Airbus Launches Long-Range A321neo Version

By: Jens Flottau published in aviationweek.com,Jan 13, 2015

Airbus has formally launched a long range version of the A321 with a 97-ton maximum take-off weight (MTOW). 

Air Lease Corporation (ALC) is the first to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for 30 of the type, making it the aircraft’s launch customer. 

First deliveries of the new Airbus A321neoversion are planned for 2019. The aircraft will be equipped with a third auxiliary center fuel tank and could fly around 500-nm farther than the A321ceo with a regular 93.5 MTOW (and only two additional fuel tanks). For the aircraft, Airbus now assumes a standard cabin layout for 206 passengers. Airbus claims the calculated 4,000-nm range even exceeds the 3,850 nm of the winglet-equipped Boeing 757-200W. 

Currently, the longest route flown by the Boeing 757 is United’s New York-Berlin service, which at slightly more than 4,000 nm can only be flown with less-than-maximum payload. United has 169 seats on the transatlantic 757s.

Chief Operating Officer-Customers John Leahy sees a Boeing 757-replacement market for the 469 Boeing aircraft still flying, plus another 500 more. “We are burning up to 30% less fuel than the 757,” said at the Airbus annual press conference in Toulouse.

Airbus initially pitched the aircraft to airlines in a premium 164-seat layout with 20 seats in business class, 30 in premium-economy class, and 114 in economy. But discussions with potential customers showed that many airlines are interested in higher seat counts. In the premium configuration, the A321neo LR range decreases slightly to 3,904 nm because of extreme assumptions in terms of weight per passenger.

The 206-seat configuration assumes 16 seats in business class at a 36-in. pitch and 190 in economy at 30 inches. “The interest has gone beyond what we initially thought,” A320-Family Product Marketing Director Arnaud Demeusois said. 

Airbus is targeting airlines that currently fly the Boeing 757 on long-range routes, as well those that would fly such routes but cannot for lack of a suitable aircraft. Key routes defining the aircraft’s needed capabilities were U.S. East Coast to Central Europe, Europe to the Middle East, North to South America, Europe to West Africa, and Australia to South Asia.

One of the key segments in addition to transatlantic services is the market for flights departing Miami for South America. The aircraft can reach all key destinations in Brazil from the American airlines hub in Miami.

Airbus believes the aircraft will be complementary to widebodies and will not take traffic away from existing long-haul operations. The manufacturer sees an opportunity to attract current narrowbody operators that are evaluating the addition of long-haul routes, but would like to avoid the big step of adding widebody aircraft.

The Airbus Cabin Flex (ACF) concept on offer for the A321 will form the base for the aircraft’s new version. Airbus is offering a new, optional exit-door configuration in which door 2 is removed and replaced by a double-overwing exit. Also in this configuration, door 3 is moved aft. Some minor changes to the wing are also expected, leading to a weight increase below 100 kg. The standard-range variant and the 97-ton MTOW version would share the same build standard—thus shorter-haul operators will suffer a small weight penalty. Customers who have opted for the older door positioning are not affected.

ACF gives Airbus and the airlines more flexibility to configure the cabin for long-haul requirements. Boeing 757s are operated with relatively small business-class cabins, because they typically end in front of door 2 to reduce complexity in the cabin. 

However, in the case of the A321neo ACF layout, there is no more door 2 and larger premium cabins can be installed. The long-haul A321neo will also be equipped with movable bins that have been launched as an option earlier this year.

Because of the addition of three center fuel tanks, Airbus is losing significant volume in the baggage hold. So airline route calculations for the A321neo will have to take into account that, beyond passenger bags, hardly any cargo can be transported. 

Rolls-Royce And Airbus Near Accord Over A380neo

By: Guy Norris published in aviationweek.com, Dec 15, 2014

Airbus is accelerating its studies of an upgraded A380 and, after talks held last month with engine makers in Toulouse, appears to be closing on an initial agreement with Rolls-Royce.

The engine manufacturer is strongly supporting plans for both the A380neo and the potential A380-900 stretch. According to industry sources, Rolls-Royce is discussing a variety of all-new engine options ranging from derivatives of the A350’s XWB-84/97 to the future Advance project unveiled earlier this year. Until recently it was widely believed Rolls-Royce may be in pole position for a possible slot on the upgraded A380 because of its victory on the A330neo with the Trent 7000, a similarly-rated engine as the current unit. This engine is due to debut on the Airbus twin in late 2017 and is derived from the ‘TEN’ version of the Trent 1000, now under final development for the Boeing 787. However sources say the proposed A380neo project will require more power than the Trent 7000 which is rated at between 68,000 lb. and 72,000 lb. for the A330-800neo and -900neo.

Although Rolls-Royce declines to comment on the A380 situation, the transition to a potentially greater thrust engine could provide for higher gross weights or presage the long-anticipated development of the A380-900 stretch. The development cost for the baseline A380neo is estimated at around $2.5 billion, primarily because of the structural revisions required for the wing, and is expected to take around four years based on previous experiences such as the A340-500/600.

The push to launch the A380neo is backed by Emirates Airline, the largest single customer for the model. Emirates CEO Tim Clark, who says the carrier could “definitely” order as many as 70 of the re-engined variants if launched, is also poised to announce the engine selection for 50 standard A380-800s ordered at the 2013 Dubai Air Show. Although Emirates operates the world’s largest fleet of GP7200-powered A380s, Rolls-Royce is bidding aggressively for the supplemental fleet order and appears to be growing in confidence that it can break the GP7200 stranglehold on Emirates.

The U.K. manufacturer currently competes for the A380 with the Trent 900 against the joint General Electric-Pratt & Whitney Engine Alliance GP7200, but is eager to build on its relationship with Airbus where it has exclusive engine deals on the new A350 family and recently launched Trent 7000-powered A330neo. The parent companies of the GP7200, on the other hand, cite an uncertain business case for the upgraded A380 and appear reluctant to make the substantial investment such a venture would require, despite holding more than 50% of the existing market.

The Engine Alliance has outlined upgrade plans which could produce near term fuel savings of 0.5% to 1%, but still well below the 10% to 12% thought to have been outlined by the Airbus requirement. Even more comprehensive upgrades for the GP7200, including a larger fan and an additional low pressure turbine stage, would gain only around 5% and be “cost prohibitive” in the absence of a compelling business case says the Engine Alliance. The difference between an incremental upgrade and an all-new engine therefore represents a financial gulf across which neither GE nor Pratt appears willing to step.

Speaking to Aviation Week, GE Aviation president David Joyce says “If you ask me if the business case closes for us to drop the GP (GP7200) and put a new engine up under the A380, I would tell you we can’t make that business case close. We just can’t, there’s just not enough incremental sales around the world that would make that case close.” GE is currently developing the Leap narrowbody engine with Snecma and is finalizing the design of the GE9X for Boeing’s 777X twinjet. “Today if someone came to me with a proposal to put a brand new engine underneath that wing — I just don’t see that as being a priority for us,” adds Joyce.

Pratt, like GE, is also deeply mired in the development of the PW1000G geared turbofan family, and says it can ill-afford an additional commitment. United Technologies CEO Greg Hayes says Pratt is unlikely to support the development of a new widebody engine for some time. Commenting at an investor conference Hayes says the company “cannot continue to afford to invest at these levels.”

Delta loss shows availability key to Boeing’s widebody strategy

By: Daniel Tsang published in aspireaviation.com, Dec 16, 2014

• Boeing stretches 777-9X fuselage from 76.5m to 76.7m: exclusive
• Airlines, most likely Emirates, asking for more seats on 777X: sources
• Boeing to announce more seats on 777-9X in Q2 2015: sources
• 777X de-icing can only take place at Code F stands with FWT down
• 787-9 OEW 277,000lbs is 11,000lbs lighter than A330-900neo’s 288,000lbs
• 787-8 OEW 260,000lbs versus A330-800neo’s 280,000lbs
• 787-8 is 9% more fuel efficient per seat than -800neo on 6,000nm missions
• Using 253t 787-9 in A330neo comparison pushes up -9’s landing & overflight fee, DMC
• 787-9 carries 13 tonnes more revenue cargo than A330-900neo
• A330neo Mach 0.81 means 25 mins longer flying time on 6,000nm missions
• Virgin Atlantic 787-9 has 9-abreast economy seats at 18.9-inch width
• Boeing sees A330neo 9-10% more fuel efficient than A330: sources
• 777-300ER carries 23t of cargo, A380 only 8t: Emirates

Airbus has much to celebrate when Qatar Airways eventually takes delivery of its first A350-900 on December 22nd, despite a last-minute delay in the official ceremony over minor issues. Not only did it run a flawless 2,600-hour, 680-sortie flight test programme in record time, resulting in its type certificate being earnt from the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) on 30th September, 14.5 months since first flight, Airbus also won a significant order from the third-largest US carrier Delta Air Lines which opted for 25 Airbus A350-900s and 25 re-engined A330-900neos (new engine options).

The first deliveries of the A350-900 and A330-900neo will begin in 2017 second quarter and 2019, respectively, and will be deployed on transpacific and transatlantic routes that Delta said will produce a 20% saving in cash operating cost (COC) per seat versus the Boeing 747-400 and 767-300ER aircraft they will replace. This follows Delta’s strategy of establishing Seattle as its US West Coast hub for Asian flights to Hong Kong and Seoul Incheon and reducing its foreign exchange exposure to the depreciating Japanese yen by suspending Hong Kong-Tokyo Narita and Manila-Nagoya services, which in turn enables it to retire 4 gas-guzzling jumbos by the end of 2014 and their entirety by 2017.

“Delta always approaches fleet decisions with a balance of economic efficiency, customer experience enhancements, network integration and total cost of ownership. The A350 and A330neo support our long-haul, transoceanic strategy and join a mix of Boeing and Airbus aircraft that provide exceptional flexibility for Delta’s global network as well as strong cash-on-cash returns for our shareholders,” Delta Air Lines vice president (VP) of fleet strategy and transactions Nat Pieper said.

In a nutshell, Delta’s order loss highlights the essence of aircraft order campaigns – a package of pricing, availability, financing and increasingly other forms of assistance such as Airbus taking back 4 ageing A340-300s in 2016-17 and Boeing 5 A340-600s alongside Finnair and China Eastern Airlines’ respective orders for 8 A350-900s and 20 777-300ERs, not simply on the grounds of technical superiority.

“Boeing competed for the order with the 787-9, but we did not have enough 787 positions available in the timeframe that met Delta’s requirement,” Boeing said in a statement, with the Flightglobal Ascends Fleet databaseconfirming there are only 12 available slots in 2017.

For Chicago-based Boeing, this also lays bare the single biggest obstacle to maintaining and solidifying its widebody dominance is availability, rather than being significantly challenged in technical terms.

Dissecting A330neo & 787 in weight, fuel & operating efficiencies
Needless to say, Airbus begs to differ, which heralds the win, alongside CIT Group firming up its order for 15 A330-900neos, as a “massive endorsement”. Airbus says the 310-seat 6,000nm (nautical miles) A330-900neo, down from 6,200nm when launched, will provide a 14% lower fuel burn per seat against a Rolls-Royce Trent 772B-equipped A330-300 delivered in 2014 over a 4,000nm mission.

Much of this stems from the Rolls-Royce Trent 7000 engine, which accounts for 11% of the per-seat block fuel burn reduction, with another 4% stemming from the adoption of A350-styled sharklet which extends the A330-900neo’s wingspan by 3.7m to 64m and improves the aircraft’s lift-to-drag (L/D) ratio from 21 to 22. In addition, increased cabin efficiency (ICE) which adds 10 seats and brings its seat count to 310 in a 2-class configuration will lower this key metric of aircraft performance by a further 2%. This will partially offset by 4 tonnes of extra operating weight empty (OWE) resulting from the larger engine and the wing modifications and engine integration which shave 2% and 1% off the block fuel burn per seat reduction.

This, Airbus asserts, will augur well for the A330-900neo against a 304-seat 253-tonne 787-9 Dreamliner, with a 1% lower cash operating cost (COC) per seat and a 7% lower direct operating cost (DOC) per seat aided by a lower monthly lease rate at US$1.1 million versus the 787-9’s US$1.3 million.

Yet there exists a contrarian view that merits consideration.

First of all, the 11% installed engine performance appears optimistic, not least because it is being compared against a low base with the Rolls-Royce Trent 772B engine. The Enhanced Performance (EP) standard featuring improved fan and blade tip clearance on its high pressure compressor (HPC), intermediate pressure compressor (IPC), high pressure turbine (HPT), intermediate pressure turbine (IPT) and a re-bladed low pressure turbine (LPT), has already slashed the engine specific fuel consumption (SFC) by 1% since 2009. The EP2 improvement package that slashes SFC by another 1% will enter into service in 2015. They combined shave 2% of the claimed SFC reduction despite featuring an improved overall pressure ratio (OPR) from 35:1 to 50:1 and a doubled bypass ratio of 10:1 from 5:1.

One may also point to the fact that the Trent 7000 is based on the Trent 1000-TEN (thrust efficiency new technologies) engine, which missed its engine specific fuel consumption (SFC) target alongside the GE Aviation GEnx-1B engine on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. The Trent 1000-TEN will only bring the engine close to Boeing’s original specification from Package C production standard which still misses the original SFC target by around 3%, according to Aspire Aviation‘s understanding. Further factoring in the 1% improvement in SFC from Package B to Package C standards, and 2.3% from Package A to Package B, it is clear that the engine faced a significant 6.3% SFC shortfall at service entry (“Boeing 777X & 787-10 show the lure of the X factor“, 2nd Jul, 13).

Likewise, flightglobal reported that GE Aviation had recalculated the GEnx-1B Block 4 standard’s performance and concluded that the Block 4 missed its original SFC target by 4-5% and the performance improvement package (PIP) I and II have only managed to narrow the gap to 1-2%.

Combined with a heavy 1970s fuselage, a 1980s wing and the addition of electrical bleed air system (EBAS), Boeing Capital Corporation (BCC) managing director (MD) of capital markets development lamented in Sydney that the A330neo is a concept “buried in 2004, resurrected in 2014″ and likened it to the A340, claiming “for those who liked cheap A340s, A330neo is the right solution”. Boeing views the A330neo as only 9-10% more fuel efficient than the existing A330, Aspire Aviation‘s sources at the Chicago-based planemaker revealed.

Moreover, the usual seat count debate also applies to the A330-900neo and 787-9 comparison. Airbus uses a 2-class 310-seat configuration for the A330-900neo, comprising 36 business class and 274 economy class seats, or 11.61% and 88.4% of the total. Boeing, in contrast, shows that its 2-class 787-9 is able to accommodate a total of 360 passengers, comprising 30 business and 330 economy seats, or 8.33% and 91.7% of the total.

Holding the seat ratio constant is important as business class seats, albeit in this case both in a 2-2-2 medium-haul configuration, are disproportionately heavier than economy seats. The 787-9 is able to accommodate 346 passengers in a 2-class arrangement at the same seat ratio of 11.61% business and 88.4% economy, Aspire Aviation calculates.

Airbus goes further in alleging that a 2-class 787-9 is only able to carry 304 passengers with a 16.9-inch economy seat width, and that its products come with “comfort without compromise”. Its proponents are also quick to cite Air Canada as an example, whose 251-seat 787-8 only has a 17.3-inch seat width and a 31-inch seat pitch in order to produce a 29% lower seat-mile costs than the airline’s 191-seat 767-300, which has a 17.8-inch width and 31-34 inches of pitch.

Yet Virgin Atlantic’s 264-seat 787-9 Dreamliner has 198 economy class seats with a 31-inch pitch and 18.9-inch width in a 9-abreast configuration, significantly wider than its A330-300s whose economy seat width is at 17.5-inch. At the end of the day, however, airlines should not be dictated by aircraft manufacturers as to how they design their interiors and there is little business sense in having a wide economy seat while being unable to make profits.

For the 787-9, it should be able to seat as many passengers as the A330-900neo at the very least, which also fits reality with Etihad Airways’ A330-300s and 787-9s both seating 231 passengers with a broadly similar seat ratio, and the same economy class seat width at 17.5-inch on both aircraft.

Most importantly, both the 787-8 and -9 remain lighter than their A330neo counterparts, which drive fuel and operating efficiencies.

Despite Airbus’s plan to shed 800kg of empty weight of the A330neo airframe, the 2-class 310-seat A330-900neo will be 4 tonnes heavier than the 300-seat A330-300, whose operating weight empty (OWE) will be 288,000lbs versus the around 279,000lbs on its predecessor. The 787-9 has an operating empty weight (OEW) of 277,000lbs, around 5 tonnes or 4% lighter than the A330-900neo.

On the 787-8, its OEW of 260,000lbs is 9.09 tonnes or 20,000lbs lighter than the A330-800neo’s 280,000lbs, amounting to a 7.7% advantage. On a 6,000nm mission, this will translate into a 9.9% lower block fuel burn per seat with the 787-8 using 526lbs of fuel per seat and the -800neo 578lbs.

In addition, Aspire Aviation‘s sources at Boeing contend, using a 253-tonne maximum take-off weight (MTOW) assumption on a 4,000nm mission comparison with the A330-900neo would unfairly penalise the -9, since such a sector length is less than half its 8,300nm range capability and would “unquestionably” not require the airplane operating at the 253-tonne MTOW condition. In assuming the engine operating at an unnecessarily high thrust, this will inevitably push up the 787-9’s landing fee, overflight fee as well as the engine’s direct maintenance cost (DMC).

When considering the flight crew cost, many also fail to account for the fact that the A330-900neo will continue to fly at a Mach 0.81 cruising speed whereas the 787-9 will be at M0.85, which will amount to a 25-minute difference on a 6,000nm mission, the same sources say.

Production stability key to volume game
When all is said and done, however, Boeing did lose Delta’s order. But it was not on technical grounds, but because of the lack of availability. Rectifying this means an ever increasing amount is at stake when it comes to ramping up the 787 production from 10 a month currently to 12 a month in 2016 and 14 by 2020.

Cutting the 787 cost is instrumental in giving Boeing further leverage on aircraft pricing and allowing it to become more aggressive in competing against the A330neo, whose production rate will be cut from 10 a month to 9 a month beginning 2015 fourth-quarter, given that low capital costs have been trumpeted as one of the A330neo’s biggest advantages, with Hawaiian Airlines chief commercial officer Peter Ingram saying “for a smaller capital cost increment than the A350s or the 787s, you get a good size chunk of the operating efficiencies in terms of fuel costs primarily and engine costs to a lesser extent”.

But analysts warn this will be challenging as the 787 deferred production cost balance reached US$25.2 billion at the end of 2014 third-quarter, a quarterly increase of US$947 million primarily owing to the US$200 million addition of 787-9 inventory to improve long-term productivity. Unit production cost only fell slightly to US$32 million during the quarter. UBS analysts forecast the deferred production balance will peak at US$28-29 billion whereas Buckingham analysts predict it will become larger than US$27 billion by 2016, despite the 787 programme turning “cash positive” in mid-2015.

Achieving this would require production stability, a pre-requisite not very well executed on the 787 programme. Ironically, Boeing should borrow a page from its transatlantic rival Airbus on the A350. The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) executive director Patrick Ky said “we dealt with a very mature” aircraft in certifying the 268-tonne and 275-tonne A350-900, which “is determined to be a variant of the A330/340 series aircraft” or “a variant of the A330-200″ with a maximum passenger number of 440 and an operating ceiling of 43,100ft. It is also certified by the EASA to be “beyond 180 minute” with either 300 or 370 minutes extended twin engine operations (ETOPS) options.

While the A350 has yet to enter into service and that early technical glitches are all but inevitable, its smooth flight test programme has lent confidence to the industry that hiccups of the 787 battery’s scale would not be repeated, despite Airbus planning to add lithium-ion battery as line-fit standard onto 2016 examples and beyond.

Although the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) faulted Boeing that “the incident resulted from Boeing’s failure to incorporate design requirements to mitigate the most severe effects of an internal short circuit within an APU battery cell, and the FAA’s failure to identify this design deficiency during the type design certification process”, and the lithium-cobalt dioxide (Li-CoO2) battery manufacturer that “GS Yuasa did not test the battery under the most severe conditions possible in service, and the test battery was different than the final battery design certified for installation on the airplane”; more stringent oversight has been put in place with Boeing finding 17 instances of non-conformance by prime contractor Thales or subcontractor GS Yuasa, and that Boeing’s 3-layered solution worked.

The fact is a few dozens of batteries fail on the in-service fleet everyday, and when it does on a 787 again, especially under cold temperature when lithium buildup accumulates, the stainless steel case able to withstand an explosion, the dielectric and magnetic protection and a titanium tube venting any fluid and hot gas outside of the airplane will protect the 787 on an airplane level.

Putting the past aside, after fixing foam-like plugs going into the stringer, the proximity sensors within the slat skew detection mechanism assembly (DMA), the auxiliary power unit (APU) bowing issue due to hot air being trapped inside the compartment, and nuisance warnings, the 787 is becoming an increasingly mature airplane and edging towards its goal of having a 99.5% dispatch reliability by the second quarter of 2015.

Another sign of increasing production stability is the start of final assembly of Boeing South Carolina’s first 787-9, destined for United Airlines, on 22nd November and the improving order mix, a significant milestone for the -9 in achieving an equal split with its smaller sibling with 459 orders each following Air New Zealand (ANZ) and Virgin Atlantic ordering 2 and 1 additional examples, will arguably aid this process as the -9 features simpler parts such as the elimination of the side-of-body modifications that shaves 363kg (800lbs) in weight. These combined make the 787-9 being 500-1,000lbs below its manufacturer’s empty weight (MEW) specifications and later examples will be 2% lighter still (“Boeing 787 availability key in fending off A330neo“, 21st Feb, 14).

Getting this right is paramount as the A330neo, after a further temporary production cut, possibly to 6 per month by Bernstein Research’s reckoning, will be vying for a large replacement market alongside the 787. The lack of availability also explains the sluggish growth of 787-10 orders, which total 139 and will be exclusively built in Charleston, South Carolina (SC) as its 3m (10ft) longer mid-body fuselage would be too long for Dreamlifter transport.

“The A330neo is expected to bring production rates back up near current A330 levels. But, we believe, A330neo margins are likely to be weaker,” Bernstein Research analysts wrote in a 11th December note to clients.

And this is not just a very large A330 replacement market – the world’s largest A330-300 customer Cathay Pacific along with its wholly-owned subsidiary Dragonair operate 40 and 18 examples, respectively; Air China 49; Turkish Airlines 40; China Eastern Airlines (CEA) 35; Qatar Airways 33; Etihad 32 and even Delta Air Lines’ fleet of 32 examples consisting of 11 -200s and 21 -300 HGWs, with a further 10 242-tonne -300s that are on order whose final assemblyhas begun in early November and will be delivered in 2015 second-quarter; the mission creep of both the A330-300neo and 787-10 with respective range of 6,000nm and 7,000nm, mean they will become perfect A340 and 777-200ER replacements.

There are 422 777-200ERs with Air France having 25, United 74, American 40, to name a few, as well as 284 active A340s that are rife for replacement, according to airfleets.net, with Lufthansa and Iberia having 18 and 7 A340-300s. Iberia, for instance, opted for 8 A330-200s and 8 A350-900s for the role.

The 787-10, in particular, has a better cargo-hauling capability than both the A330-900neo and the A350-900 with a total cargo volume of 6,187ft³ (175m³) versus the A330-900neo’s 5,751ft³ (162.8m³) and the A350-900’s 6,088ft³. The 787-9 could also carry 13 tonnes of extra cargoes on 2,300nm longer range than the A330-900neo.

Given this, it is apparent who the real enemy is for Boeing: production stability.

777X leaves Airbus no choice but to re-engine A380
Ask the marketing personnel at Airbus and Boeing about the problem of availability and the lack thereof, and they would have little hesitation in saying it is a good problem to have.

However, the same cannot be said of Airbus’s flagship A380 superjumbo or the Boeing 747-8I Intercontinental, both of which are being increasingly cannibalised by the mini-jumbos – today’s 777-300ER and the 350-seat A350-1000 and 400-seat 777-9X in the future.

Citing a weaker than expected cargo market, Boeing last week announced a fresh production cut of the 747-8 rate from 18 a year to just 16 examples, or 1.3 per month from 1.5 per month. Its thinning backlog now stands at merely 39, comprising 13 orders for the freighter.

At the same time, Airbus Group chief financial officer (CFO) Harald Wilhelm said at the plane-maker’s annual Global Investor Forum that the A380 will break even on a unit basis from 2015 onwards till 2017, but not 2018 and beyond, after which it will have to ponder its future that “if we would do something on the product, or even if we would discontinue the product”.

The comment sparked outrage from the A380’s biggest customer Emirates, whose president Tim Clark branded it as a “gaffe” as the world’s largest international carrier is prepared to order 60-70 A380neos if launched. This caused Airbus executives to do some explaining, with Airbus Group chief executive Tom Enders saying “whatever decision we take on upgrading that aircraft will be based purely on economic terms” and Airbus chief executive Fabrice Bregier promising “we will one day launch a 380neo, we will one day launch a stretch. This is so obvious there is extra potential. We will get more customers”. Airbus sales chief John Leahy said it is working on 4 active campaigns with existing customers.

Indeed, there is mounting evidence Airbus will launch a re-engined A380neo when the decision time comes in 2015, not because of a solid business case, but because the Boeing 777X has left little choice for Airbus and the fact that Rolls-Royce will probably shoulder the bulk of the A380neo’s development cost. Aviation Week reported that Rolls-Royce and Airbus are nearing an initial accord for supplying engines powering the A380neo.

If anything, Airbus has held onto the same tale for the past 14 years, that the world needs an A380 in light of increasing airport congestions, and the number of mega-cities with more than 10,000 daily long-haul passengers will grow from 42 today to 71 by 2023, by which time more than 95% of long-haul traffic will originate from them.

At congested airports such as London Heathrow which operates at 98% capacity, the A380 can free up precious slots such as what British Airways (BA) has done in replacing 3 daily 747-400 flights to Los Angeles with 2 daily 469-seat A380 flights. In doing so, the number of total daily seats has decreased marginally by 1%, but a combination of improved traffic mix with a 5% increase in premium seats and a 7% decrease in non-premium seats, and a 19% lower trip cost leads to higher profitability. The A380 has worked so well for BA such that it brought forward 1 delivery from 2016 first-quarter to 2014 fourth-quarter.

Similar significant operational efficiencies could be gained at other carriers, such as Cathay Pacific’s 5 times daily London Heathrow services, Airbus and its proponents argue. CX251 and CX255 now depart 1 hours and 15 minutes within each other in midnight, then CX257, CX239 and CX253 departing in a 3 hours’ window of each other from 9am in the morning till 3pm in the afternoon.

Yet this argument has not translated into solid sales, with the A380’s 318 firm orders since December 2000 dwarfed by the A350 XWB’s 778 and the 787 Dreamliner’s 1,055 in considerably shorter timeframes. The A380’s remaining backlog of 147, while sufficient for sustaining an annual production rate of 30 until at least 2017, appears shaky, with Virgin Atlantic’s one for 6, Hong Kong Airlines’ 10, Air Austral’s 2, Air France’s last 2 orders likely to be cancelled, while lessor Amadeo has yet to land a single customer for its order of 20 examples, let alone Qantas’s remaining orders for 8 examples.

Boeing has offered a decidedly different observation, citing OAG schedules between 2000 and 2014 that while the number of frequencies and capacity increased by 58% and 60%, respectively, serving 46% more cities, the average number of seats per flight has decreased by 2% from 304 to 299 (“Airbus, Boeing in game of thrones for widebody dominance“, 11th Jul, 14).

The A380 or any very large airplane (VLA), its rationale goes, will remain a niche serving airlines’ a select few of trunk routes while being inherently financially risky.

Airlines appear to be siding with Boeing. International Airlines Group (IAG) chief executive Willie Walsh was quoted as saying “aircraft coming into Heathrow will generally be smaller” and has indicated that BA has no intention to grow its A380 fleet beyond 12 examples, despite an existing fleet of 43 747-400s. Air France-KLM Group’s chief executive Alexandre de Juniac even went as far as saying “it’s an excellent plane but it only works for the right destinations”.

Some of the A380’s problems, such as a small cargo space and trading frequency for capacity, already exist today.

The A380 has a total cargo volume of 5,875ft³ and a revenue cargo volume of 2,995ft³, whereas the 777-300ER has a 5,200ft³ revenue cargo volume out of a 7,120ft³ total cargo volume. For Emirates, this means a difference of hauling 8 tonnes and 23 tonnes of cargo, according to its website, while Cathay Pacific hauls 20 tonnes of revenue cargoes on each 777-300ER flights, which add up to 100 and 80 tonnes to London Heathrow and Los Angeles easily (“Cathay Pacific’s prospect poised to take flight“, 1st Oct, 14).

But the arrival of the 777X will hasten a step-change in efficiency, with the aircraft providing a 20% lower fuel burn per seat and a 15% lower cash operating cost (COC) per seat against the 368-seat 777-300ER, offering a balanced growth opportunity for carriers in the Asia/Pacific and Middle East without sacrificing frequencies and resulting in “spill-over demand”. The 400-seat 8,200nm 777-9X will also have a 12% lower block fuel burn per seat and a 10% lower COC per seat than the 344-seat A350-1000, Boeing claims.

What will exert pressure on Airbus to launch the A380neo is the fact that the 777-9X will lower the -300ER’s seat-mile costs by around 10% and given that the -300ER has roughly the same seat-mile costs as the A380 today, this will lead to a 10% gap between the -9X and the A380.

Furthermore, airlines, most likely Emirates, are asking for more seats on the 777-9X and that this would be announced in the second quarter of 2015, Aspire Aviation could exclusively reveal. When this change is announced, most likely entailing the addition of a few number of economy rows, the seat-mile cost gap will further widen.

The 777-9X’s ability to feature more seats is mainly enabled by tweaks to its interior arrangements such as galleys, despite a small stretch of its fuselage, informally dubbed as the “777-10X”, from 76.5m (250.11ft) to 76.7m (251.9ft), according to a September 2014 Boeing internal document obtained by Aspire Aviation. Assuming the addition of 2 rows or 20 seats, these refinement and cabin changes will make it 420-seat and a one-to-one 747-400 replacement, further enticing British Airways with 43 ageing jumbos, KLM 23, United Airlines 24, Korean Air 14, Thai Airways 12, Air France 7 and Qantas’s 9 remaining examples to place orders.

In other words, the 777-9X will exacerbate the A380’s problems. While Airbus continues to deride the 777X as a “paper airplane”, Boeing is fast-tracking the 777X development with a “manage-to” internal entry into service (EIS) target 6 months earlier than the 2020 second-quarter public target following a 9-month flight test campaign.

It has already signed a long-term contract extension with Toray Industries, effective from 2015 onwards, to supply aerospace carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) for the 777X’s supercritical 4th-generation CFRP wing, which will be built at a US$1 billion sprawling 1 million ft² new facility in Everett, Washington. The facility will have 3 giant autoclaves co-curing the front and rear CFRP wing spars, stringers with the uncured wing panels, before being sent to the main assembly building, which will occupy the current 3rd 787 temporary surge line for 3 years in the 777X’s initial production phase, according to The Seattle Times. The facility on October 21st celebrated its groundbreaking 7 weeks ahead of schedule and will be complete by May 2016.

Boeing also signed an agreement with Japanese partners Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), Fuji Heavy Industries (FHI) and Kawasaki Heavy Industries (KHI) guaranteeing a continuation of their existing work, totalling 21% of today’s 777s, on the 777X. In addition, AVIC Shenyang Commercial Aircraft Corporation (SACC) will build the 777X’s empennage tips, whereas St. Louis is assigned responsibility for producing 777X wing parts, replacing Boeing Aerostructures Australia and outside partners.

The same Boeing internal document also reveals that it has started engaging airlines and airports on the 777X’s airport compatibility early, and included alternate and extended twin engine operations (ETOPS) airports from the beginning, even ahead of the firm configuration in mid-2015.

For 2014’s focus of alternate and ETOPS airports, Boeing talked to Nagoya, Osaka Kansai International, Taipei, Kaohsiung, Macau, Ho Chi Minh City, Penang and Batam, Brisbane, Auckland and Melbourne in the Asia/Pacific region; London Gatwick, Paris Orly, Milan, Hannover, Cologne, Brussels, Copenhagen in Europe; Chicago Rockford International Airport, Milwaukee, Detroit, Toronto, Boston, Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Indianapolis, Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, Portland, Salt Lake City, Oakland, Ontario, Las Vegas in North America.

Boeing also initiated the process to get the folding wingtip (FWT) in design documentations in 2013 with a November 2016 approval for the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) Annex 14 being eyed. Boeing said in the document that “both EASA and the FAA support the reduction” for reduced wingtip clearance.

This is important as the 777-9X is designed to fit today’s Code E airport gates over a 64.8m (212.9ft) wingspan with the folding wingtip (FWT) in the folded up position while taking less than 20 seconds to unfold and extend its wingspan to 71.8m (235.5ft) just before entering the runway. This Code E compatibility will make most of the world’s airports accessible to the 777X.

While Boeing has already developed the airport operation procedures for the FWT failures, at 1 per 100,000 dispatches, under which the FWT will be in a locked and latched position, Aspire Aviation‘s sources at Boeing say the 777X can only be de-iced with the FWT folded down at Code F gates, potentially adding a layer of complexity to the 777X’s ground operations in wintertime.

All told, with the industry body International Air Transport Association (IATA) forecasting 1.8 billion extra annual passengers from Asia/Pacific at a 4.9% annual growth rate, 559 million extra annual passengers in the US market and 266 million in India over the next 20 years, Boeing is betting that the 777-9X will be positioned at a future sweet spot of around 400 seats, moving up from today’s sweet spot of around 350 seats.

With sufficient availability, it is hopeful that the 777-9X will be able to take on not just the A380 and be a 777-300ER replacement, but also the A350-1000 and A380neo in one fell swoop, giving airlines flexibility not limited to niche roles such as Royal Air Maroc’s Hajj flights, but also profitably operate the aircraft on a large number of an airline’s routes.

Availability is the new name of the game.

Has the Boeing 787 been a network changer?

By: HANK OMBELET published in flightglobal.com, Dec 3, 2014

Much has been made about the capability of the Boeing 787 to operate on long thin routes profitably. The aircraft was presented as a “hub buster”; rather than flying large aircraft between hubs and then single-aisle aircraft to the final destination, the 787 would allow airlines to bypass hubs and fly direct to smaller destinations.

The aircraft has been in service for three years as All Nippon Airways took delivery of the first 787 back in September 2011. Since then, 198 more have been delivered to 25 airlines around the world, all but seven the -8 variant. ANA is the largest operator with, currently, 33 aircraft. Half of the total are with airlines in the Asia-Pacific region, with the remainder spread over the other continents.

The number of seats installed varies substantially. For the -8, the smallest number of seats is on one of the ANA variants which only has 169 seats. It goes all the way up to 335 seats for Jetstar, which still manages to squeeze in three rows of business class but makes up by having nine seats across in economy. ANA and JAL are the only airlines that have eight-abreast in economy.

ANA is also the only airline that varies the number of seats across its 787s. All other airlines have so far stuck to a single configuration. Not surprisingly, the low-cost and charter airlines have the highest-density configurations – mostly by not having business class and only a small premium-economy section.

All network carriers have a business class on the aircraft, but only one airline has a first class – China Southern having exactly one row of first-class seats, though it remains to be seen how viable such a configuration will prove. Among the network carriers, Ethiopian Airlines and Royal Jordanian have the highest number of economy-class seats at 246, while ANA has the largest number of business-class seats at 46 – although with a 44in seat pitch, these are aimed at use on a short- to medium-haul network.

NETWORK

Flightglobal’s Innovata schedules for November 2014 show 25 airlines operating 787s on a total of just over 250 routes with around 12,000 flights per month. With 200 aircraft, this equates to an average of 60 flights per month or two flights per day.

All but one of the 10 busiest routes by flight number at the moment are from Tokyo Haneda, and all but one of those are domestic routes operated by ANA. The only international route is to Taipei Sungshan airport, which both ANA and JAL serve with the Dreamliner. The only route of the 10 largest using 787s is a domestic route between Guangzhou and Beijing, operated by both China Southern and Hainan.

However, judging from the seat counts (the schedules data for ANA does not distinguish between the -8 and -9) it appears most of the Japanese domestic flights are operated by the 787-9, which for ANA has a high-density configuration with 377 economy seats, plus only 18 business-class seats with a seat pitch of 50in. Clearly, the 787 usage that the Japanese airlines had in mind was, initially at least, as domestic workhorses. Whether this is a good use of an aircraft built for long-haul remains to be seen.

Looking at how the 787 is used by number of flights gives one view, but is skewed toward the shorter flights. It is not really representative of how the 787 is utilised in general. Clearly the longer routes will dominate if kilometres flown is used as a proxy for utilisation, but it does give a better picture on where the aircraft are being utilised.

The 10 largest 787 routes by ASK (November 2014)

The other issue is that the short-haul use of the 787 is dominated by ANA. This airline is currently the largest operator of 787s (and will remain so based on the current orders), but it uses the aircraft disproportionately on short-haul. Separating the ANA figures out of the general fleet illustrates this impact.

The 24 airlines operating the 787 operate a total of 585 long-haul routes (>5,000km). They have started a total of 55 new 787 routes over the last three years. All new routes are of course long-haul, and it means a 10% increase over the last three years due to the 787. However, the airlines opened another 140 long-haul routes as well with other aircraft.

Where the 787 replaced other aircraft on an existing route, it typically replaced a Boeing 767 or 777. This is not to say that an airline is more likely to replace a 787 with another Boeing, just that the current 787 operators have more Boeing than Airbus aircraft in their existing fleet. The effect on the overall capacity of the replacements is mixed. Looking at existing routes where a 787 was introduced in 2014, the capacity (measured in seats) went down on 23 routes, while on the remaining 44 it increased, partly because on a number of routes the 787 was used alongside other aircraft.

For short-haul routes, the picture is much more complicated, as on many routes several different aircraft are operating and it cannot really be established which aircraft was replaced by a 787.

Norwegian has started the most new routes. The airline timed its launch of long-haul services to coincide with taking delivery of the 787 – though delays in the programme meant it actually launched long-haul flights with leased A340s. It has based its long-haul business model around the aircraft, expecting to be able to compete with low fares by having a technologically advanced aircraft in a high-density configuration giving lower operating costs than its competitors.

New 787 routes (November 2014)

One of the arguments for the 787 development by Boeing has been around the aircraft being able to open long thin routes bypassing hubs. Looking at the traditional carriers that operate the 787, every single new route has a hub airport at least at one end of the route. And of course, unless a route is between hubs, it bypasses one hub. Take for example the three new routes that JAL has opened with its 787: Helsinki, San Diego and Boston. Helsinki is a hub of Oneworld partner Finnair, which already operated the route. San Diego and Boston are not Oneworld hubs. Previously, a passenger wanting to travel between San Diego or Boston and Tokyo would have to make a connection through one of the other 16 airports on the US mainland that has a flight to Tokyo. So there is clearly a passenger benefit in having such a flight: fewer connections, shorter travel time.

However, the increase in destinations that JAL serves in the USA has not led to a decrease in hub flying. In 2011, JAL flew to four US cities, all served daily using 777s. Three of those are American Airlines hubs: Chicago, New York JFK and Los Angeles. By 2014, flights to JFK had doubled with a 787 service added to the 777 fights. The only destination that has seen a reduction is non-American hub San Francisco, where the 777 was replaced by a 787. But total service to the USA has increased from four daily flights in 2011 to seven this year.

Long-haul, it is rare for a legacy airline to operate a route that does not originate in one of its hubs or at least its focus cities. There are a few of these routes, typically to particular leisure destinations from smaller airports in the airline’s home country. By and large, however, long-haul routes emanate from a hub, and all the current 787 routes for legacy airlines do as well.

Of the 106 routes operated by legacy carriers, 32 actually operate between hubs of alliance partners. Another 74 are typical hub-to-spoke routes. The real spoke-to-spoke routes are operated by the low-cost long-haul airlines such as Jetstar and Norwegian, as well as the charter airlines such as the three TUI airlines: Thomson Airways, Jetairfly and Arkefly.

It seems that for legacy and charter airlines, the 787 currently provides a more cost-effective alternative with a seat count somewhere between the 767 and the 777 that airlines can use to develop their predominantly hub-and-spoke networks. Few of the airlines appear to utilise the full range of the aircraft. It seems it could be potential long-haul low-cost operators that might challenge this model on new “long thin” routes, but would do so with the assistance of a high-density seating arrangement to reduce unit costs.

Airlines satisfied with 787 engines despite efficiency miss

By: Stephen Trimble published in flightglobal.com, Nov 17 2014

If one of today’s market fashions becomes permanent, the Boeing 787 could be the last commercial widebody aircraft that offers buyers a choice of engines from competing suppliers – in this case the GE Aviation GEnx-1B or the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000.

This increasingly rare engine competition has delivered two propulsion systems with reliability levels well above the average at the aircraft level.

At the same time, it has so far failed to produce a turbofan engine designed by either competitor that meets Boeing’s original promise of a 10% reduction in specific fuel consumption.

Additionally, competitive pressures have not provided airline customers with immunity from brief operational crises with both engines, in one case an operational restriction that still continues.

Both engines boast despatch reliability levels above 99%, the benchmark Boeing is still seeking to claim for the aircraft as a whole.

“The engines are operating flawlessly,” says Zemene Nega, vice-president of maintenance, repair and overhaul for Ethiopian Airlines, a GEnx-1B customer.

It has not always been so. In July 2012, All Nippon Airways, a Trent 1000 customer, grounded five 787-8s after Boeing informed it of a potential problem in the gearbox. Crown gears had corroded faster than expected in endurance tests on the ground, causing damage to the engine. R-R traced the problem to a manufacturing process change by gearbox supplier Hamilton Sundstrand. It was corrected within weeks.

The GEnx-1B became the focus of the next engine crisis. A decision by GE Aviation to adopt a new lead-free coating on the fan mid-shaft backfired with explosive results. The coating caused the component to corrode faster in humid climates. In late July 2012, a GEnx-1B on board a newly assembled Air India 787-8 sustained a contained failure. GE reverted to a previous lead-based coating, and the problem disappeared.

Rolls-Royce‘s next move is to deliver the Trent 1000-TEN upgrade in mid-2016

Rolls-Royce

A longer-term problem for GE Aviation is a relatively new phenomenon called ice-crystal icing. Liquid water is not present above about 22,000ft, so airframe icing is never a concern at cruise altitudes for a turbofan-powered widebody aircraft.

However, meteorologists have recently discovered the presence of ice crystals at even higher altitudes, especially in tropic latitudes. In massive storm concentrations stretching 100km (62mi) across, convection forces can carry ice crystals the size of a grain of flour to cruising altitudes above 30,000ft. The crystals bounce off an aircraft’s skin, but can be ingested into an engine. It is believed that crystals land on a warm blade and begin to melt, which attracts other crystals to stick to the blade. Eventually, enough ice develops on the blade to cause damage downstream when it sheds.

The phenomenon is particularly acute on the GEnx engine. On its predecessor, the CF6, the ice build-up would most often shed as the aircraft descended. The GEnx experiences the ice shedding problem at cruise altitude, leading to in-flight engine shutdowns. As a result, the US Federal Aviation Administration issued an airworthiness directive last year requiring airlines to steer 787s at least 50mi wide of major storm concentrations.

For some airlines, the restriction is an annoyance but not a network issue. Japan Air Lines, however, has pulled the 787 off three routes originating in Tokyo: Bangkok, Delhi and Singapore.

By contrast, the Trent 1000 engine faces no such operational restriction, says R-R project director Gary Moore. Fortuitously, the three-spool architecture of the Trent engine family happens to be less prone to ice crystal build-up inside the core. The intermediate compressor section, which is absent in the GEnx design, rotates at a higher speed, making it more difficult for dangerous quantities of ice to build up on the blades.

“We don’t have this problem,” Moore says. “It is just a very clear difference in the two engines.”

Another clear difference between the engines is the order split. So far, 787 customers have chosen the GEnx-1B over the Trent 1000 by a nearly two-to-one margin, with 17% of the order backlog still unspecified.

R-R places a couple of caveats on the GEnx-1B’s strong start. First, not all airline decisions have been the result of a competition. When given the chance to compete, the Trent 1000 has claimed nearly half of the orders, Moore says. Moreover, the Trent 1000 is starting to gain some momentum. In the last 19 engine selections, the Trent 1000 has won orders 11 times, he says.

R-R’s next move is to deliver the Trent 1000-TEN upgrade in mid-2016. GE has acknowledged that the GEnx-1B misses, by 1-2%, Boeing’s original specification for reducing specific fuel consumption. The Trent 1000-TEN – packed with technological improvements inherited from the Trent XWB – is still aimed at achieving the 787’s original fuel-burn target.

“We’re targeting the original spec that was put upon the airplane,” Moore says. “You don’t spend this level of investment to think we’re not going to get there. We’re going to get there.”

What do recent production rate changes mean?

By: Richard Evans published in flightglobal.com, Nov 21 2014

We have seen two production rate changes announced recently, so it seems a good time to summarise the current production outlook from Airbus and Boeing. Individual programmes will have specific drivers of change, but it is also worth reviewing how the airframers’ plans stack up against overall market numbers.

Production rates are often described as Rate 5 or Rate 10, for example, which simply refers to the number of aircraft manufactured per month. For Boeing products, the annual production is 12 times this figure. At Airbus, because of the summer holiday period, the quoted rates are maintained for 11 or 11.5 months a year. For example, Rate 10 on the A330 programme equates to an annual production of 110 aircraft.

The first announcement was made by Boeing on 2 October, when it said that it “will increase production on the 737 programme to 52 airplanes per month in 2018 in response to strong market demand from customers worldwide”. Once this increase is implemented, more than 620 airplanes per year are expected to be built under the 737 programme, “the highest rate ever”.

Boeing is currently building 42 737NGs per month, and had already said this would be increased to 47/month in 2017. The primary reason behind the latest announcement appears to be the need to create additional slots for the 737 Max. The slots are valuable because the 737 Max is running about two years behind the competing A320neo, making availability an issue in key strategic campaigns.

This means that based on production rates, Boeing will maintain a delivery advantage over Airbus in the single-aisle sector for the rest of the decade. In 2018, the implication is that Boeing will have a delivery market share of about 54%, building 620 737s versus 500 A320s. This is despite the fact that Airbus has a firm backlog of 4,721 A320s to Boeing’s backlog of 4,011 737s, giving Airbus a 54% share. Taking only firm orders, Airbus has a 59% share of the re-engined variants.

IMPLICATIONS FOR SINGLE-AISLE DELIVERIES

The increased delivery slot availability from Boeing gives it more flexibility to go out and win new customers for the 737 Max, but slots alone will not determine the eventual market share. It remains to be seen if Airbus will respond with an increased rate on the A320neo. Ascend assumes that Boeing would have switched over production entirely to 737 Max by early 2019, so the new rate is also a challenge for CFM, which will have to ramp up Leap-1B production from zero in 2016 to about 1,400 engines three years later.

A320 and 737 production rates, when combined, will mean about 1,200 deliveries in 2018/19, up from 933 last year. The chart below shows how this compares to the Flightglobal Fleet Forecas for single-aisle aircraft.

It can be seen that the combined Airbus and Boeing production closely matched the overall single-aisle forecast before the latest Boeing announcement, but it now exceeds our forecast by 5-10% – or more should Airbus also raise rates. Airbus’s own forecast for single-aisle deliveries is 22,000 over the next 20 years, which averages at 1,100 per annum. Boeing has a slightly higher forecast of about 1,250 a year.

This is arguably within the margin of error of any top-down forecast, but the implication is that there is no room for the delivery plans of the new entrants, the Bombardier CSeries, Comac C919 and Irkut MC-21. Programme delays may give greater opportunity to Airbus and Boeing here. However, it is entirely possible that aircraft retirements could be the balancing figure to enable these deliveries to happen. With a current fleet of 13,000 aircraft, growing to around 18,000 by the end of the decade, it is not difficult to imagine that a few hundred extra retirements will occur, balancing supply and demand in the process. This would have a limited impact on average retirement age and, hence, residual values.

The Flightglobal Fleet Forecast also takes the view that Airbus will win a market share of >50% against the 737, based on the current firm backlog, and we will only change this if customer orders move in favour of Boeing in the next few years.

A330 AND 777 CHALLENGE

The increased delivery slot availability from Boeing gives it more flexibility to go out and win new customers for the 737 Max, but slots alone will not determine the eventual market share. It remains to be seen if Airbus will respond with an increased rate on the A320neo. Ascend assumes that Boeing would have switched over production entirely to 737 Max by early 2019, so the new rate is also a challenge for CFM, which will have to ramp up Leap-1B production from zero in 2016 to about 1,400 engines three years later.

A320 and 737 production rates, when combined, will mean about 1,200 deliveries in 2018/19, up from 933 last year. The chart below shows how this compares to Ascend’s Flightglobal Fleet Forecast for single-aisle aircraft.

The second announcement was of Airbus reducing A330 manufacturing from Rate 10 to Rate 9 from Q4 2015. This should not have come as a major surprise given the decline in book-to-bill ratios in the last few years. Indeed, the backlog for the A330 has been declining ever since 2008, and now stands at 230, compared with 425 at the beginning of 2009.

The launch of the A330neo has been a huge positive for the overall A330 programme, and we expect the letters of intent (LoIs) signed to be converted to firm orders shortly. However, the new variant, with first delivery in December 2017, has created quite a production gap to fill.

In addition to successfully converting LoIs, Airbus would need to secure up to 150 further orders for the A330ceo in order to fill the gap before entry of the A330neo, assuming Rate 9 is continued. Our fleet forecast implies that further production rate cuts are likely, down to an eventual production of about six per month from 2019 onwards. Any delay to entry into service (EIS) or ramp-up of the A330neo will increase the challenge.

The 777 has arguably an even greater challenge to “bridge the gap” to the 777-X. EIS is not until 2020, over two years later than the A330. The current GE90-powered versions still have an impressive backlog of 275 aircraft, but that has declined from 356 at the end of 2012.

In order to maintain the current level of production, Boeing would need to win around 330 new orders (including 90 option/LoI conversions). There is no plan as yet for a 777-X freighter version (although a version of the -8 is expected in the 2020s), so the 777-200 Freighter is part of the solution to bridging that gap, but the cargo market remains in the doldrums. Hence the vast majority of additional orders must come from 777-300ERs. The Ascend forecast indicates that a production rate cut is highly likely, perhaps down to Rate 6 between 2017 and the EIS of the 777-X.

Boeing Revisits Past In Hunt For 737/757 Successors

By: Guy Norris and Jens Flottau published in aviationweek.com, Dec12, 2014

For years, Boeing wrestled with how to replace a best–selling single-aisle product with an all-new design in one size s-ector while simultaneously protecting the longer-range, middle-of-the-market (MOM) from the predatory ambitions of Airbus.

Although this may sound like the 737 and 757 replacement conundrum faced by Boeing today, it is, in fact, the scenario that challenged the company almost 40 years ago. In the 1970s Boeing was grappling with how to replace the 727 and at the same time counter the emerging threat of the Airbus A310, the first derivative of the A300 family. 

In a curious parallel to the situation today, Boeing’s market analysis for filling the 180-300-seat gap in the 1970s indicated that although the two requirements overlapped, it was too difficult to meet them both with a single-fuselage cross-section aircraft. A single aisle worked better for the lower end, but did not stretch very well. A twin aisle worked better for the upper end, but equally did not shrink well. As a result, for almost six years in the 1970s, the company exhaustively studied two concepts: a single-aisle twin dubbed the 7N7 and a widebody twin called the 7X7.

Most observers at the time believed Boeing would develop one or the other but not both, at least not immediately. It was therefore with some surprise that between 1978-79, over a period of less than eight months, the company ambitiously began the simultaneous development of both aircraft. The 7X7 became the 767 in July 1978, while the 757, formerly the 7N7, received the production go-ahead the following March.

But will Boeing repeat history to answer the long-running 737/757 replacement question, and if so, why? The answers lie in the way the 757 and 767 were developed and, more important, in what they share in common. Although designed to serve very different markets, Boeing ended up developing the 757 and 767 as sister aircraft that shared key design features, including common cockpits, and used many common parts and systems. The novel approach reduced development cost and made the aircraft more attractive to operators of both types.

Faced with converging requirements, Boeing is considering using the same blueprint as it reviews its options for developing the new small airplane (NSA), and a parallel new “middle-of-the-market” aircraft that would go beyond simply filling the 757 replacement niche. “We talk about reuse of architectures and equipment, and the 757/767 are great examples,” says Mike Sinnett, vice president of product development for Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Although developed for different roles “the systems were 40% common, they had common cockpits and a common type rating.” Because it worked before, the design approach is something “we would have in our mind going forward,” he adds.

Tough acts to follow: 9,350 737s and 757s have already been delivered, with at least a further 4,200 undelivered current model and 737 MAXs still to come. Credit: JoePriesAviation.net

The NSA and 757 successors have been under evaluation, in various guises, for years. NSA was relatively well advanced as a preliminary concept when Boeing abruptly altered course in August 2011 to launch the reengined, upgraded 737 MAX in response to airline demands for a faster solution. But the 757 successor is a different story, which is why Boeing is talking to carriers about a “MOM” study rather than a simple replacement for its illustrious twin. Part of the issue is knowing what to develop, says Sinnett. The “customers don’t understand it either and that’s still evolving. It is not just about seats and range.”

In the 2008-09 period, Boeing’s evaluations in this sector centered on the Light Twin, a 290-300-seat single-class, twin-aisle, transcontinental aircraft based on 787 technology. However, by 2013 these studies had morphed into a similar-sized aircraft, but with a range of 4,000-5,000 nm. “The study aircraft would not be a direct successor to Boeing’s single-aisle twinjet,” says Marketing Vice President Randy Tinseth. Speaking earlier in 2014, he says, “We think there’s maybe a marketplace and we have a lot of interest from a lot of customers in an aircraft that seats between 200 and 300, but does not need the range capacity of the 787. We are having a lot of discussions with customers to figure out the market size of what that might become,” he adds.

While a new small aircraft was originally easier to define because of the payload range covered by the current and future 737 families, the upper edges of this replacement category have blurred into that of the 757/MOM as airlines indicate a growing preference for larger aircraft. “The middle-market segment lands between the 737-9 and the 787, and when you look at the range/payload chart there is a lot of room there,” says Sinnett. 

As a result, the hunt for a new small aircraft is increasingly linked to that of the slightly larger middle-market sector which, for want of a better term, is still largely dubbed the 757 replacement. “The 757 is a proxy for something that is not a 737 and is not a 757.” The airlines are interested in something that “is more than a 757. They are not looking for a carbon copy,” Sinnett adds. Studies are therefore focused on designs with more range and capacity to “enter a niche, and to understand if it can be expanded into a third market segment. We are still testing the waters.”

The first indications of Boeing’s renewed interest in NSA came from CEO Jim McNerney who, speaking last Nov. 5 at an innovation conference in Abu Dhabi, said: “By 2030, we will have a new airplane.” The aircraft “will be slightly bigger,” and have new engines.

McNerney added that there is “a good chance it will be a composite airplane.” Sinnett acknowledges that the 2030 timing is as much driven by crystalizing of airline demand as by readiness of technology. “The technology suite that exists today incorporated in an all-new airplane would not be any better than a MAX today. The 737 has been optimized [very] well over the decades and MAX continues that with another step change. It has become really hard to beat.”

Although Boeing pushed the state-of-the-art in commercial structures, systems, design and propulsion with the 787, Sinnett projects that “it will be the end of the next decade before we have the technology available,” to the point where it would warrant service entry of an all-new family. Rejecting reports elsewhere that an NSA could be launched later this decade for possible service entry as early as 2025, he adds that “for the middle of the decade we couldn’t do better than the MAX; it is probably another five years beyond that.”

However, engine makers confirm that Boeing has asked them to restart the NSA powerplant studies they undertook up to 2011, as well as to evaluate concepts for a 757 successor. GE Aviation President David Joyce says “we all had an NSA engine.” But he points out that the technology advances since that time mean that the architecture must be totally reevaluated. “In terms of replacements of 757s, you can imagine we’re all having that dialogue right now.” 

While Joyce also casts doubts on any go-ahead in the medium term, he adds: “If it does [proceed], I think it is right in the sweet spot of the technologies that are developed between the [CFM] Leap and the GE9X [for the 777X], depending on what the time line is. We have another whole block of technologies we are looking at in addition to that. There are some pretty radical architectures out there. As you know, we have a history of looking at some wild stuff, like the unducted fan, and a few other things like the three streams in the military world. So the architecture guys are busy.”

Eager to reenter the single-aisle market that it effectively exited with the sale of its share in International Aero Engines, Rolls-Royce has also laid out plans for Advance and UltraFan future engine architectures designed to meet a wide variety of power demands for new aircraft from 2020 and 2025, respectively. Pratt & Whitney has meanwhile vowed to develop year-on-year fuel-burn performance improvements to the geared turbofan, which enters revenue service on the A320neo and CSeries in 2015, and sees itself as a strong contender to be among the engines offered on future Boeing NSA/ MOM concepts.

Although they sport different contours, the 757 (foreground) and 767 share identical cockpits. Credit: Mark Wagner/Aviation-Images.com

With longer-range, higher-capacity versions of the737-900ER, MAX andA321neonibbling away at the edges of the classic 757 market, the key unknown remains whether an all-new replacement would not only recapture this lost ground but also expand a new niche beyond that of the current 757.

To Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at the Teal Group, the answer is “a no-brainer.” He believes there is a market for 3,000-4,000 757-size aircraft over 20 years. Aboulafia envisions an aircraft seating approximately 220 passengers and flying up to 5,000 nm. The passenger capacity would therefore be similar to the high-density layouts of the 737 MAX or A321, but would be achieved in a configuration suitable for legacy carrier long-haul services. Aboulafia believes the aircraft should offer a 20% unit cost advantage over the existing 757.

Another factor influencing the decision about a possible new 757 type aircraft does not have to do with the segment itself, but rather with how competition between the MAX and the neo plays out. Airbus, which launched the neo eight months ahead of the MAX, holds 57% of the firm orders so far. Aboulafia argues that if the market shift of Airbus controlling 60% is “structural” (i.e. permanent) then Boeing may be forced to counter with a new concept that will be bigger than the MAX to address the gap left by the 757 and, more important, solidify its position in the narrowbody segment. 

From vision to world’s most successful commercial engine: 40 years of CFM

By: MURDO MORRISON published in flightglobal.com, Sep 29 2014

It began with a casual encounter in Paris and has flourished into a 40-year marriage with a remarkably successful offspring. CFM International – the union between the USA’s General Electric and France’s Snecma – is heading towards production of its 30,000^th engine. But the joint venture’s start, back in the 1970s, was stuttering. The first years of the transatlantic relationship were fraught with cultural and language challenges, questions over the structure of the enterprise, and concerns within the US administration over transfer of sensitive military technology.

But these were nothing compared with a much more pressing concern as the decade ended. Five years after its creation, and eight years from the informal 1971 meeting at the Le Bourget show where the GE and Snecma presidents had begun their courtship, CFM International had one product in the market – a 10-tonne, 20,000lb-thrust (89kN) engine – but no production contract. The CFM56looked a gallant failure and CFM may have been headed for the divorce court. Had that happened, the commercial airliner market would have turned out very differently.

The marriage was saved by Boeing. The airframer had chosen the CFM56 to power a version of the ageing 707 (later adopting it to re-engine its military tanker sibling, the US Air Force’s KC-135. Today the air force is CFM’s single biggest customer). A re-engining effort for another venerable, four-engined type, the Douglas DC-8, bought the programme more time. But it was Seattle’s decision to commission the 18,500lb- to 23,500lb-thrust -3 version of the CFM56 for its 737-300 in the early 1980s that was the breakthrough for an engine that had all along been intended to power a new generation of twin-engined narrowbodies.

The Leap-1A is one of the three variants of the newest CFM engine

CFM

It was the start of arguably the most commercially successful pairing in aerospace. The CFM56 went on to exclusively power the next generation 737 from the 1990s and its Leap successor will be the sole engine type on the 737 Max. Of almost 27,000 CFM56 engines, some 14,000 have been fitted to 737s. CFM’s narrowbody dominance was consolidated later in the 1980s when Airbus selected the 22,000lb- to 25,500lb-thrust -5A to compete with the International Aero Engines’ V2500 on its new A320. Since then, more than 7,500 of the CFM engines have powered Airbus narrowbodies.

The engine found another application too in the early 1990s, this time on a widebody. The CFM56-powered Airbus A340 made its service debut in 1993. While sales of the quadjet did not set the world on fire, CFM had the benefit of exclusive supply, powering all 246 of the -200/300 variants delivered.

With the arrival this decade of new versions of the 737 and A320, as well as a flurry of new narrowbody and large regional contenders from Bombardier, China’s Comac, Embraer, Russia’s Irkut and Mitsubishi, the battle in the ever-growing single-aisle market has taken on a new dimension. What began as the TECH56 technology studies in the late 1990s developed into the LEAP56 (leading edge aviation propulsion) project and eventually the launch of the Leap engine for new generation narrowbodies in 2008.

While it seemed likely that Boeing would retain CFM as solus supplier on any new narrowbody, it was Comac that was first to select the Leap when it launched its clean-sheet C919 narrowbody, in November 2010. The following month, Airbus – quicker off the mark than Boeing with its decision to re-engine its top-selling product as the A320neo – also chose the new CFM engine, albeit as an option alongside Pratt & Whitney’s PW1000G PurePower geared turbofan, which emerged around the same time as the Leap and was chosen initially to power the Bombardier CSeries.

In 2011, after much speculation over its future single-aisle strategy, Boeing announced that it would be re-engining the 737 rather than launching an all-new narrowbody, and the Leap-1B would be its sole powerplant. Seattle’s loyalty came as little surprise. The airframer said it had been working with its propulsion partner of 30 years on configurations for both re-engined and possible new types. With just under 6,000 CFM56-powered 737s in service, a global maintenance, repair and overhaul network for the legacy engine, and hundreds of content airline customers, it was the low-risk choice.

Now with a backlog of more than 7,800 Leap engines – as well as some 4,500 CFM56s – the priority for the latest CFM president, Frenchman Jean-Paul Ebanga, seems less about securing new business and instead managing what he calls “one of the most complex supply chains in the world, but also one of the best prepared to cope with this challenge”. CFM boasts that it has never delayed an airliner delivery, and – despite a production ramp-up from 1,000 engines in 2000 to around 1,550 this year and 1,800 by the close of the decade – it is not a record Ebanga plans to let slip.

The Leap-1A for the Airbus A320neo family, which has been undertaking ground testing since September last year, is expected to be certificated in the first quarter of next year, ahead of the first flight of the Leap-powered A320neo. The -1C for the C919 is due to enter flight testing this autumn, although the engine is not expected to be certificated until the end of next year. The Leap-1B for the 737 Max was fired up for the first time at Snecma’s Villaroche plant in June and is expected to be handed over to Boeing as a certificated engine in mid-2016.

Ebanga’s team have to handle not only a rapid ramp-up, but a transition from the CFM56 to the Leap starting in 2016. Although the CFM56 product developed significantly between the original CFM56-2 and today’s -5B and -7B variants, the Leap represents a huge advance in technology and will require considerable new infrastructure. Most of the industrial investment is in place, he says. A new fanblade plant will open in France in a few months, ground was recently broken on an assembly plant in Indiana and a final assembly line in Villaroche is “very advanced”.

As with the CFM56, Snecma and GE manage their own supply chains for the elements of the Leap they are responsible for – Snecma the low-pressure turbine and fan, and GE the high-pressure compressor, combustor and high-pressure turbine that make up the engine’s core. Ebanga describes the global supply chain – that includes company owned factories from North Carolina to China as well as dozens of smaller suppliers – as a “beehive” with every member of the community focused on just-in-time manufacturing and quality.

“The Leap engine is result of hundreds of thousands of daily actions across the world, everyone producing parts to the right standards and at the right time, so that in the end you have an engine that is just produced by CFM,” he says. Ebanga admits that moving from a testing and certification regime to mass production of a new product in just a few months will be an “unprecedented challenge” , but says that “by the time we get to serial production we will have all the risks back to the level we want.”

Supporting the engine in service is also a challenge. The popularity of the CFM56 has created a global network of maintenance centres, run by Snecma, GE and third parties. But repairing the Leap – with its technologies such as 3D-woven, resin transfer moulding carbonfibre fan blades – is a trickier proposition for traditional shops. It led CFM in 2008 to launch its own unified service network, and seven in 10 Leap engines ordered come under this scheme. Ebanga says one of the biggest achievements of CFM has been transitioning from a programme-focused venture at a time when “the services business did not exist” to one where CFM can present “one face to the customer for everything”.

The agreement between GE and CFM has been renewed several times since 1974 and the latest contract signed in 2008 lasts to 2040, when the Leap will be a mature engine and production of CFM56 engines, even for spares, will have all but stopped. However, just as the CFM56 engine was improved on, so too will the Leap, insists CFM. “We have hundreds of developments in our pipeline,” executive vice-president Cedric Goubet said at July’s Farnborough air show. The current engine is just “the first step in a new generation of technologies” being worked on by both partners.

In an era of high fuel prices, shaving every possible kilogramme of weight while improving efficiency remains a holy grail for engine makers, and with GE and Snecma both making advances in composite technologies and additive manufacturing, this will be a key battleground. CFM vice-president Allen Paxson, also speaking at Farnborough, predicted that increasing use of ceramic matrix composites and additive manufactured processes – currently used for fuel nozzles – will become widespread in the coming years.

The question remains as to whether the big airframers will be content with iterative improvements such as these, or will look to a breakthrough technology such as open-rotor to replace their current narrowbodies. Rolls-Royce – absent from the narrowbody market since it pulled out of the IAE consortium, unhappy with partner P&W’s decision to pursue a geared turbofan design – has said it wants to re-enter the market in the 2020s. Snecma has been pursuing an open-rotor concept which it plans to flight test on an Airbus A340 in 2019.

Any realignment looks unlikely, however, until the 2030s at least. Would-be challengers to the Airbus/Boeing duopoly – Bombardier, Comac and Irkut – have all opted for a CFM or P&W engine. Until then, it will be hard for any new propulsion player to break in and the CFM agreement prevents GE or Snecma from going it alone or joining with anyone else in that segment, even if they wanted to. If anything, says Ebanga, the development of the Leap has pushed the two partners even closer together.

Improved fuel-burn allowed carriers such as Ryanair to increase fleet utilisation, says Ebanga

Boeing

Back in 1974, a French state-owned enterprise and an American corporation, both with a heritage in military engines, might have seemed unlikely candidates to alter the face of short-haul commercial aviation, a segment utterly dominated by Pratt & Whitney at the time. But CFM has been a “unique organisation”, says Ebanga. “We brought in a new level in terms of fuel burn and reliability. This enabled guys to think about higher utilisation of these assets, and instead of flying twice or three times a day, Southwest and Ryanair were able to fly six or seven times. I’m not saying the CFM56 was the only reason they did this, but it was a key enabler in this huge change in aviation over the past 30 years.”

Rolls-Royce harvests a decade of research for new engine projects

By: MURDO MORRISON published in flightglobal.com, Oct 1 2014

As Rolls-Royce prepares to build and begin testing next year its seventh member of the Trent family – the 7000 for the Airbus A330neo – it is harvesting the fruits of a decade’s worth of research and development projects into two studies that could form the basis for a new generation of widebody – and even possibly narrowbody – engines in the 2020s.

The UK propulsion specialist wants to develop technology and products that will secure a 50% share of the twin-aisle market, as well as – perhaps more ambitiously – help it break back into the growing single-aisle sector, vacated when it abandoned the International Aero Engines consortium in 2012, just when a host of new narrowbody programmes were arriving on the market.

The company earlier this year revealed its Advance and UltraFan designs. Although both are far from being formal programmes, they are based on the three-shaft structure of the successful widebody Trent family, in particular the Airbus A350’s Trent XWB. R-R says they could, in theory, be ready to enter service as production engines as early as 2020 and 2025, respectively.

R-R says Advance and UltraFan are about highlighting its progress in a range of technologies, from composite fans to lower-emissions combustion systems. The company’s timescale for bringing these to market, however, means the engine studies are more than simply “what-might-be” concepts. It has already proved, or is currently testing, many of the engines’ novel elements.

The advance’s carbon/titanium fan system has been tested on a Trent 1000 at the Stennis centre

Rolls-Royce

Advance and UltraFan are not just Trents with tweaks, stresses Alan Newby, chief engineer, future programmes and technology. Although they rely on the same three-shaft architecture, the first of the two engines, Advance, will have a new core – with a larger high-pressure compressor and smaller intermediate compressor – as well as a composite fan and casing.

Other changes include an adaptive cooling system, a lower NOx combustor, “dynamic sealing” to minimise leakage and a wider use of ceramic-matrix composites. “Advance is the next generation in three-shaft engines and brings together a lot of the technologies that we’ve been working on for the past 10 years. There are a lot of differences. The HP and IP compressors are very different,” he says.

There is a clear commercial goal too. “We are getting the technology bricks in place, and when we get the call to develop [Advance] for an aircraft programme, we will,” adds Newby. “We won’t launch a programme until we have a requirement, but we think we will have de-risked all the technologies by 2015 or 2016 and be ready with a new application from 2020 onwards.”

The test or “slave” engine for many of the new core technologies is a Trent XWB, with its core removed and replaced by the trial HP and IP system. “It’s a good platform for testing. We have quite a big project team up and running on it,” says Newby. R-R has started machining components for the engine and other elements have been ordered from the supply chain.

Although the company has no plans as yet to fly the adapted Trent XWB independently, it will undertake ground tests next year. Separately, a carbon/titanium fan system, which will be used on both Advance and UltraFan, has just completed a phase of testing – on a Trent 1000 engine – at the company’s outdoor jet engine test facility at the John C Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.

While R-R plans to test elements of its Advance engine separately, it intends to build a whole engine demonstrator for the UltraFan, with a vision of it taking to the air on a flying testbed by the end of the decade. “Given the amount of changes, we would need to verify it in flight,” says Newby. “Four or five years before entry into service is when you’d want to be maturing the technologies.”

Several engines are dedicated to research

Rolls-Royce

These technologies include a variable pitch fan, with gearbox, and a high-speed IP turbine, as well as possible adaptations to the core. “UltraFan takes the core configuration we will have developed for Advance and adds a lower-speed fan,” explains Newby. “This turns at a relatively low speed, so it makes sense to add a gearbox.”

Although UltraFan retains the Trent’s three-shaft compression system, the enhanced IP turbine drives the fan via a power gearbox, allowing the LP turbine to be eliminated. The gearbox is “critical technology”, says Newby. “We have experience through our work on the JSF [Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter] and elsewhere on the military side. We are not starting from scratch.”

The engine manufacturer has already allocated more than a dozen engines to the various technology projects that have led to Advance and UltraFan. Many of these have been supported with research and development funding from the EU and R-R’s “home” governments: the UK, USA and Germany.

Its ALPS study, intended to come up with a lightweight LP system, has used three Trent 1000s. The first phase of engine testing was completed in 2013 and the second has just finished at Stennis. A third Trent 1000, fitted with the composite fan, has been shipped to Tucson, Arizona, for flight testing on a Boeing 747 by the end of the year.

A second project, EFE, running since 2010, focuses on “hot end technologies” and also uses the Trent 1000. Testing on a fourth engine has just ended at R-R’s Bristol facility. A final study, ALECSYS, is about developing a “robust lean-burn combustion system” and involves flight testing two Trent 1000s converted with a lean-burn combustor in 2015 and 2016.

R-R claims that the bundle of technologies on Advance and UltraFan could improve efficiency by 20% and 25% respectively, compared with the first Trent, the Trent 700. Newby adds that the technology is scalable and could cover a range of thrusts from 30,000lb (134kN) to more than 100,000lb, a much broader band than the current family’s 53,000-95,000lb range.

However, the company is quick to point out that this does not offer a direct clue to how it might re-enter the single-aisle market in the next decade. “Scaling down is possible, and in theory these technologies could form the basis of a new narrowbody engine,” says Newby. “But this is not necessarily the route we will take.”

Rolls-Royce makes progress with Trent 7000

By: MURDO MORRISON published in flightglobal.com, Oct 2 2014

Although understandably coy before Airbus’s Farnborough announcement that it was launching the A330neo, Rolls-Royce was by July quite far along the path of finalising the design for the Trent 7000, the 72,000lb (320kN) thrust engine that will exclusively power the re-engined widebody. Rolls-Royce already has a more than 50% share of engines on in-service A330s, with its original Trent 700.

The 7000 is based on the latest iteration of the Trent 1000 for the Boeing 787, the Trent 1000-TEN, and includes features such as weight-saving blisks in the compressors and a system that integrates engine dressings into composite raft-like structures. The first engine will be built and ground tested next year. Flight test engines will follow in 2016 ahead of the first actual flight test in 2017, with entry into service slated for late 2017.

Other changes compared with the original Trent 700 for the Airbus A330 – launched in March 1995 – include a 2.84m (112in) fan, rather than a 97in one that helps double the bypass ratio to 10 and improve specific fuel consumption by 10%. “For us, basing it on the TEN makes it a very low-risk programme,” says Peter Johnston, head of customer marketing.

The bigger fan means the engine and Aircelle-designed nacelle have to be moved forwards and upwards, compared with the Airbus A330’s Trent 700, to retain the same level of ground clearance and avoid “sucking in too much dirt”, says Johnston. The big architectual difference with the TEN is a new external gearbox because Airbus’s system is different to Boeing’s.

The engine manufacturer has a full dedicated project team in place for the 7000, which can pull in expertise from both the Ten and the Trent 700 teams, he says. The engine gives R-R itself a foot in two camps too, with a competitive position – against General Electric’s GEnx – on the Boeing 787, as well as an exclusive arrangement on the Dreamliner’s new direct competitor.