One of the most informative aspects of any Paris Air Show is the series of updates on aircraft strategy from the main airframers, with Airbus’ widebody media briefing trending firmly towards industry recovery and incremental improvements — and no stretches to its widebody aircraft.
A key headline message from Airbus senior vice president marketing Stan Shparberg is that “traffic is back. We just came back from IATA, we were at the AIX exhibition in Hamburg, and talking to a lot of our customers, to a lot of airlines. We are clearly seeing that demand is there, [and] we’re trying to bring the capacity back.”
On a revenue passenger kilometre basis, the traffic forecast is within the range of Airbus’ January 2021 forecast. Notably, however, the speed of recovery has been more sinuous than straight-line: a faster recovery than expected from January 2021 to the end of that year, then a series of accelerations followed by a sort of coasting for a few months that has returned the overall line to roughly the middle of expectations.
Airbus’ conclusion seems to be that the global overall return to 2019 levels — noting substantial regional disparity, presently most notably in terms of outbound China travel — in roughly the third quarter of this year.
“On the international,” Shparberg notes, “we’re slightly below: we’re roughly 89%. That’s mainly driven by the APAC region, and more by the China market recovery, which is currently somewhere around 41% on the international side. We see all the strong signs for that recovery to be coming back strongly. My personal bet would be that by the end of this year, early next year, we’d definitely be at the pre-COVID levels.”
Shparberg also teased the widebody element of Airbus’ new twenty-year global market forecast, with some 8,220 widebodies needed, of which the airframer estimates 1,490 will be widebody freighters. That’s up from last year’s prediction of 7,870 within the widebody category, although at that point Airbus was using the term “typically widebody”, accounting for the crossover in seat count between a high-density narrowbody like the A321neo and a smaller widebody like the Airbus A330-800neo.
Airbus’ widebody portfolio remains unchanged with the A350 and A330neo
Five Airbus widebodies are presently on sale:
- – the A350-900 (the smaller A350, and the launch model)
- – the A350-1000 stretch (the stretch, including as Qantas’ Project Sunrise ultra-long-range with the extra rear fuel tank)
- – the A350F freighter
- – the A330-800neo (the size of an A330-200 and still very much the niche airliner of the family)
- – the A330-900neo (the size of an A330-300 and the better seller)
It’s always informative to study an airframer’s focus when it comes to marketing messages, because these are the selling points it thinks airlines want to hear for its aircraft.
For the A350, Airbus is focussing on the latest-generation aspect of the widebody, suggesting 25 percent lower fuel burn and CO2 emissions (usually against the aircraft it will be replacing in fleets, which would typically be a 747-400 or early 777-200ER model), as well as its 100 percent sustainable aviation fuel readiness (much in advance of likely fuel availability to that extent).
Airbus is also focussing on its Airspace cabin brand, following the recent deliveries of the first versions of its New Production Standard upgraded variants, which feature sculpted sidewalls that add an extra four inches of cabin width, as well as refigured front and rear cabin elements thanks to pushing the rear pressure bulkhead back a frame. A new front bulkhead means new options for crew rests and galleys, all rolled in with a higher maximum takeoff weight, raising each variant by about 3t.
Lastly for the passenger A350, Airbus is showcasing its Airbus Services for digital solutions, in-service upgrades and trajectory optimisation. This continues to be a major airframer play.
On the A350 freighter side, Shparberg gave a useful summary of Airbus’ logic in launching the product: “we’ve been asked by the customers, we’ve been asked by the ecosystem to challenge the monopoly that was created in the large freighters. We did that with the launch of the A350 freighter.”
The latest on the A350F is that it will offer up to 111t of payload, with Airbus also highlighting that it has a 175-inch freight door, 15 inches wider than the 777 Mammoth door and 25 wider than the standard 777F door.
As a result, Shparberg notes, “the response from our customers has been great. We are very proud to say, over the last couple of years since the launch of the programme, we already have been able to gain 42 percent market share versus the 777-8F. We’re very proud of it, we have plenty more to come, and I believe this product is really bringing a new era in the freight market.”
On the A330neo side, Airbus says that the new wing and engine of the neo make it a “future-proof platform”, noting that is certified to the latest CO2 standards — a looming issue for Boeing’s 767, which Airbus has long flagged as the comparator replacement for the A330neo.
Airbus cites over 1,700 total orders and 140+ operators for the aircraft, although the company rather neatly omitted that this is for the full A330 family. Airbus’ own orders and deliveries table reveals that the neo portion of this total is just under 300 aircraft. That remains, however, a fairly creditable 16% of the total over the nearly four decades since the first orders in 1987.
The final message for the A330neo is Airbus’ argument that it is the “lowest seat-mile cost widebody”, and highlighted its versatility across business models, featuring both Cebu Pacific’s long-haul ultra-low-cost carrier version and Virgin Atlantic’s more premium layout.
No stretch for the A350-1000… for now?
In response to a question from your author about any updates to the A350-2000 stretch mooted previously by the airframer, however, senior vice president in charge of the A350 and A330 programmes Florent Massou dit Labaquère confirmed that “the -2000 is not on the table today”.
As ever, this is likely to be Airbus’ line all the way up until the moment it launches a new programme. It’s notable that, in the week leading up to Le Bourget, Emirates chief executive Tim Clark — speaking to Brian Sumers’ The Airline Observer Substack — had the response “is that it, really?” to Airbus’ current large aircraft offering. Emirates is expecting to start retiring its A380s in the 2030s, meaning that now is roughly the time at which any replacement aircraft would need to be launched.
Author: John Walton
Published 22 June 2023
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