Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- Five for Five: Air India crash points to systemic problems at Boeing that CEO Ortberg must fix June 15, 2025
- 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
Pontifications: Only time will tell
By Scott Hamilton
June 20, 2023, © Leeham News: Here at the Paris Air Show in what is the first normalized show after the 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic, the sense of excitement is almost tangible.
There are predictions by some that when this week is over, more than 2,000 commercial airplane orders could be announced. This would match the heyday of orders in the 2010 decade.
Clearly, there is pent-up demand for new airplanes. Aging aircraft are part of the reason. A push toward more fuel efficient, and therefore more environmentally friendly airplanes is another reason. Full order positions, dating to 2026 for the Boeing 737 and to 2029 for the Airbus A320 is prompting some orders to “get in line.” Even widebody aircraft delivery slots are sold out for the next several years. So is the Airbus A220.
Embraer pulls up the rear with its E-Jet E2. Sales are hampered because the E-Jet family serves a shrinking market, the regional airlines. But Embraer, too, has had a flurry of recent orders.
Airbus and Boeing are talking openly about the next new airplane—Boeing more openly than Airbus. Their confidence is clear.
Alternative energy also takes a front seat at the show. Fuels, batteries, UAMs, eVTOLs, and more vie for attention.
Day One at Paris: Airbus lands record IndiGo deal for 500 A320s
By Bryan Corliss
Monday, June 19, 2023, © Leeham News – Airbus landed a huge but widely expected order for 500 A320s from Indian carrier IndiGo, as the 2023 Paris Air Show got underway Monday.
Analysts had issued pre-show forecasts that orders for as many as 3,000 jets will be announced this week at Le Bourget, as airlines place big bets on a continuing industry recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic worldwide.
Despite the lofty projections, the show got off to a slow start, with only a handful of minor announcements until IndiGo’s big splash late in the Paris afternoon.
- IndiGo has nearly 1,000 Airbus jets on order
- Airbus snags A350 order; could add more
- Boeing announces pilot training deal
- De Havilland Canada plans upgraded Twin Otter
Machinists Union members at Spirit to vote on four-year contract this week
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By Bryan Corliss
June 19, 2023, © Leeham News – Roughly 6,000 Machinists Union members at Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita will vote Wednesday on a proposed four-year contract that would significantly increase pay for hourly workers.
The bargaining committee for IAM Local 839 is recommending that its members accept the deal.
“This is not an easy decision, but it is one that we believe is a good one,” the committee wrote in a letter to members on Friday.
It noted, however, that “the decision to accept or reject this offer is up to the membership,” and added that however the vote goes, the leadership “stands 100%” behind what the members decide.
At least some of those members are vocally urging the deal be rejected.
“How on earth did you think this is an offer we should accept?” one worker wrote on Local 839’s Facebook page. “You have betrayed us.”
The current contract expires just after midnight Friday, June 23.
- Offer on its face is generous
- Comes after 13 years without a new contract
- Industry-wide ramifications should a strike occur
Kawasaki joins VoltAero to present a sensible hybrid aircraft
June 18, 2023, © Leeham News at Paris Air Show: VoltAero showed its Cassio 330 electric-hybrid test aircraft today at the Pairs Air Show, as it announced Kawasaki as the partner in realizing its rather different hybrid propulsion system.
We have analyzed hybrid aircraft concepts for eight years and have not found any that would live up to the claims of better fuel economy and lower emissions compared to the aircraft they shall replace. The root of the problem lies in batteries that weigh too much for the job.
The VoltAero Cassio family takes a different approach. It uses a small battery to produce a hybrid that utilizes the advantages of electric propulsion around the airport and the thermal engine for the rest of the flight. The strategy creates a sensible aircraft with operational advantages.
Figure 1. The VoltAero Cassio 330 prototype as shown at Le Bourget today. Source: VoltAero.
Boeing backtracks on plans to enter 777-300ER P2F Conversions
By Scott Hamilton
Concept of Boeing 787 freighter under study by Boeing. Credit: Leeham News.
June 18, 2023, © Leeham News: Boeing shelved its own plans to develop a 777-300ER freighter conversion because the costs didn’t pencil out, the CEO of Boeing Global Services (BGS) said today during a press conference in advance of the Paris Air Show.
Stephanie Pope, the CEO, said BGS, analyzed that a conversion, “but we have licensed Intellectual Property to three providers in the market today. We partner and support that. You’d love to have the economics and we decided that from a capital deployment, it was just not an area that we thought we could invest in deliver the value to our customers. There are other opportunities for us.”
Exclusive: Boeing, GE to send 777-9 to Emirates next year for route proving runs
By Scott Hamilton
Tim Clark, president of Emirates Airline. Credit: Travel World News.
June 18, 2023, © Leeham News: Boeing and GE Aerospace agreed to send a 777-9 to Dubai next year for about two months of route proving for its largest 777X customer, Emirates Airline.
LNA confirmed the plan on the sidelines of a Boeing event today in conjunction with the Paris Air Show that officially begins tomorrow.
The airline’s president, Tim Clark, has developed a deep skepticism over the pace of the program, which has been hit by repeated delays for a variety of technical and regulatory reasons. The program was launched in 2013, with Lufthansa Airlines, Emirates, Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways as launch customers. Emirates was supposed to receive the first airplane as early as December 2019. Now, Boeing forecasts the first delivery in 2025. Clark is said to be concerned that the delivery will slip to 2026.
Emirates has 115 777Xs on order.
Technical issues with the giant GE9X engine early in the flight testing forced a delay while engines were returned to GE for analysis, fixes and repairs. Then certification work on the program got caught up in the certification crisis of the 737 MAX program following two crashes in October 2018 and March 2019. Global regulators grounded the entire MAX fleet for what became 21 months.
Are the world’s regional airlines dying?
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By Scott Hamilton
June 17, 2023, © Leeham News: Is the regional airline market across the globe dying?
Ed Bastian, CEO of Delta Air Lines. Credit: CNBC.
Many think so. Certainly, the market demand for the regional jet is shrinking in the 10- and 20-year market forecasts. Bombardier withdrew from the market as demand for its aging CRJ family shriveled. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries killed its RJ SpaceJet program as delays and development costs mounted. Bombardier also exited its turboprop airliner business. ATR is now the sole producer of large turboprops outside China and Russia.
Embraer is now the sole producer of regional jets outside of China and Russia, and it doesn’t even want to call the E-Jet a regional airliner.
Regional airlines in the US face a continuing and growing shortage of pilots. Those in Europe face pressure from environmentalists to the governments to ban short-haul flights in favor of trains.
Despite these challenges and the conclusions of some that the regional airline business is dying, regional carriers take exception to these conclusions.
One regional airline official even took exception to the CEO of Delta Air Lines, who concurred with the dead-and-dying trend.
Speaking at the Aviation Week MRO Americas conference in April in Atlanta, Ed Bastian noted that Delta began trending away from regional carriers many years before.
Bjorn’s Corner: New aircraft technologies. Part 17. Airframe with lower induced drag
By Bjorn Fehrm
June 16, 2023, ©. Leeham News: This is a summary of the article Part 17P. Airframe with lower induced drag. The article analyzes Boeing 737 MAX 8-sized airliners with Truss Braced Wings versus wings with folding wingtips and the standard MAX 8 wing. We use our Aircraft Performance and Cost model to get the drag data and overall efficiency improvement for the concepts.
Figure 1. Boeing concepts of a next-generation airliner with Truss Braced Wing. Source: Boeing.
Bjorn’s Corner: New aircraft technologies. Part 17P. Airframe with lower induced drag
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June 16, 2023, ©. Leeham News: This is a complementary article to Part 17. Airframe with lower induced drag. It discusses in detail the simulations we have done on a Truss Braced Wing, using our Aircraft Performance and Cost model to compare it to today’s wings and alternative future concepts.
The Small Airliner Problem, Part 8. A battery-based airliner
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By Bjorn Fehrm
June 15, 2023, © Leeham News: In our series on fundamental costs factors that make up Cash Operating Cost, COC (Fuel, Maintenance, Airway/Airport fees, Crew costs), we have started analyzing if the size related cost factors also apply to green propulsion airliners and if the trends stay the same or change.
We use the Heart Aerospace ES-30 project as an example of a battery-based airliner with range extenders. Last week we developed the fundamental aero data for the aircraft with our Aircraft Performance and Cost model; now, we fly representative sectors and look at the energy and fuel consumptions compared to a similar-sized turboprop airliner.
Figure 1. The Heart Aerospace ES-30 hybrid 30-seat airliner. Source: Heart Aerospace.
Summary:
- There is a difference between what the theory says about aircraft range on batteries and how you have to fly in practice to keep battery costs down.
- The ES-30 has dual range-extending Turbogenerators. They get going more often and at a shorter range than advertised.