Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- FAA understaffing affects air operations oversight; NTSB falls short, too January 13, 2025
- Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 4. January 10, 2025
- The market is ready for a 787F. But is Boeing? January 9, 2025
- 2025 remains another year for recovery in commercial aerospace January 6, 2025
- Boeing touts safety progress but opposes SPEEA initiative January 3, 2025
Bjorn’s Corner: Sustainable Air Transport. Part 4. Reality checks.
By Bjorn Fehrm
January 28, 2022, ©. Leeham News: Having discussed where investments would be the most efficient in alleviating our Greenhouse gas problems and identified the low-hanging fruit, we now look at new technology airplanes that can improve the situation.
We start with classical airliners, working our way from small types to the largest, then we discuss the impact of new transport forms like VTOLs for short-haul transportation.
As we will use the Leeham Aircraft Performance Model in some of the work, there will be extra articles (for this one, a Part 4P) which are Paywall, where we use the model to generate deeper data and understanding.
Figure 1. The Alice nine-seater drawings from Eviation’s Web. The present drawing (dark blue) differs from the mid-2021 drawing (light blue, on top). Source: Eviation and Leeham Co.
Bjorn’s Corner: Sustainable Air Transport. Part 4P. Reality checks, the deeper discussion.
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By Bjorn Fehrm
January 28, 2022, ©. Leeham News: This is a complementary article to the Part 4. Reality Checks article. It uses data from Leeham Company’s Aircraft Performance Model to develop the relationship between OEW (Operational Empty Weight) and MZFW (Maximum Zero Fuel Weight) compared with MTOW (Maximum Take-Off Weight) for 74 airliners in the model.
The article also discusses in more detail what’s the reasons behind large weight misses for new projects and how it’s handled.
Bjorn’s Corner: The challenges of airliner development. Part 34. Wrap-up.
By Bjorn Fehrm, Henry Tam, and Andrew Telesca.
December 17, 2021, ©. Leeham News: As we wrap up the series where we look at the monumental work you have to do to get a new aircraft type certified, we will discuss how we need several aircraft variants, addressing different markets, if we shall survive as an aircraft manufacturer.
All successful aircraft manufacturers produce and market a family of aircraft. If you stay with only one variant, you will find it hard to keep good people as the development work ends.
Figure 1. Beech 1900, a 19 seater aircraft developed from the Super King Air 200 with 9 seats. Source: Textron Aviation.
Bjorn’s Corner: The challenges of airliner development. Part 33. Multi-country Certification
By Bjorn Fehrm, Henry Tam and Andrew Telesca.
December 10, 2021, ©. Leeham News: Our aircraft has now achieved its first deliveries and is Entering Into Service (EIS) with our launch customer.
This covers one customer and one jurisdiction. As each country is sovereign in Airworthiness certification, we have work to do for each market we want to address.
Figure 1. A new 19 seater design, the Cessna 408 SkyCourier, started life as a cargo aircraft certified to US Part 23 standards. Here, the passenger version. Source: Cessna.
Bjorn’s Corner: The challenges of airliner development. Part 32. Aircraft delivery and EIS
By Bjorn Fehrm, Henry Tam, and Andrew Telesca
December 3, 2021, ©. Leeham News: Last week, we went through typical problems by the start of serial production, such as weight creep and traveled work.
Now we discuss the ins and outs of delivering the aircraft to the customer airline and how we support the aircraft’s entry into service.
Figure 1. A new 19 seater design, the Cessna SkyCourier. Source: Cessna.
Bjorn’s Corner: The challenges of airliner development. Part 31. Serial Production problems
By Bjorn Fehrm, Henry Tam, and Andrew Telesca.
November 26, 2021, ©. Leeham News: Last week, we started our analysis of the serial production phase. If development is filled with revelations and problems to solve, production has it as well.
We start this week by looking at the beginning of serial production, where several issues are overhangs from development. There are areas of the aircraft, though we have achieved our Type Certificate, that are not quite to the maturity level we want for long-term serial production.
Figure 1. A typical aircraft Final Assembly Line (FAL) site. Source: ATR.
Bjorn’s Corner: The challenges of airliner development. Part 29. Finishing Flight tests
By Bjorn Fehrm, Henry Tam, and Andrew Telesca.
November 12, 2021, ©. Leeham News: Last week, we looked at our role in creating comprehensive crew training so the aircraft can be safely operated during its lifetime.
With maintenance and crew training docs and curriculums well underway we can return to our Flight tests and describe how we finish up the testing and get our Type Certificate.
Figure 1. The Type Certificate for the Part 23 Beech, now Textron, King Air series. Source: FAA.
Bjorn’s Corner: The challenges of airliner development. Part 28. Crew training
By Bjorn Fehrm, Henry Tam, and Andrew Telesca
November 5, 2021, ©. Leeham News: Last week, we looked at our role in creating a competent maintenance activity so our aircraft can be kept airworthy throughout its operational life. The other important part of operational safety is crew training.
We learned that these two parts, keeping the aircraft airworthy with its maintenance and providing adequate training and information to the crews operating the airplane, have a major influence on flight safety. In fact, FAA has found that these parts have a larger influence on flight safety than the aircraft certification regulations.
We, as the OEM, must therefore develop the documentation, curriculum, and training tools so that crews working in the aircraft can fly it safely. This encompasses not only initial training but a continued refresh and check training throughout the crew’s life with the aircraft.
Figure 1. Air Training Supporot’s simulator for the 19 seat Beech 1900. Source: A.T.S.
Bjorn’s Corner: The challenges of airliner development. Part 27. Maintenance competence
By Bjorn Fehrm, Henry Tam, and Andrew Telesca.
October 29, 2021, ©. Leeham News: Last week, we looked into Instructions for Continued Airworthiness (ICAs), and what roles it plays in air safety.
Equally important for air safety is the qualification and training programs we design for the organizations and people that shall carry out the work with our Instructions for Continued Airworthiness.
Figure 1. Aircraft Maintenance on an IBERIA A320. Source: Wikipedia.
Bjorn’s Corner: The challenges of airliner development. Part 26. Maintenance planning
By Bjorn Fehrm, Henry Tam, and Andrew Telesca.
October 22, 2021, ©. Leeham News: Last week, we looked into Continued Operational Safety and there specifically Safety Monitoring and Reporting. Now we look at the role Instructions for Continued Airworthiness (ICAs) play in preventing the air safety issues we talked about last week.
An important part of the Instructions for Continued Airworthiness, ICA, is how to maintain the aircraft in a continued airworthy state during its operational life. The aircraft is airworthy when it rolls out of the factory but it needs to keep this condition for its 25 years or longer productive life. How this is done is contained in the maintenance documents, but there is more to it than just producing a maintenance manual.
Figure 1. The Aircraft Maintenance Manual (AMM) for the Boeing 747, part of ICA for the 747. Source: Boeing.
