10/04/2012

Boeing B737MAX orders gaining steam

This week Boeing firmed two orders for the B737MAX. On October 1st GOL signed for 75 B737MAX-8 and two days later GECAS for another 75 copies of the -8. Another unidentified customer signed for 22 B737MAX. Boeing has now 821 firm orders for the MAX.
What is maybe more important is that Boeing still has no order for the -7. Also the A319neo has only very few orders so far. There are two possible explanations for this:
1. Airlines are shifting to larger aircraft.
2. Other aircraft, especially the Bombardier CS300 is the better aircraft.
I discussed this also in an earlier post. Against the first assumption speaks that there are markets that do not support a 180 seater and a 150 or 130 seater is more economical.
But there are not really too much orders for the CSeries - yet. My guess is that once first flight happened (and went well) we will see some more orders, maybe also on a larger scale.

Another sidenote of the GECAS order is that there are "only" 10 orders for the B737-800NG included with 15 more options instead of the 25 firm orders originally announced. I also discussed this earlier: Boeing has to sell something like 500 more NG's to close the gap until the MAX enters service. And as a ramp up to full production will probably take another two years, Boeing needs to sell another 500 or so if they do not want to have an overall slowdown in B737 deliveries.

5 comments:

  1. Thanks AeroT! Has anything being said through the grapevine about the actual size of the fan for the 737Max engines other than the talked about 69.4 inches?

    I remember you pointed out that the fan size isn't everything when trying to squeeze the best fuel burn out of a particular engine, but will GE be able to pull it off to be very close to the same fuel burn as the 320Neo engines even though those have a much larger fan diameter?

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    1. I don't know of of any update regarding the fan diameter since the 69.4" was announced. I have no doubt that fuel burn for the neo and the MAX will be close - at least for both aircraft powered with the respective LEAP engines - but if the LEAP-1A will be fully competitive with the GTF on the neo remains to be seen. I expect that the LEAP-1A will be a little bit worse on SFC and heavier than the GTF.
      The B737MAX needs less thrust than the neo, so fuel burn and SFC are not comparable back-to-back. The CFM57-7BE is also worse on SFC than the CFM56-5B today, but as the B737 needs less thrust than the A320 fuel burn is very close.

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  2. I have to assume the optimum fansize of the LEAPX engine is at least 78 inch, otherwise Airbus would have installed a smaller, lighter fan.

    Boeing will install the maximum fan feasible under the 737 wing.

    The rest is smoke and mirrors as far as I'm concerned.

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    1. Optimal fan size would be a little bit smaller than 78" as the thrust level is less than on the A320.

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  3. Maybe optimum fan size is 80 or 85 inch for 35k lbs but it couldn't fit the A321 either..

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