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
Bjorn’s Corner: Sustainable Air Transport. Part 37. VTOL Flight Control.
By Bjorn Fehrm.
September 16, 2022, ©. Leeham News: We discussed one of the critical systems for an eVTOL over the last weeks, the battery system, its cells, and its management system.
Another critical system for a VTOL is its Flight Control System (the FCS).
Figure 1. The Honeywell UAM FBW (Fly By Wire) triple channel computer. Source: Honeywell.
Boeing remarketing stored 737s ordered by China
By Scott Hamilton
David Calhoun
Sept. 15, 2022, © Leeham News: The indefinite delay in China authorizing Boeing to deliver 737 MAXes to airlines led Boeing to slowly remarket more than that are 100 stored.
CEO David Calhoun said today that Boeing can no longer wait for China’s OK with the large inventory of aircraft that went into storage when the MAX was grounded in March 2019. Boeing continued building the MAX on the assumption that the grounding would be a short one. When by the end of 2019, there was no end in sight for recertification, production was halted with 450 MAXes built but stored. About 140 of these were destined for Chinese airlines and lessors. Lessors have been allowed to accept some deliveries as long as the airplanes were delivered to customers outside China, LNA previously reported.
Engine Development. Part 5. The Turbofans go High Bypass
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By Bjorn Fehrm
Introduction
September 15, 2022, © Leeham News: Last week, we looked at how Pratt & Whitney’s JT8D turbofan came to dominate short-haul airliners while the JT3D had the long-range market.
The introduction of the widebody jets in the 1970s with Boeing 747, Douglas DC-10, and Lockheed Tristar brought GE and Rolls-Royce into the market. It was the start of the high bypass turbofans.
Figure 1. The roll-out of the Boeing 747-100 on September 30, 1968.
Summary
- The military TF39 for Lockheed C-5 Galaxy military transport set the benchmark for the new generation of high bypass turbofans with its 8-to-1 bypass ratio.
- Pratt & Whitney, GE, and Rolls-Royce developed civil engines along the lines of the TF39 for the new generation widebodies.
The Airbus and Boeing market outlooks, Part 1
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By Vincent Valery
Introduction
Sept. 12, 2022, © Leeham News: Airbus and Boeing published their updated 2022-2041 commercial aircraft outlooks ahead of the July Farnborough Air Show. Unsurprisingly, both OEMs saw robust demand for the next two decades despite recent economic headwinds that lowered long-term fleet growth forecasts.
Credit: Leeham Company LLC, 2022
Airbus and Boeing see a market for delivering 38,600 and 38,110 single-aisle and twin-aisle passenger aircraft over the period. A 1.3% difference over 20 years is well below the margin of error of such long-term forecasts.
However, despite such minor overall differences in long-term delivery forecasts, both OEMs use different assumptions to come up with those numbers.
Also, the recent challenges with increasing production rates on single-aisle aircraft raise the question of whether there is enough capacity to meet the optimistic demand outlook.
The first part of this two-article series highlights the main assumption differences between the Airbus and Boeing market outlooks. The second will translate those assumptions into production rates and assess whether OEMs can meet that demand, notably over the next 10 years.
We will focus on the single-aisle (100 passengers and above) and twin-aisle passenger markets.
Summary
- One OEM is more optimistic about fleet growth;
- Another on replacement rates;
- A (maybe not) surprising up-gauging assumption for one OEM;
- Higher growth rates than meet the eye.
Pontifications: BOC Aviation sees widebody recovery next year
By Scott Hamilton
Sept. 12, 2022, © Leeham News: Widebody aircraft demand cratered during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s still depressed.
But the chief executive officer of lessor BOC Aviation sees recovery in the works.
“We’re beginning to see quite a big pickup in demand for widebody aircraft,” Robert Martin told LNA in an interview late last month. “Not now but starting next year. What’s prompting that is people are beginning to realize that China will probably open in the fourth quarter this year for international traffic. Just to give you some statistics, if you go back to 2019, China outbound was more than 70 million passengers. Last year was 1.5 million, and so the amount of uplift is quite full.”
Bjorn’s Corner: Sustainable Air Transport. Part 36. Battery Management.
By Bjorn Fehrm
September 9, 2022, ©. Leeham News: Over the last weeks, we have discussed the cells that make up the battery system for an eVTOL.
The battery system has 10,000 cells or more. All these must, on an individual level, be managed to ensure they operate inside their allowed values. The Battery Management System, BMS, has this responsibility. It’s one of the most critical safety systems in an eVTOL.
Figure 1. The Battery Management System and battery packs from EP Systems. Source: EP Systems.
Engine Development. Part 4. Turbofans go mainstream.
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By Bjorn Fehrm
Introduction
September 8, 2022, © Leeham News: Last week, we analyzed the change from turbojets to turbofans for civil air transport. The jet engine was developed for high-speed military fighters and was not ideal for subsonic airliner use.
We also dwelled on why the three major engine OEMs came to different solutions for the first-generation turbofans. Now we look at the engine that made turbofans mainstream, the Pratt & Whitney JT8.
Figure 1. The Boeing 727-100 with Pratt & Whitney JT8 engines. Source: Wikipedia.
Summary
- The JT8 competed with the more developed Rolls-Royce Spey to engine the first US domestic jet airliner, the Boeing 727.
- After it captured the Boeing 727, it went on to engine all US short and median haul jets of the 1960s.
HOTR: Could airport caps lead to 777X success?
Sept. 6, 2022, © Leeham News: Will Europe’s airport passenger caps ultimately save the Boeing 777X?
Sometimes it’s more important to be lucky than it is to be good.
It may be purely speculative, but Boeing may well be on the verge of being lucky.
Amsterdam and London Heathrow imposed daily caps of 67,000 and 100,000 passengers, respectively. Other airports considered following suit. The caps were imposed because airport operations were melting down. Short staffing across several professions, including passport control, was blamed.
The short-staffing no doubt will be rectified eventually. But some industry observers speculate that the European Union may decide to impose flight capacity restrictions as one way to reduce aviation emissions. This, some think, might result in a sales boost for the slow-selling 777X.
ICAO report outlines steps to reduce aviation’s carbon output
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By BRYAN CORLISS
Sept. 5, 2022, © Leeham News: Saying the climate crisis now is at “Code Red for Humanity,” the UN-sponsored International Civil Aviation Organization is calling on nations and companies to increase their investments toward techniques and technologies that can reduce aviation’s climate impact.
It won’t be easy, ICAO said in its Environmental Report 2022, which was released in July.
The aviation industry will be one of the hardest to ween off carbon-based forms of energy, a recent report concluded.
“Scaling the production of sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) and other energy sources requires substantial investment and financial support from both fuel suppliers and governments on top of what would be needed for associated infrastructural changes,” the report said. “This is particularly important, considering that the drop-in fuels have the largest potential to reduce the overall emission from international aviation by 2050.”
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Pontifications: Some customers face 3 month delays in current 737 MAX delivery stream
By Scott Hamilton
Sept. 5, 2022, © Leeham News: Boeing has been delivering 737s from its stored inventory and its new production line more slowly than desired. Some customers face a three-month delay, even as Boeing tries to return to normalcy following the 21-month grounding of the MAX and the impact of the two-year pandemic.
The supply chain is a key culprit. Reconfiguring stored airplanes for lessees or buys after a change from the original operator is another. Engine shortages are still another.
BOC Aviation, a lessor headquartered in Singapore, faces three months delays, Robert Martin, the CEO, said in an interview with LNA.