Now that I’m sitting at my desk and for once not cursing CA and their “wonderful” AV products, it’s time to get down to the nitty gritty of Paris 2009 – or “The year when 10 Wide Body jet is considered a big order”
New orders on day 5 –
Olympic Airways join the Dash-8 400 party with an order for 5, option for another 5
So lets put this into graphics.
So what are the scores in terms of class? I’ve split these into 4 categories: Widebody (twin isle jets), NarrowBody (>100 people single isle jets), Regional – Turbofan powered and Regional – Turboprop powered
Sources: Flight, BBC News, Airbus/EADS, Boeing. Graphs show only complete orders – not options or MOU’s. So there.
Perhaps the big winners this year are narrow-bodies, and the regional turbofans. In particular, the A320 design seems to be grabbing new share in terms upgrades. The Wizz-Air MOU for 50 A320‘s is very good news – and will keep a lot of people in jobs hopefully when its signed and converted into a full order.
The Superjet is doing quite well, but to break through to new markets – it needs to find a big “western” operator (for lack of a better geopolitical term) to make it really sell. Again, I’d want to see the performance the jet and how it fits into the new markets well enough. Equally doing well is Bombardier with their CRJs.
We knew it wasn’t going to be a long haul year – so we’ll drink a mug of coffee to an A350XWB orders by Air Asia X and Vietnam Airways – a sign that they’re looking towars the upturn.
In real terms, Boeing has kept very quiet in terms of commerical jets apart three bits of noise –
- The proposed “777-300ER-Plus” which could be a re-winged jet (Boeing – hint – Airbus tried that with the A350 initially), A 787-10 (Much more likey as it could be a simple/slightly complex stretch) or a clean sheet design (is there enough slush money to design a clean sheet aircraft I wonder?)
- The first 787-8 is nearing clearance for first take off at the end of this month
- And Qatar airlines getting very narked off with the delays to 787 project and telling Boeing in so many words “Sort it or we’ll cancel” (and probably saying it for a lot of other 787 recpieants)
This year we all predicted quiet. But there has been noise thankfully – even on the IFE front and more airlines taking on Panasonic’s X Series IFE system, Wireless IFE and a few other neat technologies. In this time of squeeze, some new ideas are sneeking out.
Back to normal next week with irreverent chatter.
