Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
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.
Pontificatons: Paris Air Show preview
By Scott Hamilton
June 13, 2023, © Leeham News: The Paris Air Show officially opens next Monday. LNA will be there, with some events scheduled as early as this Friday.
Our expectations are modest. We don’t expect any new airplane programs from Airbus, Boeing or Embraer, or ATR. These are the only remaining major aircraft companies outside China and Russia.
China’s COMAC finally saw its C919 passenger jet enter service last month after 13 years of development and seven years after entry into service was planned. There won’t be anything new this year from COMAC.
Russia, of course, is immersed in its Ukrainian war. No new civil airplane programs will come from here.
Based on the pre-air show pitches I’ve been receiving, the alternative energy sector is going to be well-represented and active at the show. Most concepts, LNA feels, have little-to-no future.
We expect the news from the Duopoly and Embraer and ATR to be pretty much all about orders. Expectations will be mixed.
As Airbus ponders the A220-500, Boeing shrugs
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By Scott Hamilton
June 12, 2023, © Leeham News: Boeing CEO David Calhoun says he’s not worried about the prospect of Airbus launching a stretched model of the A220 family.
Airbus has said it’s a matter of “when, not if” it launches the A220-500. This would be a direct competitor to the Airbus A320neo and the Boeing 737-8 MAX. Sales of the A320N are declining in favor of its larger sibling, the A321neo. The MAX 8 is Boeing’s bread-and-butter member of the MAX family.
Calhoun, during Boeing’s pre-Paris Air Show media briefing last month, said the -500 doesn’t give him heartburn. But he didn’t go into detail.
Darren Hulst. Credit: Darren Hulst.
Darren Hulst, VP of Commercial Marketing for Boeing, did the next day. Hypothetically, the value of the 737 family is probably best illustrated when you talk about the choice that an airline must make with a 320 base family or an A220 base, he said. Assuming Airbus goes forward—which it said is not going to happen at the Air Show beginning next week—Hulst said the market will decide its success of failure.
Summary
- Commonality vs capacity.
- No growth opportunity after A220-500.
- Limited market for the A220-500; the market may have passed the -500 by.
Bjorn’s Corner: New aircraft technologies. Part 16. Airframe with lower induced drag
By Bjorn Fehrm
June 9, 2023, ©. Leeham News: This is a summary of article Part 16P. Airframe with lower induced drag. It discusses the Truss Braced Wing type of airframe that increases the practical wing span of an aircraft and thus reduces induced drag.
Figure 1. Boeing concepts of a next-generation airliner with Truss Braced Wing. Source: Boeing.
The Small Airliner Problem, Part 7. How affected are Green airliners?
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By Bjorn Fehrm
June 8, 2023, © Leeham News: We have analyzed the costs factors that make up Cash Operating Cost, COC (Fuel, Maintenance, Airway/Airport fees, Crew costs), and how these vary with different size airliners. The aim was to search for fundamental trends and if these disadvantaged a smaller airliner versus a larger one.
We found that a smaller airliner (we analyzed from 190 seats down to 9 seats) has structural cost disadvantages versus a larger model. The analysis was made with conventional gas turbine-propelled planes so as not to complicate the work. Now we introduce airliner types with green propulsion concepts and see if the trends stay the same or change.
Figure 1. The Heart Aerospace ES-30 hybrid 30-seat airliner. Source: Heart Aerospace.
Summary:
- We analyze the fundamental characteristics of a hybrid 30-seat airliner and compare it to the conventional airliners we characterized in the series.
- The negative cost trend for smaller airliners worsens for a battery or hybrid airliner.