Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- Airbus sees Boeing as medium-term competitor, with Comac next June 14, 2025
- Boeing bullish on 20-year forecast, despite short-term headwinds June 14, 2025
- Embraer’s 20-year market forecast under 150 seats: fewer turboprops, jets about the same June 14, 2025
- Airbus Canada CEO: Airbus is here to stay in Canada June 14, 2025
- Little known, most unknown in Air India 171 crash June 13, 2025
Podcast details AF ACARS messages
There has been plenty of press about the 24 messages from the Air France flight that crashed. Addison Schonland of Innovation Analysis Group has two podcasts (17 minutes and 30 minutes) that has an expert decipher the messages. The podcasts may be found here. The PDF that is being deciphered is here.
A380 vs 747-8
Update, June 12: Boeing’s new 20 year forecast issued immediately before the Paris Air Show now forecasts just 740 VLAs, a dramatic drop from 960+ in its previous forecast. You can bet we’ll ask Airbus about this–and just guess what its answer will be.
Air Transport Intelligence, covering a United Airlines presentation at an investors conference, reports the carrier isn’t interested in the 747-8I:
“We’re focused on a new technology aircraft to materially improve cost performance,” said United senior vice president corporate planning and strategy Greg Taylor today during the Bank of America/Merrill Lynch transportation conference. The 747-8 is “not on the top of our list”, he adds.
United has specified to each manufacturer the aircraft it is most interested in, and Taylor explains the carrier has “left the door open for creativity”.
Original Post:
This is the last of our continuing reports from the Airbus Innovation Days….
Airbus continues to have production and delivery issues with the A380 and now, with the global economy and premium traffic doing so poorly, there have been additional deferrals and YTD no new orders for the giant airplane.
But Airbus still believes in the aircraft and continues to hold to its belief that to 2026, there will be a need for 1,280 Very Large Aircraft (VLA) in the passenger category. Airbus forecasts the need for at least 300 more VLA freighters.
United for 150 orders?
Update, June 5:
Here are a couple of news articles about this story:
Here is a 19-minute podcast on this story by Addison Schonland, Ernie Arvai, Erkan Pinar and us.
Original Post:
Be still my heart.
United Airlines requested RFPs from Airbus and Boeing for 150 airplanes, a mix of wide- and -narrow-body orders, including replacements for 97 Boeing 757s.
Why “be still my heart?” Because CEO Glenn Tilton has previously shown zero inclination to invest in United, preferring to shop the airline for a merger. United previously announced that long-standing orders for Airbus A320s would be canceled, forfeiting tens of millions in deposits–though we don’t believe these actually were canceled, not having shown up this way on the Airbus orders tally.
A330 in missing Air France flight
Update, June 2: Here is an interesting piece from the London Daily Mail with graphics of the timeline. The lightning strike was nearly an hour before the electronic signals alerting Air France to a power failure. The news reports yesterday made it sound like these were simultaneous events.
Original post:
An Airbus A330-200 is involved in the missing Air France flight that has surpassed fuel exhaustion time.
The airplane reported an electrical problem in proximity to a storm with heavy turbulence.
The A330 up to now had a perfect safety record with passengers on board (there was a fatal crash involving a test flight carrying only pilots and engineers). But there were recent incidents with Qantas Airways in which it was believed electronic signals from a nearby military installations interfered with electronic systems. In one instance, the plane lost altitude at a rapid rate.
Top on the list of investigative points will be (in no particular order) whether the electrical problem magnified to cause loss of control; whether the storm caused an “upset” and loss of control; whether the storm may have caused turbulence severe enough to prompt a structural failure; and whether a bomb or other terrorist act may have been involved.
The plane was 3-3 1/2 hours into the flight when the problems were reported and said to be near an island. There was no immediate indication whether the island had a landing strip.
Eco-Aviation Conference Report
The Air Transport World-Leeham Co. Eco-Aviation Conference last week produced a great deal of news, most notably the test results from Air New Zealand on its biofuel test flight made in cooperation with Boeing and Rolls-Royce.
ANZ announced at the conference that the test flight had a 1.2% better fuel efficiency than Jet-A fuel but a whopping 60%+ reduction in CO2 emissions.
A listing of news articles that came out of the conference may be found on our Eco-Aviation page here.
A330 vs 787
Another in the continuing reports from the Airbus Innovation Days….
Airbus provided an A330/A340 market update during its Innovation Days presentations in Hamburg earlier in May.
The A340 has become irrelevant to the new airplane market, with only a handful of new orders remaining and virtually none forthcoming in the last several years. Airbus is tweaking the A340 with some aerodymic improvements designed to reduce fuel burn by 1%. Along with maintenance procedure changes to the A330, the A340 increases the interval on the A Check to 800 flight hours from the current 600; C Check intervals go from 18 months to 21-24 months; Intermediate Checks increased from five years at EIS to the current six years and remains unchanged; and Structural Checks increase from 10 years to 12 years.
We resisted asking whether the A340’s Product Improvement Package includes a large Parking Brake sign in the cockpit.
BWB a big challenge
To some, the Blended Wing Body airplane seems like a great idea. We like it, too. It’s highly fuel efficient–estimated to be up to 30% more so than the Airbus A380. The body acts as lift, providing a lot of the efficiency.
It’s voluminous. It can carry more than 1,000 people and it has great cargo-carrying capability. It’s also been discussed as an aerial refueling tanker for the US Air Force.
A350 vs 787, 777
Another in a series of the Airbus Innovation Days in Hamburg, Germany, earlier this month….
Airbus predicted that the A350 will capture 50% of the medium twin-aisle market forecast of 5,900 aircraft over the next 2o years, company officials said at the press event.
(As an aside, the same forecast predicts 1,698 Large Aircraft [i.e., A380/747].)
When one considers that the Boeing competition will be the 787, the 777 and its successor, this is a pretty bold forecast.
787 Update, Week of May 26
Testing continues on the 787 as it prepares for first flight in June.
Speculation is rampant over whether the airplane will be ready to fly before, during or after the Paris Air Show (but for clarity, “during” does not mean “at” the air show).
We believe Boeing would dearly love to be able to talk about first flight at the air show. Tests appear to be moving more quickly than anticipated, as reported by Flightblogger in its running countdown to first flight.
We are hearing widely divergent opinions about whether first flight will happen in time for Boeing to discuss it at the air show or not.