NEO is out!

The time of the "unknown unknowns" is over! Airbus just this morning officially announced that starting in Spring 2016 the new "NEO" version of the A320 family can be delivered to the customers. Airlines (and others who can afford) then have the choice between four engines with the CFM LEAP-X and the PW1100G being the new choices - I guess this is a "first time" in aviation history; although not a really important one, as my guess would be that there will be only a few who will opt for the old engines (CFM56 and V2500).
Airbus claims that the NEO versions, which will also feature the sharklets, will have a 15% advantage in fuel burn versus today's aircraft. To explain, why it is only 15%, although CFM and PW both talk about a 15% SFC advantage for their engines (vs. CFM56 and V2500) and Airbus said that the sharklets lead to a fuel burn reduction up to 3.5%, we have to remember:

• that the new engines will be heavier than the old ones,
• will have a larger fan diameter, thus produce more drag
• there will be additional weight in the wings and pylons to accommodate the heavier engines

These three points are taking something away from the 15% SFC (uninstalled) advantage +3.5% fuel burn advantage, leading to (approximately) 15% fuel burn reduction.

Now - as Airbus came forward today: what is the rest of the (aviation) world doing?

A320NEO - picture taken from the Airbus website

Boeing

The most important question of course is, what the other "big one" will do:
My guess is that this is hinging on what the two most important customers for the B737, Southwest and Ryanair, will have to say.
In the last weeks both airlines talked up the reengining, saying that "doing" nothing" would be no option. A new 737 would of course be the solution they prefer, but Southwest was skeptical, that Boeing would be able to deliver a 737 successor in the 2020 timeframe.
And the 737 is not the only battlefield for Boeing. The 777 has to be (at least) updated and this should be done in the same timeframe as the A350-1000 comes to market - whenever this will be. Probably this will not happen exactly in 2015. If Airbus decides to please Emirates they might opt to alter the -1000 design to a -1100ER, meaning that the airplane gets larger and gets a little bit more range. But the thrust has to rise into the 100klbf range then, and I doubt that the core of the Trent XWB would not be capable of that. As suggested that would open the door for a GE90 variant - an article in Aviation Week suggested that it would just be a downrated version of today's GE90-115B, but the SFC would not meet the requirements, so there would be some technology infusion from GEnx required. But the same engine then could be used by Boeing for their 777 update/successor.
So the path regarding the 777 seems more obvious than that on the 737. At the last quarterly call Boeing kind of negated the possibility to do both programmes at the same time. The question is: what will be first:

• If the 737 is first, Boeing's only choice would be to do a reengining - which would be more costly (if a significant fuel burn saving should be achieved) than for Airbus. A clean-sheet design would not be that much better than the A320NEO (as they would have to work with the same engine technology) to justify the $10billion+ investment.
• If the 777 is first, they will probably loose some market share to Airbus in the narrowbody market for a couple of years.

Embraer

As we all know, also Embraer is thinking, along other options, about reengining their EJet-Family. With Airbus launching the NEO this option becomes more likely. Bombardier eating into their market with the CS100, Sukhoi having a low cost option with the Superjet and Airbus with a A319NEO having an aircraft with probably not much higher trip costs but more seats than the E195 would make a reengining (maybe with the CSeries GTF?) a good option as I explained earlier.

Bombardier

Well, Bombardier was leasing the pack with the CSeries. Without the CSeries, there would not be -NEO launch today (or anytime soon). The A319NEO will eat into the CS300 cake. Question is if Bombardier can react to it and if yes: how?
Could they stretch the CS300 a little bit to reach in between the A319 and the A320. Could they launch a CS500 that would maybe come to market in 2016? And if yes, would they use the same engine (PW1524G) and the same wing, thus compromising range, but optimizing trip and seat costs for typically flown trips around 1000nm. Or can they even hang the same engine under the (strengthened) wing without enlarging the main landing gear?

Bottom line: the first "unknown unknowns" is away - but now there are many others out there...good for us bloggers!

The Chinese "Threat"

At the Zhuhai Airshow COMAC presented first customers for their C919, aimed to be a competitor to the A320 and B737 narrowbody families.

COMAC said that there are now “up to 100 orders” – a closer look shows that 50 of these orders are firm orders the rest are options.

The four big airlines in China – Air China, China Eastern, China Southern and Hainan Airlines – all ordered the C919. The first three all ordered “up to 20”, probably meaning that 10 for each airline are firm orders and 10 are options.

GECAS is another launch customer – for 5 firm orders and another 5 options. This is not a big surprise, as GECAS is also a customer for the much-delayed ARJ21-700 and GE delivers the engines for both aircraft (as part of the CFM consortium in the case of the C919).

The last launch customer is CDB (China Development Bank) – also not a big surprise, as CDB wants to play a big role in aircraft leasing in the future and signed MoU’s with all civil aircraft manufacturers recently. An anticipated order for the Bombardier CSeries is still in the pipeline and will most probably not being made public during the Zhuhai Airshow, as Scott Hamilton assumed recently.

So the C919 got their first customers – fine! But do we see a threat for Airbus and Boeing here? Not really for the next 10-15 years to come, I would say. Let’s have a look at the numbers for outstanding firm orders from the Chinese airlines that now ordered the C919.

Airbus

Airline	A319	A320	A321	Sum
Air China		28	14	42
China Eastern	5	26	5	36
China Southern		25		25
Hainan	5	26		31
Sum	10	105	19	131

These are the numbers as in the Airbus O&D table from October 31, 2010.

We have to add the order the 50 A320 aircraft which was signed early November.

So the total is 181 open orders.

Boeing

Airline	B737-700	B737-800	B737-900ER	Sum
Air China		50		50
China Southern	25	30		55
Sum	25	80		105

Additionally, there are 46 open orders from other Chinese airlines for the B737 family for a total of 151 open orders.

This is a total of 332 open orders for Airbus and Boeing narrowbodies.

Let’s have a look at the actual aircraft and the (small set of) date given to the media by COMAC at the Airshow (Flightglobals headline was “Comac releases C919 specifications”, which was a little bit exaggerated) and compare it to the A320.

	C919	A320
Span	35.8m	34.1m
Length	38.9m	37.6m
Cabin width	3.90m	3.70m

Efficiency is driven largely by two values: aircraft (empty) weight and engine SFC. Another important factor Is the wing efficiency, expressed in L/D (lift-to-drag ratio).

The thrust needed to power the aircraft in level flight is mass*(L/D).

From press releases it is known that the LEAP-X1C for the C919 is designed for a thrust of 30klbf. The 1.3m shorter A320 has a thrust rating of 27klbf, the engines on the 5.6m longer A321 produce 33klbf of thrust at takeoff.

Weight is not given by COMAC, but the span gives a good indication of the weight. Assumed that the aspect ratio of the C919 wing is not that different from a A320 or B737 wing, the wing area is at least the same as the wing of A320. Wing loading at takeoff (takeoff mass/wing area) is - together with the takeoff thrust – the driving factor for the takeoff length. The C919 is designed with hot-and-high airports in Western China in mind, so wing loading should not be far beyond the A320.

L/D could of course be a little bit better, as the A320 wing design is well over twenty years old.

Given all that we can preclude that the C919 won’t have a large weight advantage against the A320. The main driver for efficiency will be the engine. No doubt that the LEAP-X1C will be far better in SFC than the V2500 and the CFM56-5B on the A320. But what if Airbus does the –NEO? And what if the LEAP-X1C is not the “real” LEAP, as discussed here and elsewhere?

Conclusion: for me, the C919 is not a big deal for the next ten to fifteen years – at least technically. If China decides one day that chinese airlines have to buy nothing but Chinese, then it’s a different story – and confined to the Chinese market and close allies.

By then the Chinese aircraft market could very well cool down, as high speed rail eats into air travel wherever a rail line opens.

Update:
There is a good artice on the Aviation Week Website detailing the C919 orders. It's a little bit different than originally reported by Flight International...

EASA Directive for Trent 900

The EASA found an oil fire in the HP/IP turbine area to be the cause of the uncontained failure in the #2 Trent 900 engine of the Qantas A380 on Nov. 4. This is an outcome that was expected by experts. The AD dated November 10, 2010 can be found here.
But why does an oil fire lead the IP turbine disk to disintegrate? Let's talk about what (likely?, maybe?) happened in detail and step by step:

1. The buffer cavity between the HP and the IP gets contaminated with oil. Why this happened is pure speculation at the moment. It could have been a bearing that leaked, it could have been oil lines that leaked or failed or something else...
2. During the take-off and climb phase temperatures in the cavity are rising high enough to let the oil ignite.
3. The IP shaft gets overheated and fails.
4. The IPT disk, now running free without the IP compressor as a brake, accelerates in milliseconds as fuel is still pumped into the combustor. The bore of the disk is designed to withstand speeds that are up to, say, 40% higher than the speed at takeoff, whereas the airfoils are designed to fail earlier, at maybe 120% speed. But the oil fire also heated up the bore, decreasing the so called overspeed burst margin.
5. The disk burst at a speed before the airfoils fail.

So what needs RR to do to prevent such a failure to happen again?

First of all, prevent the oil leakage. Without oil leakage no fire, no shaft shear, no disk burst.
Secondly, as you probably never can eliminate the possibility of an oil leak for 100% sure, a functionality has to be build into the engine that detects a shaft shear and shuts off the fuel immediately. Without the fuel being burned and the energy put into the turbine gas path, the disk will not accelerate.

Rolls Royce said that the Trent 900 and the Trent 1000 uncontained failures are unrelated. That might be true with respect to the causes of the two incidents. But I would like to hear what Rolls Royce changed in their design philolosophy between the Trent 900 and the Trent 1000 (and the Trent XWB) to prevent such an overspeed beyond burst limit speeds in case of a shaft shear as it appears that the outcome of the different causes was the same.
To clarify, the story I pictured is my view on what might happened. I can't assure that it was like I wrote. I hope to hear the "real" story tomorrow from RR.

Boeings Dreamliner under Fire

News came late yesterday that the second prototype of the B787, ZA002, landed with a cabin full of smoke in Laredo, Texas. The aircraft was en route to Harlingen, TX for trials of the nitrogen generation system. The fire broke out in the aft electronics equipment bay, the PFD and the auto throttle failed and the ram air turbine deplyed to provide enough electricity to handle th aircraft and to land it safely.
No one was injured, all test personell exited the aircraft via emergency slides.

The 787 saga of problems continues! All what can go wrong - goes wrong! Said someone "Murphy...?

What and if this latest part of the 787 saga means something really serious for the further flight test campaign and first deliveries of the aircraft remains to be seen.
In the best case there "just" was something like a short-circuit in the test equipment. Then the fire has nothing to do with the aircraft itself and the test fleet will be back in the air soon.
But it would be a lot worse if the fire has something to do with the electrical or electronical system of the aircraft.

• If it is the electrical system and some kind of short-circuit, the problem would be to find to exact location and cause of the problem. Also it would have to be examined if the cause lies in the software that controls the electrics.
• If it is the electronics itself where the fire started, it could either be a short-circuit on a circuit board or overheating of the electronics. How long then changes will take, is up in the air...and so long the aircraft won't....

In every case, the alarm bells in Rockford, Ill., where the Electrical Systems Division of Hamilton Sundstrand is located, are ringing!

Rolls Royce faces technical and legal battles

What a bad time for Rolls Royce:

August 2: Uncontained Failure on a Trent 1000 in Darby

August 30: Uncontained Failure at a Qantas B747-400 powered by RB211’s

November 4: Uncontained Failure at a Qantas A380-842 powered by Trent 900’s

Not to mention the more minor problems two B747-400 had with a RB211 (apparently a contained failure) and with fuel hydraulics.

And now: Pratt sues Rolls on patent infringement regarding the Trent 900 and Trent 1000 fan blades.

Let us recall: not long ago, in August, Rolls Royce filed a lawsuit against Pratt & Whitney, claiming that P&W would infringe their patented design for swept fan blades with their fan blades on the GP7000 and the PW1000G (and others). This case is due to go before a jury in the US in the first half of 2011.

Pratt & Whitney apparently fights back now, filing also a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), which could be very damaging for Rolls Royce, as if the ITC rules in Pratt’s favor, RR could get blocked to ship any more Trent 1000’s to Boeing. And if the UK courts come to the same conclusion, RR would also have a problem to ship the Trent 900 to Airbus.

But could that be Pratt’s real interest? Not only P&W and RR would be deadly enemies forever, also Airbus and Boeing would not be happy about P&W, as deliveries for the B787 and A380 to customers with Trent 900 and 1000 engines would be (further) delayed or in the worst case impossible. As a last consequence you could expect RR to go bankrupt.

So I doubt that this is what P&W is really looking for – even if Airbus goes ahead with the A320NEO and P&W developing a version of their PW1000G Geared Turbo Fan for it without Rolls Royce, the two companies will still be tied for centuries, as the V2500 will continue to be shipped until 2015 at least and aftermarket activities will continue  - say – twenty years plus.

So what could be the real goal behind the legal actions?

My guess: P&W wants RR to “cooperate” a little bit more on the narrowbody front:

RR officially states that reengining the current Boeing and Airbus narrowbodies does not make any sense. But it sounded a little bit different until RR was officially put out of the reengining game by Airbus. And as RR has no interest to participate as  a junior partner in the GTF, RR would be out of the narrowbody market at least until a clean sheet design either by Boeing or Airbus arrives. So one can imagine that RR will do everything (legal, of course) they can do to prevent the Airbus reengining by hindering and blocking P&W’s PW1000G to be one of the –NEO engines.

I do not know how the IAE contract between Pratt, RR and the other partners looks like, but maybe RR can block an engine offering for the A320NEO by P&W – or block order conversions from the V2500 to a PW1000G once the A320NEO is officially offered to costumers.

It will be interesting to see how RR will come out of these two battles:

-          the technical battle: RR has to regain confidence on the Trent 900/1000 – and maybe the XWB

-          the legal battle with P&W