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...

Boeing's very ambitious plans

A lot of media articles are out there today covering what Boeing CEO McNerney told the audience at the Cowen and Co. conference: "We're gonna do a new airplane that will go beyond the capability of what the [A320]NEO can do." (Flightblogger has all the quotes)
Well, once Boeing really does a new airplane (in the A320/B737 category), it has to be better than the NEO for sure - otherwise there would be no reason to do it anyway.
But he went further on and said that the B787-10 would be a good replacement for the A330. No argument against that...then he also said, that Boeing is studying upgrades for the B777 (which is not new), but that these are targeted for after an EIS for the B737 replacement, which would be around 2020. In the meantime Boeing could do the 787-10.

??? Please what ???

After the more than three year late 787-8 Boeing should concentrate on delivering the B787-8, developing and the delivering the 787-9 before talking about three(!) new or at least heavily upgraded aircraft. Boeing lost too much credibility since the roll-out of the 787.

Interestingly Teal Group VP Aboulafia forecasted this week that Boeing would have to react against the NEO with a re-engined 737. And also Scott Hamilton reports that studies for the re-engining did not stop.
So by now nothing is certain - despite doing the B787-10, then B737RS and then 777up, it could also be 737RE, then 777up and then, if at all, the 787-10. I don't see an urgent need for the B787-10 anyway, as the 787-9 would pretty much do the job of the A330-300. The 787-10 would probably need a new undercarriage, more thrust than the Trent1000 and the GEnx are capable today and customer needs are diverging in terms of payload and range - a problem that reportedly also faces Airbus with the A350-1000.
I would be very interested to hear what major customers like Southwest are thinking about these ambitious plans...

CSeries impact

Last year I wrote an entry about what the Bombardier CSeries meant for aircraft development. Meanwhile Airbus announced the A320NEO programme on Dec 1st, 2010 and announced first customers. I expect more to come forward in the next weeks and months - by the time the Paris Air Show ends, Airbus could have 500+ orders (or at least MoU-like commitments) for the A320NEO in the books.
If you read how Southwest is now pushing Boeing to clarify it's plans for the B737, you can clearly see how the decision by Bombardier to lauch the CSeries affected the whole development cycle:
Virgin America, the launch customer of the A320NEO, looked very seriously to buy the CS300 - it was only when Airbus came forward with the NEO that Virgin decided to stay with Airbus. So, very clearly: without the CSeries there would not be a NEO to buy!
Boeing has to and will react - until lately I was not convinced that they would do a 737 successor. My thoughts were, like John Leahy, that they would announce a reengining of the 737 soon after a launch of the NEO. In the meantime I am a little bit more convinced that they could announce a new narrowbody. Scott Hamilton recently argued why. If Boeing is right to think that the A350-1000 will enter airline service not before 2019 is on another piece of paper - but if they are convinced, it would make sense to do the narrowbody first - well, if it is a narrowbody! It could also be the long-discussed small widebody, starting at around the capacity of todays 737-800 and going up to the capacity of the 757-300. They would leave the 150 seater market to Airbus and possibly Bombardier (CS500?) and maybe Embraer, but they would have another big market for themselves.
At the EADS press conference CEO Louis Gallois thought loudly about a tie-up between OEM's, as the market place gets increasingly crowded during the next decade. There were speculations then that Airbus could partner with Embraer and Boeing with Bombardier - I could also see some cooperations with the japanese Heavies, as I wrote earlier. All this will not happen this year, but the possibility - and good reasons - are there for it that it will happen sometime.