Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- Airbus 1Q2025 results: So far, so good, but US tariffs make future results unpredictable May 1, 2025
- Does an Airbus A220-500 need a new wing and engines? May 1, 2025
- Teamsters, Boeing have a new contract April 29, 2025
- Boeing wants to remarket China’s airplanes. It’s costly and time consuming. April 28, 2025
- Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 19. April 25, 2025
777X: Why it’s not a composite fuselage, and going with a derivative for the 737
Boeing defends 777X aluminum fuselage, reads the headline from Bloomberg News, reporting from the Paris Air Show.
During the pre-Paris Air Show media briefings by Boeing, we asked Scott Fancher, vice president and general manager of aircraft development, why Boeing didn’t go with an all-new fuselage. His answer:
“Our job is to harvest the investments in technology we’ve made over the last 10 years and translate those into value for our customers and value for Boeing,” said. The 787 required a new fuselage cross section compared with the 767, so Boeing had to go with all new tooling anyway and the composite fuselage was the result. The 777 fuselage cross-section remains unchanged, so the decision was made to harvest the hard-won 787 technology but retain a metal fuselage.
Undecided is whether the fuselage will be traditional metal alloys or new alloys.
The same is true in deciding to re-engine the 737 rather than proceeding with a new design.
“It’s really about harvesting those technology investments [from the 787], Fancher said. “The time it would take to do a new small airplane in the single aisle market vs the time it would take to bring to market that is very competitive against our adversary, it’s a very cost-effective decision to do a derivative.
“On the wide body side of the equation, we made big investments and pushed technology forward on the 787. We’ve made huge investments in technology. It was a long, hard road. But the investments paid off. We need to continue to harvest those investments and apply them going forward in the most cost effective way we can. Going forward, offering derivative airplanes that are able to offer 20% more fuel efficiency to the market place by harvesting the technology investments we’ve made today, that sounds like a great business plan to me and that’s why we’re doing derivatives. It’s about value to the market place in the most cost effective way.”
Elizabeth Lund, VP and GM of the 777 program, and Jason Clark, director of manufacturing, explained that continuing to upgrade the current 777 is key for an airplane that is the “flagship” for many airlines.
“The Triple 7 is a huge part of the Boeing franchise. We are deeply committed to it,” Lund said. “The 777 has a departure reliability of 99.4%, the highest of any twin-aisle aircraft today. There are many more investments you can’t see. You can’t see the things that have been done. In the last couple of years we’ve added international connectivity to the airplane. We’ve added the antennas and capabilities so the flying public can stay connected over the oceans all the time and not just over land.
“We’ve improved our navigation links, which allows real-time changes to be uploaded to the airplane to change flight plans through the system instead of verbal conversations as it has been done through the years.”
Lund said the 777-300ER is qualified to operate with 330 minute ETOPS. Only one airline, Air New Zealand, is flying 330 minute ETOPS.
Continuous improvements have reduced the empty weight of the airplane today by 1,000 pounds compared with three years ago.
“We’ve reduced our maintenance costs. We’ve offered a full sweep of service and maintenance capabilities, including things like airplane health monitoring on the airplane as well,” Lund said. “We invest for three primary reasons. One is to reduce the cost of the airplane. Two is to meet the needs of our customers. We spend a lot of time with our customers understanding the market, doing technology development so that we understand the future market needs. The third area is to do some investment where it makes sense is that if there are technologies or applications that we can implement early to prove out for the Triple 7X as we continue to move into that.”
Clark said Lean manufacturing has improved efficiencies and reduced costs.
“Going to moving line and Lean reduced parts shortages by 57% on 777 line. Our quality continues to improve year end and year out. It gets down to improved productivity,” he said. “If we are going to have the rate flexibility that the market demands of us, we were going to have to look at the production system differently.”
Competitive advantage is no longer just about the platform, Clark said. It’s about the entire supply chain and production system.
“Lean is the basis of our production methods. When you look at some of the investments we are starting to make it’s about taking it to the next level. This isn’t a conversation for doing it for automation or technology just for technology’s sake. It’s really about the right balance. It’s also about the ability to allow the customer to differentiate the product. We are looking at elements that allow us to provide the differentiation.”
“One Boeing” leads way for P-8, KC-46A; 767-2C commercial order seen
“One Boeing” is the strategy that blends all the company enterprises–Boeing Commercial, Boeing Defense, Boeing Commercial Aviation Services and other business units into a single set of resources rather than operating as solo businesses.
The P-8A Poseidon program is just such a blend. Using the commercial 737-800 as the platform with the 737-900ER wing, Commercial and Defense integrate the technologies of the two units and assemble the P-8A in what is actually the third 737 production line.
The US Navy has plans to acquire 117 P-8As to replacing the Eisenhower-era Lockheed P-3 Orion. The P-3 and the P-8 has a primary mission of anti-submarine patrol but the airplanes are increasingly being used for maritime patrol in a variety of countries for fisheries, immigration and more recently anti-piracy surveillance.
India ordered eight. Boeing sees a potential market for more than 150 more with countries now flying the P-3.
The Poseidon’s One Boeing approach was copied for the re-bid of the USAF KC-X tanker competition. The original platform, the KC-767 International program, was largely a Boeing Defense effort. The KC-767I, which involved taking a commercial 767-200ER and converting it to a cargo aircraft at Italy’s Alenia and finishing it out at Boeing Wichita, was a disastrous effort. Boeing pulled the work back from Alenia and design and flutter issues caused the program to be several years late to customers Italy and Japan. Only eight were built.
In the re-bid against EADS, BCA and BDS joined forces in an effort patterned after the Poseidon project. Boeing won with a bid that was 10% below EADS. So far, the USAF reports the project is going according to plan.
Boeing is now talking with customers to sell the KC-46A tanker outside the US, which was always part of the plan, according to this Bloomberg article. The platform, called the 767-2C, is about six feet longer than the 767-200ER but shorter than the 767-300ER. Air Force officials were quoted in trade press that commercial cargo versions could be offered, but nothing has been said about this prospect since.
However, we understand that Boeing is nearing a commercial order from FedEx for the -2C that will enable Boeing to boost production of the 767 lines to as much as 2.5 aircraft per month by October 2016.
Figuring seat counts A320 v 737 families
Airbus and Boeing use different seating assumptions when comparing each others’ airplanes. As one of the charts in a previous post shows, Boeing’s assumptions tend to favor Boeing. Airbus assigns more seats to its airplanes than does Boeing and fewer seats to the Boeing airplanes.
Below is a chart of “real” configurations and the average. This data is from Seatguru.com. Several airlines have multiple configurations and we’ve averaged them for purposes of this table.
We were surprised by the low average of the 737-900/900ER but the sampling is small and Turkish skews it. Eliminating Turkish gives an average of 170 seats for the 737-900(ER).
If you eliminate American Airlines for the A321 (102 seats is correct), the A321 average is 189.
| A320 | A321 | 737-800 | 737-900 | ||
| Airbus Assumption | 153 | 189 | 157 | 175 | |
| Boeing Assumption | 150 | 183 | 162 | 180 | |
| Actual Configurations | |||||
| 1 | Aeromexico | 160 | |||
| 2 | Air China | 158 | 185 | 163 | |
| 3 | Air New Zealand | 169 | |||
| 4 | AirAsia | 170 | |||
| 5 | AirBerlin | 210 | 180 | ||
| 6 | AirCanada | 146 | 175 | ||
| 7 | Alaska | 158 | 176 | ||
| 8 | American | 102 | 154 | ||
| 9 | Asiana | 143 | |||
| 10 | British Air | 157 | 186 | ||
| 11 | Delta | 150 | 160 | ||
| 12 | Lufthansa | 150 | 190 | ||
| 13 | Malaysia | 163 | |||
| 14 | Ryanair | 189 | |||
| 15 | SAS | 198 | 186 | ||
| 16 | Southwest | 175 | |||
| 17 | Turkish | 143 | 180 | 157 | 151 |
| 18 | United | 141 | 156 | 170 | |
| 19 | US Airways | 150 | 187 | ||
| 20 | Virgin America | 143 | |||
| Average | 152 | 179 | 167 | 166 | |
Airbus v Boeing on wide bodies
Airbus and Boeing don’t confine their comparisons to the A320 v 737. They are equally forthcoming in discussing the wide-body strategies.
The pre-Paris Air Show briefings included contrasts in how Airbus and Boeing see the wide-body strategies.
Airbus views the product line-up this way:
Boeing views the product line up this week. We added the seat gap counts and arrows, because Boeing appears to use a slightly higher seat gap count for the A380 than does Airbus vis-a-vis the A350. We added the seat gap count between the 777-9X and the 747-8I, based on Boeing’s publicly stated assumed seat counts.
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In these examples, we favor the Boeing view (though with the Airbus A380 seat count) as to the market gaps. We do not see the A350-1000 competing with the 777-9X.
737NG-to-MAX production Plans and comparing the 737 with the A320/321
Boeing is gearing up for the transition from the 737 Next Generation to the 737 MAX at its Renton plant in Washington State.
During pre-Paris Air Show briefings at Boeing last month, embargoed until today, Boeing officials detailed how they will transition the production facility in a continuous flow. When Boeing introduced the 737NG, sales of the 737 Classic were terminated. Boeing expects a two year transition period this time, meaning the NG will continue production 2019, two years after the 737-8 MAX first enters service.
The exception will be the P-8A assembly line, which is based on the 737NG and which is in the so-called “saw tooth” building to the west of the primary 737 assembly plant. The saw tooth building is seen at the far right of this Boeing illustration.
The primary plant above shows the current NG assembly lines to the left and right. The line on the left produces 21 737s a month and the one on the right will be at this rate next year. The line in the center will initially be the MAX transition line, where the test aircraft will be assembled and the workforce learns the differences between assembling the NG and the MAX, which will have substantial differences compared with the NG.
Eventually, the MAX will fully integrate on the two NG lines.
At previous air show briefings, Beverly Wyse VP and GM of 737 Program, said the center line will have the capacity to match the assembly rates of the other two lines, or 21 per month, giving Renton the capacity to produce 63 737s a month.
At last month’s briefing, Wyse displayed this chart that suggests production rates will maintain at 42/mo from implementation next year.
However, we know from our own market intelligence that Boeing is considering sharply higher rates by the end of the decade.
Wyse, in the recent briefing, said the workforce is a key advantage for Boeing with flow-through benefits for Boeing’s customers.
Comparing the 737 and the A320: the story continues
The war of words between Airbus and Boeing continues over the A320 and the 737, with each company boasting its airplanes are better than the competitors.
The competing positions were evident in the pre-Paris Air Show briefings from both companies. The comparisons between the single aisle airplanes were front-and-center again.
We’ve written on several occasions that when Boeing compares the 737 with the Airbus A320, officials credit the 737 with Performance Improvement Packages (PIPs) but except for the sharklets and the neo, does not credit Airbus with any other improvements while listing years of upgrades for the 737.
We’ve been critical of the practice, which continues. We recognize that Airbus and Boeing will put their product in the best light, and Airbus selectively chooses information to promote its airplanes at the expense of Boeing (the A330-300 v the 787-9 being a particularly egregious example we’ve written about in the past.)
We’ve written many pieces that airlines tell us the 737-800 and A320 are within 2% of each other on cash operating costs, favoring the 738.
In the most recent briefings, Boeing displayed the following charts comparing the 737 vs the A320.
Odds and Ends: A350 pressures Boeing for 777X; the future of flight; FAA and 787; “one Boeing”
A350 Pressures Boeing: With the first flight of the Airbus A350 now scheduled for tomorrow (instead of today), Bloomberg News reports that the pressure is increased on Boeing to go forward with the 777X.
The future of flight: Is this what flying will be like in the future?
Congressional hearing on 787: The FAA says its certification system is good and that the 787 is safe.
“One Boeing:” This means the defense and commercial units working together. Aviation Week has this article; we’ll be talking about this more next week.