A small review of 2019 - and outlook for 2020

Looking back at what happened at Civil Aviation in 2019 first of all there are two things belonging to Boeing: most important of course the grounding of the B737MAX. A lot was written about it, so I won't do... at least it was good for every lessor who had a B737NG or an A320 coming off-lease, making a good lease rate for the next lease. But bad for all the airlines which now has to pay the higher lease rates...
Boeing now stops B737MAX production for some weeks or months, also the suppliers will at least slow their output. That could give some of them breathing room -  at least all the casting houses for turbine blades were running over capacity...
The second "important thing" from Boeing did not happen - at least so far: the NMA. Who knows if Boeing would have launched it if the B737MAX did not happen?
Airbus meanwhile launched the A321XLR and now has a few hundred orders for it, some of them maybe only because NMA was not launched. A320neo family production is still a problem, this time not because of missing engines, but because of missing cabins. Airbus maybe should have launched a new-build freighter version earlier...😂
Production of the A220 though went better than predicted by Airbus. According to the Airbus Family Flight Page 44 aircraft were delivered so far and 48 had a first flight. I guess the four remaining aircraft will be delivered until the end of the year.That would be three more deliveries than anticipated and about 45% more than in 2018 (33 deliveries). A welcome break from Bombardiers policy to forecast more deliveries than actually were delivered.
But with the recent announcement from Airbus that building the so-called "pre FAL" I doubt that out of Mirabel there will be a big jump in delivery numbers out of Mirabel in 2020. Airbus made some progress in completing the aircraft, building more capacity in the "back part" of the assembly process. But as long as there is no capacity increase by building the "pre FAL", the input of new aircraft at the "front part" cannot be increased very much.
Another six aircraft for Delta and one for Jetblue should be delivered from Mobile. I wait to see the combined delivery goal from Airbus...
A little bit of a disappointment is the Embraer E2 Family: deliveries for the E190E2 and the E195E2 are still below 20! I doubt that Azul will get six E195E2 until the end of the year, so far they got four. Also Helvetic only got two of their anticipated four E190E2, with the second aircraft (HB-AZB) reaching Zurich only yesterday.
At least Embraer managed to get the E175E2 in the air before the end of the year. But without a customer and with no changes in the US Scope Clauses in sight, where is the program heading to?
Talking about orders, at the beginning of the year, John Slattery promised that 2019 would be the year of the big orders for the E2. Sure the order from KLM is good for the program but not  really a new order as they take the aircraft from existing lessor orders.

Slattery also promised large orders for 2018. Maybe we have to wait until the merger with Boeing is finalized, but there are two questions to this theory:
1. When will the merger be finalized: the EU is holding up the process and that might be e political response to the U.S. tariffs against Airbus.
2. Will Boeing have any priorities to sell the E175E2. They have to rebuild trust in their own bread-and-butter product, bring the 777-9 into the air and through flight testing, maybe launch, market and sell NMA...

Spacejet... I don't know. FTV10 is still not in the air and this is the aircraft which MITAC needs for certification flights. The main problem will be to build trust they can manage to build the M100, on paper a very good aircraft...

So far, so good! I know, this review and outlook is incomplete, but these were the topics that came through my head this morning...

I wish everyone (who wants one) a Happy Christmas!
And really everyone a peaceful 2020 - the world needs it!