Leeham News and Analysis

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

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

Southwest launches 737-8, bypasses 737-7 for now

Here is an article we did yesterday for Flightglobal Pro’s subscription service.

The Southwest Airlines order on 13 December launching the 737 Max programme is a launch of the -8 version. The carrier, which has substitution rights between the -7 and the -8, has chosen to bypass the -7 for now.

Brian Hirshman, SVP Technical Operations, told Flightglobal Pro on 15 December that the carrier is up-gauging its fleet, which it began doing this year with acquisition of the 737-800 for the first time. Southwest, throughout its history since is 1971 birth, has relied on the 737-200/300/500/700, preferring smaller sized aircraft and high frequency as its business model.

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 16 Comments

 Posted on December 16, 2011 by

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

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Odds and Ends: Sharklets, CAPA analyzes the Middle East

A320 Sharklet: Jon Ostrower has a detailed piece about the wing work needed to retrofit the A320 with sharklets and some thoughts about what this means for the neo.

Dubai Air Show: The Center for Asia-Pacific Aerospace (CAPA) does an analysis on the orders placed at the Dubai Air Show and what these mean. CAPA has a couple more links within the article that are worth clicking. One link is about Bombardier and its CSeries progress.

Middle East: More on the region: Bloomberg has this report in which Emirates Airlines is considered a safer investment than the sovereign risk of Dubai.

Bernstein Research, meanwhile, issued a note today (Nov. 28) on the Middle East. It writes:

Long term strategies at Boeing and Airbus for long haul aircraft need a special focus on Middle East airlines. We see growth at the big three Middle Eastern airlines (Emirates, Qatar, Etihad) as a trend that will not end any time soon and will come heavily at the expense of European and Asia-Pacific airlines (e.g. Lufthansa, Air France, British Airways, Thai, Singapore, Qantas). The big three airlines are all now among the fifteen largest long haul airlines in the world in terms of widebody fleet plus backlog (Emirates is the world’s largest and Qatar the third). Compared to other regions, the Middle East is an outlier in that planned fleet growth is much larger than could be justified by the region’s GDP growth alone. But, this fleet growth is all about acting as a “sixth freedom” hub for long haul traffic, particularly connecting the Asia-Pacific region with Europe and Africa.

Pratt & Whitney: Time magazine named the GTF one of the top 50 inventions in 2011. The Montreal Gazette has this take on the Time honor. (We’d link directly to Time’s article, but it is for paid subscribers only at this point.)

Air India: The airline is now apparently planning to sell its new Boeing 787s and lease them back, thus neatly avoiding the controversy over export financing.

Boeing Wichita: News broke last week that Boeing is studying closing its Wichita operation, which is dedicated to military business. With the defense budget under attack, Boeing is finding it hard-pressed to keep Wichita open, according to news reports. The news sent Kansas politicians scurrying and set off some irate comments because Boeing promised Kansas 7,500 jobs in the KC-X tanker competition if it won (as it did). The politicians say Boeing promised Wichita the tanker finishing business and it better keep its promise. The Wichita Eagle has this latest article, which also has some interesting history of Wichita’s role in aerospace.

KC-46A Tanker: Speaking of the tanker, DOD Buzz and Bloomberg News have reports that Boeing is likely to lose money on its initial contract with the tanker. This is not particularly new; this was first reported earlier this year. But the amount has grown from a $300m loss to $500m on a $4.8bn contract.

 9 Comments

 Posted on November 28, 2011 by

 air force tanker, Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier, Pratt & Whitney

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Odds and Ends: A350, 737MAX, 787; ACG is #10; and more

Guessing Game: The mysterious nine customers for the 737 MAX continues to confound observers. Actually, there were nine before Aviation Capital Group signed up, so ACG was #10.

  • American Airlines
  • Lion Air
  • Aviation Capital Group
  • GECAS
  • COPA
  • GOL
  • Norwegian Air

Three more; we have three of the names but not confirmed.

Airbus A350 delay: Airbus announced a delay of six months; we think it prudent to add 3-6 more.

Aviation Week has a comprehensive table of neo vs MAX orders.

Boeing 787 Deliveries: All Things 787 reports there will be only two more deliveries this year and why.

Boeing 737 MAX: Note the wording in the Boeing press release about Aviation Capital Group’s commitment for the MAX: “ACG first leasing company to announce commitment for 737 MAX.” Not that ACG is the first lessor to commit; it is the first leasing company to announce its commitment. We understand two other lessors have committed. One is GECAS (no surprise, given the family-engine connection). We haven’t identified the other one with enough confidence to publish its name yet.

Bombardier: There remain three unidentified orders announced by BBD: one in Europe, two in the Middle East. The Middle Eastern ones should be revealed at the Bahrain Air Show. (This probably gives you a hint who they are and why they weren’t revealed at the rival Dubai show.)

Also, with some aerospace analysts increasingly speculating the CSeries entry-into-service will slip to 2014 (and, for the moment, BBD says ’tain’t so), we’ll remind everyone that the AirInsight CSeries Business Case report of December 2010 assumed a 2014 EIS.

Embraer: EMB has teamed with Alcoa to offerer advanced metals on the E-Jet RE, to lighten weights and reduce maintenance. EMB isn’t using composites (BBD’s CSeries has an aluminum-lithium fuselage and composite wings), but the E-Jets at 2×2 seating and 2,000 mile range are lighter than the CS-100 with which they will compete. Ninety percent of the US domestic flying is less than 2,000 miles (other areas of the world are likewise), so the operating costs vs the 2×3 seating, heavier CS100 will be interesting to watch.

YouTube: We’ve added a YouTube category in the right hand column, with links to OEM You Tube channels. So far we have Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier Aerospace, CFM and Embraer. As we find more, we’ll add them.

 38 Comments

 Posted on November 18, 2011 by

 Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier, CFM, Embraer, Embrarer, Pratt & Whitney

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Dubai Air Show review

The Dubai Air Show is over, with record orders being announced.

2 x B777F for Qatar

20 x A320neo for ACG

45 x A320neo/30 x A320  for Spirit (MoU)

50 x A320neo for Qatar with PW1100G-JM (+30 options)

5 x A380 for Qatar (+3 options)

ALAFCO announcing GTF for all A320neo

Emirates 50+20 777-300ERS

10 x CS300 for Atlasjet (LoI)

We took a bye on daily coverage because we weren’t there and the on-site reporters could do better than we could from afar. So we decided to do a post-show pontification.

Overview

Airbus and Boeing dominated the headline–no surprise there–but while Boeing had a blow-out order with 50+20 777-300ERs from Emirates Airlines, Airbus had another mind-xxxx from the mercurial Akbar “U-Turn” Al-Baker, CEO of Qatar Airways. Al-Baker is now the subject of a mocking Twitter account, @AkbarAlFaker, having a conversation with @MichaelOhReally.

This Bloomberg story gives a nice wrap.

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 30 Comments

 Posted on November 16, 2011 by

 Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier, CFM, CSeries, Embraer, Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce

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PNAA aerospace conferences in February, March in Seattle

The Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance is hosting two conferences in the Seattle area in February and March.

PNAA’s 11th annual conference is Feb. 6-7-8 at the Lynnwood (WA) Convention Center, north of Seattle and south of Everett. Information may be found here. This 2 1/2 day conference is comprised of a Defense Focus Day on the afternoon of Feb. 6; a day-and-a-half of commercial aviation presentations and a Suppliers’ Fair on the afternoon of the 8th.

Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier, CFM, Pratt & Whitney, the Teal Group’s Richard Aboulafia, G2 Global Solutions’ Michel Merluzeau, Alcoa and Electroimpact are among the presenters on the commercial side.

Tayloe Washburn of Project Pegasus and the Washington Aerospace Partnership will discuss the issues surrounding the assembly site of the 737 MAX.

Boeing’s Insitu  EADS North America and Lockheed Martin are among the defense industry presenters.

More than 300 people attended the 2011 conference, which is now the largest in the Pacific Northwest and one of the largest on the West Coast. PNAA serves Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Alberta and British Columbia. It has arranged trade missions from Europe, Asia and Latin America visiting here to meet with Washington State suppliers. PNAA was also asked by the White House and the US Commerce Department to arrange a meeting of key CEOs in Seattle to discuss economic issues affecting aerospace.

The March event PNAA is organizing is a Suppliers Forecasting Symposium. This one day event on March 12 precedes the first USA-based Aerospace & Defense Supplier Summit organized by BCI Aerospace.

The Symposium is the first of its kind: a day-long event focused on forecasting the requirements in the supply chain that services Boeing, other OEMs and the Tier 1 suppliers. Boeing Commercial Airplanes and Boeing Defense, Space & Security will be presenters as well as two noted aerospace analysts from Wall Street, David Strauss of UBS and Robert Spingarn of Credit Suisse. They follow Boeing and the supply chain and have their views on forecasting the needs of the suppliers.

These are two important events sponsored by PNAA and the A&DSS summit by BCI Aerospace is equally important to the Washington aerospace supply chain. PNAA members get a discount to the A&DSS event.

 1 Comment

 Posted on November 13, 2011 by

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

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Embraer decides on re-engine, takes a pass on NSA

Embraer announced that it will take a pass on developing a New Small Airplane in the 130-155 seat class and instead re-engine the E-Jet series, possibly with stretch to 133 seats (smack in the middle of the Bombardier CSeries 100/300 size). Targeted entry-in-service (EIS) is 2018.

Aeroturbopower, which focuses on engine stuff, already has this back-of-the-envelope analysis.

As Aeroturbopower notes, EMB favors a one-stop, trans-continental airplane (2,000-2,200nm) over the full transcontinental range of the CSeries (although BBD offers a lighter-weight CSeries with 2,200nm range as well). About 90% of the US domestic flights are within this range but the E-Jet is 2×2 vs the CS 2×3 seating. Aeroturbopower concludes the E-Jet will have lower seat costs.

Aeroturbopower also compares the E-Jet with the Mitsubishi MRJ.

 6 Comments

 Posted on November 11, 2011 by

 Bombardier, CFM, CSeries, Embraer, Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce

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PW gains major wins in Rolls-Royce deals

Here are some additional thoughts about the Rolls-Royce/Pratt & Whitney deal announced yesterday.

PW is a real winner in this set of transactions.

  • Buying RR out of the International Aero Engines partnership gives PW far more latitude in making deals for the V2500 engines and the ability to connect V2500 transactions to transitions to Geared TurboFan orders. RR had no incentives to make connected deals, since there was nothing in it for them if a customer ordered the GTF instead of the V2500. CFM had the competitive advantage in offering the CFM56 for legacy airplanes and the LEAP for the A320neo. With PW now controlling the V2500 partnership, PW has come closer to leveling the playing field. Read more

 30 Comments

 Posted on October 13, 2011 by

 CFM, Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce

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Rolls-Royce, PW join forces for 120-230 seat engine–and to focus on GTF technology

It is a stunning announcement. Not so much the buyout of Rolls-Royce by Pratt & Whitney from the International Aero Engines partnership. This has been expected for more than a year.

What’s stunning in the new partnership RR and PW announced to develop engines in the 120-230 seat market and to focus on Geared Turbo Fan technology.

AirInsight has a commentary on the tie-up.

This is a major shift in the engine competition and a major endorsement of the GTF engine and techn0logy, creating a more formidable competitor to the dominate CFM International.

We’ll have more to say after we digest this a bit and talk with the market.

 49 Comments

 Posted on October 12, 2011 by

 CFM, Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce

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Boeing’s Albaugh, others discuss aerospace jobs, related issues

Jim Albaugh, the CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, is also chairman of the Aerospace Industries Association. He and several executives in aerospace plus the CEO of AIA held a press conference in Washington (DC) today to comment on the prospective cuts in the defense budget and the impact overall on aerospace jobs.

The other people are: David Hess, president and CEO of United Technologies (parent of Pratt & Whitney, Sikorsky and other companies) and vice chairman of AIA; Marion Blakey, AIA president and CEO; Charles A. Gray. VP and COO of Frontier Electronic Systems; Dawne Hickton, vice chair, president and CEO of RTI International Metals; and Richard McNeel, chairman, president and CEO of LORD Corp.

Here is a synopsis of their comments:

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 12 Comments

 Posted on September 14, 2011 by

 Boeing, Pratt & Whitney

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Boeing at APEX, Pratt & Whitney’s dilemma

Over at our affiliate, AirInsight, there is a 27 minute video of Randy Tinseth, VP of Marketing at Boeing, making a presentation and our think piece about Pratt & Whitney’s dilemma following the launch of the Boeing 737 MAX.

See both pieces here.

Additional: Aspire Aviation today published a long piece about the 777X. See the story here. Update, Sept. 14: Aeroturbopower comments on the fuel burn analysis for the 777X. Update, 230pm PDT: Jon Ostrower has this article on 777X.

 14 Comments

 Posted on September 13, 2011 by

 Airbus, AirInsight, Boeing, Pratt & Whitney

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