Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Bjorn’s Corner: Why e in ePlane shall stand for environment, Part 4. Boundary layer ingestion.
January 10, 2020, ©. Leeham News: We continue our series why e in ePlane shall stand for environment and not electric.
Before we continue the discussion about low CO2 footprint propulsion opportunities we look into some of the distributed propulsion concepts proposed for electric/hybrid airliners.
In this and the next Corner, we examine the substance in claimed aerodynamic gains and increased efficiency from such concepts.
Figure 1. The Ampere distributed propulsion concept as presented by ONERA. Source: ONERA.
To what level can Boeing’s remaining cash cow, the 787, pay the company bills?
By Bjorn Fehrm
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Introduction
January 9, 2020, © Leeham News: What a difference a decade made. In January 2010, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner had just made its much delayed first flight and its crisis was at its deepest. The aircraft would soon be more than three years late and its costs had more than doubled. One questioned if it would ever be a profitable program and how deep this money pit would drag Boeing?
Today, 10 years later, the 787 is Boeing Commercial Airplane’s sole cash cow, with a 737 MAX which can’t be delivered, the 777 in difficult migration to 777X and the 767 freighters just hanging in there profitability-wise.
But how profitable is the 787, eight years after its first delivery and coming from very red numbers? We look behind Boeing’s accounting rules to find how much of the company bills can be paid by Dreamliner profits when other programs can’t contribute.
Summary:
- Boeing uses US Program Accounting rules that allow production cost swings to be shuffled between the beginning and the end of an aircraft program.
- This presents nice quarterly profits in the program’s early days when there are actual losses but it comes around making mature aircraft programs less profitable than programs using international accounting rules where profits are calculated for each delivered aircraft (Unit based accounting).
- We go behind the Boeing quarterly figures to analyze how profitable the Dreamliner is over the next years, now when it needs to shoulder the cash cow mission for a wounded company.
Areas of investigation for Ukraine Airlines crash
By Scott Hamilton
Commentary
Jan. 8, 2020, © Leeham News: Some news reports of the Ukraine Airlines crash yesterday in Tehran linking the event to the Boeing 737 MAX crisis are irresponsible.
Ukraine Airlines Boeing 737-800. Source: Wikipedia.
The Ukraine airplane is a 737-800, a highly reliable aircraft with thousands in service around the world.
Drawing any conclusions about the crash at this stage and under the unique circumstances of open, armed conflict in the region is also irresponsible.
None of the news reports LNA has seen so far indicates possible radio communication from the pilot. The flight and voice recorders apparently have been recovered, but no information has been released of what information these contain. It’s unlikely any information has been downloaded at this point.
Here’s what investigators routinely consider in a crash investigation:
Exclusive: Boeing, internally, sees production halt at least 60 days
By Scott Hamilton
Jan. 7, 2020, © Leeham News: Boeing internally sees production suspension of the 737 MAX of at least 60 days, LNA has learned.
The last inventory MAX fuselages entered final assembly this week and will roll out of the factory shortly.
Then, production is suspended. Boeing publicly has not said how long the suspension will last and it’s unclear how much information has been passed down the supply chain. Without knowing when the FAA will recertify the MAX, Boeing can’t truly gauge when production will resume.
Air India’s Rupee bottomless pit
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By Vincent Valery
Introduction
Jan. 6, 2020, © Leeham News: Air India lost more than $1bn in the fiscal year 2018-19. After years of heavy financial losses, the Indian government is mulling another privatization attempt.
The current Air India is the result of the 2007 merger with another publicly owned airline, Indian Airlines. The Indian flag carrier owns several subsidiaries, including two operationally separate airlines, and a hotel chain.
One would a priori think that the sustained losses are mainly the results of a bloated cost structure. LNA went through Air India’s financial statements since the fiscal year 2007-08 to see whether that is the case.
The root causes of Air India’s chronic losses will make the latest privatization attempt challenging to execute for the current government.
Summary
- A complicated history and structure;
- Strategic decision and competition drag company down;
- Not only a cost problem;
- Lessons from a failed privatization attempt.
Pontifications: Airbus almost certain to be hurt by MAX crisis
By Scott Hamilton
Jan. 6, 2020, © Leeham News: This may be the year that Airbus is hit with the negative consequences of the Boeing 737 MAX crisis.
Most observers see Airbus benefitting with greater A320 family sales while the MAX remains grounded.
In LNA’s 2020 Outlook last week, we pointed out that the long-running trade war between the US and European Union could be coming to a head this year. Airbus and the EU are waiting for the World Trade Organization’s authorization to impose tariffs on US products. This decision is expected in May or June. Boeing is expected to be the first target. The Trump Administration last year imposed a 10% tariff on Airbus aircraft.
The MAX crisis could ratchet up tariffs on Airbus aircraft.
Aviation safety continues to improve in the US and Europe
By Judson Rollins
Introduction
Jan. 3, 2020, © Leeham News: Despite all the safety-related headlines surrounding the Boeing 737 MAX, 2019 was a mercifully quiet year with just six fatal airline accidents around the world.
Clifford Law Offices in Chicago recently released an analysis of aviation incidents and accidents reported to the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) from 1982 to 2018. It highlighted several interesting patterns that are probably well known to pilots but perhaps not the rest of the aviation community. LNA also looked at accident data from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) for 1970-2017 for comparison.
In 2018, the NTSB investigated 1,581 aviation accidents and incidents that left 847 people dead and another 768 people injured. The vast majority of these, not surprisingly, involved non-commercial general aviation aircraft. Seventy-nine percent of all US aircraft accidents and 72% of fatal accidents involved single-engine planes. In this article, LNA will focus primarily on commercial aircraft operations like the ones defined under US Federal Aviation Administration Part 121 rules.
Summary
- Air travel remains one of the safest modes of transportation;
- Accidents and fatalities have fallen dramatically over the past 40 years;
- The most accidents occur during takeoff and landing, but those during maneuvering and cruising are the most deadly.
Bjorn’s Corner: Why e in ePlane shall stand for environment, Part 3. Open rotor revisited.
January 3, 2020, ©. Leeham News: We continue our series why e in ePlane shall stand for environment and not electric.
Our target is to lower air transport’s environmental footprint and we can achieve this more efficiently by using established technologies. As an example, I will describe a very promising concept that has fallen out of focus due to the hype around everything hybrid and electric.
Figure 1. The Clean Sky IRON project aircraft with an Unducted Single Fan (USF) propulsion. Source: Clean Sky.
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2020 Outlook for Airbus, Boeing, et al
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Introduction
By the Leeham News team.
Jan. 2, 2020, © Leeham News: This will be a pivotal year for Boeing.
It will be a year of challenges for Airbus.
Embraer Commercial Aviation should disappear.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries faces final decisions for the SpaceJet.
Overhanging international trade is the US presidential election.
These are just some of the headlines to look for in 2020.
Leeham News and Analysis provides its annual outlook as the new year, and the new decade, begins.
Boeing MAX crisis dominated 2019 Top stories
By Scott Hamilton
Dec. 30, 2019, © Leeham News: Boeing and the 737 MAX dominated the Top 10 Stories on Leeham News in 2019.
This should surprise no one.
The year-end late-breaking news that Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg had been fired by the Board of Directors should be in the Top 10 Stories of 2019.
But coming as it did on Dec. 23, the start of Christmas week, it failed to make it into LNA’s Top 10 list.
Readership, obviously, falls off dramatically over the Christmas holidays. The fall-off continues between Christmas and New Year’s evidenced by LNA’s own decision to take a holiday (except for breaking news).
The Ethiopian Airlines crash on March 10 grabbed three of the Top 10 stories and shared, with Lion Air 610 (the Oct. 29, 2018, crash) a fourth story.
Boeing photo.
Boeing’s pickle with the 737 NG pickle fork cracking was of the Top 10 stories.
An historical review that Boeing didn’t want to re-engine the 737, preferring instead a new airplane in 2011 when what became the MAX was launched, was in the Top 10.
An April 2018 story about a potential Blended Wing Body airplane from Boeing hit the Top 10 after an enthusiast site linked it to its forum.
Other MAX MCAS stories were in the Top 10. Finally, anticipated announcements by Mitsubishi for the Paris Air Show was the only non-Boeing story to be in the Top 10 reads for the year.
Airbus didn’t hit the Top 10 but did have a #11 story concerning a pitch-up issue on the A321.
The Boeing stories propelled record readership on LNA in 2019.
Here is the rundown.