COC and DOC Part V

This is the next part in a series of blog posts related to COC and DOC - the last one can be found here. As I referred to Allegiant in that last post I will continue with that particular airline here.
Yesterday Allegiant announced that they will introduce the A319 into their fleet. The company presentation includes an interesting comparison of COC and DOC costs per passenger between the MD80 and the

Payload Range Diagram

After my last post a debate started about the range of the B737MAX-8 and -9, precisely whether these ranges can only be achieved with an additional fuel tank. It seems like (and Scott Hamilton pointed us to that) that Boeing already said that the MAX-9 range of 3595nm is reached with an additional fuel tank. Boeing did not say anything about the MAX-8 fuel tank configuration to reach 3640nm of range, but it seems logical that this will also be only achievable with the additional fuel tank.
A further hint to that is the difference between the different OEW and MTOW gains, relative to the NG.

Fairchild Dornier 728Jet

Teal Market Forecaster Richard Aboulafia writes a monthly letter on his website. In his latest letter he asks about the fate of the Fairchild Dornier 728Jet Prototype. Well, here it is: it is inside a hangar of the german aerospace research agency  DLR in Goettingen.

Embraer could feel the heat...

Last week's Farnborough Airshow yielded not many surprises - maybe the surprise was that mayn anticipated orders did not happen.

• Boeing does not have 1000 firm orders (or more) for the B737MAX (but Airbus did not either after the Paris Air Show last year.
• There was no VLA order from Turkish Airlines (nor from any other).
• There was no order for the A320neo or the B737MAX from Pegasus. Apparently Boeing trying all they can to keep Pegasus in the Boeing camp...
• There was also no order from Aeromexico - but all points to an order for Seattle/Chicago here...

But wait - there was one order that was remarkable and that could mark the beginning of a shift in the regional aircraft market. Although this order was not quite a real - firm - order. But the "agreement in principle" between Skywest and MITAC shows that the MRJ gains some confidence in the marketplace despite the recent announced delay in the development schedule and subsequently the EIS.

A few days before Embraer announced their statistics for the second quarter of 2012. backlog is now at a 6 year low for the EJet Family. It fell from 476 aircraft at the end of 2007 to 200 at the end of the second quarter. There are a lot of options, but if these ever get firmed up is not a safe bet.
Embraer shares took a hot following the release of the backlog and analysts called the airshow to be "dismal" for Embraer.
Well, that may be a little bit overstated, as Embraer got a lot of orders at the last airshows, including orders from ALC and GECAS that showed confidence in the EJet Family also from the leasing community.

But in fact Embraer could feel a little bit pressure now to react. The 50 seater replacement cycle in the U.S. regional market just has begun. The MRJ won two rounds, at Trans States and now at Skywest. The direct competitor to the MRJ90 is the E175, but according to todays planning the E190 would get the reengining first. On the other hand Embraer recently announced that there would be an "aerodynamic cleaning up" including new winglets in the works for all the EJet family members that results in a 5% lower fuel burn for the E170 and E175. This could give Embraer some breathing room, but I doubt that this is enough to cope with the brand new design (aircraft & engine) of the MRJ.
Embraer currently plans with an EIS of the E190G2 in 2018, probably meaning that the E175G2 could come in 2019. It remains to be seen if Embraer now speeds up their plans, despite saying that the Skywest order does not change their strategy.

Farnborough Airshow Orders

Here I will try to track all orders and commitments coming in at the Farnborough Airshow (main manufacturers only - sorry).


AIRCRAFT

Farnborough Preview

We are only days away from this years largest air show. There are quite a few previews out there, the most extensive I read comes from Scott Hamilton.
First at all - for me the SST mentioned in Scott's post is nothing more than a marketimg gag - at least for the flying public. The program could serve Boeing as a technology platform for military vehicles in the future, but I doubt that we will ever see a thing like that one shown in the post flying (in full scale at least).
But what about the rest?