Flight Test Programs: Here’s a quick update on the flight test programs underway right now:
Airbus A350XWB: The sole flying test platform in the A350XWB program has accumulated 150 hours since its first flight just before the Paris Air Show in June. The second test plane is due to enter the program this month. The program is believed to have completed its VMU (unstick) testing.
Boeing 787-9: The second member of the 787 family has accumulated 40 flying hours since its first flight on Sept. 17. Aviation Week has a good article on the flight test progress. The airplane is nearing its flutter testing.
Bombardier CSeries: Flight Test Vehicle 1 returned to the skies Tuesday after two weeks since its first flight Sept. 16. Further software upgrades and analyzing test results were stated as the reasons for the gap. The airplane reached 25,000 feet and Mach 0.60 in its second test flight, which lasted four hours.
New A320/737 cabins: Interior maker Zodiac has designed retrofit cabins for the Boeing 737NG and the Airbus A320 families. The 737NG cabin is similar to the Boeing Sky Interior installed on every new 737, but Boeing didn’t offer this as a retrofit to the installed base. Zodiac’s design actually carries more luggage than Boeing’s. The Zodiac A320 cabin is similar.
APEX reported in 2012 that Zodiac had designed an A320 cabin. Zodiac has this detail of its 737NG cabin offering.
Only Qantas Airways has purchased Zodiac’s 737 interior and so far there are no customers for the A320 version. But this is about to change. Here is the story we wrote for APEX.
JetBlue Tails: The airline’s blog has a nice compilation of all its tail liveries here.
Posted on October 4, 2013 by Scott Hamilton
Stowage and Retention of PEDs: The US government shutdown will delay rules from the Federal Aviation Administration on the trend toward allowing gate-to-gate use of Personal Entertainment Devices, or PEDs. A special FAA committee sent its recommendations to the FAA on Sept. 30, the day before government operations ground to a halt for non-essential services due to the budget impasse in Congress.
The possibility of allowing expansion of the use of PEDs came up at the Aircraft Interiors Expo-US organized by Reed Exhibitions (Flight Global). We attended on behalf of APEX, the Airline Passenger Experience magazine, and filed several stories with APEX.
Here is one on the PED issue, and the factors that must be considered for the stowage and, more importantly, retention of PEDs. What’s the difference? Stowage is just that. Retention is keeping the PED where it is stowed in the event of an emergency (aka, crash) so the PEDs don’t become flying objects.
Embedded IFE or Bring Your Own? With the proliferation of Bring Your Own Devices (BYOD), the question arises: how long will airlines continue to embed in-flight entertainment systems, and how long with OEMs provide them?
This was one of the questions raised at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Seattle this week. Here is a story on the subject we did for APEX magazine. Don’t look for embedded IFE to disappear any time soon, and not for reasons you would think.
Expanding passenger experience: Airlines are trying to alter the in-cabin passenger experience (not always for the better, in our view, but we digress). It’s not that easy, given regulations, different vendors and more. Industry experts answered questions about the challenges of integrating in-flight entertainment systems into aircraft. The event was the Aircraft Interiors Expo-US by Reed Publishing. We recorded a couple of short segments that give the flavor of the challenges.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kv0tvZCX6Aw
L to R: Jose Pavida, VP Engineering, TIMCO; Zuzana Hrnkova, Head of Aircraft Interiors Marketing, Airbus; Alan Wan, Product Manager, Thales; Sage Secimis, Electrical Engineering Manager, Northwest Aerospace Technologies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItpYCdmwyb4
Recordings by Scott Hamilton
Posted on October 3, 2013 by Scott Hamilton
United Airlines announced it is adopting a new seat in coach to improve the passenger experience.
Its press release is here.
UAL’s overview:
The new design includes:
We’re impressed.
Posted on October 3, 2013 by Scott Hamilton
A limited global market for Ultra Long Range Airplanes (ULRA) will limit sales of the Boeing 777-8.
The Boeing Board of Directors is expected to green-light the 777X program this month, with two versions of the airplane: the 350-passenger 777-8 and the 406-passenger 777-9. The 777-8 will have a range of about 9,400nm and the -9 a range about 1,000nm less.
The 777-8, an Ultra-Long Range Aircraft, is known within the industry as “Tim Clark’s airplane.” Clark is the president of Emirates Airlines and for years has been urging Airbus and Boeing to develop a plane with ultra-long range that can fly from Dubai to Los Angeles with a full payload. The absence of this ability is one reason why he has not purchased the 747-8I.
Reaction to the 777-8X in customer meetings sponsored by Boeing has been tepid. The 777-8X has been viewed as a niche airplane that will not compete effectively against the Airbus A350-1000, which nominally carriers 350 passengers but has a range of about 8,400nm.
Customer reaction, we are told by some of those in attendance at these meetings, has been that the 8X is a highly niche aircraft that will be needed on only 5% of the world’s routes. It will be too heavy and too costly for most operations, and uncompetitive with the A350-1000.
Posted on October 3, 2013 by Scott Hamilton
Bombardier and American Airlines: Bloomberg has an analysis of the campaign at American Airlines for a large regional jet order, and how vital it is to Bombardier to win the deal. Embraer won three previous important orders from the US major airlines, leaving American the last remaining prize in the near-term.
C919 Entry-into-Service: Reuters has an analysis about the Chinese effort to challenge Airbus and Boeing with the COMAC C919, and the continued challenges to do so. EIS is now figured for 2018.
Europe blinks on emissions: The European Union blinked on its long-running effort to force all airlines to pay a fine if they don’t meet emission standards. The effort met with international resistance, with China leading the way. Chinese orders for Airbus A320s and A330s had been held up. The Chinese earlier ordered the A320s, but still blocked A330 purchases by its airlines. We’ll see how quickly these orders come through.
Posted on October 3, 2013 by Scott Hamilton
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee has proposed extending the state tax credits to Boeing as an incentive to land the assembly of the 777X.
The Puget Sound Business Journal has this report.
The Seattle Times is a bit more detailed.
Here is the Governor’s speech (17 pages) with the details.
Inslee predicted quick approval by the State Legislature, which returns to session in January.
The tax breaks were those granted to Boeing to land the assembly of what was then known as the 7E7, later renamed the 787.
There is one little issue, however. The 787 tax breaks were found to be illegal under World Trade Organization rules in the highly contentious international trade dispute between Airbus (the European Union) and Boeing (the US Trade Representative) over illegal subsidies.
The WTO found Airbus and Boeing each received illegal subsidies or tax breaks, and Boeing’s from Washington State were among those found to be illegal.
The US and EU each appealed the respective WTO rulings.
We asked the director of the Governor’s Office of Aerospace about this. His reply:
“The case is still being adjudicated and they are still in effect. Until something changes, the industry is still benefiting.”
Posted on October 2, 2013 by Scott Hamilton
CSeries second flight: It was two weeks and one day to the second flight of the Bombardier CSeries, quite a bit longer than the Boeing 787-9 and the Airbus A350. The lengthier time was subject to a fair amount of scrutiny by some observers.
We’re told that Flight Test Vehicle 1 was under-going software upgrades. The fly-by-wire aircraft had taken aloft in direct law flight mode. Some of the delay to first flight had to do with software upgrades.
Bombardier collected some noise data on the second flight.
Boeing’s impact on WA State: A new study outlines the impact of the current Boeing 777 family to Washington State, and it’s pretty big. The study was commissioned by the State to understand what needs to be done to win the assembly site for the 777X. A bi-partisan Legislative panel has been appointed by Gov. Jay Inslee as part of this effort.
Other stuff:
Posted on October 2, 2013 by Scott Hamilton
It had become one of the worst-kept secrets: Indigo Partners, the investment group managed by Bill Franke, former CEO of America West Airlines, has purchased Frontier Airlines from Republic Airways Holdings.
Frontier assumes all the Airbus A320neo family orders outstanding.
Franke’s Indigo bought controlling interest in Spirit Airlines and transformed it into an Ultra Low Cost Carrier. Indigo sold its shares months ago and Franke and an associate resigned from the Board of Directors, and from then on speculation was rife Indigo was gearing up to buy Frontier. Frontier CEO David Siegel has been transforming Frontier into an ULCC, but Franke is likely to take to concept further.
Republic was the launch customer for 40+40 Bombardier CSeries, Inevitably, questions will arise over the future of these orders, since these were assumed to be for Frontier.
Our information is that Republic has plans for these airplanes apart from Frontier.
Posted on October 1, 2013 by Scott Hamilton
Contrary views of Mulally: With increasing media speculation about the prospect of Alan Mulally returning to Seattle to take the helm of Microsoft, a company in need of strong and creative leadership, two interesting and contrary views of the former CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes emerged.
The first we’ll put up is from Steve Wilhelm at the Puget Sound Business Journal, who wrote this piece recalling Mulally. The second is an old Business Week article that is considerably less flattering.
Mulally was passed over to head The Boeing Co. twice. After the second time, he left to become CEO of Ford Motor Co., saving it from bankruptcy (rivals GM and Chrysler didn’t avoid this fate), and remaking it into a profitable entity.
Many at Boeing believe that had Mulally stayed, many of the problems that emerged from the 787 program would have been avoided. This is, of course, a matter of speculation, but there is no getting around that his successor, Scott Carson, as a finance expert and salesman, didn’t have the engineering background necessary to cope with the emerging debacle of the 787 and 747-8 programs.
Microsoft has been stagnant under the tepid leadership of Steve Ballmer. Mulally, at 67, is old by CEO standards, but he certainly would shake things up at the stodgy company.
A retrospective New York Times article talks with Mulally and looks at Boeing in May 2006. Four months later, Mulally was CEO of Ford.
Cathay considers 420-seat 777-9X: Cathay Pacific Airways is considering becoming a launch customer for the Boeing 777X, reports Aspire Aviation. The configuration considered is a 420-seat version. Aspire cites an internal CX newsletter.
We noted on September 10 that Air Canada is jamming in 458 seats in a Boeing 777-300ER. The 777-9X is somewhat larger so it’s obvious CX won’t be using a similar seat pitch or business/first class size as Air Canada. But at 420 seats, this, too, is solidly within the Very Large Aircraft sector. (Boeing insists the 777-9X is not a VLA, however.)
As with the Air Canada -300ER, and as we have written many times, the -9X makes the 747-8I irrelevant and, in our view, represents the final nail in the coffin of the poor-selling 747-8I. The 9X in an Air Canada configuration probably would easily push 450 seats, becoming a clear threat to the Airbus A380. We think this is why Airbus began touting 11 abreast coach seating for the dual-deck airplane, adding 40 seats to the capacity. So far as we know, no airline has bought into this concept.
The VLA market was fragmenting already with the current generation of aircraft (777, A330, 787 and soon the A350). It will shrink further with the 777-9X.
Airbus had maintained a consistent 20-year forecast of about 1,200-1,300 VLA passenger models since it launched the A380 in 2000. Boeing has reduced its forecast to a mere 540 VLAPs. Airbus released its latest 20 year forecast on September 24 in a press conference in London that continues to predict the same number of VLAs over the next 20 years. We’re already 13 years into the original Airbus 20 year forecast for VLAs, and the figure hasn’t changed much since then (in fact, it’s gone up slightly).
As we wrote way back in July, the A380 continues to struggle.
Long Haul Flight Log: This is priceless. And accurate. Hat tip to Mary Kirby.
An Aside: We often take our Golden Retriever to Soaring Eagle Park in King County for a hike. One morning this week, we came across this scene of backlit morning sun, some fall colors and a spider web (center of the picture). This Blackberry photo doesn’t do the scene justice, but we thought we’d share this example of Mother Nature’s work anyway.
Photo by Scott Hamilton
Posted on October 1, 2013 by Scott Hamilton
Lufthansa Airlines announced an order for the Boeing 777-9X, but the program hasn’t officially been launched yet.
Source: Airline Reporter
The Boeing Co. Board of Directors is expected to do so in October. Boeing doesn’t reveal the date of its board meetings, but they are typically toward the end of the month. Formal launch of the program is widely anticipated to come at the Dubai Air Show Nov. 17-21, along with major orders from Emirates Airlines and others. Emirates’ order is expected to be for both the 406-seat 9X and the ultra-long range, 350-passenger 777-8X, the latter providing Emirates with the long-sought ability to provide full payload, non-stop service between Dubai and Los Angeles.
Source: Boeing
While launch of the 777X is a foregone conclusion, where it will be assembled isn’t. This is of keen interest to Washington State, where the current 777 family is assembled, and South Carolina, which is becoming a growing Boeing assembly site.
Boeing has purchased hundreds of acres of land in Charleston in multiple increments and now owns slight more land there than in Everett.
We believe Everett is the only logical place to assemble this derivative of an existing program, and there are many who think so, too. But there is a smaller group that thinks Boeing Chicago favors Charleston.
Here are the pros and cons of each:
Posted on September 30, 2013 by Scott Hamilton