Everyone's a winner, baby...

Boeing‘s Randy Tinseth can’t resist to screw every statistics in his (i.e. Boeing’s ) favour. This makes him of course no different from John Leahy, head of sales at Airbus. Now, after Air Canada firmed up their order for 61 B737MAX yesterday, Tinseth claimed that the B737MAX gained more than 50% of the market since it’s first order. Granted – Boeing has now 1908 firm orders for the B737MAX in the books and Airbus sold “just” 1521 A320neo since the first order for the B737MAX from Southwest Airlines. But does that really matter? Boeing’s first firm order for the B737MAX from Southwest Airlines in December 2011 came more than one year after the launch of the A320neo on Dec. 1^st, 2010 and Airbus booked the first order for the A320eo from Virgin America in late December that year. By the time of the first B737MAX order Airbus already had 1,176 firm orders for the A320neo family and so they had 89.55% of the market (“Neo vs. MAX”).

In 2012, the first full year where the B737MAX was available, Boeing had the upper hand: 949 firm order for the B737MAX meant a 66.5% market share for that year with Airbus being in the overall lead with 61.6% (1,764 vs. 1,099 orders).

In 2013 the picture reversed in favor of Airbus –they sold another 937 A320neo aircraft where Boeing gained “only” 703. Overall Airbus held a market share of 59.7%.

Until today in 2014 Boeing sold 117 B737MAX – Airbus sold 57 A320neo. So one could conclude that the market lead for Airbus dwindles away. But there are a few large already won campaigns for Airbus  to be firmed up: Tigerair (37 A/C), China Eastern (70 A/C), ANA (30 A/C) and a few others – like Monarch – are waiting for their winner. So I guess Airbus’s John Leahy will soon have an answer for Tinseth’s anaylsis with his own statistics.

The better choice than throwing  with statistics would maybe be that both gentlemen would unite to sing the Hot Chocolate song "Everyone's a winner" - although I cannot imagine them singing together the line "Making love to you is such a thrill..."...

In retrospective, the decision by Airbus to launch the A320neo brought record full order books for both and helped both to fend off Bombardier's CSeries. And there is some truth of course in the claim that SVP Andy Shankland from Airbus made at the ISTAT America this year, that it would be fair to say that the B737MAX was launched in Toulouse. So Randy could bring a bottle of wine to the party to celebrate their appearance in front of the aviation audience. I would give a fortune to see and hear them...

Boeing 737 successor Part II

A few days ago I wrote about a possible 737 successor, aka 797.
Every day I get a mail with the headlines from ATI (Air Transport Intelligence) and today there where two headlines that catched my eyes.

1. Boeing sets performance targets for 737 clean-sheet contender (10Mar11
   23:29 GMT) Boeing would like its possible 737 clean-sheet design to
   have a 15-20% improvement in fuel efficiency over today's
   model, VP for marketing Randy Tinseth says at the Asian
   Aerospace show in Hong Kong.
2. Boeing: Twin-aisle 737 replacement could increase aircraft utilisation
   (10Mar11 23:25 GMT) Boeing is evaluating how to reduce weight from a 737
   replacement with a wider fuselage accommodating two aisles,
   vice-president for marketing Randy Tinseth says at the Asian
   Aerospace airshow in Hong Kong.

Here are my questions (and in the unlikely case that Randy Tinseth reads this, I would be the most happy man to get the answers directly from himself):

1. Why does Boeing only target 15-20% better fuel efficiency over the 737? If this is all they want, they can go straight ahead with reengining (Mike Bair said that reengining would yield 11%) plus some (more or less) minor improvements like weight savings through more composites and aerodynamic improvements. As a reengining benefits from grandfather-rights, Boeing would not have to care for some safety regulations that were introduced after the EIS of the 737-100. If Boeing goes with an all-new aircraft, they would have to care for all these with a weight disadvantage for the new aircraft versus the B737NG from the beginning.
2. Aside from the problems I tried to describe in the earlier entry, I still do not understand how the twin-aisle concept reduces the time for passengers to board and de-board an aircraft. The bottleneck are always the doors, so Boeing should better build wider doors. And for some low-cost airlines they should maybe have an option to build in a same-sized rear exit door, as Ryanair usually does not use airbridges at the terminal but boards and deboards on the tarmac via stairs.

Looking forward for the Paris Airshow this year more than ever...

There are three more parts of this story:
Part I
Part III
Part IV