Podcast: Reading The Commercial Tea Leaves At Farnborough

No blockbusters but lots to talk about. Listen in to what our editors saw at Farnborough Airshow.

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Rush Transcript

Joe Anselmo:

Welcome to the Check 6 Podcast from the Farnborough Airshow. I'm Joe Anselmo, Aviation Week's editorial director and editor-in-chief of Aviation Week &Space Technology Magazine. And today we're here to talk about the commercial highlights at this week's Farnborough show, the first Farnborough in four years.

            Joining me are Jens Flottau, our executive editor for commercial aviation, the esteemed Guy Norris, our senior propulsion editor, and Dan Williams, the head of fleet, flight and forecast data at Aviation Week, which means he's our numbers guy on this podcast.

            Jens, our defense guys recorded their podcast on Monday. We were supposed to go the next day, and there just wasn't enough going on, we had to postpone this for 24 hours. So where are we now on the commercial front? I heard Steve Costley, one of our colleagues, say, "There's a lot of news, just not a lot of big news."

Jens Flottau:

Yeah. If I could, I would postpone the podcast by another day, or maybe let's do it on Friday. Maybe by then we'd have more orders. And normally, yes, there wouldn't have been a problem by now, we would've had plenty of orders on the Boeing side, on the AIrbus side, [and] we would have regional aircraft orders. That really didn't happen this time.

            On Wednesday, we did see the first commitment for Airbus; EasyJet topped up its order for A320neo family aircraft, 56 additional aircraft. That obviously coming behind Boeing's commitments that I'm sure Guy will talk about a little bit more.

            Christian Scherer, Airbus's chief commercial officer, was asked about the lack of orders at the show. And he said that, ‘We don't need to make a lot of noise. We can do business quietly.’ And while the press room was very quiet, there wasn't a lot going on, he said, ‘It was quite active in the private rooms.’

            So basically there's a lot of ... I think in fairness, some of it is timing. On the other side, China just announced a big order for 300 [Airbus] aircraft on July 1st. There's other pending commitments that haven't been finalized yet. So some of it is timing, some of it is people not showing up. And some of it is people not ready to commit.

Joe Anselmo:

Guy Norris as Jens referenced, Boeing came out swinging on Monday. They actually had some good news to start the show off with. Tell us about that.

Guy Norris:

Yeah, you're right Joe, they did. In fact, it was really sort of signaled early by [Commercial Chief] Stan Deal's press conference in central London over the weekend, where he did give out this ... emanated this feeling, echoing really earlier comments that went from our interview with [CEO] Dave Calhoun, that Boeing was looking to turn the corner, effectively, and that this show would be more about a ... Oh, we're just having an aircraft taking off by the way, in case anybody's wondering what that is.

Jens Flottau:

Not a Boeing.

Guy Norris:

It's not Boeing. It's a very nice executive jet. And there she goes. It's an ir show anyway, folks. But yes, essentially turning the corner, it was part of that continuing message. And he did actually indicate, strongly hinted, that there would be a slew of orders during the show. We haven't seen that many as Jens said, certainly not. So far the biggest one from Boeing was the commitment by Delta, long expected, to go for 100 MAX 737-10s, plus options for a further 30, which was a huge vote of confidence, really, in that program. Now Delta did say there's all back options, but the message was ‘Hey, let's get this airplane certified, let's get it into service, and let's get over this.’ And I think that was really underlined by the press conference.

Joe Anselmo:

And Delta is a big Airbus customer. So this was-

Guy Norris:

Yeah, that's right, yeah. Thanks for reminding me there. Yeah, it was a huge bridge-building thing as well, because obviously relations with Delta, I mean, let's not fool ourselves, were particularly bad, and soured dramatically because of the C Series. For those that need reminding on that, of course it was the C Series order that Delta placed, which in 2017 triggered this whole series of actions by Boeing, which eventually led to, of course, Airbus buying the [C Series] program, and launching the A220. So anyway, that really left a bad taste, and for Delta, it's taken this long for it all to get over. But here we are at the show, they've placed a massive order and they're all buddies again.

Jens Flottau:

I’d just like to add that it was obvious that Delta needed to buy Boeing again, at some point. They hadn't bought a Boeing aircraft in, I think, 11 years.

Guy Norris:

Oh yeah. I think over 10 years.

Jens Flottau:

Yeah. Such a large airline depending on one manufacturer is not a good idea. So it was a question of time, and now it seemed right time.

Joe Anselmo:

Dan Williams, I said you're the numbers guy. You've been counting the whole show. So what do you have there in your notebook?

Dan Williams:

Well, it's -- underwhelming I think is a word that I've seen. I've talked about it previously, that I did suspect that Farnborough may be a little light for orders, because the OEMs have shifted how they've been doing orders. We've seen ... we had a six month period where we consistently had 100-plus orders collectively, which is very unusual. Normally you get these peaks and troughs, and we've not been seen that because we've not been having the events. So did some of that detract from the event here today? MAX was a reasonable winner. I hoped Boeing would come away with 250-ish orders, they've come away with a little under 180, 190, something like that, when you add them all together. The loser, in some respects, is the widebody, because there's been just five widebody announcements for 787s. And which it doesn't surprise me, it's the way the industry's going.

            A lot of these press releases are cleverly worded. They're not really orders, some of these, there's lots of letter of intents and memorandum of understandings, and we've seen the Qatari MAX10 LOI expire, which was their revenge order for the A321, I suppose you could say. So Airbus didn't really have to do much. They probably could go another 18 months without taking another order, and they still would be sitting reasonably pretty.

            So the pressure was on Boeing. Boeing have performed, but maybe not to what I would've liked and anticipated. Airbus taking that extra order for EasyJet is really good. And the regional jet market, again, still out there with very little orders. ATR have just got a few, and a few for, for Embraer.

Jens Flottau:

Yes, but on the Embraer side we do have to mention, I think, that they claim to have signed LOIs for more than 250 of the proposed new turboprops. That's kind of a significant milestone, if you believe that, and we should, I guess, in the run up to a launch early next year, mid next year. [The] big question, what's going to be the engine? We know what's not going to be the engine, which is GE, having pulled out of the race. It's leaving Pratt and Rolls Royce as the two competing OEMs for that application.

Joe Anselmo:

We should stress that this is the end of day three. There's still at least another day to go, so there could be announcements tomorrow that we don't know about. So that's the point in time we're at.

            Guy Norris, another piece of news here was Boom Supersonic. Some big news out of them.

Guy Norris:

Yeah, you're right. Obviously, we were tipped the wink on that, given a little bit of a heads-up that something big was going to happen with a new configuration. And let's be transparent about this, Joe, you and I got an early look at this didn't we? But-

Joe Anselmo:

Well, you broke the story in April, that you thought they were going to four engines, and here we are.

Guy Norris:

And here we are. Yes, exactly. And that was the big configuration change, a move from the tri-jet to a kind of more of a concept that went away from a son-of-Concorde type of thing, with an ogive wing and underwing engines, to a much more familiar, really, modern supersonic concept, that really looked a lot like the shapes that came out in the 1980s and ‘90s, when NASA did the High Speed Civil Transport project. Boeing and McDonnell Douglas at that time, both came out with designs which -- certainly this one looks very much like the McDonnell Douglas design.

            Of course they were bigger airplanes, they were aimed at 300 people. We're talking about a much lower capacity aircraft here, between 65 and 80 seats. But the aircraft itself, the wingspan has increased dramatically from about 60 to 100 feet. It doesn't sound like much, but for an airliner of this size, that's a huge increase in lift capability.

            The engines themselves, because there's now four of them, it means they can take off at a lower thrust rating. So this is the only way a concept like this will ever meet the modern noise standards for Chapter Five. Or sorry, is it Chapter 14 and Stage Five? I can ever remember. But anyway, that's the only way they're possibly going to meet it.

            The bigger wing also gives them the opportunity to put leading edge, trailing edge devices, which are going to improve lift at low speed. And of course it will still have the capability, because none of these engines will be afterburning, to reach the target speed of Mach 1.7. So a lot of interesting ... Oh, it's also area rule fuselage. The gear's now got six wheels on each bogie. So it's basically it's a different airplane.

Joe Anselmo:

Yeah. And they also said that there's military applications for this. I've never heard of a new airliner having military applications. What's that all about?

Guy Norris:

Well, okay. So I think this is part of Boom's ... Boom wants to legitimize this project as much as possible. And this is a tick in that box, because they're currently working under a U.S. Air Force study program to look at some sort of like executive transport. In other words, a supersonic Air Force One project. But it's sort of allied to that extension of this, with Northrop Grumman as the partner. They're talking about special mission roles. So, they haven't said what those are specifically, but you're talking about fast reaction, special forces transports, that sort of thing. They're being very vague about what exactly they're looking at here, but, you know. There was also equipment provider, suppliers, and partners named; Collins, Safran Landing Systems, Eaton. So there was some kind of progress there.

            Of course, the big thing that we still don't know, and who knows, is who's going to do the engine? So Rolls-Royce was going to be the, and has in fact been a partner with them on studies. Rolls talked to us about that a few weeks ago. But beyond that, nobody's yet committing to be the power plant provider on this.

Joe Anselmo:

And you and I were pretty sure that they would be announcing the engine, or more details on the engine, at least, here at Farnborough. Didn't happen, or hasn't happened at least.

Guy Norris:

It, no, it hasn't happened. Not yet. I mean, who knows, maybe there's discussions going on behind the scenes, but they're certainly kicking this can down the road. And it's the one thing they can't really afford to do for very much longer if they want to stick to the development schedule they've outlined. Which essentially, the bottom line is, if they want to get it into service by the end of the decade, they need to get an engine yesterday. Maybe today might do. But in other words, it's got to happen real soon.

Dan Williams:

Yeah. It's quite interesting, to jump on the point about the changing engines. And it's something that we've not mentioned yet, but it's something that's evident in the show, is sustainability. I know that Boom says that it's all going to be a hundred percent SAF and this is a step in the right forward. But it does bring into question, and people may question, why would you take an aircraft like that, that is less sustainable, because you're doing the power required for SST? But lower thrust ratings will help in some other respects, in other parts of the flight envelope. So, but when you look around the halls, sustainability is ever-present with the displays that are in there.

Guy Norris:

Yeah, you're right. I mean, obviously Boom has its strategy. They've stuck to it all the way, in terms of looking at carbon capture, even sourcing fuels. So, I mean, compared to what we were used to in the ‘90s or up to the 2000s with Concorde, this is a different beast altogether, we accept that. But it is still a hard sell in some cases in the world of sustainability.

            Talking of which, of course, we've seen some big news here from CFM with the RISE program. They announced that they're going to work with Airbus on the demonstrator. It's going to be put under the wing of an A380, which is about the only thing big enough to accept the 13-plus foot diameter rotor that's going to be on that.

            This is the second A380 that GE's now going to work with, or CFM in this case, with Airbus on. Of course they've already said the Passport engine, which is going to burn hydrogen, will be tested on another A380 testbed.

            So my point about this is that we should all be back here in six years' time, because Farnborough's '28 is going to be awesome. There's going to be at least two A380 testbeds, and the whole flight line's going to be filled with eVTOLs.

Joe Anselmo:

So remind our listeners what the RISE is.

Guy Norris:

Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. I should tell you the RISEs are basically a new technology, sort of a potpourri, really, of technologies, which CFM is studying, as part of ... to meet Airbus's goal of this carbon-neutral airliner project for the mid 2030s. So it covers everything from new core technologies, to open rotor architectures, and even more electric drive systems inside.

Joe Anselmo:

And there was also a little bit of news on the GTF, the Pratt & Whitney GTF. Talk about that.

Guy Norris:

Yes, that's right. Breaking news. Well, I mean, I don't know whether I'm overplaying this, but basically Pratt & Whitney has been very quiet about what's coming next, because they have to respond on the single aisles. The GTF of course has been a great competitor for the LEAP family. But now they're talking about a whole slew of ... For the first time, I mean, everybody knew this was coming, but they never really detailed it. So this afternoon they laid out this roadmap of composite fan, going to be bigger, they're going to increase the bypass ratio. They've got a lot of technologies, including CMCs, going into the core.

            And this is before they've even started looking at these really exotic cycles, which they're talking about, with MTU in Germany, this wet cycle. And back at Pratt, the hydrogen ... I can never remember what it's ... It's basically where they take byproduct water from the hydrogen combustion, out of the exhaust, and pass it back through a heat exchanger to re-inject it further upstream, so they get the benefit of hydrogen, not only as a fuel, but also because of its cryogenic state they can use that as part of the energy transfer in the engine. So anyway, there's a lot to go at, and I think it's a really exciting time for propulsion.

Jens Flottau:

And the more they do on the GTF side, the more challenging it becomes for RISE to really differentiate themselves. I mean, it has to be 10% better to make sense, right?

Guy Norris:

Totally. Yeah, absolutely. So it's a really interesting time. But I think Jens, you saw some Airbus technology used, didn't you?

Jens Flottau:

Yeah, I mean, Airbus, while there was a lack of order announcements on the Airbus side, there were tons of announcement on sustainability, on technology. One of them was a glider that's been being equipped with a hydrogen burning engine, just to test contrail development and contrail composition, what is actually ... what are the particles in the contrails.

            They're going to compare that with a legacy kerosene engine that they are putting on the same glider at, say, 35,000 feet. That's a project that's going to be undertaken this winter in North Dakota-

Guy Norris:

Yes.

Jens Flottau:

... because of the clean cold air there. And that's going to precede the A380 Passport trials a few years.

            Also very relevant, the Wing of Tomorrow, a composite wing that Airbus has been working on for a number of years, quietly. They've confirmed here that they've finished the first prototype of that wing. And that's going to be relevant for all sorts of projects, including possibly a re-winging, if that's what you call it, of the 321neo, maybe. People have talked about a potential 322, which might be a project to extend the life of the neo family with a new composite wing, new engines potentially, whatever comes out of the GTF development. So there's a lot of options that they're working on behind the scenes, not talking too much about it. Some of it came out here. So really interesting times.

Guy Norris:

Yeah. So there you are. There's quite a lot of news here, really, isn't there, when you think about it?

Joe Anselmo:

Well, unfortunately we're running short on time. But guys, it's been a heck of a week. I mean, it's great to be back, the energy at the show, seeing everyone, all the meetings. At the same time, record heat in the UK. The trains here are a mess. I might not make it home tomorrow, because there's a strike at Heathrow. But it's good to be back after four years at Farnborough. So Jens, Guy, Dan, thanks so much for your time.

            That is a wrap for this Check 6 Podcast, which is being edited in real time, so you're going to get to hear all the glitches this time. Special thanks to our editor, Guy Ferneyhough. Please join us again next week for another Check 6.