9/04/2013

Airbus overbooking A320ceo slots

With Delta Air Lines today announcing the plan to purchase 30 A321ceo (along with 10 A330-300) it becomes clear that all the remaining A320ceo slots are booked now and that it is very likely that Airbus overbooks the slots.
As of July31 there were 1.787 open orders for the A320ceo family in the orderbook. Now let us consider the following orders to get cancelled:
  • Kinfisher/Kingfisher Red 67 aircraft
  • United Airlines                 30 aircraft
  • Alphastream                     15 aircraft
  • Northwest Airlines             7 aircraft
  • Croatia                                4 aircraft
  • Hamburg International       2 aircraft
There are now some announced orders which are not yet in the Airbus O&D table:
  • Delta Airlines                       30 aircraft
  • Vueling                                30 aircraft
  • CASC                                   42 aircraft
  • Air China / Shenzen             40 aircraft
This is a net of 17 orders, so we get 1804 open orders as of July 31st.
With a production rate of 42 and 11.5 months of production per year another 1092 aircraft will have been delivered until the end of October, when the A320neo will enter airline service, leaving .
A320ceo production will ramp down from that point in time. Assume Airbus can hold the rate of 42 aircraft per month steady.
I read somewhere that 12 A320neo should leave the factories in 2015 and 100 in 2016. So from the 564 aircraft produced from November 2015 until December 2016 464 will be ceo's, leaving the ceo backlog at 374. For 2017 I guess that around 60% of all produced A320 will be neo's (289 from 483), so the ceo number delivered in 2017 would be 194 and the remaining backlog at the beginning of 2018 would be 180. Airbus said before that the A320neo should reach 100% share in early 2018, so it is clear that the A320ceo are overbooked at the moment. Maybe this is not unwise as one of the two neo engine suppliers could be late - who knows...

UPDATE: I forgot to mention the American Airlines order: the order for a combined 130 A319ceo and A321ceo is not part of the orderbook. The first two aircraft were delivered in July, then three in August and another one in early September. Airbus leases these aircraft directly to American and then sells them with the lease attached. Not all deliveries will follow that procedure: ILFC ordered 15 A321 recently to lease to AA, so these 15 A321 are part of the orderbook and we do not know how many aircraft from the recent order for 3 A319 and 5 A321 from CIT are destined for AA and how many aircraft will come from other already existing orders fom leasing companies. But Airbus already said that around 30 aircraft will follow the procedure of the first four A319, which were sold to Avolon. So we have another expansion of the orderbook and further overbooking of the A320ceo slots.
             

Race to First Flight

In early June the aviation world still wondered which aircraft would fly first: the Bombardier CSeries CS100 or the A350-900. Then, in the week before the Paris Air Show Airbus managed to get the A350 up in the air. During the Air Show Bombardier officials still stated that the CS100 would fly until the end of June, aka in the last week of June. Then First Flight was delayed until "by the end of July", due to an upgrade of the software. The end of July came and Bombardier once again delayed the first flight, now only saying that it would happen "in the coming weeks".
During that time Low Speed Taxi tests happened and Transport Canada recently awarded the Flight Test Permit.
During the Moscow Air Show two airlines announced that they would take five CS300 each from Ilyushin Finance Lease (VIM and UTAir Ukraine).
But we are still waiting for first flight and we haven't heard of any high speed taxi test and the RTO (rejected take off). And now we hear that Boeing is not too far away from getting the B787-9 in the air. So which aircraft will be first to get the landing gear up from the ground? Once again the (virtual) race is on. Of course none of the two manufacturer will rush just to be first - safety is always first! But it's time for Bombardier to prove that the CSeries is not a paper aircraft!