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

Geared Turbo Fan scores first

Now we have the long-awaited first battle "GTF vs. LEAP-X" fought out: the GTF (PW1133G) won at ILFC. Today they ordered up to 100 A320NEO aircraft, 60 of them will be powered by the GTF, the rest remains open.
Of course, this is only the first round of the battle, with many more to follow.
But many, including me, would have thought that a leasing company would opt for both engines, leaving their customers a choice.
Per CFM and PW, both engines promise the same reduction in fuel burn.
PW states that the GTF has 20% lower maintenance costs compared to today's engines - probably they compare the GTF to the V2500. CFM says maintenance costs for the LEAP-X will stay where they are with the CFM56 today. So at the end of the day the maintenance cost should be comparable, as the V2500 with it's 2nd HPT stage has "by definition" higher maintenance cost than the CFM56.
So the question is: why ILFC feels better with the GTF than with the LEAP-X - at least for the time being? Do they know something the public does not know?
One could say it is just a matter of a good deal, of course, and that could be right. PW might have offered ILFC a to good deal not to make. But on the other hand, pricing power should be something that CFM could play with - they have thousands of engines in the field and will have many more when the deal comes "online" in 2016 and beyond, so they could cross-subsidize more easily than PW can with their limited market power in the narrowbody market, as they are tied to RR in the V2500 - not to speak about the virtually non-existent widebody market power, where their only really selling products are the GP7000 (in a joint venture with GE) - the PW4000 picked up a little bit recently after it got the Advatage70 package.
Bottom line: it is unlikely that pricing power was the driving factor behind the engine decision from ILFC.
Let's wait for the next battles and their outcomes - maybe we can see some kind of a pattern then...

Oh, and by the way - I would love to know what our "friend" Saj Ahmad from the fleetbuzz Editorial has to say about the GTF now...

Boeing 737 successor

Reportedly, Boeing focuses on a replacement of the B737 rather than doing something with the B777 in the nearer future. Mike Bair, who leads the B737RS studies at Boeing, said in the interview with Bloomberg, that "Six or nine months ago, we were leaning toward a bigger airplane sooner" - meaning that Boeing did not expect Airbus to launch the A320NEO and now finds itself captured between Bombardier on the low-end side of the single-aisle market and Airbus trying to steal traditional B737 customers. So they have to react, but reading carefully the Bloomberg interview and also the latest blog entries from Flightblogger Jon Ostrower makes me believe that they are not really sure what to do. Basically, they have two choices:

• A 6 abreast family sized from 149 seats (to please Southwest Airlines in particular) to around 200 seats. That would mean, that todays -700 would grow a little bit, todays -800 and -900 could stay in cabin lenght were they are today. For sure, cabin diameter has to increase to "speed loading and unloading, with either a wider aisle or possibly two aisles".
• That brings us to the second option: a 7 abreast in 2-3-2 configuration with two aisles. That configuration would make it very hard to please Southwest with a 149 seater. The aircraft's fuselage would be heavy in comparison with a 6 abreast aircraft, as the extra aisle takes extra space you have to buid around. Then the 149 seater would have 22 seat rows, compared to 23 rows of the  -700 with 137 seats in Southwest configuration today. It would not only look like a "Mini Guppy" (see below), but the problem is that in case of "one engine out" the stabilizer has a small moment arm and thus has to have a relatively large area, comprising weight for the larger family members, which does not need the large stab. Vice versa is the case with the wing: to get exceptable runway performance and range for the largest family member (runway performance is today's weak point of the -900ER), the wing has to be sized accordingly, which means extra weight for the smallest member. Of course that's a problem of today's B737 and A320 families, too. But with the CSeries entering the market, which is optimized around 135 seats and trans-con range, there is an alternative available which does not have to make this heavy compromises.

Another question Boeing and the engine manufacturers have to answer (first for themselves) is: what are the improvements in SFC for an engine with an EIS 2010 compared to EIS 2013 (CSeries) or EIS 2016 (A320NEO, C919, MS-21).
Boeing today dismisses the NEO as the 15% fuel burn improvement would be not enough. Remember: fuel is about 40% of Direct Operating Costs (DOC), even for narrowbodies (the numbers in Jon Ostrowers interview with Mike Bair seem to be too low) and it could rise even further. Historically, SFC gets down by 0.5-1% per year. So the best we can expect for a EIS 2020 engine is 4% better than the NEO engines will be - and they could be upgraded as the V2500 and the CFM56 were upgraded several times in their life.
So where could the big advantage in DOC come from?

• Aircraft weight: the new aircraft will benefit from new and lighter materials. If you read the interview, it will probably not be a plastic aircraft but a will get a Al-Li fuselage, like the CSeries.
• Plastic wing with smaller wing area (compared to today's B737) with higher aspect ratio: that leads to lower drag, lower weight and better aerodynamics
• The first two bullets both lead to a lower thrust requirement, directly leading to lower fuel burn.
• Maintenance costs of the aircraft: as the B737 today is the airline's darling when it comes to maintenance costs I can't see where this could get dramatically better
• Maintenance costs of the engines: as these engines will (most probably) be enhanced versions of the LEAP-X and the GTF or something similar from RR (Advantage 2 or 3), the difference in maintenance costs to the NEO engines would be small if at all. They could be even higher, as one way to improve SFC would be to raise OPR and therefore core temperatures.

Conclusion: there will be an cost advantage of the 737RS/797 compared to the NEO: of course. But will it be a step change? I can't see it today. And there are alternatives like the Bombardier CSeries and maybe another 5 abreast model from Embraer - they will decide what to do after Boeing announces their final plans - what could happen in June according to Bair. So in the second half of the year, we should have an announcement from Brasil...watch out!

This is how a 130 seater in a 2-3-2 seat configuration would look like...



Meanwhile there are three more blog entries about the possible 737 successor:
Part II
Part III
Part IV

New blog on the bloglist

You might have already seen it: there is a new blog on my blogroll:
Saj Ahmad Fleetbuzz Fact Checker
If you re-read my very first post,where I tried to explain my motivation to write my blog, you can understand why this blog is on my blogroll. Obviously I am not the only one who feels nerved by the biased blog of Ahmed Saj. From my own knowledge of what is going on in the industry I can only agree with the author: Saj has obviously no contacts other than to Boeing and uses excerpts knowingly false or in a wrong context.
I guess at least some of his statements will be proved to be wrong in the coming weeks and months!
So I really recommend reading the Fact Checker...

AirAsia eyes A320NEO

News broke yesterday that AirAsia's CEO Tony Fernandes held talks with Airbus COO John Leahy and CEO Tom Enders about a mass purchase of the A320NEO. According to Fernandes the order would be similar in size to the existing order for 175 A320, so expect something like a firm order for 100 and a further 50 options or so to be announced soon. Maybe together with the also "pre-announced" order for more A330's, maybe firmed during the Paris Air Show in June.
If you look at AirAsia and the other two carriers which came forward to order or to sign an LoI for the NEO, it becomes clear who are the prime targets for Airbus when the A320NEO was launched: the fast-growing LCC's in Asia (IndiGo, AirAsia, Tiger) and elsewhere (Virgin America in this case). A few years back the prime targets would have been on different continents - this is a clear sign of how the world has changed in the last decade.
Why are these large LCC's attractive (potential) customers)? They already have (or will have in 2016) large fleets - adding another subtype (in case of the NEO it's "just" another engine) in an equal large scale does not produce a lot of headaches. And by being one of the launch customers for one of the NEO engines, they can bet on getting good deals not only regarding the purchase price of the engines but also for aftermarket packages. Remember IndiGo was the launch customer for the V2500Select.
Even Ryanair, at least in public, talks about adding another type to their B737-800 fleet, altough that might be just chatter get better pricing from Boeing. Southwest though, already having different types of the B737 in their fleet and adding the B717 with the purchase (merger) of airtran can be expected to have a closer look to diversifying the fleet more, but this would, if at all, point more in the direction of the CS300 (or a CS500) to replace the B737-300 and later -700.
So expect to see more big orders for the A320NEO from LCC's - but not only from LCC's...