CSeries first flight this morning 0930 EDT

It’s 0-dark-30 here on the West Coast, waiting for the Bombardier CSeries first flight in 45 minutes.

You can watch on the Bombardier webcast here, where it will go live just before, according to Tweets. You can follow on Twitter at #CSeries.

Busy Week ahead: First flights; and Odds and Ends:Lufthansa to split order; Embraer tells of upgrades

Update, 2:30PM PDT: Boeing confirms that Tuesday is the target day for 787-9 first flight, time TBD and subject to weather and other factors.

Update, 3:30pm PDT: Bombardier says 9:30 EDT Monday is the scheduled first flight for CSeries. Twitter follow is #CSeries

Original Post:

It looks like it will be a busy week in aviation news. Bombardier plans the first flight of the CSeries tomorrow, weather permitting (it looks good). Exact time hasn’t been announced. Reuters reports Boeing plans the first flight of the 787-9 Tuesday, though we haven’t seen notice from Boeing on this yet. And we’re waiting any day for Lufthansa Airlines to announce its long-awaited wide-body order.

Lufthansa said to split order: Lufthansa Airlines reportedly will split its order for widebody airplanes between Boeing and Airbus, according to this Bloomberg report.

Embraer EJet improvements: Flight Global has this story about the improvements and another about production rates.

Air Force One: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has a 42 slide photo display of Air Force Ones, past to present, that’s quite interesting.

Update: “Small Airbus:” If you listen carefully, someone at the end of the video notes that the CSeries “looks like a small Airbus 320.” We couldn’t help but chuckle at this.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWgjBNI_l-I&w=420&h=315]

Implications for the 787-9’s first flight

The first flight of the next member of the Boeing 787 family, the -9, is coming soon and this has greater implications than usual for what would be called a minor model variant.

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Boeing has been making “minor model variants” since the dawn of the jet age with the 707: the 707-120/320/420, the 727-100/200, the 737-100/200, the 300/400/500 family and so on right through today’s 787 variants.

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The first flight of the 787-9 ordinarily would be a little consequence. But because of the painful birth of the lead variant, the 787-8, and its troubled early service life that included a 3 ½ month grounding, the 787-9 will have greater scrutiny to see if Boeing has the program troubles behind it.

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Boeing made significant changes to the 787-9 based on lessons learned from the -8. Changes amount to a reported 30% of the design and include lessons learned from the design and production of the tail plane, the side-of-body wing join, elements of the wing’s internal structure, some electronics and, of course, the lithium ion batteries that led to the grounding of the 50 -8s in service.

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Also the engines. The GEnx and Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines fell short of specification for the -8. It remains to be seen whether the -9 will meet the specs with the engine upgrades, or whether more work will need to be done.

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Dispatch reliability remains a challenge for the -8, hovering around 98%; Boeing wants to see it closer to 99.7%, the standard set by the 737NG and the 777. This may not sound like much difference, but it means a lot to the airlines, and Boeing is quick to compare the 99.7% for the 737NG with the 99.4% for the rival Airbus A320. This fractional difference amounts to more than 60 flights a year Boeing claims as an advantage for the 737NG over the A320.

A nearly two point difference between today’s 787 and tomorrow’s is significant. The lessons learned, incorporated into the 787-9, will be watched as a path toward this reliability target.

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Expectations are high for the -9. We hear that the first plane emerged from the factory pretty “clean,” that is, without the troubles that bedeviled the -8. Let’s hope the flight test program comes off without a hitch.

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Nearly 40% of the more than 900 787 orders are for the -9. We expect the -9 and its larger sibling, the -10, to eventually account for more than 50% of the orders for the family.

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This was originally sent to our email list on September 3.

Replacing Air Force One: will 747-8 production remain open, or can 777-300ER become AF One?

Bloomberg has this story about the prospect of replacing Air Force One “early in the next decade.” Aviation Week has this story as well. The Aviation Week story links to the Dayton Business Journal, and reports that the USAF wants a commercial derivative, four-engine airplane for delivery in 2021 or later. This description, of course, says “Boeing 747-8” without saying so.

The assumption is that Boeing will provide the 747-8I (Airbus already said it will not bid the A380), but the timing could make it problematic. At August 31, there was a backlog of just 53 8Is and 8Fs, or 30 months at the current production rate of 1.75 per month–to 2016. Boeing has had several dry spells for orders. The 8I isn’t selling well at all and the cargo market hasn’t recovered yet, suppressing sales for the 8F. How does Boeing keep the 747-8 production going until delivery of Air Force One replacements “early next decade”?

Boeing has a couple of 8I campaigns we’ve heard about, hoping for orders this year. These include British Airways and Lufthansa Airlines and a third airline we haven’t yet identified. Lufthansa is expected to announce a wide body order any day now. The publicly acknowledged competition has been between the Airbus A350 and a combination of the Boeing 787-10 and the yet-to-be-launched Boeing 777X. But the 787-10 entry-into-service is planned for 2018 and the 777-9X in around 2020, followed a year later by the 777-8X. Airbus is believed to have delivery slots earlier that either Boeing airplane.

So what would entice Lufthansa to buy Boeing with the later delivery slots? According to our market intelligence, Boeing has offered LH the 747-8I at steep discounts to serve as an interim airplane. This not only would keep LH in the Boeing camp but would help keep the 747-8 production line open. An order from the second of the three airlines would also be needed in this scenario to keep the line open. These orders would also enable Boeing to avoid another write-off for the 747-8 program, our market intelligence says.

But does Air Force One have to be a four-engine airplane? The Secret Service reportedly demanded such when seeking a replacement for the Boeing 707, but according to Wikipedia, the USAF specified a plane with at least three engines and 6,000 mile range. Air Force Ones (there are two of them). When the RFP for the new AF One was issued, in 1985, twin-engine, long haul airplanes with ETOPS were still early in their service, eliminating the prospect for the twin-engine Boeing 767. The Secret Service was said to want more than two engines for safety.

But today, twin-engine ETOPS airplanes and the engines are incredibly reliable. The Boeing 777-300ER has a dispatch reliability second to none as far as we can tell and the GE90 engines that power it are superb. Could the Secret Service and USAF accept a 777-300ER bid? (We doubt the Secret Service or the USAF would accept the new, unproven 9X as Air Force One.)

The 777 certainly doesn’t have the panache of the 747, but operationally there certainly is nothing wrong with the airplane and engines and there is no question about the line being open to 2020 or even somewhat beyond.

The Air Force also needs to replace the 747-200 that serves as the flying command post for the President and the top military brass. This is the white 747 that was spotted over Washington (DC) on 9/11/2001, the day America came under airborne attack by Al Qaeda. But the news articles don’t mention replacing this aircraft.

New life for old airliners

New life has been created for an airliner that wasn’t considered a particularly successful airliner. The British Aerospace 146/Avro family is being converted to an aerial firefighting tanker and also an aerial refueling tanker.

The 146 and follow-on Avro upgrades weren’t particularly successful in commercial airline service, although nearly 400 were produced over 19 years. A niche aircraft, a few remain in operation today. Its four engines were an oddity for regional aircraft service and the initial engines were temperamental. The narrow fuselage made the 3×3 seating very cramped and some operators reduced seating to a more comfortable 2×3 configuration, which ballooned per-seat costs on the 100-seat model by 15% with elimination of 15 seats.

We flew in a 146 last January from Paris to Dublin, surprised to find the model still in use. While apparently still reasonably common in Europe, the airplane has disappeared from service in the US as far as we can tell.

Conversion to fire fighting use has been underway for some time, though the quantity so far is small. A blog about fire fighting discusses the 146 tanker and Aviation Week wrote a short piece about the 146 tanker and the emerging development of the McDonnell Douglas MD-87 as a tanker, which is being development by Aero Air, an affiliate of the Erickson Air Group, which is a joint venture partner in the Boeing 757P2F Precision Conversion company.

The US faces a crisis in aerial fire fighting because the tankers are old and several have crashed due to wing failures. The tanker fleet at one point was grounded for inspection because of the crashes. The 146 is viewed by some as having the advantage of being able to operate from unimproved air strips and operating at a relatively slow speed. The MD-87, sporting the same engines and wing as the larger MD-88, was considered a special performance airplane with short-field capabilities.

Bombardier has an aerial tanker that can scoop water from a lake on the fly, literally, but it costs $20m-$30m and a lack of orders caused BBD to announce it will discontinue production. There is a need for about 200 tankers worldwide, but like freighters, conversions of old airplane is preferred for cost.

American, US Airways respond to DOJ complaint

American Airlines and US Airways filed their responses to the DOJ lawsuit seeking to block the merger. The Dallas Morning News has this synopsis. The full, 50-page US Airways response is here.

There’s one element that particularly caught our eye, and that is market share. While DOJ points out that the New American, along with Delta Air Lines and United Airlines, would control some 80% of the available seat miles (a statistically correct figure), AA and US point out that in terms of domestic market share, Southwest Airlines, other LCCs plus Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines control 40% of all domestic passengers.

The Complaint’s focus on legacy airlines causes it to ignore the most meaningful competitive development in the airline industry since deregulation: the emergence of low cost carriers. Southwest, which in 1978 was an oddity limited to intrastate flying in Texas, is now the country’s largest domestic airline, carrying more passengers last year than any legacy carrier and more than US Airways and American combined. Other low cost carriers, including JetBlue, Spirit Airlines, Virgin America, Sun Country, and Allegiant, are expanding at dramatic rates. These carriers, together with Southwest and regional competitors Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines, now transport over 40% of all domestic passengers, and that share continues to grow. The demonstrable success of low cost carriers is a market driven response to consumer demand, but the Complaint inexplicably ignores their profound and permanent effect on industry competition.

In fact, Southwest has for many years carried more domestic passengers than any other airline–which begs the question, why didn’t DOJ block the Southwest-AirTran merger, which would only increase and consolidate this concentration?

The court should find for AA and US. This lawsuit is an embarrassment to DOJ for its political motivations, poor research and lack of understanding of the airline industry.

BBD’s conservative approach toward first flight

BBD v Boeing on First Flight: We, along with others, have wondered why Bombardier wants a clear, sunny day for first flight when Boeing flew the 787 on a rainy day in December. Was this some regulatory difference between Canada and the US, or was this a policy decision by BBD vs Boeing?

It’s a policy decision, BBD tells us. The Transport Canada flying permit is good for any weather, but the CSeries–for Bombardier–is an entirely new configuration (engines on pods under wings vs rear-mounted engines and T-Tail), new engine types, fly-by-wire and so on. So the company is being conservative. From a technical standpoint, the first flight could be on a rainy day such as that experienced by Boeing (which is tough not to have in Seattle in December).

The high speed taxi tests, followed by the shimmy and braking tests, do need a dry runway and low winds, BBD tells us.

Here’s the weather report through Tuesday at Mirabel Airport. Not very encouraging.

Meanwhile, The Toronto Star has this latest look at when the airplane may fly and comments from others.

Who needs a 747-8I? Air Canada puts 458 seats in 777-300ER

Holy crammed-in-coach, Batman!

Air Canada has configured its latest Boeing 777-300ER with 458 seats, in three classes. How in the world? Airline Reporter tells how, and we wouldn’t want to be stuck in coach.

We’ve been writing for some time the Boeing 747-8I is squeezed from the bottom by the -300ER and from the top by the Airbus A380, but this configuration on the -300ER is pretty extreme. Boeing claims seating of 467 for its 747-8I when it compares its Very Large Aircraft with the A380 (a configuration that is unrealistic–it should be 405 in typically airline layout).

Seatguru.com has this illustration of Air Canada’s -300ER seating.

Airline Reporter doesn’t say who makes Air Canada’s new coach seats. Recaro seems to be a popular supplier, providing its slimline seats to Qatar and Alaska Airlines, among others. We’ve been in Alaska’s Recaro-equipped coach class and while AS touts these as state-of-the-art comfort, we were less impressed. There was little lower back support unless sitting firmly in the seat, and the recline isn’t enough unless you slouch. The headrest is in the wrong position for good neck support (for a 6-footer). We also sat in Qatar’s Recaro coach seat when the airline showed its first Boeing 787 off to media and invitees, and we weren’t impressed then, either. Slimline design notwithstanding, it was still cramped. On the other hand, Qatar uses BE Aerospace-designed fancy business class seats and these were the first we’d seen where you don’t have to be an engineer to figure out the controls, figuratively speaking.

Since we started out with a Hollywood saying, we’ll end with one. Coach class on international flights, especially considering 17 inch wide seats and narrow seat pitch: as Danny Glover’s character in Lethal Weapon said, “I’m too old for this [stuff].”

Odds and Ends: 787 fulfilling dream; Weather worsens for CSeries; Painting out logos; plane vs car

787 Opens New Routes: The Boeing 787 is still getting some negative headlines about dispatch reliability, but the plane is proving Boeing’s underlying message about opening new, “thin” routes. The Tacoma News-Tribune has this story detailing how the 787 is fulfilling the dream (so-to-speak).

CSeries First Flight: The weather forecast in Montreal deteriorated further overnight. Now rain is predicted through Saturday, making first flight unlikely until at least Sunday.

Guess Whose Airplane? You’d never know from the titles and logo painted out, would you?

NBC News Photo

CNN has this story on the matter. This is the first accident in 12 years, according to Wikipedia when a crew member was killed in a fire that destroyed a Boeing 737 on the ground. The last accident involving passengers was in 1998, according to Wiki.

Speaking of Accidents: Here’s an unusual one: A Delta Air Lines commuter plane struck a car parked on the tarmac while the plane was being towed.

ClickonDetroit photo.

Let’s see the owner of the car explain this one to his insurance company.

Weather outlook bleak through Wednesday for CSeries first flight

Bombardier has finished taxi testing today following an increase in the winds. The weather forecast for Montreal calls for rain beginning tonight through Wednesday, with a sunny day forecast for Thursday.

BBD says it needs VFR weather for the first flight. So it appears there is no likelihood of a first flight at least through Wednesday.