Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- Teamsters, Boeing have a new contract April 29, 2025
- Boeing wants to remarket China’s airplanes. It’s costly and time consuming. April 28, 2025
- Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 19. April 25, 2025
- How good is the C929? Part 2. April 24, 2025
- Boeing First Quarter Results Update: China is 10% of the backlog, with 500 in “Unidentified” April 24, 2025
Odds and Ends: Airbus neos; 757RS/A320RS; charity efforts
Airbus neos: The conversation continues, with Tom Williams, EVP of programmes, giving an interview to Flight Global about the A330neo and the A380neo. Plane Talking has another version of the Williams interview. Notable in Plane Talking’s report is the indication Williams said it will be a year before a decision is made on the A330neo. Our information is that a decision, whether yes or no, is due this year. PT also reports Williams indicated an A380neo would be a 2020s product. This suggests the prospect of a new engine from Rolls-Royce, which is under development, or conceivably a Big Engine Pratt & Whitney GTF could be considered.
757RS/A320RS: Aerotubropower, whose expertise is engines, discusses the implications of the planned improvements in fuel burn on the Pratt & Whitney Geared Turbo Fan and what this means for the replacement of the Boeing 757, 737 and Airbus A320 families.
Charity efforts: IAM 751, the touch-labor union for Boeing, is often portrayed as a bunch greedy members who feel a sense of entitlement. One can certainly debate this point, but what isn’t debatable is 751’s efforts at charity throughout the year. Every once in a while, we pop over to 751’s blog. Today (Feb. 19) the first four items are about philanthropic efforts in Pierce and King counties.
Just as 751 members are often cast as greedy, so is Boeing, so it is only proper in this context to point out that Boeing also engages in philanthropic endeavors throughout the US (we don’t know about abroad). Here’s a link to some of Boeing’s efforts.
Boeing’s Partnering for Success strains supplier relationship
Boeing officials reaffirmed the company’s drive for Partnership for Success, or PFS, during two appearances at conferences this month, adding that its supply chain was mostly on board, though some companies are now on a “no-fly list.”
.CEO James McNerney spoke at a Cowen Co. conference and in subsequent interviews, noting that some suppliers have greater margins than Boeing, which he termed “out of kilter.”
.Stan Deal, VP and GM for Supply Chain Management and Operations for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, told the Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance conference in Seattle last week that PFS is proceeding well, with cooperation of most suppliers.
Odds and Ends: A350 EIS; A330neo; more on 757RS
A350 EIS: Bloomberg reports that the first Airbus A350 XWB could be delivered to launch customer Qatar Airways “before the December deadline.” According to the Ascend data base, the first delivery had been planned for July and then slipped to September and then October. Airbus later said November or December. Based on this movement and market intelligence, we had slipped EIS to early 2015. In the end, we’ll see where the date lands.
A330neo: Aspire Aviation reports that Hawaiian Airlines could be an early customer for the A330neo. The prospect makes sense: HA is a hold-out for converting its A350-800 order to the larger A350-900, preferring the capacity of the smaller airplane.
757 Replacement: News out of the Singapore Air Show about the prospect of a 757 replacement continues to pick up steam. This story in the Puget Sound Business Journal is as complete as any (besides which, it also quotes us and our stories).
Competing in Asia: CNN has a profile of the competition between Airbus and Boeing in Asia for the low cost carriers.
Guest column: envisioning the next round of airplanes
By James N. Krebs
Leeham News recently forecast that the next all new Boeing airplane will be a 757 successor with an entry-into-service around 2025, followed by a smaller NSA (New Small Airplane), a 737 MAX/A320 neo successor, in maybe 2027. I believe it will be clear in the next few years that the technology is and can be available here to build a reasonable-risk NSA with 20% fuel savings over the MAXes/ neos (at same seats) for initial service by 2025 (which will demand perhaps 40 more than 162 seats for even better economics). Its production would ramp up over ~5 years or so.
I hope this would be mainly a “Made in the USA” Boeing NSA: American engineering, American manufacturing, American jobs and American competitive edge. If that takes some helpful brainpower and/or investments from NASA, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, etc, good.
Boeing and Airbus might love to build a combined 100/mo. MAXes and neos “forever,” but technology and market forces aren’t likely to permit this. The companies won’t want to whet any appetites soon but I hope Boeing’s advanced design people are already at work–I’d be disappointed if they aren’t.
Airbus could certainly put an A320neo successor in service 10 years after their 2015 neo. A reengined A330 and a possible A350-1100 aren’t the only new projects they are capable of in the next decade. The market response to their A320neo family completely surprised Boeing a couple years ago. What’s next?
Rolls-Royce Trent engines program update at PNAA conference
Bill Boyd, senior vice president of Rolls-Royce, provided a program update of its Trent engines that are being developed for the Airbus A350 XWB. He appeared on a panel with GE Aviation and Pratt & Whitney. He appeared at the 2014 Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance conference last week in the Seattle area.
Sound is soft; use of headphones is recommended.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ps_BuG1_JQ
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2Lgs-oGJYg
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Euo3TJZlQyc
A350 XWB program update at the PNAA conference
Daniel Wenninger, senior director of the Airbus A350 XWB program out if the Airbus Americas office, appeared at the 2014 Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance conference last week in the Seattle area.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RdszdH0egE
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMyM5NLu3V8]
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YNb0UFKiMw]
Simon Pickup of Airbus Americas joins Wenninger for questions and answers.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMtO4AfpZB4]
Development of the GE9X for the Boeing 777X
Jason Brewer, general manager of GE Commercial Engines Marketing, appeared at last week’s Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance 2014 conference on the Big Engines panel.
Brewer discussed the development of the GE9X for the Boeing 777X, outlining the new technology going into this big engine for Boeing’s latest 7-Series aircraft.
One slide–which is available to the conference attendees–showed a market forecast of 3,000 aircraft in a context that appeared to suggest GE sees a market of this number of airplanes for the 777X. We clarified this with Brewer after the panel; the forecast is for the 350-400 seat sector. Brewer told us that GE hopes to capture 1,700 of these aircraft.
This is the first time we’ve seen this sub-sector broken out–Airbus and Boeing typically forecast for the larger 300-400 seat sector in their 20 year forecasts. Airbus and Boeing have previously indicated they think the demand for the 400-seat aircraft (i.e., the 777-9X) is between 670-780 respectively.
The sound is pretty soft on this. It will best be heard with headphones.