Why the Airbus A220 might END the A320!

at the moment Airbus is featuring a much more complete lineup of single Island aircraft and Boeing is but is that also bringing a problem to integrate the newly acquired Airbus a220 into its family and maybe more importantly could the a220 actually be an A320 killer stay tuned in a previous video I looked at the Bombardier C Series and how it eventually after many twists and turns became the Airbus a220 and not the Boeing 797 that video I concentrated mainly on what that story meant to Boeing but what about Airbus Airbus basically got an aircraft well not for free but very cheap and it's a very modern efficient and comfortable aircraft that both Airlines and the traveling public seems to really love plus the size of that aircraft particularly the a22300 which is the larger of the two current versions puts it near the sweet spot of the current single aisle Market that's why a number of operators like air Baltic for example have already replaced their older 737s and even their larger turbo props with the a220 this was actually the reason Bombardier designed the jet in the first place to replace the older type like the 737 classic and the md-80 now in terms of range the a220 has the capacity to fly very similar distances to what the Airbus A320 Neo and the 737 Max families can do and that's actually one of the misunderstandings surrounding the a220 many people and even companies like Boeing for example actually thought that the a220 was intended to be basically an overgrown Regional Jet but as I've explained before Airbus didn't make that same mistake they definitely saw the C Series for the short medium hold modern airliner that it really is so with this plane now in their aircraft lineup Airbus should be rubbing their hands gleefully about having snapped it away from the Jaws a boy right well they should and they shouldn't and to understand why I'm going to use JetBlue as an example JetBlue ended the year 2020 by picking up their very first Airbus a220 previously they had a fleet of Airbus a320s 321s and at the smaller end around 60 Embraer e190s now officially at least the airline was going to replace those 60 embryers with 70 new a220s this higher number of new aircraft they bought could be explained as a possible expansion which makes sense for an ambitious and competitive operator like JetBlue but it turns out that there's definitely a lot more to it than that not only did JetBlue order more a220s than its e-190s these 70 a220s were also much bigger than the embryers were when JetBlue got the a22300 they put 140 passenger seats in it and as a comparison they're older embryers of which nearly 50 are still in service by the way only if it's 100 passenger seats so if JetBlue simply wanted something closer to a straight swap between the e190s and the a220s they could have gotten the smaller a220 100 that one has between 110 and 125 seats but instead they got the a22300 which is really a completely different category of aircraft and to really prove that the a220 was not just replacing jet blues and brayers the airline has recently ordered another 30 a220s still of the same bigger variant so is JetBlue actually getting these 100 a220s simply to replace their 60 smaller e190s and use the rest to expand that would be a pretty impressive expansion right well it turns out that what's really happening here is much more straightforward than that and to see that all we have to do is to look at what aircraft JetBlue is not ordering so let's look at the A320 family which up until now has been JetBlue's bread and butter aircraft the airline has owned over 140 Legacy a320s which it's still operating 130. these Jets have between 150 and 162 seats JetBlue also has just over 60 of the larger a321s and those aren't just fewer in number they're also much newer just seven years old on average meaning that those ones doesn't need to be replaced urgently so how many new aircraft of the A320 family have JetBlue ordered well the answer is 86 aircraft but of those 59 or a321 NEOS and another 14 are the longer range a321lr plus another 13 of the extra long range a321 xlrs in other words all of the Neo models that JetBlue has ordered are variants of the larger a321 Neo which they have fitted with 200 passenger seats this means that JetBlue have no orders at all for the A320 Neo and that's even though they currently use 138 320s who all have an average age of nearly 18 years meaning they are definitely ripe for replacement now JetBlue has more orders for a321 NEOS than their existing number of Legacy a321s so they might well be counting on using their larger planes on some of their more popular routes on which they have until now use the a320s this is called up gauging and it's pretty common but JetBlue are also expanding their network with some long distance routes so up gauging alone doesn't really explain what we're seeing here instead it looks like JetBlue's really long-term plan is to use their new super efficient a220s to replace their a320s on most of their routes and they are not alone in that strategy Air France for example has up until now used all variants of the Legacy A320 family including the tiny baby boss the A318 but now they currently have orders for 60 A2 2300s which they will use to start replacing their Airbus a320s and like JetBlue airfronts have no new a320s on order at all but at this point you might ask so what if the airlines want a220s Airbus should just make a220s right they will make money whatever they sell if it's an A320 or an a220 so what's the big deal well the answer to that is that it really is a major headache for Airbus and for the way that they will plan their future both in the short and in the longer term and I'll explain exactly why that is after this have you ever found yourself struggling to grasp a technical subject or feeling like you're just not smart enough to understand something well I know that I definitely have felt that way and that's why I'm so happy to 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that the a220 has like a cuckoo in the nest upset the Airbus family or aircraft in a number of ways let's start with pilot training for example since the introduction of the A320 in the late 1980s Airbus has gone into a lot of trouble to create an aircraft family with a high degree of commonality the A320 and the larger A330 and the 340 don't have the same exact type rating but Pilots can get a much quicker transition between the A320 family and the white bodies lasting just a couple of days instead of the typical two months that it normally takes this is because the cockpits and systems of these aircraft are incredibly similar and their fly-by-wire controls ensure that the flying characteristics are also quite similar between the types and that even involves their newest wide body the gorgeous Airbus a350 what about the a220 then well this aircraft also has fly by wire and sights the controls but it was never intended to have any kind of commonality in training with Airbus aircraft because why would it after all bombardi initially actually intended to compete directly with Airbus not to join them this means that the pilot typewriting training on the a220 is different from the rest of the Airbus pilot training and therefore it could potentially create some headaches for the airline customers who might be used to the overall commonality between the rest of the Airbus aircraft but that's not airbus's main problem no the main reason why Airbus doesn't want the a220 to become so popular that it kills off their Airbus A320 is because they have organized most of their manufacturing capacity and supply chain around the A320 family according to the air current in the second half of this decade Airbus plans to reach a combined total production rate of 96 a220s and A320 neo-family aircraft per month but over 75 of those 96 planes will be of the A320 Neo family primarily the a321 nails like I explained in a recent video right now Airbus have nine final assembly lines for the A320 Neo family and they recently announced plans for a tent which will be their second one in China and by contrast there are only two final assembly lines producing a220s the original one is in Mira belt Canada and the second one is in the US in the same facility in Alabama where Airbus also assembles their American a320s according to Scott Hamilton in liham news the mirable final assembly line has a maximum monthly output of 10 a220s and the site in Alabama can only manage four that makes 14 in total but that's the maximum capacity and in reality Airbus has only been assembling around five a220s per month during 2022 and they might be able to increase this to around eight per month this year so why is that done why are they not just churning out more well the answer here might actually be a bit surprising while the a220 might be saving a lot of money for the airlines who are operating it due to its 25 better efficiency than the older types some analysts actually thinks that the a220 isn't actually making any money at all for Airbus at least not yet according to some industry sources as recently as in 2021 Airbus was actually losing around 400 million dollars per year on the a220 program the main reason for this seems to be the slow production rate of the aircraft and that's not about to change anytime soon according to Liam news Airbus currently needs around two weeks to assemble a single a220 which is twice the time Boeing needs to assemble one of their 737 Maxes for example this means higher labor costs and a lower production capacity and efficiency for the production line and why is it so slow well it looks like the delays with the supply of the many components is one reason but a much bigger reason is likely the number of inefficiencies in the way that Bombardier originally set up the aircraft production one example of that is the lack of pre-stuffing of the aircraft fuselage sections like I explained in my video about Air Force One it is a lot easier to fit things like wiring pipes and other components on wings and fuselage sections before they're actually brought together in the final production line better access to many parts of the plane means that fitting all of these components can be done much much faster that way but more importantly here once all of the sections are brought to the line the engineers can then concentrate almost solely on the actual assembly this means that there will be fewer workers at the final assembly line meaning that they don't get in each other's way as much as otherwise this is something that Airbus has been very adamant at doing with their production of all of their other aircrafts but this philosophy was something that Bombardier was not doing on the a220 when they planned the production that means that now things like insulation of the cabin walls wiring pipes really anything that doesn't get in the way of the Assembly of the a220 is fitted to the fuselage sections at a separate section of the Airbus facility called the pre-finish assembly line or pre-file and that's obviously not ideal another issue that slows things down is mainly affecting the second assembly line of the a220 the one that's located in Alabama not only is this plant smaller and newer which means that they're still getting up to speed but Airbus actually has to transport fuselages and other parts from mirabelling Canada down to Alabama for the final assembly and to cap it all off there's a big issue with some of the deals that Bombardier originally struck with its suppliers is a giant manufacturers like Airbus and Boeing have plenty of negotiating power when it comes to striking Supply deals about the new aircraft type that they might be planning suppliers know that new airliners coming out of the big two have production runs likely numbering in the many thousands so they have every reason to offer really competitive prices in order to get in on this nice long-term supplier contract but obviously that wasn't the case when Bombardier started designing him building their first non-regional airliner instead that was a substantial risk for the suppliers who likely demanded a premium for that risk and because of that Airbus are now trying to renegotiate some of these early Legacy contracts and they're even examining the possibility of finding alternative suppliers for some of the parts Airbus are also a bit unhappy with the fact that the a220 currently only has one engine option which is the pratham Whitney geared turbo fan Airbus offers a variant of this engine on their A320 NEOS too but they would like to offer customers a second option from someone like CFM and a recertification using a new engine will likely be a very costly affair so to recap Airbus definitely aren't ready to let the a220 kill off their A320 Neo the a220 is still too expensive and too slow to make so if that were to happen Airbus would basically be replacing a cash cow with an aircraft that is currently not even breaking even and I personally think that that's a real shame because until Airbus can solve those problems they likely won't move forward with the next step in the a220 story which is to launch an even bigger variant called the a220 500. wemble body had designed the C Series they were planning for a further stretch of its largest variant the wing for example is already designed to culminate this stretch although the plane would need probably a bit more power from its Ambience that's likely another reason why Airbus was to widen the engine options companies like Air France JetBlue and others would obviously really want Airbus to offer such an aircraft to them and they have been pushing Airbus to make it available as soon as possible but of course if the a22300 is already stealing some sales away from the A320 Neo a longer a22500 with as many as 175 seats would likely hit the sales of the existing A320 Neo even harder but it should also be mentioned here that some analysts are saying that this doesn't have to be a problem for Airbus if the production of the a220 can be optimized a shift in demand for this type and away from the A320 Neo would increase production capacity for the a321 Neo and that's something that Airbus really needs along with its subvariants like the XLR the a321 Neo is already in huge demand from Airbus existing customers yeah some of Airbus older assembly lines were only big enough for the A320 but lately Airbus have been upgrading them so they can all handle the larger a321 as well so there might already be some signs that the Airbus management might be thinking along these lines replacing the A320 Neo with an a22500 mic look at the onset like a costly loss but it would pave the way for Airbus to make more a321 NEOS quicker and more importantly the a22500 will be large enough to be a more efficient alternative to Boeing's 737 Max 8 which is the most popular Max variant that's likely why Airbus is now saying that the a22500 isn't a question of if but when I wouldn't be at all surprised if we will hear more from Airbus about this at upcoming events and air shows quite soon but the thing here is that this could become even more complex than this the analysts don't generally agree on how much more efficient the a22500 would be per passenger compared to Boeing's Max 8. but some claim that the difference could be as high as 13 percent now if that's true it could force Boeing to react and finally launch an all-new 737 replacement we've obviously heard Boeing say that they don't plan to start designing any new airplane at all during this decade but can they really afford to sit and watch as Airbus gets double digit efficiency advantages over their current best sellers I highly doubt so on the other hand though it's quite possible that Airbus don't want to trigger Boeing into launching a 77 replacement because if Boeing would start to design something radically new and even more efficient well then Airbus would need to react to that not with the a22500 but with a new clean sheet design which would be significantly more expensive to do of course Airbus can certainly afford another clean sheet design probably more than Boeing can at least but why why would they do that in a situation like this in the first place if they could avoid it as things stands right now Airbus could soon be outselling Boeing two to one in the single aisle market and that's without doing almost anything at all however Scott Hamilton in liham news recently also correctly pointed out that Airbus would do well to avoid becoming complacent in this situation this is an absolutely fascinating subject that I'm quite sure that we're going to come back to when things start to evolve now I hope that you've all had the time to check out my new awesome app the mentor app there's no need to download it just go to app.mentorpilot.com and create a user or you can just log in if you already have my older app you can add it to the home screen if you want or just use 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Channel: Mentour Now!

Views: 426,596

Keywords: Airbus, Boeing, Airbus a220, C-series, Bombardier, Boeing 737MAX, MAX8, Mentour pilot, Mentour pilot crash, How to become a pilot, Aviation news, Breaking news, Leeham news, Air Current, Boeing 777x, A220, A320, A320NEO, Airbus A320NEO, Airbus A321XLR, Fear of flying, Aviation industry, Aviation explained, Best aviation youtuber, Nervous flyer, Nervous flyer help, Boeing 747, Concorde, Alabama

Id: ghzTtDlXOB8

Length: 20min 59sec (1259 seconds)

Published: Sun May 21 2023