neo era or MAXed out?

If they are not going to cede marketshare to the upstart Bombardier in particular – the CS300 launches later this year and has been pitched at 160 seats in a high-density market, but a double-stretched CS500 is almost a certainty – they will need to increase production rates.

Airbus was the first mover on the re-engining of the current generation of narrowbodies, and the A320neo is already flying with customers, despite the well-publicised rotor bow and startup time issues with the Pratt & Whitney engines that launched the aircraft.

But a key advantage to the A320 may well be more than just speed to market. Airbus can offer a more attractive passenger experience than Boeing. Much of the advantage is around cabin width, and by default seat width. Airbus’s 3. 7m width cabin is obviously an advantage over Boeing’s smaller MAX narrowbody. Boeing does not publish cabin width figures, and had not responded to Cabin Pressure’s request for the numbers at Farnborough as this column went to print, but the aircraft is smaller in cabin diameter.

Sitting inside the fourth Boeing 737 MAX 8 test aircraft, which had the launch Southwest Airlines cabin and its B/E Aerospace seats inside, was a much less comfortable experience at a 32in seat pitch than the 30in on a new Lufthansa A320neo. The “wider seats” claim is made up partly by shaping the edges of the window seats so that they sit flush against the sidewall, reducing space, and partly by narrowing the armrests. Such tweaking aside, the A320 is simply wider than the 737.

At the top end of the narrowbody market, the A321neo can also fit more passengers than the 737 MAX 9, so much so that Boeing is talking of a 737 MAX 10, which will require a fair amount of re-engineering. The 737 sits lower to the ground than the A320, which has restricted the fan size of the engine that the MAX can take. One option is to raise the nose gear in order to give the front of the engine nacelle enough clearance. But a lot of the point of the re-engined narrowbody generation is to avoid rework and adaptation. The consequence to the 737-900ER has already been that the aircraft needs a notably long runway in order to lift off at maximum takeoff weight.

The turbofan diameter, and especially the power to weight ratio, gives the A320neo other advantages too: it’s important not to overlook the passenger experience benefits of flying nonstop with the A321neoLR compared with having to stop or not when being served by the 737 MAX – let alone the benefits to airlines.

In terms of sheer size of aircraft, for LCCs in particular, the benefit of being able to carry 20 extra passengers – especially in single aisle markets – is key. The A321neo maxes out at 240 passengers, while the 737 MAX 9 tops out at 220.

The same is true even for full service airlines: more space and wider cabins give a better experience. It was notable that Boeing’s virtual reality demonstrator was showing a mockup of the Thompson Vantage fully flat bed inside a 737 cabin, which to Cabin Pressure’s knowledge has not been certified and certainly hasn’t been installed on the 737, although it does fit on the same diameter 757 cabin. It is, however, popular on the Airbus A321, with carriers from British Airways to jetBlue using it for mid-haul premium services. American Airlines and Qatar Airways also use the A320ceo Family with B/E Aerospace’s Diamond business class, with American also offering a Zodiac Cirrus outward-facing herringbone in its first class cabin on transcontinental A321 flights.

Of course, the much-hyped, much-rumoured and much-promised Boeing middle-of-market replacement (MOM) aircraft might well change the game yet again. A 2-3-2 configuration seems to be on the cards, which is a better option in terms of passenger experience than 3-3. Yet time to market and design delays have been the watchwords for new aircraft builds in recent memory. Will the A321neo eat MOM’s lunch in the meantime? The 737 MAX interior as to be delivered to launch customer Southwest. john walton