Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- GE testing of giant GE9X engine aims for maturity at entry into service June 30, 2025
- Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 28. June 27, 2025
- Parent agency, FAA often at odds as politics outweighs safety June 26, 2025
- Electric Flight and the Ugly Duckling June 25, 2025
- Engine makers tout “Plan A” but have “Plan B” backups in R&D June 23, 2025
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 17.
By Bjorn Fehrm
April 11, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to improve the emission situation for Air Transport. We try to understand why development has been slow.
We now examine the non-CO2 effects of Air Transport that contribute to global warming. Of these, contrails have the largest impact, Figure 1.
In the last Corner, we described encouraging results from airline flight trials with warming contrail avoidance. What is required to move from trials to warming contrail avoidance for regular flights?
Figure 1. A summary of the CO2 and non-CO2 Effective Radiative Forcing (ERF) contributions from Air Transport. Source: The report “The contribution of global aviation to anthropogenic climate forcing for 2000-2018” by Lee et al. (2021).
Uncertainty plagues airline, aerospace, lessor industries over tariffs
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By Scott Hamilton
April 10, 2025, © Leeham News, Seattle: The airline and aerospace industries are plagued by uncertainty over the global tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump on April 2. The 90-day pause on nearly all tariffs announced yesterday doesn’t resolve the uncertainties. For the moment, they are only postponed.
Airbus’s A320 production plant in Hamburg, Germany. Credit: Leeham News.
Airframe and engine manufacturers, suppliers of components feeding them, and Buyer Furnished Equipment (BFE) directly to the airlines, lessors, aftermarket maintenance companies, and freighter conversion firms have many questions and no answers in chaos following Trump’s global tariff scheme.
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Consider the unknowns:
- Will Trump tax the entire value of airplanes, engines, and components imported into the United States or just the foreign content? There is no guidance yet.
- Will other jurisdictions, notably the European Union, announce reciprocal tariffs? This is unknown because the Trump Administration hasn’t clarified what will be taxed.
- How will aircraft leased by non-US lessors be treated when US airlines are the customers? How will US lessors leasing to non-US airlines be treated? No answers.
- Contracts between lessors, airlines, Boeing, and Airbus don’t specifically address tariffs. Some airlines say they won’t pay tariffs because the contracts are silent. However, Boeing thinks there is a way to pass tariffs along. Airbus probably does, too.
- Over the last weekend, US-based supplier Howmet informed its customers it reserves the right to exercise the force majeure clause in its contracts to give it flexibility to suspend deliveries because of the tariffs. Other suppliers, including some engine companies, are following suit.
- At least one supplier has already billed some customers for delivered goods, including a tariff tax line item on the invoice.
- How will various jurisdictions treat aircraft converted into freighters with a mix of US and foreign content? There is no answer.
The US-based law firm Vedder Price issued its opinion and guidance on Tuesday on some issues.
Boeing eyes tariff risks
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By the Leeham News Team
April 7, 2025, ©. Leeham News: Escalating global trade tensions stemming from newly announced U.S. tariffs could ripple through Boeing’s intricate supply chain and potentially disrupt aircraft production, a senior executive at the company has warned.
Speaking days before President Trump imposed tariffs of 10-50% on U.S. trading partners, Malcolm An, Boeing’s senior managing director, global strategic initiatives commercial sales and marketing, said the aerospace giant was actively working to mitigate any impact, even as the full consequences remain uncertain.
Boeing 787 production line. Credit: Boeing.
“We are monitoring these things which mostly are outside of our control, and on tariffs the situation is fluid, but everyone knows that Boeing has a very complex and big global supply chain. Disruption with the key suppliers could lead to a disruption in our production system,” An warned during an address to delegates at Routes Asia 2025—an annual gathering of airport and airline leaders in the Asia-Pacific region—this year held in Perth, Australia.
“At times, outsourcing makes sense, but also at times [so does] bringing work back in house. On tariffs, in the near term, Boeing is working to mitigate the impact on the global supply chain. That’s our focus.”
The imposition of tariffs that will affect a range of Asian goods have stoked fears of a broader trade conflict between the United States and its key partners in the Asia-Pacific region—a region Boeing counts as one of its most important markets.
With more than 6,200 aircraft in backlog and a continued need to ramp up production, Boeing’s reliance on global suppliers clearly makes it vulnerable to geopolitical disruption. Read more
Boeing at far greater risk of tariff impacts than Airbus
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By Scott Hamilton
April 7, 2025, © Leeham News: Tariffs against the rest of the world announced by US President Donald Trump last week threaten retaliatory tariffs against Boeing at a far greater level than Airbus faces, an analysis by LNA shows.
Trump exempted no part of the world from tariffs where Boeing isn’t at risk for retaliatory tariffs. Airbus faces tariffs only in the US. Critics note that North Korea and Russia aren’t on the list; these two countries already are under steep economic sanctions. Nevertheless, the US had more than $3bn in Russian imports last year. Even Boeing’s domestic US deliveries potentially could be hit with tariffs on foreign-sourced parts, components and engines.
The situation is still fluid, and it is still unknown precisely how US tariffs will be applied to the aerospace industry. This will affect how retaliatory tariffs are applied to Boeing and Airbus, which sources much of its aircraft content (notably engines) from the US.
Accordingly, LNA’s analysis is necessarily highly preliminary. It’s also possible that more airplanes may be listed as at risk to tariffs than the final analysis would conclude.
Boeing potentially has three times more aircraft subject to retaliatory tariffs than Airbus has exposure in the US with its European and Canadian sales to US customers.
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 16.
By Bjorn Fehrm
April 4, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to improve the emission situation for Air Transport. We try to understand why development has been slow.
We now examine the non-CO2 effects of Air Transport that contribute to global warming. Of these, contrails have the largest impact.
Contrails form when aircraft gas turbine engines emit soot particles into water vapor-saturated areas with low temperatures, where the soot particles act as condensation nuclei and the droplets freeze into ice crystals.
The report from Lee et al. (2021) lists non-CO2 effects as more important for Global Warming from Air Transport than CO2 emissions from burning hydrocarbon fuels, Figure 1.
Figure 1. A summary of the CO2 and non-CO2 Effective Radiative Forcing (ERF) contributions from Air Transport. Source: The report “The contribution of global aviation to anthropogenic climate forcing for 2000-2018” by Lee et al. (2021).
How good is the C919? Part 3.
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By Bjorn Fehrm
April 3, 2025, © Leeham News: The COMAC C919 is finding its first customers outside China, which gives us a reason to examine the aircraft.
Last week, we estimated its efficiency versus its Western “look-a-like,” the Airbus A320neo. Now, we look at new variants that have been announced and how competitive these would be.
Figure 1. The C919 and its variants are analyzed by the Leeham Aircraft Performance and Cost Model, APCM. Source: Leeham Co.
Summary:
- The C919, sized like an A320neo, is the first variant in a family of aircraft.
- The next C919 variant is a shorter model for hot and high airfield operation.
- The following variant is an A321neo-sized aircraft.
Airbus launches Book and Claim SAF scheme
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By Scott Hamilton
March 31, 2025, © Leeham News: Airbus last week announced a program to boost Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) called Book and Claim. Its purpose is to buy SAF credits in one location and take credit for them in another.
The buyer can then claim in its corporate reports that it is meeting environmental goals, at least in part.
“This initiative aims to boost both supply and demand for SAF worldwide, providing a flexible and scalable solution to accelerate SAF adoption,” Airbus said at its annual environmental Aviation Summit.
“In simple terms, the book and claim approach allows a buyer to ‘book’ a certain amount of SAF and ‘claim’ the corresponding emission reduction, even if the fuel is used elsewhere. Through a pilot program running throughout 2025, Airbus will leverage this system to improve SAF accessibility for potential customers, particularly those with limited volumes and far from supply points,” the company said.
It’s an admirable effort for an industry that has so far fallen dramatically short of the SAF goals outlined by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) at its 2021 Annual General Meeting in Boston (MA).
However, LNA is skeptical about the effort. Carbon credits, which appear to be a variation, failed when airlines tried them. United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby called carbon offsets a “fig leaf” and “mostly a fraud.”
In land use regulations, Book and Claim sounds suspiciously like wetland mitigation programs. This is where a wetland is filled in for development and a new one may be created miles away, offsetting the environmental damage in the original location. At least this is the theory, and it’s essentially pencil-whipping. Nature doesn’t work this way for wetlands. LNA isn’t convinced it works this way for carbon, either.
Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 15.
March 21, 2025, ©. Leeham News: We do a Corner series about the state of developments to improve the emission situation for Air Transport. We try to understand why development has been slow.
After covering alternative propulsion concepts to lower CO2 and NOx emissions, we now study air transport’s non-CO2 effects on global warming. Of these, contrails have the largest impact.
Contrails form when aircraft gas turbine engines emit soot particles into low-temperature water vapor-saturated areas in the atmosphere. The soot particles form condensation nuclei, and the developed droplets freeze to ice crystals that form contrails.
Figure 1. The net Radiative Forcing of flights during 2019. Source: The report “Global aviation contrail climate effects from 2019 to 2021” from 2024.
How good is the C919? Part 2.
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By Bjorn Fehrm
March 27, 2025, © Leeham News: The COMAC C919 is finding its first customers outside China, which gives us reason to examine it and estimate how efficient it would be operating a typical mission compared to its Western competitors.
We will compare the C919ER version with a 3,000nm maximum range to “its look-a-like”, the A320neo, which served as the C919 design template.
Figure 1. The C919ER is analyzed using the Leeham Aircraft Performance and Cost Model (APCM). Source: Leeham Co.
Summary:
- The C919 consumes more fuel as the airframe is larger for the same seating capacity as the A320neo.
- Due to a lack of airframe maturity, the maintenance costs will also be higher.
- The big unknown will be the capital costs as the pricing or leasing strategy of a state-owned COMAC is hard to predict.
Boeing’s new fighter award moves away from money-losing fixed price contracts
By Scott Hamilton
March 24, 2025, © Leeham News: Boeing’s major win for the US Air Force’s new F-47 sixth-generation fighter isn’t just a major plus for a company under siege since 2019. It’s a major shift in its defense and space contracting that moves away from fixed price contracting, costing it billions of dollars during the past two decades.
Boeing’s new F-47 fighter. Credit: US Air Force.
An Air Force official told LNA that the contract is a cost-plus-incentive-fee award for “Engineering and Manufacturing Development. ” The contract will mature, integrate, and test all aspects of the NGAD Platform (Next Generation Air Dominance), the official said. The contract will produce a small number of test aircraft, which will be used for testing. The contract also includes competitively priced options for Low-Rate Initial Production aircraft.
Boeing’s Defense, Space, and Security unit entered into a series of fixed-price contracts that have been plagued by cost overruns. The KC-46A aerial refueling tanker cost more than $7bn over the fixed-price contract. Converting two passenger model 747-8s into the new Air Force One cost more than $3bn. The MQ-25 unmanned Navy refueling drone, T-7 Red Hawk fighter trainer, and Starliner space capsule, among other defense programs, add up to billions of dollars more cost overruns on fixed-price contracts.
The F-47 is Boeing’s first all-new fighter contract with the Air Force. Its current fighter programs pre-date the 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas Corp.