The new chief executive officer of United Technologies Corp., Gregory Hayes, threw cold water on hopes and dreams of Pratt & Whitney, a subsidiary, that the successful small- and medium-sized Geared Turbo Fan will grow into the wide-body market.
Aviation Week just published an article in which all three engine OEMs were reported to be looking at a 40,000 lb engine that would be needed to power a replacement in the category of the Boeing 757 and small 767. Hayes did not specifically rule out a 40,000 lb engine, leaving PW’s potential to compete for this business unclear.
Hayes has been CEO for two weeks. He was previously CFO. He made his remarks in a UTC investors event last night. The Hartford Courant has this report.
Hayes’ remarks were in response to a question from an analyst about research and development expenses. Here is his reply, from a transcript of the event:
Posted on December 12, 2014 by Scott Hamilton
Boeing, Bombardier, CFM, Comac, CSeries, Embraer, Irkut, Mitsubishi, Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce
737 MAX, 757, 757 replacement, 767, 767 replacement, A320NEO, Alain M. Bellemare, Bombardier, C919, CFM, Comac, CSeries, E-Jet E2, Embraer, GE Aviation, Gregory Hayes, GTF, Irkut, MC-21, Mitsubishi, MRJ, Pratt & Whitney, United Technologies
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By Scott Hamilton and Bjorn Fehrm
Introduction
Dec, 8, 2014:The Boeing 737-8 MAX is the successor to the 737-800 and has largely been thought of in this context.
Our analysis, prompted by Norwegian Air Shuttle (NAS) plans to use Boeing 737-8 MAXes to begin trans-Atlantic service on long, thin routes, comes up with a conclusion that has gotten little understanding in the marketplace: the 8 MAX has enough range and seating to open a market niche below the larger, longer-legged 757, and the economics to support profitable operations for Low Cost Carriers interested in some trans-Atlantic routes or destinations beyond the range of the -800.
Summary
By Bjorn Fehrm
Dec. 2, 2015: The time has now come to cover descent and landing in our articles around airliner performance. As many aspects of descent are similar to climb we will repeat a bit what we learned in Part 4:
Lets now start to go through the steps that our 737 MAX 8 performs after leaving its cruise altitude.
Posted on December 2, 2014 by Bjorn Fehrm
Dec. 1, 2014: Adam Pilarski, an economist for the consulting firm Avitas, predicted several years ago that the price of oil would drop to $40bbl. Few believed him.
Oil hit $66 this week, on a steady decline over the past months, and, according to an article by Bloomberg News, could be on its way to $40.
Pilarski, who originally made his prediction in 2011 at a conference organized by the International Society of Transport Aircraft Traders (ISTAT). He predicted this price by October 2018.
In an interview with Leeham News today, Pilarski concurs that oil may hit $40 soon, though he believes the low end will be in the $40-$50 range. The low price will not for the reasons he outlined in 2011 and neither will it stay at or near $40 for long.
Posted on December 1, 2014 by Scott Hamilton
By Bjorn Fehrm
Nov. 25, 2014: In our article series around the performance of a modern airliner we have now come to the climb after takeoff. We started with cruise as this was simplest because the aircraft is flying in steady state, then we looked at the modern turbofan and how this is affected by both altitude and speed. We then examined how this affects the takeoff and today we continue with the climb after takeoff.
Before we start, let’s sum up a few points we need for today:
Posted on November 25, 2014 by Bjorn Fehrm
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By Scott Hamilton and Bjorn Fehrm
Introduction
Low cost long haul service is gaining traction, but previous efforts proved difficult to be successful.
Dating all the way back to Laker Airways’ Skytrain and the original PeoplExpress across the Atlantic, airlines found it challenging to make money.
More recently, AirAsiaX retracted some of its long-haul service, withdrawing Airbus A340-300 aircraft when they proved too costly. The airline recast its model around Airbus A330-300s as an interim measure, unable to fly the same distances as the longer-legged A340. AirAsiaX ordered the Airbus A350-900 and now is a launch customer for the A330-900neo.
Cebu Pacific of the Philippines is flying LCC A330-300 service to the Middle East. Norwegian Air Shuttle famously built its entire LCC long haul model around the Boeing 787, initiating service with the 787-8 and planning to move to the 787-9.
Canada’s WestJet is leasing in four used Boeing 767-300ERs to offer LCC service,
Legacy carrier Lufthansa Airlines plans to use fully depreciated A340-300s to begin “lower cost” (as opposed to “low cost”) long haul service. LH says the fully depreciated A340s come within 1%-2% of the cost per available seat mile of the new, high capital-cost 787s.
Summary
Posted on November 19, 2014 by Scott Hamilton
Airbus, Airlines, Boeing, CFM, Premium, Rolls-Royce
747, 757, 767-300ER, 787, A330-900, A330-900neo, A340, A350-900, AirAsiaX, Airbus, Boeing, Canadair CL-44, Cebu Pacific, CFM, DC-10, DC-8-63, Douglas, Icelandair, Laker Airways, Loftleider, Luftansa Airlines, McDonnell Douglas, Norwegian Air, PeoplExpress, Rolls-Royce, WestJet
By Bjorn Fehrm
In our first article on how to understand the fundamentals that make up airliner performance we defined the main forces acting on an aircraft flying in steady state cruise. We used the ubiquitous Boeing 737 in its latest form, the 737 MAX 8, to illustrate the size of these forces.
Here a short recap of what we found and then some more fundamentals on aircraft’s performance, this time around the engines:
When flying steady state (Figure 1) we only need to find the aircraft’s drag force to have all important forces defined.
The lift force is given as equal to and opposite to the aircraft’s weight and the tail downforce that we need to add to this was small. We also presented the two classes of drag that we will talk about:
We could see that the aircraft’s flight through the air created a total drag force of 7900 lbf, Figure 2 ( lb with an f added as we prefer to write it as this is a force and not a measure of mass. Mass we denote with just lb or the metric units kg or tonne = 2205 lb).
We also learned that if the drag is 7900 lbf then the engine thrust is opposite and equal. It is then 3950 lbf per engine when cruising at our mean cruise weight of 65 tonnes or 143.000 lb on our 1000 nm mission. Drag due to size consumes 63% of our thrust and drag due to weight 37%. Read more
Posted on November 13, 2014 by Bjorn Fehrm
The 10th Chinese airshow at Zhuhai opened today. It was a day with fewer announcements than expected from the usual suspects (Airbus, Boeing…) but the Chinese industry did not disappoint. China is now showing more and more of its coming might as a player on the aeronautics arena.
The most prominent displays at this show were on the military side, where China has two stealth aircraft projects flying (the large Chengdu canard J-20 and the smaller Shenyang J-31) while their canard Chengdu J-10 was flying the display circuits overhead (Figure 1).
All aircraft are of latest structural and aerodynamic design if not in engines and systems. This is a big difference to previous shows where the Russian Sukhoi and MIG aircraft and their local copies did the flying display until 2008. Since then everything has changed and now China and USA are the only countries in the world with two different stealth designs flying. USA has one in operation (F-22) and one close to (F-35) whereas China still has many years to go until they have their new aircraft operational. But it is significant that the old aeronautical behemoths Europe and Russia have none respective one (PAK-50) stealth fighter in flight test.
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By Bjorn Fehrm
Introduction
Over the last weeks we have looked at Boeing’s 757 replacement possibilities on its long and thin network niche, including a ground breaking launch interview for the A321neoLR with Airbus Head of Strategy and Marketing, Kiran Rao. In the series we have seen that the A321neo has the potential to replace the 757-200 on long and thin international routes. Boeing’s equivalent single aisle entry, 737 MAX 9, has problems to extend its range over 3,600nm. It is too limited in the weight increase necessary to cover the longer range.
Many have asked how the less- restricted Boeing 737 MAX 8 would fare, suitably equipped with the necessary extra tanks. This is the subject of this week’s sequel on the theme long and thin. At the same time we look at Airbus entry in this segment, the A320neo, to see how it stacks up to the 737 MAX 8, both in their normal 1,000 to 2,000nm operation and then also in a long and thin scenario.
Let’s first summarize what we found so far in our four articles around the Boeing 757 and its alternatives:
Summary
Posted on November 9, 2014 by Bjorn Fehrm
Fundamentals of airliner performance, Part 3
By Bjorn Fehrm
In our first article about how to understand the performance of a modern airliner we defined the main forces that are acting on an aircraft flying in steady state cruise. In our clinic we use the ubiquitous Boeing 737 in its latest form, the 737 MAX 8, to illustrate our case. In the second article we introduced the aircraft’s engines and understood how they function by pumping air backwards faster than the aircraft’s speed and therefore generating thrust as air is in fact quite heavy. We also looked at the influence of flight altitude on the performance of the aircraft.
In short we can conclude our findings so far:
Having covered the most important aspects of cruise we will today look at takeoff, a subject with a lot of aspects. Read more
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Posted on November 19, 2014 by Bjorn Fehrm
Boeing, CFM, Leeham News and Comment, Uncategorized
737 MAX, Boeing, CFM, CFM Leap-1B