Bjorn’s Corner: hot summer, hot engines

By Bjorn Fehrm

By Bjorn Fehrm

17 July 2015, ©. Leeham Co: It is summer in south of Europe and we have had over 30°C/86°F for weeks. It makes one realize the conditions where the engines have to work over their flat rating point in the Middle East.

Aircraft engines are a bit fidgety. They don’t like temperature although they are made to sustain that their hottest parts, the nozzle and first turbine after the combustor, gets scalded to 1700°C/3,092°F or more.

Go down to the very back end of the engine and we come to where the key engine parameter, EGT (Exhaust Gas Temperature), is measured. It determines a lot of things, among them the time the engine stays on wing. Things are typically 700°C/1,832°F cooler here and this is where a reliable temperature measurement probe can be placed. Based on its values, the total health of the engine’s core is determined. It is also a key input whether the engine shall be throttled back in a hot take-off like in the Middle East.

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Bjorn’s Corner: Electrical flight, how real?

By Bjorn Fehrm

By Bjorn Fehrm

10 July 2015, ©. Leeham Co: We have just witnessed the first solar electrical aircraft, Solar Impulse 2, cross the ocean from Tokyo to Hawaii. Today, Friday, Airbus Group will cross the English Channel with a battery powered electrical aircraft, the E-Fan.

How real is electrical flying? Real enough to make demonstration flights like the one to Hawaii and to Calais. Both these aircraft are technology demonstrators but it is symptomatic that they do these hops now, 2015.E-Fan cross Channel

Airbus Group’s E-Fan aircraft is preparing to cross the English Channel. Source: Airbus.

We live in the years when electrical cars have gone from exotic one-offs to serial produced products, still expensive but more and more practical. Why should not the aircraft industry follow? Read more

Bjorn’s Corner: Bandit mask explained and nonexistent IFE boxes.

By Bjorn Fehrm

By Bjorn Fehrm

2 July 2015, ©. Leeham Co: Having aircraft as your interest exposes you to thousands of photos of your favorite subject. In general I find exterior photos of airliners a bit dull; there is no variation in their configuration or physics except for the livery of the operator. Some photos are a bit extra though. Read more

Bjorn’s Corner: What Paris Air Show taught us about East and West.

 

By Bjorn Fehrm

By Bjorn Fehrm

25 June 2015, © Leeham Co: With a few days in the office one can look back at Paris Air Show with a bit of perspective. So what are the impressions?

It was surprising how many orders Airbus and Boeing landed. Both had played down the expectations, telling that it will be a decent show but nothing close to record. Yet both were booking orders or commitments which were better than expected going into the PAS. Read more

Bjorn’s Corner: Paris Air Show review

 

By Bjorn Fehrm

By Bjorn Fehrm

June 18, 2015, c Leeham Co: With the industrial part of Paris Air Show over (the public portion continues through the weekend), one can start to summarize impressions. I have over the years participated in around 10 Paris Air Shows or Farnborough International Air Shows. This was one of the first where one could see that people were stopping and looking up to observe the aircraft which were quiet.

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Bjorn’s Corner: Hot competition in Middle east.

By Bjorn Fehrm

 

By Bjorn Fehrm

By Bjorn Fehrm

Introduction

12 June 2015, C. Leeham Co: Earlier in the week we had an interesting interview with Sir Tim Clark, , president and COO of Emirates Airline. We discussed Emirates’ requirement for a twin aisle medium/long range complement to their Airbus A380 and Boeing 777 fleets. The competition is between Boeing’s 787-10 and Airbus’ A350-900. So far the assumptions have been that the 787-10 will be hard to beat on pure costs per seat for mid-range requirements in the 300-seat segment.

The 787-10 seats 323 passengers in Boeing’s old-fashioned IAC three class seating and 331 in our more modern, normalized two class seating with 60 inch angled lie flat in Business and 32 inch economy section. The A350-900 has so far seated 313 seats in the same normalized seating standard. Recent cabin changes by Airbus can now increase that to close to 330 seats. The configuration changes were originally conceived for A350-1000 but we believe Airbus will offer these to Emirates and they will make it into the -900 catalog.

The 787-10 is lighter and would therefore be more effective on fuel but the difference is small, given the A350-900’s more modern engines. So the overall discussion was that 787-10 had found its ideal customer, in need of many seats, a solid mid-range performance and lowest cost. That was until Monday’s interview with Clark.

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Bjorn’s corner: Conversion to A350, we talk to Finnair.

By Bjorn Fehrm

By Bjorn Fehrm.

Introduction

June 4, 2015, c. Leeham Co. In our article series around A350 we now finish by covering how an airline prepares its pilots for flying A350. Here we were given the possibility to interview Finnair’s Flight Safety Manager Tapani Toppari on how Finnair will use Airbus training to convert their A330/340 pilots to include A350 in their type ratings.

Christian Norden, Airbus Director for A350 Flight Training, also furnished us with more information on how Airbus has improved their training philosophy for A350 training. This new training concept, called Evidence Based Training, has been developed by Airbus and other OEMs in cooperation with ICAO to counteract the tendency revealed by recent accidents that pilots had lost their manual flying skills and had deficiencies in their capability to solve unexpected problems.

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Bjorn’s Corner: Airbus Innovation days, activities and program updates.

By Bjorn Fehrm

By Bjorn Fehrm

Introduction

28 May 2015, C. Leeham Co: I am in Toulouse today attending Airbus Innovation days for Leeham News. It has been a good day’s briefings and I have presented what was perhaps the biggest change since we last met Airbus in the article “Airbus A350-1000 getting real”.

Apart from this program, there were more standard updates on Airbus other activities and programs. Here follows a rundown on these updates in a more paraphrased form.

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Bjorn’s Corner: Flying the Airbus A350

By Bjorn Fehrm

By Bjorn Fehrm

Introduction

22 May 2015, C. Leeham Co: As one of four aeronautical media companies we were asked by Airbus if we wanted to test fly the A350 end of January this year. Airbus was arranging for Media test pilots to come and fly the A350 and we had asked for sampling the A350 through its simulator. Airbus returned with the question if I did not want to try the real thing. They did not have to ask twice!

It was all in the preliminary planning stage at the time but come March things got concrete. I should come to Toulouse on April 22 for a full day in the simulator and then the aircraft. As I did not have previous airline flying experience (mainly military fighters and business aircraft), I started training on the rather different system approach that a civil airliner has to a military fighter for Autopilot and Autothrust. I described this training in a previous Bjorn’s Corner. Publication of this story was embargoed by Airbus to May 22.

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Bjorn’s Corner: China’s civil aviation, from nothing to world’s largest in 2030

Introduction

By Bjorn Fehrm

By Bjorn Fehrm

14 May 2015, C. Leeham Co: In my ISTAT Asia reports, I wrote about how China will overtake USA as largest civil aviation market in  2030. Airbus China Group chairman, Laurence Barron, and I had a chat after his ISTAT presentation where he described China’s evolution as a civil aviation market and how Airbus gradually worked itself from a late and hesitant start to today’s split of the market with Boeing.

Barron provided his slides, some of which  we will use  to review how China grew from virtually no civil aviation after the Chinese revolution in 1949 to the world’s largest market by 2030. We will also look at what aircraft have made up this growth and finally describe how Airbus progressed from a latecomer in 1985 to sharing the market with Boeing today.

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