Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- Electric Flight and the Ugly Duckling June 25, 2025
- Engine makers tout “Plan A” but have “Plan B” backups in R&D June 23, 2025
- Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 27. June 20, 2025
- Pontifications: A Personal Note June 19, 2025
- Airbus books 142 firm orders as Boeing retracts from the Paris Air Show June 19, 2025
Airbus wraps up Paris Air Show 2015
June 18, 2015, c. Leeham Co: Airbus traditionally wraps up the Paris Airshow with a Thursday review of their orders during the week. We have the major events captured in pictures, describing what was announced during the week. Boeing does not end the air show with a similar event.
Airbus President and CEO, Fabrice Brégier, opened the wrap up by saying that he was perhaps a little to conservative in the first briefing Monday where he said that he expected Airbus to book “a couple of hundred orders” during the show. In the end it became 421 orders/commitments, the fourth best result during air shows in Airbus history.
Odds and Ends from Paris Air Show
- A350-1100, A380neo
- A350-900, 787-10 thrust issues
June 18, 2015: The industrial part of the Paris Air Show is over, and here are some closing odds and ends.
We may have some more next week when we decompress.
A350-1100 and A380neo
The prospect of an Airbus A380neo was one of the top topics this week. Airbus suggested a neo might include a modest stretch, which was the only piece of new information about the neo topic in the public press conferences. We have more on this after this….
The Wall Street Journal reported that Airbus is talking with customers about the prospect of a stretch of the Airbus A350-1000, commonly referred to as the A350-1100. The Seattle Times reported there are no customer talks (link not available-we used up our free access, but you could search The Times).
We asked John Leahy, chief operating officer-customers of Airbus about the A380neo and the -1100 on the sidelines of the closing Air Show press conference:
Airbus wins hot Wizz competition: 110 A321neos and with it the Paris Air Show
- Deal signed 10 minutes before press conference
- Boeing loses out in aggressive bid for 737 MAX 200
- Last minute deal gives Airbus PAS win over Boeing
June 18, 2015, Paris Air Show: It was one of the most hotly contested campaigns in Europe, for a triple-digit order from the Hungarian low
Airbus super-salesman pulled one of his famous rabbits out of the hat at the last minute to win a crucial competition over Boeing and with it, bragging rights over Boeing at the 2015 Paris Air Show. Photo via Google images.
cost carrier, Wizz, for either the Boeing 737 MAX 200 or the Airbus A320 family.
For Boeing, a win was sorely needed for a second customer for the 737 MAX 200. It would also mean displacing Airbus as the incumbent supplier to Wizz.
For Airbus, it didn’t want to be displaced and winning this deal would increase the A320neo family lead over the MAX and keep a thumb on the MAX 200.
In a deal signed just 10 minutes before the scheduled press conference of a “customer announcement,” Airbus won and Boeing lost.
Bjorn’s Corner: Paris Air Show review
By Bjorn Fehrm
June 18, 2015, c Leeham Co: With the industrial part of Paris Air Show over (the public portion continues through the weekend), one can start to summarize impressions. I have over the years participated in around 10 Paris Air Shows or Farnborough International Air Shows. This was one of the first where one could see that people were stopping and looking up to observe the aircraft which were quiet.
Embraer gains 125 orders at half-year
John Slattery, chief commercial officer, Embraer Commercial Aircraft. Photo via Google images.
June 17, 2015, Paris Air Show, c. Leeham Co. With focus, as always, on Airbus and Boeing, and an airplane that neither exists nor is about to any time in the near-term (the Middle of the Market aircraft), little attention was paid to Embraer, currently the third of the Big Four commercial aircraft companies.
Embraer finished the Air Show (which essentially ends June 18 for the industrial sector), with 50 orders for the E1 and E2 E-Jets.
John Slattery, the chief commercial officer, said the company is ending the first half of the year with 125 firm orders for the two platforms. EMB now has 70 customers, headed for its target of 100 by 2017, and an important new customer joined the ranks, albeit through a used airplane transaction. Delta Air Lines will purchase 20 E-190s once a new pilot contract is ratified. The airplanes will be flown by Delta pilots for the mainline carrier, not one of its regional partners.
Engine Alliance undertakes PIPs, but not to level Emirates wants
June 17, 2015, Paris Air Show, c. Leeham Co. Engine Alliance, one of the two power plant suppliers for the Airbus A380, said today that it is undertaking Performance Improvement Package (PIP) upgrades to the GP7200 to lower maintenance and operating costs and to reduce fuel burn.
This contrasts with blunt remarks from Tim Clark, president and COO of Emirates Airlines (EK), that EA has “flat lined” and isn’t undertaking PIPs. Emirates is by far the largest operator of EA-powered A380s but recently ordered the competing Rolls-Royce Trent 900s for EK’s 50 A380s ordered late last year. Clark kept engine selection open at the time.
Dean Athans, Engine Alliance president, told LNC today that the A380 is a low-volume airplane and the
David Athans, president of Engine Alliance
business case for investing in the GP7200 to the level Clark want’s isn’t there.
“Tim is acting in the best interests of Emirates Airline, and he wants to most and the best of GP that he can get,” Athans said in an interview. “I’d do the same thing if I was in his place. He wants a brand new engine. He wants a large GTF or GE9X version for this A380s. I would, too. The position I’m in, looking at the volume and the business case for the A380, it doesn’t enable that level of investment.”
At the Annual General Meeting of the International Air Transport Assn. last week in Miami Beach (FL), Clark told LNC that EA wasn’t willing to invest in the PIPs Clark wanted, and RR is.
Boeing program update at Paris Air Show 2015.
By Bjorn Fehrm
Introduction
June 16, 2015, Paris Air Show, c. Leeham Co: On the second day of the Paris Air show we visited several Boeing briefings. The first was Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA) update with BCA President and CEO Ray Conner. He elected to not do the usual slide show speech as all slides were available as handout. Instead the whole session was turned into a Q&A, which was good. All hot topics were discussed as questions from the audience. As many were also covered in Boeing’s next session, BCA development update, I will handle these there.
The topics that did not come up in the second briefing were Boeing’s Middle of the Market (MOM) studies for a new mid-range aircraft with 200-250 seats and Boeing’s view on the VLA market. Let’s take MOM first. Conner confirmed that Boeing now has identified that there is a market of around 1.000 aircraft over 10 years which is not served by a suitable aircraft. He dismissed this market being covered by Boeing’s 737 MAX 9 or the Airbus A321LR, both being too small and not having enough range. Range requirement from the many airlines they had visited over the last year was 4,500-5,000nm. The MAX 9 and A321LR have advertised ranges of 4,000nm or less.
Conner said the next step is now to study if Boeing can build an aircraft to serve this market at the price required by the market. “We are early in the studies and don’t expect any concrete decision soon.” He could also not answer if any MOM aircraft parts or technologies could be shared with an up-and-coming replacement for the 737 MAX.
Conner said the Very Large Aircraft (VLA) sector “is a small market. We don’t see that people really want to travel to a point for gathering, then go to the next hub together, only to start spreading out again. People want to go direct to their destination. We are happy with serving this market with our 747-8, especially as part of the small market is freighters.”
Dueling market forecasts for the VLA sector
June 16, 2015, Paris Air Show, c. Leeham Co. Dueling forecasts between 
Airbus and Boeing became a bit of a sideshow yesterday, with the differing projections for the Very Large Aircraft (VLA) market coming up at the Airbus Global Market Forecast press conference and in our interview with Kiran Rao, EVP Marketing and Strategy for Airbus.
John Leahy, chief operating officer for customers, continued to project a 20-year demand for the VLA-Passenger sector at 1,200. Boeing’s forecast for the VLA sector, including freighters, is 540.
Airbus on orders this year: You ain’t seen nothing yet
June 15, 2015, Paris Air Show, c. Leeham Co. Boeing predicts 1:1 book:bill (orders to deliveries) this year.
For Airbus, you ain’t seen nothing yet. And it’s not even super-salesman, super-optimist John Leahy doing the talking.
Kiran Rao, EVP Marketing and Strategy, said that after a slow first half of the year, Airbus will come on strong in the second half with a book:bill much greater than 1:1.
Kiran Rao, EVP-Market and Strategy for Airbus
Rao wouldn’t be drawn into a more definitive guidance, however.
Although sales by Airbus and Boeing have been modest this year, Rao scoffed at the suggestion the industry is entering an order trough.
“I’d start by saying you’re not seeing a decline yet. What you see is we have a nice, gentle start to the year and then we usually have a little bit of an uptick toward the end of the year. The year is not over yet, so don’t write anything off yet,” he said. “We’ve got some surprises in store before the end of the year. Not for the [Paris Air] show.”