US Airways is planning to issue about $388 million worth of enhanced equipment trust certificates to refinance five Airbus aircraft currently operating in its fleet and four A321s scheduled for delivery later this year. The airline plans to upgrade 92 aircraft powered by International Aero Engines’ V2500s with the manufacturer’s SelectTwo fuel burn improvement kit and convert 60 more aircraft due for delivery with the same engine configuration. It currently operates 106 V2500-powered aircraft, including 49 A320s, 39 A319s and 18 A321s.
A leading supplier that has been bitten by delays on major commercial aircraft developments says the industry needs to be more realistic about scheduling the introduction of cutting-edge products to market. “There are tremendous competitive pressures on aircraft manufacturers by the airlines to deliver a product that offers new technology at a lower cost,” says Eaton Aerospace President Brad Morton. “We as an industry have to be careful about bowing to that pressure beyond our own capability.”
ATR has booked 78 orders so far this year with another 32 options, setting a record for business activity for the company for the first six months. ATR CEO Filippo Bagnato says the record number of orders is worth $2.4 billion. The tally includes Azul Linhas Aereas’ decision yesterday to exercise options for 10 more ATR 72-600s, adding to 20 ordered last year. The first of the -600s are to be delivered to Azul in October.
Korean Air has signed a letter of intent to acquire up to 30 Bombardier CSeries jets in a deal that makes it the first customer for the new aircraft in the lucrative Asia-Pacific market. The agreement, which is subject to final approval by the airline’s board, includes 10 firm orders for CS300s and an additional 10 options and 10 purchase rights (options guarantee delivery dates, while purchase rights do not).
CFM International is gearing up for year-on-year record engine production increases to keep pace with planned rate hikes by Airbus and Boeing, and expects to be supplying up to 1,600 CFM56-5/7s per year by 2014.
A group of major U.S. carriers is negotiating an agreement to purchase biofuel derived from recycled waste to use on flights out of San Francisco Bay Area airports.
Bombardier has taken 10 firm orders for its CSeries jet from an undisclosed “major airline” that will become the first operator to take delivery of the new 110- to 145-seat jet.
Boeing is aiming to develop a game-changing fuselage as the centerpiece of a next-generation narrowbody jet that it is studying as a replacement to the 737. Company officials say they will decide by the end of the year whether to re-engine the 737 in response to Airbus’s new A320NEO (new engine option). Their preferred option, if customers will wait, is to develop a brand-new jet that would offer much better fuel burn but arrive about four years after the NEO’s targeted late-2015 service entry.
Air Lease Corp. (ALC) is adding to its aircraft portfolio with narrow- and widebody aircraft from Boeing and Airbus. The young leasing company will buy up to 33 Boeing aircraft. ALC will take 14 Boeing 737-800s, as well as five 777-300ERs and four 787-9s. The deal also includes exercising six 737-800 options from a 2010 order for 60 aircraft.
Management and staff from Antigua-based carrier LIAT spent two days with a Bombardier Q400 as part of the airline’s continued review of possible replacements for its aging fleet of 18 de Havilland Dash 8 turboprops. The demonstration flights come a month after Embraer showcased an E-190s twinjet for LIAT (Aviation Daily, May 11). LIAT says it "not yet at the point of making a final decision."
Boeing has not made a decision on whether to re-engine its 737 in response to pressure from the Airbus A320NEO (new engine option), but the answer is obvious to Steven Udvar-Hazy. The U.S. airframer must resist pressure to re-engine and proceed with development of a next-generation narrowbody, says the influential chairman and CEO of Air Lease Corp.
The two U.S. senators from Illinois have introduced bills that could affect the City of Chicago’s now-fading plan to privatize Midway Airport and numerous other similar transfers of community assets to public/private partnerships.
United Continental Holdings’ ongoing capacity reduction plan is targeting only widebody aircraft from its Continental Airlines division, according to two grievances filed by the Continental chapter of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA). The claims center on the 10 General Electric CF6-powered Boeing 767-200ERs operated by Continental before the carrier’s merger with United Airlines, Jay Pierce, chairman of the Continental ALPA unit tells Aviation Week in a telephone interview.
EADS envisions development of a hypersonic commercial aircraft able to transport 50-100 people between Paris and Tokyo in 2.5 hours. The so-called Zero Emission Hypersonic Transportation (Zehst) notionally should fill the high-end market niche left by the retirement of Concorde, says Jean Botti, chief technical officer at EADS.
Airbus is pressing hard to ensure the A350-900 program will not suffer another delay, but also is having to look at cutting weight off the twin-widebody. The first development aircraft are heavier than Airbus wants, says Gordon McConnell, A350 chief engineer. “We are about 2% away for the first aircraft from where we want to be,” McConnell says. The design for the first production aircraft is not locked, yet, so the weight savings program for in-service aircraft continues.
American Airlines is expanding its code-share with Air Berlin to include the German carrier’s new four-times-weekly nonstop service between Berlin Tegel Airport and New York John F. Kennedy International Airport, which started May 1. With the addition of this service, the code-share will include every Air Berlin service to the U.S.
With evidence stacking up that a planned U.S. broadband-wireless service will interfere severely with GPS satellite-navigation receivers in markets from aviation to agriculture, the battle is shifting to how the problem can be mitigated, or avoided altogether. At stake is the performance of millions of GPS receivers now in commercial and government use and privately held LightSquared’s $15 billion business plan to parlay its mobile satellite communications service into a nationwide network of 40,000 high-power base stations using the same frequencies.
Boeing CEO Jim McNerney waves off a suggestion that the commercial aircraft sector is nearing a cyclical peak. The real issue, he says, is the ability of suppliers to keep up with rising global demand for passenger jets. "The constraint to taking up [production] rates for Boeing and Airbus is not the marketplace," he says. "It's the ability of the supply chain to get there."
