Aus der aktuellen Flug Revue:
AIRBUS AND BOEING BATTLE FOR FUTURE MARKETS
By Sebastian Steinke
Le Bourget and the Aérosalon serve as a very international stage, on which manufacturers from around the world can lay out their competing wares. This year the comparison between the two industry giants, Airbus and Boeing, is particularly tense as the arch-rivals are putting forward quite different product ideas in the hard fight to win airline customers.
Before the A380 programme was even definitely launched at the end of last year Airbus had already notched up a remarkable number of orders. Evidently the resolve that was publicly trumpeted right from the beginning to realise this costly and, for Airbus, even fateful large project helped win over the confidence of the airlines in the new A380 ultra-large airliner family. The acquisition early on of FedEx as a customer, signifying a breakthrough into the North American market and also into the freight sector, was particularly auspicious.
The outlook from Boeing's perspective, particularly in this market segment, is in stark contrast. After the vain attempt to launch a much modified jumbo jet on the market in the form of the 747-500/600, the somewhat less ambitious 747X/X Stretch also failed for lack of demand. For a whole year Boeing touted the two X variants around without succeeding in bagging a single order. This fact is somewhat surprising when one considers the large number of 747's in service around the world and its high customer acceptance. Instead, there will at least be further passenger and freighter derivatives on the basis of the 747-400LR, offering a slightly increased take-off weight and thus more range.
Especially in the freight area, a stretched 747 from the X family, with its voluminous fuselage interior, would very likely have had good prospects, not least as Boeing only recently withdrew its in-house rival, the MD-11F (ex McDonnell Douglas Long Beach), from the market. This raises the question of whether "Seattle" was flexible enough on the selling price and terms.
If Boeing really does phase out its classic 747 in the long-term without bringing out a successor of at least the same size, ironically Airbus will find itself in a launch situation that is the exact opposite of the position it has been in for so many years, in which it has had to hold its own against a rival manufacturer that offers a complete portfolio of products, despite having no equivalent product in the superclass.
For one of the knock-on effects of the 747 success story was that existing jumbo jet customers would return to Boeing when they also needed a medium- or short-range aircraft. In this way the 747 flagship that was so popular with the airlines became a powerful bait by which Boeing lured in customers for all its other aircraft. In the industry it was said that the exorbitant 747 price tag that Boeing got away with for so long produced a profit margin the equivalent of a fully fitted 737 on every aircraft sold.
In Toulouse they are hoping that Airbus will now find itself in this enticing monopolistic role. The decision by Boeing to walk away from the X-Stretch and hence effectively to give up its ambitions of a future rival to the A380 have actually improved the prospects of Europe's own ultra-large aircraft proving a financial success. The trend may well be towards increased demand for point-to-point services, but there will definitely be a profitable market for jumbo jets as well and also for aircraft with even greater capacity. This latter market only Airbus with its A380 will now be able to supply.
Despite all the media excitement over the mega-aircraft, however, it remains likely that the more mundane midsize segment will continue to constitute the real "bread-and-butter market". Already today the Airbus A310 and A330 and the Boeing 757 and 767 classes account for the majority of North Atlantic traffic.
In its Sonic Cruiser Boeing has now launched an exotic new competitor with special longhaul capabilities into the running. It remains to be seen, however, how seriously Boeing takes this expensive new project and how rapidly it can reach the market.
In theory faster point-to-point transport seems the only logical outcome of congested hubs and transfer connections that are prone to delay. If the Sonic Cruiser really materialises, it would appear to be a promising concept that for the first time in years can finally offer full fare paying passengers a new quality feature, namely significant time savings. But, being a new aircraft category, the Sonic Cruiser is likely to upset the carefully balanced airline market and its networks and route systems. It seems that for the time being Boeing prefers to concentrate on the technical details of the Sonic Cruiser rather than sharing with us its vision of how the advent of the new ultra-fast aircraft will affect the market .
Even if Airbus and Boeing appear for the moment to be concentrating their public relations offensives on the A380 and Sonic Cruiser respectively, both companies will soon have no choice but to clarify how "traditional" midsize Airbus and Boeing aircraft that are currently in service should be modernised.
Both the A300/A310 and also the Boeing 757/767 can look back today on more than 20 years of revenue-generating operations. Especially in the Airbus camp there seems to be an obvious gap above the A321 and below the A330, while Boeing's 737, despite technically successful modernisation, is up against an upper limit of 189 on the number of seats it can be stretched to. Here Airbus's larger A321 is selling very well, especially in the European airline and charter markets.
Will today's midsize class be succeeded by a tailless aircraft? And who will be the first to build one? Such a revolutionary design would enable hefty savings in airlines' operating costs due to its significantly improved fuel consumption. However, for the manufacturers these ideas entail a lot of pioneering work followed by all the expense of development, and hence constitute a high-risk project. It is probably for this reason that the two large airframers are still maintaining a low profile in this promising area.
With the extreme ranges and flying times that are already possible today, passenger on-board comfort is becoming increasingly important. The media topics of "air rage" and the "economy-class syndrome" (potentially fatal deep-vein thrombosis) have propelled this into the limelight.
Manufacturers and airlines have become pampered by more or less continuous growth, but it is high time that they now put some serious effort into addressing this issue. This means, for example, providing significantly more legroom, including in "cattle class", a proper armrest for every arm, the opportunity to move around and, finally, washrooms that are bigger than the rock bottom minimum standard. The risk the air transport industry runs is that its acceptance by the public at large, which translates into such rich pickings, will be gambled away so that the hoped-for further growth do not materialise.
But in the development departments of the large manufacturers the message did in fact arrive some time ago: whole hangars are devoted solely to squeezing generous sleeping quarters or extended kitchens and rest areas into hitherto unutilised nooks and crannies in aircraft fuselages, often in the hold or at the back. The aim is to improve the quality of the time spent on board on longhaul aircraft despite steadily rising utilisation, and for the crew as well. In the passenger compartments in the more expensive classes more and more reclining seats are to be found already today. The provision of Internet access both in the flight deck and the cabin will shortly take off and may even develop quickly into a separate market segment.
All these new challenges must be addressed by manufacturers at a time when their airline customers are temporarily feeling the pinch. Once the major orders already placed have been worked through it will then be a matter of continuing with types and aircraft categories that have undergone major revamps or are even quite new. Given that significant long-term market growth appears unlikely, the tug-of-war thus remains quite tense.