Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- The BWB has a long way to go before flying passengers, freight May 12, 2025
- Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 21. May 9, 2025
- Does an A220-500 need a new wing and engines? Part 2. May 8, 2025
- Embraer downplays tariff impact on 2025 results May 6, 2025
- JetZero readies effort for private equity fund raising May 5, 2025
Natilus: Composite BWB, entry-into-service by 2029, 570 on order
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By Karl Sinclair
April 17, 2025, © Leeham News: California-based Natilus is on target to begin delivering its first aircraft for service in 2029, a Blended Wing Body (BWB) turboprop cargo aircraft, according to CEO Aleksey Matyushev.
The pusher-type cargo aircraft Kona will soon be followed by a larger turbofan passenger version, the Horizon, in the early 2030s.
Matyushev, an aeronautical engineer previously the lead aerodynamicist at Piper Aircraft, sat down with LNA to discuss timelines, aircraft production, engineering challenges, and the powerplant options that Natilus will use.
Natilus designed the BWB to fit within current airport gate footprints. Credit: Natilus.
China bans Boeing, US parts imports in tariff war
April 15, 2025, © Leeham News: It was inevitable: China has banned its airlines from accepting deliveries of Boeing airplanes.
The move is in retaliation against President Donald Trump’s boosting tariffs on Chinese goods to 145%. Beijing placed retaliatory tariffs on US goods to 125%. During the first Trump administration, the president placed tariffs of 25% on Chinese goods imported to the US. Beijing has allowed delivery of very few Boeing jets since then.
Illustration of many of the systems and components COMAC sources for its C919 jet. The smaller C909 regional jet is similarly sourced. Credit: Airframer.com.
The move once more blocks Boeing from the world’s second biggest aviation trade market. Additionally, Beijing blocked the import of US-made parts, according to Bloomberg News, which first reported the actions.
Boeing welcomes COMAC competition as Asia-Pacific demand soars
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By Leeham News Team
April 15, 2025, © Leeham News: Boeing sees long-term growth potential in the Asia-Pacific commercial market, but the company also acknowledges that China’s domestically produced COMAC C919 poses a credible challenge in the single-aisle segment—particularly in China and potentially in the broader region over time.
With China’s state-backed aerospace ambitions gaining momentum, the U.S. manufacturer faces a new challenge threatening to unbalance the traditional duopoly with Airbus.
According to Boeing’s 2024 Commercial Market Outlook (CMO), Southeast Asia will require more than 4,700 new aircraft over the next 20 years. About 80% of this demand will be for single-aisle aircraft—a space Boeing would ordinarily seek to dominate with its 737 MAX family.
COMAC may still have work to do to gain credibility for the C919 inside and outside China, but its short-medium-range airliner is proving popular in its domestic market (Air China, China Eastern Airlines, and China Southern Airlines are current operators). The planemaker is now seeking customers elsewhere in the region, including Indonesia, Cambodia, and Kazakhstan. How potential U.S. tariffs will alter airline customer decision-making between Boeing and its rivals remains to be seen.
Speaking to LNA as the Routes Asia forum got underway, Dave Schulte, managing director of Boeing Commercial Marketing for Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania, said he welcomed the contest for supremacy.
“Competition is always good for the aviation industry,” Schulte said when asked about the impact of COMAC on Boeing’s plans in the region. “It makes everyone in the industry invest in better technologies and find solutions to meet evolving customer needs.
“In the future, airlines will need to make longer-term fleet decisions that support growth and profitability, while providing competitive fares and service levels to the public.
“To achieve this goal, airlines across the region and globally evaluate airplanes based on performance capabilities, comfort level for passengers, economics, and more.” Read more
How good is the C929?
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By Bjorn Fehrm
April 14, 2025, © Leeham News: The COMAC C919 is finding its first customers outside China. At the same time as COMAC has started work on shorter and longer versions of the C919, work on a widebody C929 has been going on for the last 14 years.
If the development of more family members for the single aisle C919 is straightforward, the widebody C929 development has presented several challenges.
Figure 1. The COMAC C929 widebody aircraft. Source: COMAC.
Summary:
- The C929 has been in development since 2011.
- The project was first delayed by Russia-China relations and recently by increasing tensions between China and the West.
- The latest problems are around the engines, as Western engines have become politically impossible.
Read more
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 17.
By Bjorn Fehrm
April 11, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to improve the emission situation for Air Transport. We try to understand why development has been slow.
We now examine the non-CO2 effects of Air Transport that contribute to global warming. Of these, contrails have the largest impact, Figure 1.
In the last Corner, we described encouraging results from airline flight trials with warming contrail avoidance. What is required to move from trials to warming contrail avoidance for regular flights?
Figure 1. A summary of the CO2 and non-CO2 Effective Radiative Forcing (ERF) contributions from Air Transport. Source: The report “The contribution of global aviation to anthropogenic climate forcing for 2000-2018” by Lee et al. (2021).
Uncertainty plagues airline, aerospace, lessor industries over tariffs
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By Scott Hamilton
April 10, 2025, © Leeham News, Seattle: The airline and aerospace industries are plagued by uncertainty over the global tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump on April 2. The 90-day pause on nearly all tariffs announced yesterday doesn’t resolve the uncertainties. For the moment, they are only postponed.
Airbus’s A320 production plant in Hamburg, Germany. Credit: Leeham News.
Airframe and engine manufacturers, suppliers of components feeding them, and Buyer Furnished Equipment (BFE) directly to the airlines, lessors, aftermarket maintenance companies, and freighter conversion firms have many questions and no answers in chaos following Trump’s global tariff scheme.
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Consider the unknowns:
- Will Trump tax the entire value of airplanes, engines, and components imported into the United States or just the foreign content? There is no guidance yet.
- Will other jurisdictions, notably the European Union, announce reciprocal tariffs? This is unknown because the Trump Administration hasn’t clarified what will be taxed.
- How will aircraft leased by non-US lessors be treated when US airlines are the customers? How will US lessors leasing to non-US airlines be treated? No answers.
- Contracts between lessors, airlines, Boeing, and Airbus don’t specifically address tariffs. Some airlines say they won’t pay tariffs because the contracts are silent. However, Boeing thinks there is a way to pass tariffs along. Airbus probably does, too.
- Over the last weekend, US-based supplier Howmet informed its customers it reserves the right to exercise the force majeure clause in its contracts to give it flexibility to suspend deliveries because of the tariffs. Other suppliers, including some engine companies, are following suit.
- At least one supplier has already billed some customers for delivered goods, including a tariff tax line item on the invoice.
- How will various jurisdictions treat aircraft converted into freighters with a mix of US and foreign content? There is no answer.
The US-based law firm Vedder Price issued its opinion and guidance on Tuesday on some issues.
Boeing eyes tariff risks
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By the Leeham News Team
April 7, 2025, ©. Leeham News: Escalating global trade tensions stemming from newly announced U.S. tariffs could ripple through Boeing’s intricate supply chain and potentially disrupt aircraft production, a senior executive at the company has warned.
Speaking days before President Trump imposed tariffs of 10-50% on U.S. trading partners, Malcolm An, Boeing’s senior managing director, global strategic initiatives commercial sales and marketing, said the aerospace giant was actively working to mitigate any impact, even as the full consequences remain uncertain.
Boeing 787 production line. Credit: Boeing.
“We are monitoring these things which mostly are outside of our control, and on tariffs the situation is fluid, but everyone knows that Boeing has a very complex and big global supply chain. Disruption with the key suppliers could lead to a disruption in our production system,” An warned during an address to delegates at Routes Asia 2025—an annual gathering of airport and airline leaders in the Asia-Pacific region—this year held in Perth, Australia.
“At times, outsourcing makes sense, but also at times [so does] bringing work back in house. On tariffs, in the near term, Boeing is working to mitigate the impact on the global supply chain. That’s our focus.”
The imposition of tariffs that will affect a range of Asian goods have stoked fears of a broader trade conflict between the United States and its key partners in the Asia-Pacific region—a region Boeing counts as one of its most important markets.
With more than 6,200 aircraft in backlog and a continued need to ramp up production, Boeing’s reliance on global suppliers clearly makes it vulnerable to geopolitical disruption. Read more
Boeing at far greater risk of tariff impacts than Airbus
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By Scott Hamilton
April 7, 2025, © Leeham News: Tariffs against the rest of the world announced by US President Donald Trump last week threaten retaliatory tariffs against Boeing at a far greater level than Airbus faces, an analysis by LNA shows.
Trump exempted no part of the world from tariffs where Boeing isn’t at risk for retaliatory tariffs. Airbus faces tariffs only in the US. Critics note that North Korea and Russia aren’t on the list; these two countries already are under steep economic sanctions. Nevertheless, the US had more than $3bn in Russian imports last year. Even Boeing’s domestic US deliveries potentially could be hit with tariffs on foreign-sourced parts, components and engines.
The situation is still fluid, and it is still unknown precisely how US tariffs will be applied to the aerospace industry. This will affect how retaliatory tariffs are applied to Boeing and Airbus, which sources much of its aircraft content (notably engines) from the US.
Accordingly, LNA’s analysis is necessarily highly preliminary. It’s also possible that more airplanes may be listed as at risk to tariffs than the final analysis would conclude.
Boeing potentially has three times more aircraft subject to retaliatory tariffs than Airbus has exposure in the US with its European and Canadian sales to US customers.
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 16.
By Bjorn Fehrm
April 4, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to improve the emission situation for Air Transport. We try to understand why development has been slow.
We now examine the non-CO2 effects of Air Transport that contribute to global warming. Of these, contrails have the largest impact.
Contrails form when aircraft gas turbine engines emit soot particles into water vapor-saturated areas with low temperatures, where the soot particles act as condensation nuclei and the droplets freeze into ice crystals.
The report from Lee et al. (2021) lists non-CO2 effects as more important for Global Warming from Air Transport than CO2 emissions from burning hydrocarbon fuels, Figure 1.
Figure 1. A summary of the CO2 and non-CO2 Effective Radiative Forcing (ERF) contributions from Air Transport. Source: The report “The contribution of global aviation to anthropogenic climate forcing for 2000-2018” by Lee et al. (2021).
How good is the C919? Part 3.
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By Bjorn Fehrm
April 3, 2025, © Leeham News: The COMAC C919 is finding its first customers outside China, which gives us a reason to examine the aircraft.
Last week, we estimated its efficiency versus its Western “look-a-like,” the Airbus A320neo. Now, we look at new variants that have been announced and how competitive these would be.
Figure 1. The C919 and its variants are analyzed by the Leeham Aircraft Performance and Cost Model, APCM. Source: Leeham Co.
Summary:
- The C919, sized like an A320neo, is the first variant in a family of aircraft.
- The next C919 variant is a shorter model for hot and high airfield operation.
- The following variant is an A321neo-sized aircraft.