Boeing Blogger-in-chief Randy Baseler wore his VP of marketing hat on Wednesday to deliver the company’s updated 20-year market forecast. Here’s a link to Boeing’s online summary of the report: http://www.boeing.com/commercial/cmo/index.html
Or you can read what Baseler himself wrote about it at his blog: http://www.boeing.com/randy/
Or you can read the highlights in the story I wrote for Thursday’s Herald. http://www.heraldnet.com/stories/06/07/13/100loc_a1boeing001.cfm
After running through the numbers, Baseler took a fair number of questions about the 737 replacement plane (which he did NOT refer to as the 797, btw).
“We’ve got very detailed studies going on,” he said. Part of it is looking at “what we can take from the 787 to see what can be translated into smaller airplanes,” he said, and part of it is trying to project would kinds of technology will be available in the 2010-12 time frame, when the plane’s likely to come to market.
It’ll be be tougher to replace the 737 with a new plane than it was to replace the 767 with the new Dreamliner, Baseler said.
One of the benefits of the 787, versus the older Six-Seven, is its superior range. But most airlines don’t want a 737 replacement with longer legs, Baseler said. “There have been a few airlines that have said they’d like to have trans-Atlantic capability, but we’ve had a few airlines tell us they’d like us to focus on under 2,000 miles.”
He said that likely means the Three-Seven replacement will stay with a range of about 3,000 nautical miles — enough to fly from coast-to-coast in North America, and from Europe to Africa.
So to make the Three-Seven replacement worthwhile to airlines, Boeing will have to come up with a plane that is significantly cheaper to operate (ie., better fuel economy and maintenance characteristics), and maybe cheaper to buy, Baseler said.
Much of that will depend on engine manufacturers making great strides on their end, he said.
“If you can’t get an engine with significant breakthrough … that means that you’re not going to have this compelling value proposition.”
He said Boeing is studying all kinds of options at this point, including:
* Twin-aisle planes (twins would be heavier than single-aisles, but it’s possible that airlines could turn them around faster on the ground, ala Southwest and Ryanair);
* Jets smaller than the current 737 and recently departed 717 (“We’ll take a serious look at 90 to 100 seats, maybe as far down as 80.”)
* More than one replacement model (perhaps a narrower, five-abreast hull for some missions with a bigger six- or seven-abreast hull for others).
Baseler poo-phooed reports that Airbus is poised to offered an upgraded A320 family. If Airbus can improve performance 5 percent — by cutting weight and adding winglets — “that is an improvement for the A320 but it doesn’t close the efficiency gap” with the 737, he said.
He described the proposal as a defensive play by Team Toulouse, which originally had penciled in an all-new A320 replacement for the 2010-12 period, but now finds itself faced with having to do an all-new A350 replacement first. Incremental improvements to the A320 now may extend its shelf life a few years, he said.
Still, Baseler called the single-aisle market “very competitive” and projected that Boeing and Airbus will just about split sales over the next 20 years.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
