Leeham News and Analysis

There's more to real news than a news release.

There's more to real news than a news release.

737RE up at Boeing Board today

Update, 930am: The Daily Express of L0ndon (of all places) reported yesterday BCA got the approval Friday for the 737RE and that the announcement is to come today. Thanks to Heidi Wood of Morgan Stanley for this one.

Original Post:

Approval for Authority to Offer the 737 re-engine is expected to come from the Boeing Board of Directors today, according to sources.

Last Friday we published our story reporting this in Commercial Aviation Online in London and, per our arrangement with CAO, the following day on this site.

Bloomberg News published this story later on Friday also confirming ATO was expected.

Official launch of the airplane isn’t expected until fall, likely after the October Board meeting, predicts Credit Suisse.

Full design definition of the 737RE isn’t expected until next month, we are told. While it is widely expected that the CFM LEAP engine will have a 66-inch fan in order to avoid any changes to the landing gear that would complicate the work statement, as of today this isn’t definitively settled. A 68 inch fan is still a possibility, though it’s considered more remote.

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 23 Comments

 Posted on August 29, 2011 by

 Airbus, Boeing, CFM

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Replacing 757s; Bombardier’s Scott and Delta; pricing engines

AirInsight, in a burst of prolific writing, posted three pieces of note today:

 32 Comments

 Posted on August 25, 2011 by

 Airbus, AirInsight, Boeing, Bombardier, CFM, CSeries, Pratt & Whitney

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The GE Powerhouse and how it wins deals

Those of us who are intimately familiar with commercial aviation will find this as no news. For those who don’t deal in this business every day, this will provide a better understanding of how deals are won in aviation.

This is the story of the GE Powerhouse and how family ties combine to enable GE Aviation and CFM International to win deals that might otherwise go to competing engines.

None of what we’re about to tell you is to suggest that the GE/CFM engines are inferior (though, obviously, some might dispute this), because they are superb engines. But a telling comment came from CFM’s Sandrine Lacorre, product marketing director, who said at a UBM Aviation conference, “What we can’t do technically, we will do commercially.”

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 3 Comments

 Posted on June 29, 2011 by

 Airbus, AirInsight, Boeing, Bombardier, CFM, Pratt & Whitney

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Odds and Ends, Post-Paris Air Show 2011

Here are our closing views of the PAS:

Boeing

Boeing did very well at the show. We know the headlines almost universally say Boeing had a bad show (which it didn’t) and was trounced by Airbus (which it was), but people easily overlook comparing Boeing’s performance vs. previous air shows.

Boeing announced more than 140 orders worth some $22bn–about equal to the 2009 Paris Air Show. By anyone’s standards, this ain’t shabby. Boeing often announces low numbers at air shows, claiming it doesn’t hold orders for the shows and Airbus does. We regard this as so much poppycock, because we know customers drive announcements and both Airbus and Boeing hold announcements for air shows at customer requests.

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 34 Comments

 Posted on June 27, 2011 by

 Airbus, AirInsight, Boeing, Bombardier, CFM, CSeries, Pratt & Whitney

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Odds and Ends at the Paris Air Show, Day 3

Odds and Ends at the Paris Air Show, Day 3

  • John Leahy, COO-Customers for Airbus, says that after CFM re-jigged the LEAP engine with a larger fan and the seventh LPT stage, has brought the engine to parity with the Pratt & Whitney GTF in fuel burn. The LEAP initially was up to 4% lower in fuel burn, leading to PW’s early lead in sales.
  • “We don’t buy deals,” CFM told our associate, Addison Schonland of AirInsight Wednesday during his visit with them at the Paris Air Show. He’s going to have a special post about the War of Words between PW and CFM soon on AirInsight. Read more

 8 Comments

 Posted on June 22, 2011 by

 Airbus, AirInsight, Boeing, CFM

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Odds and Ends at the Paris Air Show, Day 2

Odds and Ends at the Paris Air Show, Day 2

Airbus

Airbus owned the day again with a bunch of orders, including capturing a Boeing 737 operator, Garuda Indonesia. For the A320neo (In this context, we’re not counting SAS, which already operates A320s.) Up to now, Boeing has been dismissing the sales of the neo as being only to A320 airlines, as well as winning deals on price and asserting the neo only brings the airplane to “parity” with the 737-800. Airbus’ John Leahy, COO-customers, counters that airlines aren’t buying Boeing’s line and are buying the neo because it is more efficient than the 737-800. So, it would seem, lessors are also convinced. ILFC previously ordered the aircraft. Air Lease Corp, CIT Aerospace and GECAS also placed orders.

The ALC order could be considered particularly significant. Its CEO, Steven Udvar-Hazy, previously was cool to the neo and now placed a bet for 50 of them.

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 12 Comments

 Posted on June 21, 2011 by

 Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier, CFM, Pratt & Whitney

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Odds and ends on the final pre-Air Show day

 Odds and Ends from the Paris Air Show

  • While an order or two are expected to come from Qatar Airways’ mercurial CEO Akbar Al-Baker, the buzz here already is that U-Turn Al may yet again live up to his nickname. It’s been widely expected that he would, at long last, order the Bombardier CSeries, but Al-Baker is renowned in aviation circles for embarrassing OEMS. He’s done it to Bombardier, Airbus and Boeing and has flipped-flopped in his praise-criticism-praise for the CSeries and the A320neo. For Boeing, it was a major embarrassment when at the Farnborough Air Show in 2008 Boeing issued a press release announcing Qatar ordered the 777 only to rescind it hours later (even though it was correct) at Al-Baker’s insistence. Neither did he show up for the 787 roll-out even though Qatar’s logo was displayed in the roll-call of tail logos and a chair was reserved with his name on it. While Al-Baker recently trashed-talked the A320neo, word now is that he will place an order for the airplane (with CFM LEAP engines, maybe?) for a new Qatar leasing company. He has been feuding with Pratt & Whitney, and if he by-passes the GTF for the A320neo, this could mean PW hasn’t bent over to his demands—and the CSeries could suffer as a result.

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 4 Comments

 Posted on June 19, 2011 by

 Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier, CFM, Pratt & Whitney

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Boeing 737 re-engine studies very much alive

Boeing officials like to downplay the prospect of re-engining the venerable 737, but studies are very much alive as the company tries to figure out what the market wants and how to respond to the Airbus A320neo.

Boeing has shifted focus on re-engine studies despite already having a solution, officials said during a pre-Paris Air Show media briefing.

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 16 Comments

 Posted on June 18, 2011 by

 Airbus, AirInsight, Boeing, Bombardier, CFM, CSeries, Pratt & Whitney

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Paris Air Show outlook

There are several items looking at the Paris Air Show outlook:

AirInsight had a live discussion Friday with Addison Schonland, Richard Aboulafia and Ernie Arvai hosting it. The transcript is here.

AirInsight also published a lengthy written preview of what to expect from all the major airframe and engine OEMs here.

Here’s a short-take on Airbus at the show.

 2 Comments

 Posted on June 6, 2011 by

 Airbus, AirInsight, Boeing, Bombardier, CFM, Comac, CSeries, EADS, Embraer

     

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.

 3 Comments

 Posted on June 1, 2011 by

 AirInsight, Boeing, Bombardier, CFM, CSeries, EADS, Pratt & Whitney

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