Pre-Paris Air Show discussion and AirInsight preview

AinInsight will host a live pre-Paris Air Show discussion Friday, with guest Richard Aboulafia of the Teal Group. Sign up to participate here.

Also look for AirInsight’s Paris Air Show preview next week. We historically have done air show previews here but this year we’re combining our thoughts with our partners, Ernie Arvai and Addison Schonland at AirInsight. AirInsight will go down the airframe and engine OEMs with our outlook for orders and announcements.

Addison and I will be at the air show, providing daily coverage. I’m also attending the Boeing pre-air show briefings this week (with news embargoed to June 19); and the EADS/Airbus media day June 18, at which there will be an A350 briefing that had been scheduled for May 31 but was postponed to the media day.

Just a hint of AirInsight’s preview next week: we’re expecting Airbus to announced and firm up several hundred orders for the A320neo and more A380 orders; Boeing may have some 747-8I orders ready to announce; Bombardier should have more CSeries orders; CFM will get its first LEAP-X orders on the neo (and these will be large numbers) while Pratt & Whitney will continue to add to the GTF book; Embraer won’t announce a new airplane and neither will Boeing; ATR (an EADS company) will have a nice turbo-prop order; and we expect a major announcement from Rolls-Royce.

Odds and ends: More on DC-7B trip

Here are some more photos from our DC-7B trip. All photos by Scott Hamilton.

PBY

This PBY Catalina, a derelict but intact condition, is at the San Juan Airport. Given the loss of a PBY several years ago in a landing accident, could this become a new, restored edition?

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Going on hiatus

Due do a number of special projects with near-term deadlines, this column will be a hiatus for a while. In the meantime, please see our affiliate, AirInsight, for commentary and news.

2011 Outlook for Aerospace

Note: this is unusually long, 11 pages when printed.

The new year is here and it is time for our annual look-ahead for the big OEMs.

On a macro level, 2011 should be a good year. Airline passenger and cargo traffic recovery should continue. The global economy also is recovering, but it is almost painfully slow to do so. Still, this is better than some of the alternatives.

Airlines and lessors are likely to continue their order stream that resumed in mid-2010 at the Farnborough Air Show. There could be some key orders that will influence the OEMs and their strategies going forward.

On the military front, we are much more limited in our tracking. We follow the KC-X tanker program because the offerings are based on commercial airliners. We slightly follow the P-8A Poseidon for the same reason, but Boeing pretty much has the monopoly for this type airplane, so there isn’t much to follow.

We do closely follow cybersecurity issues, if for no other reason than it is so important but also because key aerospace companies, including Boeing, have major efforts in this arena.

But by and large, we focus on the OEMs, the emerging competitors and the new engines.

So let’s get to it.

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Airbus NEO won’t kill CSeries: New study

Airbus’ A320 NEO won’t kill the Bombardier CSeries, a new study concludes, issued today by AirInsight.

The study, “The Business Case for the Bombardier CSeries,” which we co-authored, is discussed on the AirInsight blog.

The study began as an update to AirInsight’s report in December 2009 on the prospect of re-engining the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 families. As Airbus COO-Customers John Leahy repeatedly asserted that to re-engine the A320 would kill the business case for the CSeries, AirInsight broadened its update into a full, in-depth study. AirInsight concluded that the business case for the CSeries is sound.

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New Report on Boeing

AirInsight has published a new report on The Boeing Co. This follows reports on Airbus, the emerging competitors to Airbus and Boeing and Re-Engining the A320 and 737 families published since August.

We co-authored these reports with Ernest Arvai and Addison Schonland of The Arvai Group and Innovation Analysis Group. The link to these reports is here.

The Boeing Co. report contains a competitive assessment vis-a-vis Airbus, updating our Airbus report published in August; a close look at Boeing’s programs; its relationship with labor; the prospect for replacing the 737 and 777 to meet Airbus competition; the KC-7A7 and more.

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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.