Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- GE testing of giant GE9X engine aims for maturity at entry into service June 30, 2025
- Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 28. June 27, 2025
- Parent agency, FAA often at odds as politics outweighs safety June 26, 2025
- Electric Flight and the Ugly Duckling June 25, 2025
- Engine makers tout “Plan A” but have “Plan B” backups in R&D June 23, 2025
Flying with a hole in a 747
Here is a very interesting story about flying with a big hole in a Boeing 747 fuselage–on purpose.
Will Lean 767 Line mean new life for this airplane?
Boeing’s plan to implement a Lean production line for the 767 has significant implications for this aging product.
Boeing tells us that the line will result in a 20% improvement in unit time in construction. This does not correlate into a 20% improvement in production costs, however. Productions costs consist of materials (raw materials, fasteners, finished parts, and assemblies), perishable tooling, support labor, production labor and plant and equipment. Unit time improvements are directly related to reductions in production labor costs and have a proportionate decrease in support labor costs.
Kicking off the New Year
As is so often the case, we found the following while looking for something else. We thought this would be a good way for readers to kick off the New Year.
Delta ousts American in JAL global alliance
We have learned for industry sources that Delta Air Lines has won the battle and that Japan Air Lines will be leaving the oneworld alliance to join SkyTeam, reports Ernie Arvai of the AirInsight team of which Leeham Co. is a member.
This is a significant blow to American Airlines, which now lacks a Japanese partner, and boosts both United (Star Alliance partner with ANA) and Delta (with NW Japanese routes and now JAL) that can be well exploited, given the new open skies agreement between the two countries.
Albaugh as BCA head will be key to Boeing tanker bid
There has been more foo-faw going on with the KC-X tanker competition in the past week, largely overshadowed by the first flight of the Boeing 787. Supporters of Northrop Grumman met with Pentagon officials to urge that changes be made in the Draft RFP to assure a fair and open competition.
As soon as this became public, supporters of Boeing did the same.
Southwest loses Frontier bid
Southwest Airlines lost its bid to acquire Frontier Airlines in the bankruptcy auction this week. The bid was a long shot because its competition was Republic Holdings, a DIP lender to Frontier and the largest unsecured creditor. Read more
Lufthansa committed to 747-8, expects more delays
Flight Global has this report about Lufthansa remaining committed to the 747-8I, but that it expects more delays, a knock-on effect from the continuing 787 problems.
Aerospace Journalist of the Year
Geoffrey Thomas of Air Transport World was the winner of the Aerospace Journalist of the Year both in his category and of all 14 categories. Jon Ostrower of Flight Global and Niall O’Keefe, also of Flight Global, won in their categories–and we won in our category, Regional Airlines stories.
Eco-Aviation Conference Report
The Air Transport World-Leeham Co. Eco-Aviation Conference last week produced a great deal of news, most notably the test results from Air New Zealand on its biofuel test flight made in cooperation with Boeing and Rolls-Royce.
ANZ announced at the conference that the test flight had a 1.2% better fuel efficiency than Jet-A fuel but a whopping 60%+ reduction in CO2 emissions.
A listing of news articles that came out of the conference may be found on our Eco-Aviation page here.