Three in a row, two in a week..

There is some movement in the A320neo engine market right now, it seems. P&W scored three "wins" in a row recently. After BOCA announced an order for 15 A320neo to be powered with the PW1100G-JM, this week both Tigerair and ANA selected the Geared Turbo Fan for 37 and 30 aircraft.
I would expect that we will see more decisions about A320neo engine options being taken this year as EIS is now less than 20 months away. The PW1100G-JM should gain certification this summer so that it will maybe have an advantage in customer confidence (and this is badly needed by P&W after the PW6000 disaster).
Right now the GTF has a slightly larger market share with 896 aircraft (866 shown here by pdxlight plus 30 by ANA) to be powered versus 827 to be powered by the LEAP-1A. But there are large campaigns waiting for a winner, like Lion Air (174 aircraft), American Airlines (130 aircraft) and easyjet (100 aircraft), so the picture can turn by any of these campaigns decided.

Lion Air Accident

On Saturday a B737-800 crashed into the sea just before reaching the runway of Bali.
Some "analysts" and "experts" were quick to question Lion Air's safety in the light of the quick expansion and rapid growth of the airline. They did not care to wait for what the pilots had to say about the accident and what had caused it. As we can read here the pilot has about 15,000 flight hours and is a flight instructor and the co-pilot, who was in charge, has about 2,000 flight hours so I would rule out any reason relating to inexperience of the flight crew. It appears that the reason was weather related, heavy rain and a wind shear or a downdraft might have caused the crash.
As safe as today's aircraft are - there isn't any powerful force than mother nature. We should never forget this! Even the safest airline can't be "safe" enough not to be prone to the forces of nature.

Good days for the A320!

What a week for Airbus! John Leahy predicted at the beginning of last week during his presentation at the ISTAT conference that until the end of March Airbus will have more than 2000 orders for the A320neo. While the number itself is technically just as good as 1900 or 2100, it justifies once more the decision to go ahead with the neo program in December 2010. Boeing, as it seems, was really caught by surprise, despite Airbus was talking about the possible launch for months before deciding to launch the neo program.

Lufthansa

The Lufthansa order was not a big surprise. I wrote about that in an earlier post. Nico Buchholz, VP

Narrowbody Outlook 2013

After Boeing and Airbus unveiled their final order and delivery numbers for 2012 it is now time to turn to what is ahead. What will 2013 bring us in the narrowbody segment?

Let’s begin with deliveries – this is quite easy:

·         Airbus stabilizes their output rate at 42/month and will deliver 480-485 A320 family aircraft (ca. 11.5*42 as we have to take the summer break into account)

·         Boeing will increase the delivery rate towards  38 B737NG’s per month and therefore deliver between 450-460 narrowbodies.

·         Bombardier will deliver the first CS100 in 2014, so A & B are (probably for the last time) alone.

Narrowbody Review 2012 Part 2

After the Airbus Press Conference is over we now have the long awaited numbers of orders and

Orders, orders, orders...

Starting early last week we see another MoU firmed up (MEA, Avolon), a new MoU (Hawaiian) or even a completely new order (Citilink) for the A320neo. An exception was last Friday, when Airbus and Singapore announced the order for 5 more A380 and 20 more A350-900.
I am now sure that John Leahy will tell the audience on Thursday that he now has (more than) 2000 orders and commitments for the A320neo. Maybe even 2000 or more firm orders.
Today's order came from BOC Aviation for 25 A320neo as well as 25 A320ceo, further filling the remaining delivery positions for the "ceo".
I wonder who is featured in Leahy's 5th season show tomorrow. And who is going to be the rabbit jumping out of Leahy's hat on Thursday.
That leads me to...Lion! They reportedly will order or have ordered more than 200 A320's. I believe it when I see it...Scott Hamilton reports also that they selected the GTF for this order - if this is all true, it would be a huge blow for both Boeing and CFM.
The firmation of the AA order is subject to cout approval now (as is the MAX and B787 order).

Airbus year end Order Buzz

Every January there is a press conference in Toulouse where John Leahy presents the order and delivery figures for the past year. And every year he has some surprise orders which came in in December. Two years ago, for example, Richard Branson took center stage in the press conference when the first order for the A320neo for 30 aircraft where

Lion Air - another Boeing-Airbus splitter?

In one of my recent posts I speculated about a large narrowbody order accompanying the launch of the low cost carrier from Lion Air and NADI, based in Kuala Lumpur and aimed to take on Air Asia. But Rusdi Kirana, owner of Lion Air, said that the aircraft will be B737-900ER and probably later on B737MAX-9 channeled through Lion Air's existing order book with Boeing.
Now there are news out, reporting that Kirana said that Lion Air needs more planes and Scott Hamilton predicts an order for 100 A320neo's to be knocking at John Leahy's door.
I remember (and found) a press article last year, a few weeks after the massive order from Lion Air for B737-900ER and B737MAX-9 was announced, in which John Leahy mentioned that Airbus and Lion Air already had a MoU in place, but then political pressure from the White House inhibited Lion Air from defecting from Boeing to Airbus. Who know - maybe the MoU is still valid?
It looks like there are two 100-aircraft-orders in the works in Toulouse. The other of course being for AirAsia. Reports last week said that this is not only for the A320neo - earlier reports suggested that the A320ceo is the aircraft to be ordered as Tony Fernandes said that AirAsia needs more planes "soon". I guess there will be also a nice number of A330-300 (presumably the new 240t version) and maybe more A350's in the deal. At last weeks ISTAT Europe the A330-300 was one of the most mentioned aircraft (in a positive way): Nico Buchholz, Lufthansa VP Fleet Strategy said that it is a "bloody profitable" aircraft for their North America destinations. But also AirAsia Co-Founder Conor McCarthy was very positive about the aircraft (but he also thanked god that AirAsiaX has just two A340-300 in the fleet).
The new (still to be announced) AirAsia order was public since Farnborough (or even earlier, I don't remember exactly). It will go to AirAsia's board in the coming days and then officially announced. I would guess the Lion Air order for A320neo's (if true) will be announced shortly thereafter.
As boring the summer was in terms of new aircraft orders (at least since Farnborough), as interesting might get the rest of the year...

Lion Air vs. AirAsia

That just caught my eye: after AirAsia announced to buy Batavia Air, merges them with Indonesia AirAsia and thereby becomes a real competitor to Lion Air, now Lion Air (together with NADI) strikes back in AirAsia's home country.
Competition in Southeast Asia will get hard in the next few years. But the region is the one with the highest growth and everyone wants to get piece of the cake.
Will the new airline place a large narrowbody order? Or will they be fed from Lion Air's existing orderbook for B737-900ER/-MAX9? Next Tuesday could be interesting - and AirAsia already announced that they want to place an order for 50-100  more A320 (ceo I guess) at the Berlin Air Show (ILA), also next week.

NEO and MAX

In the last few days we saw a few more orders and commitments for the A320neo and B737 MAX. Here is a list:

A320neo:

50 Qatar (+30 options)

50 ALAFCO (+30 options)

30 ACG

45 Spirit Airlines

30 Volaris

B737 MAX:

201 Lion Air (+150 options)

35 ACG

So we now know three committed customers for the B737 MAX out of the nine customers that committed for 700 aircraft - the third one of course being American Airlines, triggering the launch of the B737 MAX with their rejection of the also proposed Boeing NSA and their commitment to take 100 B737 MAX and an option for another 60.

The Lion Air commitment is significant: