Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 25. June 6, 2025
- New RISE powerplant benefits from decades of GE research and development June 5, 2025
- Engine makers emphasizing durability, reliability June 4, 2025
- Boeing CEO: Lessons learned are key to certification of 737-7/10 and 777X June 2, 2025
- Digital twin is a key to JetZero’s hopes for Blended Wing Body entry June 2, 2025
Airbus readies hydrogen-powered demo flights
Update, Feb. 21: Airbus announced today a press conference tomorrow in Toulouse.
By Scott Hamilton
One concept of where hydrogen tanks could be located.
Feb. 8, 2022, (c) Leeham News: Airbus plans to fly a hydrogen-fueled ZEROe demonstrator soon, with an announcement coming as early as this month.
Airbus’ drive to reduce emissions appears prioritized toward developing an H2-fueled airplane. While all it’s A-Series aircraft will be 100% compatible with Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) by 2030—they’re 50% compatible today—hydrogen is at the forefront of its research and development. Officials want to have an H2-powered airplane ready for service by 2035. This aircraft will almost certainly be a turboprop.
Amanda Simpson, vice president for research and technology of Airbus, said the company must have a demonstration project proving the feasibility of an H2-fueled airplane before full development can proceed. She told the audience at the annual conference of the Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance yesterday that an announcement could come within two weeks. In sideline remarks, she declined to say what type of aircraft will be used for the demo project.
HOTR: ULCCs Frontier, Spirit announce plans to merge
Feb. 7, 2022, © Leeham News: Frontier and Spirit airlines today announced plans to merge. The combination will create the USA’s fifth largest carrier and combine the two largest Ultra Low-Cost Carriers (ULCC) in the United States.
Shareholders of Frontier will own 51.5% of the new company, and seven of the 12 board members will be appointed by Frontier. The largest shareholder is Indigo Partners, whose chairman, Bill Franke, becomes chair of the combined airline. Indigo once was the largest shareholder in Spirit. Indigo sold its shareholdings and Franke resigned from the Spirit board when Indigo bought control of Frontier.
It hasn’t been decided what the brand of the new company will be.
Pontifications: KC-X aerial tanker competition becomes a pass-fail RFP
Part 4: The Boeing perspective
By Scott Hamilton
Feb. 7, 2022, © Leeham News: After Boeing lost to Northrop Grumman-EADS for the KC-X US Air Force tanker contract, Boeing filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
The Air Force, Boeing complained, gave Northrop extra credit for the larger A330 MRTT’s fuel capacity and range. This possibility had not been in the Request for Proposals. Boeing, therefore, felt its tanker, based on the 767-200ER airframe, was properly sized for the USAF requirements.
The GAO upheld Boeing’s protest. For the third time, the Air Force now had to issue an RFP and run another competition.
Northrop decided to sit this one out. But, as previously reported in the Sean O’Keefe series of the Airbus perspective, Airbus elected to bid again.
This time, the RFP was tightened. It took a Pass-Fail approach.
The new Boeing freighter, 777-8F, versus Airbus’ A350F
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By Bjorn Fehrm
Introduction
February 3, 2022, © Leeham News: Boeing launched the new large freighter, 777-8F, Monday with an order for 34 and options for 16 from Qatar Airways.
We made a comparison based on projected data in August 2021 of the 777-XF versus an A350 freighter, but now we have final data for both. We can now compare the 777-8F from Boeing with the A350F from Airbus. We also compare these with the present Boeing freighter, 777F.
The new freighters represent the largest freighters that will be in the market at the end of the decade, as Boeing’s 747-8F ends its production after the summer. The A350F starts deliveries during 2025, and the 777-8F joins in 2027.
We start with comparing freight capabilities, and then we fly them on a typical freight route, using our aircraft performance model.
Image: Boeing.
Summary
- The 777-8F has the largest volume and highest payload capability, making it the market’s largest freighter at the end of the decade.
- But despite the highest takeoff weight, it has the shortest range of the compared freighters.
Year-end 2021 Orders at Risk
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By Vincent Valery
Introduction
Feb. 1st, 2022, © Leeham News: After a large number of cancellations, Boeing accumulated a healthy number of 737 MAX orders in 2021. Some came through positive ASC 606 adjustments on Boeing Commercial Airplanes’ website. The adjustments resulted from Boeing agreeing on new terms on existing deals or finding new customers for tails flagged as ASC 606.
Airbus also accumulated a healthy number of A320neo family orders, effectively selling out the production line through the middle of this decade. Both OEMs struggled with their twin-aisle order books due to the lingering effects of the pandemic and Boeing’s Dreamliner production problems. Freighter orders were a bright spot for Boeing.
However, portions of both OEM’s order books became shakier. It means there is a material probability some orders won’t translate into deliveries. Most were the result of airlines encountering financial difficulties, but some were related to contractual disputes. Boeing flags such orders as subject to an ASC 606 adjustment.
Unlike Boeing, Airbus isn’t subject to an accounting rule similar to the ASC 606 adjustments. Therefore, the European OEM does not break down the orders at risk of cancellation by the program. Airbus only discloses the nominal value of its total adjusted order book in its annual report.
LNA analyzed in July 2020, November 2020, and August 2020, Airbus’ and Boeing’s order books to identify orders at risk and come up with an apples-to-apples comparison. We update this analysis with the latest order books from both OEMs. The above links explain our methodology and its differences with Boeing’s ASC 606 adjustments.
Summary
- Lingering order book cleanup for older programs;
- A riskier region for single-aisle orders;
- Small and large twin-aisle order book weaknesses;
- A more significant impact on twin-aisle market shares.
HOTR: Lockheed Martin to split refueling tanker work between Airbus-Mobile and LMCO Marietta facilities
Jan. 31, 2022, © Leeham News: Assembly and conversion of the proposed LMXT refueling tanker for the US Air Force will be split between Mobile (AL) and Marietta (GA), Lockheed Martin (LMCO) announced today.
Airbus has final assembly plants for the A220 and A320 families in Mobile. LMCO has surplus facilities at its home in Marietta. A new final assembly plant and line will be required at Mobile. LMCO’s C-5 building in Marietta will be the site for the conversion and installation of military equipment.
“We will transition the assembly line for the A330s to the United States and transitioning all conversion lines from Spain to the United States,” said Larry Gallogly, director of the LMXT program. The A330 tooling and production lines moved to the US are for the A330ceo only; A330neo production remains in Toulouse. A330 MRTTs ordered by non-US customers will be assembled and militarized at the current facilities in Toulouse and Spain.
Pontifications: “The mother of the last pilot on the 707 tanker hasn’t been born yet”
Part 3 of the Boeing focus for the USAF Aerial Refueling Tanker
Jan. 31, 2022, © Leeham News: Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, Boeing offered the US Air Force a lease deal for 100 aerial refueling tankers based on the 767-200.
By Scott Hamilton
The concept of leasing tankers had been floated before. Boeing at one point proposed creating a 747-based tanker and leasing it to the Air Force. The idea went nowhere, but this one gained traction.
The leasing concept formed just before Jim Albaugh arrived at IDS, but he was president as it progressed and through the subsequent competition, called KC-X, against Northrop Grumman-EADS (Airbus) after the lease deal was canceled.
“You go back in history, and it started out with the need for the Air force to replace the 707s which were their tanker fleet for a long time, and they were getting old,” recalls Albaugh, the CEO of Boeing’s Integrated Defense Systems unit at the time. IDS is now called Boeing Defense, Space and Security (BDS).
Lockheed Martin sees LMXT as complementary to KC-46A, not competitive
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Now open to all readers
By Scott Hamilton
Jan. 30, 2022, © Leeham News: Lockheed Martin’s LMXT US Air Force refueling tanker will be a complementary offer to the service in the forthcoming KC-Y competition.
Larry Gallogly
In an exclusive interview with LNA earlier this month, Lockheed Martin (LMCO)’s LMXT Campaign Director, Larry Gallogly, said the Air Force wants an airplane that is bigger, has more range, and more fuel offload than the incumbent Boeing KC-46A. This fits the LMXT, based on the Airbus A330-200 Multi-Role Tanker Transport (MRTT) now in production.
Airbus partnered with LMCO in 2018 to prepare for the KC-Y competition. Airbus has 61 orders for the MRTT from around the world. Boeing is building 179 tankers for the Air Force from the original KC-X competition. It has a handful of orders from other countries.
The KC-Y contact will be for up to 160 tankers. The competition will pit Boeing and Airbus against each other for the third time. Airbus first teamed with Northrop Grumman in the first round of the KC-X campaign. Northrop won the contract, but the award was protested successfully by Boeing. Northrop dropped out of the recompete, with Airbus going alone. This time, Lockheed Martin will be the lead, and Airbus the subcontractor.
The two fights were bitterly waged in the public and political domains. LMCO hopes to avoid a repeat.
No plans to relitigate
“We have, from the start of this, with both ourselves and Airbus, have had no intention of re-litigating the [KC-X] competition,” Gallogly said. “Our goal has always been to provide what we consider to be a complementary capability. There are going to be 179 KC-46s out there, but there are significant capability gaps that the US Air Force has that this LMXT can fill. We are not trying to provide the same capability in a different wrapper. Our goal is to provide a very different capability and, again, fill those gaps.”
Gallogly said that after talking to the Air Force and Pentagon repeatedly, from the Air Mobility Command to transportation command to the individual theater commanders, to the people in the Pentagon, “what we heard consistently was that the gap exists for fuel offload at strategic ranges. You know as everybody who focuses on the Pacific Theater, you’re faced with the tyranny of distance there, and we needed to provide as much fuel offload as we possibly could.”
“Don’t delude the public” on environmental advances in aviation
By Scott Hamilton
Jan. 26, 2022, © Leeham News: The International Air Transport Assn’s Annual General Meeting in Boston last October focused on industry progress and goals toward a greener environment.
Tim Clark, president of Emirates Airline. Photo Credit: ET Travel World News.
In a fanfare series of panels and announcements, IATA set a goal of industrial carbon neutrality by 2050. But in reality, this was a step backwards from a goal described in 2011 by Jim Albaugh, then-president of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Albaugh made his remarks in a speech before the Royal Aeronautical Society.
At the IATA AGM, Tim Clark, president of Emirates Airline, cautioned the industry: “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
LNA spoke with Clark this month, who expanded on his IATA appearance.
Airbus brings BelugaST to outsized cargo market
By Bjorn Fehrm
January 25, 2022, ©. Leeham News: Airbus has decided to bring the original Beluga fleet, BelugaST (A300 based), on the market for outsized freight transport, as the newer BelugaXL (A330 based) caters for Airbus internal needs.
It has a larger cross-section than the AN-124, a tad longer freight compartment, and loads outsized but less heavy cargo. When all BelugaXLs are delivered, the ST will be spun off to a dedicated external freight company, Airbus Beluga Transport.
Figure 1. The cargo space of the BelugaST compared with the AN-124. Source: Airbus and Leeham Co.