Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- Hopes for 1Q financial progress turns into bumpy ride for Boeing April 21, 2025
- Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 18. April 18, 2025
- Natilus: Composite BWB, entry-into-service by 2029, 570 on order April 17, 2025
- China bans Boeing, US parts imports in tariff war April 15, 2025
- Boeing welcomes COMAC competition as Asia-Pacific demand soars April 15, 2025
“No” to A350 aid
Bloomberg News reports that Airbus has asked for US$18 billion in financial aid for development of the A350 XWB. (Holy smokes, the price of things has gone up.) Here’s the report from The Seattle Times.
Boeing, predictably, doesn’t like the idea. Neither do we.
We’ve long been on record that we don’t like corporate welfare, however it’s masked. This includes launch aid, government loans, research & development funding, tax breaks or anything else. This applies to Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier, Embraer, the Chinese, Japanese and Russians.
Airbus says it wants the loans to have a level playing field for the A350 vs. the 787. Two of the three models are actually competitors to the Boeing 777. If one accepts the Airbus rationale at face value, then it’s aid request should be trimmed by two-thirds to in essence cover only the A350-800 (yes, we know the impossibility of segregating out the one model, but you get our point).
But whatever is done, we still don’t like it. Not for the reasons Boeing complains about. We just don’t like corporate welfare, period.
About face on the tanker?
In an interesting piece that looks like an about face, Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute now sounds like Boeing when it comes to the USAF tanker award. Thompson just published this piece on his website challenging the Air Force to answer a bunch of questions that are right out of Boeing’s playbook. Setting aside for the moment that the questions may well be answered in the GAO protest investigation, why Thompson is asking these now is ripe for speculation.
Immediately after the award, Thompson–the beneficiary, apparently, of USAF leaks on the award, didn’t raise these questions and praised the Air Force for an open and transparent process. He’s since been the target of more than a little criticism about receiving Air Force leaks. In fact, on March 18, US Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS), a hyper Boeing supporter (and former Boeing employee), wrote Michael Wynne, secretary of the Air Force, demanding to know how Thompson knew the Air Force was going to award the contract to Northrop (albeit only a half hour or so before the announcement–Editor) and knew the rationale behind the decision before Members of Congress did. (The latter is probably a bigger sin than the award to Northrop, in the view of some Members of Congress. Heaven help those who step on Congressional protocol.)
In the letter, Tiahrt requested that Wynne provide:
- All documentation briefed or provided to Thompson regarding the KC-X decision;
- A list of government officials who discussed the tanker decision with Thompson on Feb. 29, the date the award was announced;
- Northrop’s official bid proposal;
- Boeing’s official bid proposal;
- Any appropriate data to the competition and award.
More: We can’t help but speculate–and that’s all it is–that with this kind of heat on leaks to Thompson, perhaps his sources, and his answers, have dried up on this issue and what we’re seeing now is a bit of frustration emerging.
We’ll remind readers that although we did not support Boeing’s filing of a protest, once it was filed we agreed that it needed to be vigorously pursued and that all of Boeing’s questions needed to be answered. These include the same questions Thompson raises. Only by addressing the questions thoroughly can the integrity of the USAF process be affirmed or disallowed (for the lack of a better term). Also reminding readers, our position was and is that if the GAO affirms the USAF decision, Boeing and its supporters should respect this decision. If the GAO upholds Boeing’s protest and recommends a re-run of the competition, the USAF Northrop and its supporters should likewise respect this conclusion (the USAF is not legally bound by a GAO recommendation, it should be noted).
Of course, a compromise can always be worked out by doubling the procurement and splitting the contract. As we wrote last week on our Corporate site, we believe there are missions for which the KC-767 is better suited than the KC-30 and vice versa. Furthermore, replacing 500 old KC-135s at the current proposed rate of 12-18 a year is ridiculously low. The US is spending something like $1 billion a day in Iraq (which Iraqi oil production was supposed to pay for, it might be remembered, according to Vice President Cheney); doubling the tanker production equals a month-and-a-half of expense of the Iraq war–spread out over many years it would take to produce the tankers. It’s a good investment.
New, Wednesday, 700 AM PDT: James Wallace at The Seattle Post-Intelligencer interviewed Thompson–here’s his report.
Speaking of aerial tankers, Airliners.net has a nice photo here.
White House threatens veto on KC-45A curbs
The White House threatened to veto a House of Representatives bill that includes, among other provisions objected to by the White House, provisions that would undo the USAF KC-45A tanker award to Northrop Grumman, according to this Reuters report.
It’s a lengthy article and the references to the tanker controversy are minimal, but it’s significant that there appears to be White House support for Northrop’s contract. This may explain what is widely perceived to be a Boeing strategy to delay the contract through protests (and appeals, if its protest is denied by the GAO) and political tactics with Congress until after the next president takes office–on the assumption the next president will be a Democrat. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the Democrats, have questioned the contract (though Obama is more temperate in his comments than Clinton). John McCain, the Republican, is no fan of Boeing and blocked the 2004 contract to Boeing after discovering improprieties.
Airbus worth “less than zero”
This Bloomberg report quotes Lehman Brothers’ aerospace analyst as concluding there is no value attributable to Airbus reflected in the share price of parent EADS. The value of EADS’ non-Airbus business make up all the share price. Morgan Stanley analysts come to essentially the same conclusion, according to Bloomberg.
Boeing Environmental Report
Boeing just issued a 50 page report on its approach to environmental issues. In addition to the link here, we’ve added this permanently under our Green Aviation section.
Boeing is participating our our Eco-Aviation conference June 18-20 in Washington, DC, organized with Air Transport World.
There is a high quality list of speakers.
Eco-aviation continues to gain importance in profile and substance. Boeing’s Scott Carson, president of the Commercial Aircraft division, spent a fair amount of time during his presentation at the annual investors’ conference yesterday talking about aviation and the environmental movement.
In an interview we just completed with Airbus for the new publication, Aviation and the Environment, Airbus discussed the environmental advances of the A350’s new Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engine compared with the new Trent 1000 on the Boeing 787. Although the Trent XWB doesn’t represent a technological break-through, it does provide advances over Rolls’ own latest engine technology for the game-changing 787.
Whereas fuel efficiency and noise have been the drivers in the past for new airplanes, there are a whole new set of drivers for technological advances to protect the environment.
Boeing’s new environmental report is important reading for a better understanding of what Boeing is doing and the issues in eco-aviation.
You read it here first: 767 production boost
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports today that Boeing plans to double production on the 767 line to accommodate airlines affected by the delays in the 787 program. We reported this back on April 15.
The P-I reports production will double to two a month sometime next year. We reported that the boost would come in 2010 and could be a doubling to 24 a year or even somewhat higher, to 27-30 a year.
We’ve also reported that lessor Aircastle may swap some Airbus A330-200F positions for A330 passenger slots to take advantage of 787 delays. We can now report that lessors Intrepid Aviation and Guggenheim are also thinking of swapping out early A330F slots for A330P positions, adding to their orders for A330s instead of a pure swap. Additional freighter orders would be placed with early positions being switched to the passenger model.
We’ll have more details in an update of our Corporate Website later today, delayed so we can include information from Boeing’s investors day conference this morning.
EADS’ ex-lobbyist quits McCain campaign
It generated a lot of headlines at the time of the USAF aerial tanker contract award to Northrop Grumman when it was revealed that a campaign adviser to Republican presidential candidate US Sen. John McCain one time had EADS as a client.
EADS, of course, is partnered with Northrop to offer the KC-30 tanker to the USAF. EADS is parent of Boeing’s arch-enemy, Airbus, and the KC-30 is based on the commercial A330-200 which essentially put Boeing’s 767 commercial airliner out of business. Boeing’s KC-767 is based on the commercial 767-200, with parts from the 767-300 and 767-400.
After Boeing lost the tanker award, critics of the decision blamed McCain for the loss, a position we find preposterous, but that’s neither here nor there. When it was discovered that a top McCain adviser was once a lobbyist for EADS, the conspiracy theorists really went to town.
We thought that the entire round of accusations was poppycock, and still do. (Disclosure: although we’re defending McCain on this one, we have no connection to his campaign and aren’t even for him; we liked Ron Paul in the primary and Barack Obama in the general.)
But with the McCain campaign adopting its own rules on ethics, conflicts of interest and lobbyists, the former EADS lobbyist quit the campaign.
A wire service story on the action may be found here.
Boeing loses another defense contract
Make it four. That’s the number of defense contracts Boeing has lost this year. This AP story outlines them.
Maybe it’s just coincidence, but Boeing certainly hasn’t done very well since protesting the first loss, that of the KC-45A tanker program. Maybe there’s no retaliation going on with the Pentagon. Maybe we’re just being cynical. But we can’t help wondering if there’s a connection.
Government R&D for A350 wing
The Financial Times reported today (May 15) that the UK government will help fund the research and development for the composite wing for the Airbus A350.
An excerpt:
Aerospace groups are joining forces with the government and regional development agencies to fund research and development aimed at strengthening the UK’s leading position in the manufacture of wings for commercial jets.
They are planning to invest £103m ($200m) in a three-year programme to develop and manufacture wings out of carbon-fibre composites, rather than aluminium. The R&D programme will be led by Airbus, the European aircraft maker, which has its wing design and manufacturing operations in the UK at sites near Bristol and in north Wales.
The full story may be found here, but it’s Subscription Required.
Our immediate thought, of course, was about that old bugaboo, government “subsidies” and the entire WTO/EU/USTR/Boeing/Airbus/USAF tanker series of fights.
This will only add fuel to the fire of the complainers over Airbus “subsidies.”
The Airbus response, of course, will be that Boeing gets plenty of R&D and “subsidy” support from NASA and the US Department of Defense.
UA-US, DL-NW, Boeing-Airbus
Richard Aboulafia, Addison Schonland and Scott Hamilton discuss the winners (or not) between Airbus ands Boeing in the potential tie-up between United Airlines and US Airways and Delta and Northwest in this 15 minute podcast by AirInsight. (Subscription only.) The link is here.