September 1, 2023, ©. Leeham News: We described the Preliminary design phase of an airliner development program last week. One could say this was the classical way that aircraft projects conduct Preliminary design.
There is a different way that Conceptual and Preliminary design can be run. It’s more along the lines of pre-development of functions, as a reader commented on two articles back.
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By Bjorn Fehrm
July 6, 2023, © Leeham News: In our series on costs factors that make up Cash Operating Cost for a battery-based airliner with range extenders, we now add Crew costs and Airport/Airway fees.
We then have all the components of the Cash Operating Cost (COC) for the ES-30 and can compare it to a normal propulsion 30-seat turboprop.
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By Bjorn Fehrm
June 22, 2023, © Leeham News: Every announcement from aircraft deals, OEM updates, or supply chain news now has the words Sustainable/Sustainability injected in every second sentence. It doesn’t matter what the subject is; if it’s about a gas-guzzling way of transporting people at supersonic or even hypersonic speeds or at the other end in an eVTOL which is only as fast as your car on a US highway.
What is the real news about making our air transport system less polluting behind this misuse of the buzzwords? You have to search behind the headlines and the announcements that you know will not turn the dial. Let’s tour the Paris Air Show 2023 and look at the real developments in Sustainability.
Figure 1. First flight of Universal Hydrogen’s DH8-300 with a hydrogen propulsion system on the starboard side. Source: Universal Hydrogen.
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By Bjorn Fehrm
June 15, 2023, © Leeham News: In our series on fundamental costs factors that make up Cash Operating Cost, COC (Fuel, Maintenance, Airway/Airport fees, Crew costs), we have started analyzing if the size related cost factors also apply to green propulsion airliners and if the trends stay the same or change.
We use the Heart Aerospace ES-30 project as an example of a battery-based airliner with range extenders. Last week we developed the fundamental aero data for the aircraft with our Aircraft Performance and Cost model; now, we fly representative sectors and look at the energy and fuel consumptions compared to a similar-sized turboprop airliner.
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By Bjorn Fehrm
June 8, 2023, © Leeham News: We have analyzed the costs factors that make up Cash Operating Cost, COC (Fuel, Maintenance, Airway/Airport fees, Crew costs), and how these vary with different size airliners. The aim was to search for fundamental trends and if these disadvantaged a smaller airliner versus a larger one.
We found that a smaller airliner (we analyzed from 190 seats down to 9 seats) has structural cost disadvantages versus a larger model. The analysis was made with conventional gas turbine-propelled planes so as not to complicate the work. Now we introduce airliner types with green propulsion concepts and see if the trends stay the same or change.
May 26, 2023, ©. Leeham News: This is a summary of the article Part 14P. Airframe for lower friction drag. The article discusses in detail a Blended Wing Body (BWB) type airframe and how it reduces the wetted area and, thus, air friction drag compared to a conventional tube and wing airframe.
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By Bjorn Fehrm
May 4, 2023, © Leeham News: In our series about the viability of the business plans for small airliners (nine to 50 seats), we have covered how energy and fuel consumption scales with the size of the airliner.
The cost factor we examine today is the maintenance cost for keeping an airliner fit for purpose and safe.
We use the Leeham aircraft performance and cost model to get the data for the maintenance costs for airliners going from nine to 200 seats.
Figure 1. The Cessna Sky Courier is a new 19-seat small airliner with conventional propulsion. Source: Textron Aviation.
VIPs were on hand Monday at a hangar on Paine Field as Alaska Airlines and ZeroAvia announced that the airline had donated one of its recently retired de Havilland Dash 8 Q400 aircraft to be a testbed for ZeroAvia’s new hydrogen-electric propulsion systems./Bryan Corliss photo
By Bryan Corliss
May 2, 2023 © Leeham News – Two-and-a-half years ago, a hydrogen-powered regional aircraft for Alaska Airlines was a caffeine-fueled brainstorm, the airline’s head of development said.
Two-and-a-half years from today, the flight of this kind of plane may be close to becoming reality.
That’s how fast the technology is evolving, said Pasha Saleh, who manages Alaska Air Group’s Star Ventures investment fund.
The fund is one of the investors in ZeroAvia’s effort to develop a hydrogen-electric turboprop motor strong enough to power regional aircraft. On Monday, ZeroAvia and Alaska unveiled the de Havilland Dash 8 Q400 that will be the testbed for the project.
VIPs touted the Alaska-ZeroAvia partnership for building the “world’s largest hydrogen-powered commercial aircraft.”
The goal is to have small aircraft with hydrogen-electric motors flying as soon as two years from now, said ZeroAvia CEO Valery Miftakov. “It’s quite aggressive targets that we have, but it can work.”
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By Bjorn Fehrm
April 27, 2023, © Leeham News: We started a series about the viability of the business plans for small airliners (nine to 50 seats) last week in the light of a continuing decline of regional airlines in the US and Europe.
To understand whether fundamentals are stacked against small airliners, we look at operational cost factors and how these scale with aircraft size. Then we add the revenue and yield and discuss the conditions for viable business plans for different size aircraft.
This week we use the Leeham airliner performance and cost model to compare the airframe energy and fuel consumptions for airliners spanning nine to 200 seats.
By Bryan Corliss
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March 13, 2023, © Leeham News — Embraer executives said last week that the company is on a flight path to growth after weathering two major storms in 2020.
“As we have said, since 2020, the 2021 and 2022 years would be dedicated to the business recovery after two simultaneous crises – the pandemic and the end of the Boeing deal – and the focus will be on growth from 2023,” Embraer CEO Francisco Gomes Neto said Friday.
“We can now state we have fulfilled what was promised,” he continued. “The business turnaround was completed in 2022, and we are ready to start a new growth phase.”
Embraer still faces “supply chain challenges this year,” he acknowledged, “but we are optimistic about the company’s future in terms of revenue growth and profitability.”
Neto made the declaration as his company reported delivering 80 regional and executive jets in the fourth quarter of 2022, which was roughly half of the total deliveries for the year.
The company reported earnings before interest and taxes of US $166.2 million for the quarter, which was 196% better than its earnings in the same quarter of 2021.