Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- Teamsters, Boeing have a new contract April 29, 2025
- Boeing wants to remarket China’s airplanes. It’s costly and time consuming. April 28, 2025
- Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 19. April 25, 2025
- How good is the C929? Part 2. April 24, 2025
- Boeing First Quarter Results Update: China is 10% of the backlog, with 500 in “Unidentified” April 24, 2025
Southwest fatigue failure likely to have little effect on 737 values
Here’s an article on values we did for Commercial Aviation Online:
| Date: | 11/04/2011 08:04 |
| Source: | Commercial Aviation Online |
| Location: | Seattle |
| By: | Scott Hamilton |
The in-flight fuselage rupture caused by metal fatigue is, in the end, likely to have little affect on Boeing 737 Classic values, predicts Fred Klein, president of Aviation Specialists.
Odds and Ends: Entertaining recap on Leahy and NEO
1. Entertaining look at Leahy and A320neo
Max Kingsley-Jones, editor of Airline Business, has this amusing take on Airbus COO John Leahy and Leahy’s view of his latest toy, the A320neo.
Last week we received a couple of inquiries and comments about the investment Airbus has made in the NEO and whether this will be worth it. Figures publicly issued by Airbus were that the investment in NEO is about $1.5bn.
What is not discussed but which is widely known within insider circles is that the engine makers, Pratt & Whitney and CFM, are footing most of the bill. We don’t know the split between the engine OEMs and Airbus, but we understand the engine share is not insignificant. Thus, the actual financial risk to Airbus is, by R&D standards, pretty small. We remarked to one who inquired that NEO will probably have one of the best ROIs for Airbus of any program.
Aviation Week’s Robert Wall has this story about the NEO, emerging from the Airbus 320neo briefing last week.
Reports from the Airbus neo event
Our partner at AirInsight, Addison Schonland, has posted additional reports from his attendance to the Airbus neo event April 5.
Tom Williams, EVP briefing.
John Leahy’s briefing. This is different than the one-on-one interview Addison had.
Keeping the A320 in production to 2030 decade.
Airbus, the NEO program and an interview with John Leahy
Airbus held a media day today about the A320neo; we were scheduled to go to Toulouse for this event but circumstances required we stay in Seattle, so our partner at AirInsight, Addison Schonland, made the journey.
He obtained an exclusive interview with John Leahy, COO Customers. Here is his report. Addison will have additional reports later in the week.
FAA 737 inspection AD covers 175 jets
Note: Dominic Gates of The Seattle Times has a particularly thorough piece looking at this incident. The Wall Street Journal also has a good story on the topic. The New York Times has this story.
Update, April 5: Flightblogger has this story about how the 737s subject to the AD were identified. As Jon Ostrower closes his piece, he asks what the design changes were. KIRO TV (Seattle) told us that Boeing told it design changes were made to strengthen that area of the airplane.
Original Post:
The FAA said late April 4 that it will issue an airworthiness directive April 5 requiring immediate inspections of 175 Boeing 737-300/400/500 aircraft, following the Southwest Airlines in-flight decompression April 1. Eighty of the aircraft are in the US. Only those with more than 30,000 cycles are affected.
The FAA press release is here.
Other countries with reciprocity airworthiness agreements with the US–such as Germany, for example–will follow the FAA’s AD. Countries without airworthiness agreements with the US aren’t required to follow the FAA AD, and it’s unclear how many aircraft are involved.
Odds and Ends: Three drivers for Bombardier; PW GTF gains momentum
1. JP Morgan looks at Bombardier
Aerospace analyst Joe Nadol has an interesting take on Bombardier and the next 12 months. Nadol begins with, “We believe Bombardier may be better positioned now than at any time in the 10+ years we’ve followed the stock,” and continues:
Three Important BBD Drivers: 1) CSeries, 2) CSeries, 3) CSeries. With the business jet and train businesses both poised for solid earnings growth, the CSeries is now clearly set as the key likely driver of the stock. There are two primary issues here. The first is demand, and we believe the program needs to start racking up more orders this year, even by the Paris Air Show in June. We believe there is a high level of interest, and we are fairly confident Bombardier will sell more aircraft. The partnership with Comac that Bombardier announced last week seems to foreshadow meaningful Chinese orders. Bombardier also has nearly $12 bil in financing for CSeries aircraft available from Chinese sources. The second issue is execution. Management noted that Bombardier still expects to fly the aircraft next year and also highlighted some recently achieved milestones for the engine. However, Flight reported in recent weeks that the date for first flight may have slipped by a few months into next fall, so the program does appear to be experiencing at least the normal level of fits and starts. Thus far, the CSeries appears on track overall, but execution obviously remains a major overhang given the complexity of the program and the well-known problems the industry has had meeting cost and schedule targets in recent years.
Southwest Air’s second 737 decompression
Southwest Airlines suffered a second in-flight decompression of a Boeing 737-300 yesterday. This is the second–the first was in July 2009.
Both airplanes were 15-year old 737-300s and the failure on both airplanes were in the aft fuselage. The 2009 incident involved a hole in front of the vertical fin about one foot in size. Friday’s incident was bigger, about three feet, further forward and on the left size but aft of the wing.
Southwest grounded 79 737-300s for inspection, all about 15 years old. The company doesn’t have word how long the inspections will take; about 300 flights will be canceled today.
Boeing WTO panel report released; podcast with Airbus and Boeing
The WTO released the public version of its report on the illegal subsidies for Boeing. There are plenty of stories on the Internet to choose from, so we won’t recap it all here. We have said and still say a pox on both houses.
But here is a 10 minute podcast by AirInsight of an interview with Airbus’ Alan McArtor, Chairman of Airbus Americas.
Here is a slightly longer podcast with Boeing’s top WTO official.
Indigo selected PW GTF for NEO
Indigo Airlines of India selected the PW P1000G Geared Turbo Fan for its order of 150 Airbus A320neos.
We’re at the PW Media Day and will be filing additional reports today. Up to this point, most of the activities have been associated with military and space programs, which we don’t follow closely.
We did confirm that PW is providing the PW 4000 for the KC-46A tanker. There had been some minor speculation that the secretive Boeing bid might have included plans for a 767-sized GTF; this isn’t the case.
Odds and Ends: Orient Aviation’s profile of John Leahy
This is an abbreviated Odds and Ends; we are traveling this week and next and we’re not sure if we’ll have the chance to update while we are on the road. Meantime:
Orient Aviation magazine has a cover story profile of John Leahy, COO of Customers, and it’s a good one.
FlightGlobal has a long piece about the new competitors to Airbus and Boeing.
This is a frightening story about construction at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.
An Australian TV station has a special on the Qantas A380/Rolls-Royce incident.
George Talbot of The Mobile Press-Register takes a look at how all the analysts and pontificaters were flummoxed by the Boeing win on the tanker.