Entry costs into the airliner business are formidable and even the two major players are upgrading their aircraft rather than committing to new designs. Murdo Morrison, Editor of Flight International, reports.
Airbus A380
MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR CHALLENGES D
uopolies are hard to break, and the dominance of Airbus and Boeing in the market for airliners of over 120 seats looks fortress-like. Canada’s Bombardier is determined to disprove that with its CSeries, and at June’s Paris air show finally displayed in public the two variants of the single-aisle jet. The airframer – which has specialised in smaller regional and corporate jets – launched its 110-seat CS100 and 130-seat CS300 programmes in 2008 and the aircraft were meant to be flying passengers by now. After several delays, the CSeries should start paying its way next year, but Bombardier is still several dozen short of the 300 orders it wants by the time the aircraft enter service, and Paris – for all the hype surrounding the debuts – failed to secure any more. Bombardier is not the only entrant vying for a slice of a market for some 1000 narrowbod6 Industry Europe
ies a year – a market set to grow perhaps by a half by 2020 as regions such as Latin America and South East Asia continue with their seemingly insatiable appetite for short-haul air travel. Russia’s Irkut and China’s Comac both have large single-aisle jets in development, powered by Western technology, including variants of the CFM International and Pratt & Whitney engines on the latest Airbus and Boeing narrowbodies. Prototypes of the Chinese C919 and the Irkut MC-21 are in assembly and due to begin test flights in the next 12 months. Of the two, the C919 arguably has the stronger prospects, with 450 commitments so far, most from Chinese customers. The challenge for these interlopers is cracking a duopoly enjoyed by Toulouse and Seattle for 20 years. Entry barriers are huge. The multi-billion-dollar expense of developing a new aircraft has proved almost disastrous
for Bombardier, which has had to fund the CSeries (and two long-range business jet launches) at the same time as sales of its regional aircraft and lighter business jets have been falling. Russian industry, despite its heritage of building airliners for a captive Soviet market, has had to reinvent its business model to compete with the West. China may have deep pockets and a large local customer base, but developing its closeto-certification ARJ21 regional jet has been fraught with problems, and, despite Western input, the much larger C919 is unproven. Critical mass is another barrier. With monthly narrowbody production of more than 40 aircraft each and global supply chains – with components dual-sourced to encourage competition – the big two are able to price products attractively. Not only that, but with a range spanning single- and
