Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
777X decision due in October; where will it be assembled?
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:
Airbus announces 68 A320s, A333 “Lite” at Chinese air show
Airbus loves air shows as platforms for announcements, and the current event in China is no exception.
Airbus announced orders for 68 A320ceos and neos and launched the A330-300 Lite program (though no orders yet). Reports suggest Airbus expects the first Lite orders from China, hence the location and announcement at the air show.
Zhejiang Long Airlines signed an MOU for 11 ceos and 9 neos. This is a start-up carrier.
Qingdao Airlines ordered five ceos and 18 neos.
BOC Aviation, the long-established leasing company owned by the Bank of China, placed an order for 12 neos and 13 ceos.
The A333 has a range of 3,000nm and will carry about 400 passengers. The weight is 200 tons and Airbus says it will burn 15% less fuel than the all-up, 6,100nm version. Aviation Week has some additional detail.
Separately, Bloomberg reports that Vietjet (Vietnam) will order up to 100 A320 family airplanes. The order could be announced today, Bloomberg says.
- We’ve not commented on the Lufthansa Airlines order for Airbus A350-900s and Boeing 777-9s to any great extent because the deal was pretty straight-forward. But this Aviation Week article has a comment from the LH CEO saying it by-passed the 787-10 because its range (at 7,000nm) is to short. This is interesting in context of Boeing’s statements that the 787-10 will cover about 90% of the mission requirements of airlines. Just an observation.
Busy decade ahead for new, derivative airplane EIS dates
The next decade will see an extraordinary number of new and derivative airplanes entering service, beginning next year with the Boeing 787-9 and ending in 2022 with what we believe will be a replacement for the Airbus A330.
Bombardier’s CS100 is currently planned to enter service in around September next year, 12 months after its first flight on September 16, 2013, but we think EIS will slip to early 2015. Bombardier seems to be laying the groundwork for this in statements that it will reassess the EIS date in a few months.
Beginning with the 787-9, there is a steady stream of EIS dates–and a couple of end-production dates of current generation airplanes.
This chart captures the airplanes and their dates. Most dates are based on firm announcements from the OEMs, but we’ve adjusted some based on market intelligence and our own estimates.
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The arrows to certain points within years are not necessarily representative of specific timelines within that year. OEMs generally are not too specific about and EIS date, preferring to say “first half” or “second half” or some derivative of ambiguity. The only specific that we’re aware of is Boeing’s revised EIS of the 737 MAX, from 4Q2017 to July 2017. Although the Ascend data base is quite specific, we’ve not attempted to be highly specific in this chart. (Have we been specific enough about all this?)
Readers will note that we have the ARJ21 arrow going to a question mark. This airplane is already seven years late, and supposedly it’s going to enter service next year, but we aren’t banking on this at all. COMAC/AVIC, producer of the ARJ21, has a dismal record of meeting target dates. Accordingly, although COMAC now says the EIS for the C919 is 2017, we’ve got this in 2018–and even this is likely generous.
Lufthansa splits wide-body order between Airbus and Boeing
Lufthansa Airlines announced its long-expected wide-body order, for 59 Airbus A350-900s and Boeing 777-9Xs.
Airbus won a firm order for 25 with options for 25 more. Boeing’s press release didn’t disclose options.
This is a big win for both companies in a hard-fought contest. LH had long said it expected to buy only from one company, and the split order means neither OEM came away empty handed. But Boeing did not get an order for the 787-10, which was part of the package being offered to LH. Nor did it receive an order for the 747-8I, which it had hoped to obtain as well.
787-9 first flight follow-up
Here is some “morning after” coverage of the first flight of the Boeing 787-9.
- The Wall Street Journal has this article with some detail about pricing, design improvements and other differences between the 789 and the 788. Via Google News so it should be accessible to all Readers.
- CNET has this report, along with a compilation of photos.
- The Seattle Post Intelligencer has this photo array.
- Aviation Week has this report, with its usual devotion to detail.
- The Everett Herald has this report.