NEO directions

Any enhancement to the A320 Family by adding as an option evolutionary geared turbofan engines such as Pratt & Whitney’s PW1000G or the Snecma/General Electric LeapX to the current airframe would need to realise fuel savings in the order of 13-15 per cent, or between US$5m and US$9m (A$6.1m to A$11.06m) per year in order to be viable, Leahy said. Interestingly, Airbus’s head of programs, Tom Williams said the manufacturer was not considering an engine offering from Rolls-Royce for an A320 re-engine, as that manufacturer had yet to demonstrate it had a design that could meet the targeted savings.

Leahy added that Airbus is continuing to invest €100m (A$152m) a year to improve the aircraft’s efficiency such as the addition of ‘sharklet’ wing extensions from 2012 and other aerodynamic ‘clean ups’ and cabin enhancements, and that this would likely continue throughout the aircraft’s production life. In the meantime, the ‘sharklets’ will see fuel burn reductions of between one per cent on shorter sectors up to nearly 3.7 per cent on sectors of about 5000km over the current wingtip ‘fences’ equipped A320 Family offerings when they enter service from 2012, and will give the A318, A319, A320 and A321 models between four and eight per cent better fuel burn figures than their Boeing 737-600, -700, -800 and -900ER equivalents on a per seat and per trip basis. And with Air New Zealand last year becoming the launch customer for the ‘sharklets’, Airbus has ramped up its marketing effort for its rejuvenated A320 Family, with the A321 in particular seeing a renewed push towards the 757 replacement market.

The company says the 3.7 per cent reduction in fuel burn provided by the ‘sharklets’ will provide an A321 with an additional 220km range, meaning a 185-seat two-class A321 will provide a 17 per cent fuel burn saving per seat over a 192-seat 757-200 on a typical 4000km sector such as US trans-continental services like Boston to San Francisco, or from the US West Coast to Maui in Hawaii, and a six to eight per cent saving over a similarly equipped 737-900ER.

With this in mind, Leahy’s sales team are likely to target airlines such as Delta, American, and the recently announced United/Continental merger which operate a large proportion of the estimated 689 757-200s currently in service, the bulk of which are now between 16 and 23 years old. But Airbus’s Vice President of Marketing, Andrew Shankland later conceded that the A321 won’t adequately replace the 757 on longer routes such as trans-Atlantic services where the 757 offers a range of up to 8300km, some 2600km more than the A321.

Leahy added that he expected any efforts to re-engine the A320 to be keenly watched by airlines, but said he doubts the manufacturer will rely on a large launch order before proceeding. He said a decision on whether to proceed with a re-engine would depend on the cost of developing and certifying the change and on Airbus having sufficient engineering resources, but added the development costs would be minimal compared to an all-new design, with about 94 per cent of the current components and most of the current tooling expected to be carried over to the NEO. Engineering resources is expected to be a major factor considering the manufacturer’s ongoing problems in ramping up its A380 and A400M programs and its efforts in bringing the new A350 to market. No doubt while Airbus is continuing to build 34 and rising A320s per month and continues to hold a backlog of more than 2000 units, the financial case to proceed with the NEO will need to be a compelling one.

Earlier, Williams said one of Airbus’s key targets if it proceeded with the NEO would be to prevent Bombardier’s CSeries and its likely growth derivatives from gaining too strong a beach head in the market before an all-new single-aisle aircraft could be brought to market. “We will not allow them to build significant market penetration,” he said.

Airbus said the prospect of an A320 NEO was not proving popular with lessors due to the expected limited decade-long life of the model, and its perceived adverse affect on residual values of current model A320s. But Leahy pointed out that the introduction of the 737NG had not resulted in a fall in ‘classic’ 737 model values until deliveries of the NG had equalled roughly half the installed classic fleet, and with more than 6000 A320 Family airliners in service or on order, this suggests A320 values won’t fall until some 3000 NEOs had been delivered sometime after 2022.

Williams also said he expected airlines to have significant input into the design of the A320’s eventual successor, adding that the recent tie up between Jetstar and Air Asia X would likely be one such airline. “I think they also bring some very good experience on low-cost operations, very intense operations, in quite tough environments,” he told The Australian. “There are a lot of the thunderstorms, for example, a lot of electrostatic activity in that part of the world, and that has some impacts on aircraft. So, yes, I think they can bring some quite unique experiences and that helps us in terms of making sure we’re designing an aeroplane to suit all the different types of markets, different regions and different, very intense, operations.”

Although not entirely new, design concepts for the ‘A30X’ displayed at Broughton appeared to show more detail than previous briefings. Two concepts showed otherwise conventional looking tube shaped fuselage designs which will use advanced materials and will have exceptionally clean low-drag wings, advanced flight decks, fuel cells for zero emissions on the ground, rear mounted geared open rotor or ultra-high bypass advanced turbofan engines, and either a T-tail or twin tail design which shields the engine’s exhaust from the ground.

Interestingly, Leahy provocatively said, despite recent suggestions from his US rival to the contrary, that he doubts Boeing will develop an all-new replacement to its 737 line by 2020. He said Boeing had a track record of openly raising the prospect of new models in response to Airbus program launches in the past, citing the prop-fan powered ‘7J7’ which was touted in the late 1980s after the launch of the A320, and the ‘Sonic Cruiser’ which coincided with the A380 program launch, only to quietly withdraw these designs and proceed with less risky upgrades in the case of the 737NG, or arguably less radical designs like the 787.

Leahy added that he understood the new ‘open rotor’ or advanced turbofan engine technology required to achieve efficiency gains of 30 to 40 per cent which he estimates are required to justify the investment in an all-new aircraft would not be ready for production by 2020, saying that 2025 or beyond was more likely, hence Airbus’s exploration of the re-engine option from 2015. Timing will certainly be a critical factor in the longer term success or otherwise on any new model. While Boeing may be to market first if it proceeds with a new design and thus will get a five or more year jump on its rival, Airbus’s A30X may be able to offer better economics if launched with new generation engines, and thus will likely overhaul and significantly Boeing’s offering over the expected 30 to 40 year life cycle of the two models.

Leahy was adamant Airbus wouldn’t proceed with an all-new design until he could be confident that he could offer “an all-new airplane that will obsolete everything in between.” He added that he expected Boeing would probably come to the same conclusion, that he took any new model announcements with “a grain of salt”, and predicted Boeing would probably reveal its intention to proceed with its own “737 Neo” sometime next year.