HO HO HO HO, FROGS LOSE
Great news for Boeing----bad bad bad news for Froggy Bus
Several of the biggest customers for AirBus have demanded major changes in the design of the 340 and 350 Airbus planes because as they sit right now they are fuel sucking dinosaurs. The European planemaker's biggest customer, the International Lease Finance Corp., a Los Angeles-based subsidiary of American International Group (AIG), called for a top-to-bottom redesign of the A350, the plane Airbus plans to launch as a rival to Boeing's 787 Dreamliner. Add to that the UAE, who would like to get even with the U.S. but not at the cost of running an airline that must be subsidized to exist, has basically cancelled their orders. Boing has been saying all along that the Airbus design would never be able to compete. They have been vindicated.
Industry watchers say Airbus will probably be forced to revamp the plane, even though the changes suggested would boost development costs from $5.3 billion to as much as $10 billion. Airbus' current design is based on its existing A330 widebody plane, with the addition of more fuel-efficient engines and increased use of lightweight composites.Full story at Biz Week.
At the conference, Udvar-Hazy said that a design based on "leftovers" would sell poorly against the 787, perhaps winning as little as 25% of the market. "Airbus has boxed themselves in on the A350," he told BusinessWeek Online. "Airbus has to make some changes."
6 comments:
Add to that the UAE, who would like to get even with the U.S. but not at the cost of running an airline that must be subsidized to exist, has basically cancelled their orders.
Yo, Howie, just a couple weeks ago you were saying we had to let the UAE firm take over US ports, else the A-rabs wouldn't buy no more Boeing airplanes.
You were wrong, Howie.
Why? I suspect you take Invester's Business Daily editorials too seriously.
-- david.davenport.1@netzero.com
If you will check the news stories today you will see that this ain't over til it's over. This is a completely government subsidized operation and the plane is built in twenty countries and shipped to France for assembly. This catastophic loss of subsidized jobs will move the EU to pay up the ten billion to fix it. I'm for Boeing but the countries announcing purchases today build the dam Air Bus.
This is a completely government subsidized operation and the plane is built in twenty countries and shipped to France for assembly. This catastophic loss of subsidized jobs will move the EU to pay up the ten billion to fix it. I'm for Boeing but the countries announcing purchases today build the dam Air Bus.
What point are you trying to make there?
Look, neither Boeing nor Airbus are actually "private enterprise" operations, and the sale of airliners has been very political for a long time. Many big foreign airlines are nationalized.
By the way, Airbus' big new model, the A380, has problems. It's a liitle heaverer than designed for, the wing is a little darggier than they claim, and the wing recently failed its 150 per cent limit stress test by a few percent, which means further delay in delivery.
-- david.davenport.1@netzero.com
Several emailers have asked why existing Air Bus customers just don't walk away and buy Boeing; why ask Air Bus to change designs? The answer appears to be in the parts required to maintain their existing Air Bus planes. To shift from Air Bus to Boeing will require a dual parts/maintainence program for the affected airlines.
But lots of airlines, including Air France, already operate both brands of airplane.
There are also pilot re-training issues.
Airbus aircraft don't handle quite the same as Boeings. Airbus' flight control philosophy is to let the computer embedded in the fly-by-wire control system do more and the pilot make fewer micro-scale control decisions.
If you want to circulate some scare stories about Airbus, you make Google on "A320 rudder."
However, the main reasons why everybody's not gonna switch to Boeing are that (a) most EU countries are also Airbus stakeholders, (b) Muslims and Chinese and really everybody wants to play politics with big aircraft purchases and (c) in general, airlines everywhere are loath to give Boeing or Airbus a monopoly. The big airliner business is a duopoly. The choices are: Airbus or Boeing, or Boeing or Airbus. narrow the choices down to one brand, and the situation gets even worse.
An additional thought about Airbus: part of the reason for Airbus' success is that it has been underpricing Boeing in some cases. There is a question as to whether Airbus is now or has ever been profitable. Airbus is not an American company, and Airbus doesn't conform to American notions about financial transparency.
-- david.davenport.1@netzero.com
The EU airlines will be forced to buy the minimum number of aircraft Airbus needs to eke out a break even number. The good news is that Boeing fleets will be more profitable to operate giving those carriers an edge over the Airbus fleets. The airlines flying these hub and spoke behemoths will have to offer large discounts to fill the seats. All else being the same only the most price sensitive flyer will fly on these planes when for a few bucks more than can fly direct point to point on the new Boeing plane instead of hub and spoke. Greater inconvenience to the passengers and worse fuel efficiency for the airline.
Typical EU idiocy. And to make the thing even marginally doable they will probably be forced to use US engines and avionics.
Here's some more background. it's not necessarily a disaster for the A380 ... a bigger plane with bigger loads of Muslim, umm, travlers coming your way!
mary_hinge
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Dated the 20th Feb 2006.
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp...49&sec=apworld
Airbus official says A380's failed wing test will not delay delivery
SINGAPORE (AP) _ Airbus's chief operating officer for customers said Monday the first delivery of the world's largest commercial jet, the A380, would not be affected by the failure of the jet's wing in a stress test last week.
"It's not a big problem at all in fact. We hope and expect it to be relatively minor,'' John Leahy said on the sidelines of an Airbus briefing ahead of the Asian Aerospace exhibition.
Before certifying an airliner for commercial service, aviation authorities set its "limit loads'' - the maximum strain each part is likely to be placed under during extreme turbulence or hard landings. New planes are required to resist loads of 1.5 times the limit.
The A380 wing had ruptured sooner than expected during ground testing in Toulouse on Tuesday, reaching only 1.45 times its limit load before breaking - 3.3 percent short of target. The wing had been bent upward by 24.3 feet at the tip.
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Old 14th March 2006, 12:36 #7
barit1
Over 500 posts. I really must consider clicking here so I can order a Personal Title. ( <-- Maybe you ought to try this gimmick to "monetize" Oraculations, Howie. )
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The test was undoubtedly planned to demonstrate 150% of some Max ZFW limit. As it happens, it failed a few percent shy of that value.
Another way of stating this is that Airbus have demonstrated 150% of some lower ZFW value (~3 to 5% reduction). Assuming all other tests are met, the initial aircraft could be delivered with a reduced ZFW. This would imply some financial penalty for Airbus because of the reduced profit potential for the airline.
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-- david.davenport.1@netzero.com
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