[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by RGK

Have seen some liquids are sprayed on the entire aircraft during severe winter/snow times in many NA airports. Will this affect the composite material, in the long run, making a repaint compulsory?

What you are referring to is the de-icing or anti-icing fluids that are sprayed. This is a mixture of glycol and water, heated up and sprayed under pressure. The short answer is that these do not affect, in any way, the metal or the composite materials the plane is made up of. The painted surface itself is designed to be resistant to any corrosion from normal de-icing procedures. Smile and fly safe.

[Aravind_M92]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Permit me to share a different perspective and some facts. When you buy a large aircraft, be it a business jet or an airliner there are performance guarantees on cruise speed, range, fuel consumption, drag coefficient very clearly laid out with technical details of the conditions within which those numbers will be achieved. All this is stated in a manner that can be tested in a court of law. Fuel efficiency, drag and range are among the key criterion of why you buy jet X and not jet Y. So when an airline buys an A380 or A350 or B777 the performance that must get achieved in a certain flight condition is clearly spelt out. How the performance would deteriorate with time is also included. Comparing buying a $50 or $200mm aircraft with a car is like comparing buying a car with a tricycle.

Allow me to share an anecdote from the 2011. We were helping a customer purchase a large (very large) biz jet famed for its non-stop range. Inspecting the machine while it is in assembly is a part of the buying process. In this particular case my audit engineers were not happy with the wing assembly section and we stopped the OEM from mating the wing with the fuselage till our issues were addressed. And after a noisy meeting the OEM obliged. The relationship of an aircraft OEM with its customer is a very deep one. By kicking a launch customer in the teeth on the unrelated A321 order Airbus is sending a very dangerous mixed signal to 90 other customers.

Sir I do completely agree with your points. But as an airline Executive, it's their duty to analyse the market needs and purchase the aircraft accordingly. For eg. A new start up airline for heavy domestic routes within India would go with A321 neo rather than the A321 XLR. Simply put the neo makes sense with its range. But the same airline going with international routes would go with A321 XLR.

Qatar Airways like other middle East airlines joined the race for A380 to prove their worth. It was more of pride than practicality. The 380 didn't make sense with passenger role as many regional international airports had cropped up and airlines found flying multiple Twin Jet wide bodies cheaper than operating a A380! And 380 as a freighter didn't make commercial sense.

So yeah, the airline made their choice of buying the aircraft. The A380 was introduced at a time when the 747 sales were being overshadowed by the 777. The 380 sure is an engineering marvel but it was introduced at a wrong time. Had it been developed in the late 80s, it sure would been a success!
The 380 for Airbus was like the Concorde for Aerospatiale! The same pride factor played a role here. It was the airline's choice to buy the aircraft. That doesn't entitle them to blame the manufacturer for the commercial failure.
And for the 321 part, I would say Airbus did the part correctly. They didn't retaliate before the court proceedings.

[pta320]

Originally Posted by Aravind_M92

Sir I do completely agree with your points. But as an airline Executive, it's their duty to analyse the market needs and purchase the aircraft accordingly. For eg. A new start up airline for heavy domestic routes within India would go with A321 neo rather than the A321 XLR. Simply put the neo makes sense with its range. But the same airline going with international routes would go with A321 XLR.

Qatar Airways like other middle East airlines joined the race for A380 to prove their worth. It was more of pride than practicality. The 380 didn't make sense with passenger role as many regional international airports had cropped up and airlines found flying multiple Twin Jet wide bodies cheaper than operating a A380! And 380 as a freighter didn't make commercial sense.

So yeah, the airline made their choice of buying the aircraft. The A380 was introduced at a time when the 747 sales were being overshadowed by the 777. The 380 sure is an engineering marvel but it was introduced at a wrong time. Had it been developed in the late 80s, it sure would been a success!
The 380 for Airbus was like the Concorde for Aerospatiale! The same pride factor played a role here. It was the airline's choice to buy the aircraft. That doesn't entitle them to blame the manufacturer for the commercial failure.
And for the 321 part, I would say Airbus did the part correctly. They didn't retaliate before the court proceedings.

The upcoming airline in India Akasa is going with Boeing. One reason why for a very new airline to not go with Airbus is the delivery delays. Boeing has a better infrastructure to deliver the planes much faster than Airbus. Currently the waiting times are huge for Airbus. The delivery is at snails pace.

[.sushilkumar]

Originally Posted by pta320

The upcoming airline in India Akasa is going with Boeing. One reason why for a very new airline to not go with Airbus is the delivery delays. Boeing has a better infrastructure to deliver the planes much faster than Airbus. Currently the waiting times are huge for Airbus. The delivery is at snails pace.

Airbus is already producing A 320 at top speed of 45 planes a month & intends to increase output to 64 by Q2 next year & 75 by 2025 .

https://www.airbus.com/en/newsroom/p...oduction-plans

A320 Family: Airbus confirms an average A320 Family production rate of 45 aircraft per month in Q4 2021 and calls on suppliers to prepare for the future by securing a firm rate of 64 by Q2 2023. In anticipation of a continued recovering market, Airbus is also asking suppliers to enable a scenario of rate 70 by Q1 2024. Longer term, Airbus is investigating opportunities for rates as high as 75 by 2025

https://simpleflying.com/boeing-737-...tion-increase/

Being intends to produce 42 planes per month by auntum of 2022 which is still 3 less than what airbus already produced in last quarter of 2021.

Fact remains that Airbus is neck deep with A 320 orders and will need considerable time to full fill them. Boeing on the other hand is sitting on ready made inventory of Max planes. Akasa could not be seen delaying the launch just because they want A 320. Traditionally also, short haul market in India is dominated by airbus. Barring Spice-jet , nobody uses Boeing in domestic sector. It,s airbus all the way !!!!!!!!

It,s a simple demand and supply case nothing else. Moreover, I am sure Boeing would have discounted it heavily for Akasa to grab the order. They needed this order badly since Airbus been busy poaching traditional Boeing customers.

In the Single Aisle market, Boeing is way behind airbus now ,more so with A-220 family coming into production shortly & Boeing have no answer to A-220 family in near future.

[dragracer567]

Originally Posted by .sushilkumar

Fact remains that Airbus is neck deep with A 320 orders and will need considerable time to full fill them. Boeing on the other hand is sitting on ready made inventory of Max planes. Akasa could not be seen delaying the launch just because they want A 320. Traditionally also, short haul market in India is dominated by airbus. Barring Spice-jet , nobody uses Boeing in domestic sector. It,s airbus all the way !!!!!!!!

Also, to add to that, I remember reading somewhere that the IGI airport sees the highest number of flights operating the A320 in the world, goes to show just how dominant Airbus is in India, mainly thanks to the giant that is Indigo. Where Boeing really leads is in wide bodies but that’s really minuscule in India with Air India operating the majority in the form of B777s and B787s while Vistara has a handful of B787s.

[ads11]

Originally Posted by .sushilkumar

In the Single Aisle market, Boeing is way behind airbus now ,more so with A-220 family coming into production shortly & Boeing have no answer to A-220 family in near future.

Yeah just wanted to reiterate that the A-220 even going back to its Bombardier C-Series days has been a bogeyman for the Seattle manufacturer. So much so they lobbied first the Dept of Commerce to sanction Bombardier and handicap the jet, and then when they realised their whole sanctions argument would have the floor pulled out from under once the programme got picked up by Airbus (critically with assembly happening in a US facility), they panicked and made a rushed bid for Embraer. That deal obviously fell through when the whole s***storm of the Max fiasco hit and Boeing had more important fires to put out. But yeah, Boeing is really up against it in the narrow body market - they have an uphill battle just winning back confidence in the 737 Max and they just don't have anything to compete with the A-220.

Speaking of which I can see the A-220 being quite the handy jet for a market like ours. Surely there must be some interest?

[TSIboy]

Apparently Qatar airways has signed an MoU to buy Boeing’s 737-10, the largest variant of the MAX family after Airbus cancelled the A320 orders. Reports say it has committed to 25 of the aircraft with option for an additional 25. In addition to the MAX order, the airline has also signed an order for 34 of the freighter variant of the 777X with option for 16 more.

[Aravind_M92]

Originally Posted by TSIboy

Apparently Qatar airways has signed an MoU to buy Boeing’s 737-10, the largest variant of the MAX family after Airbus cancelled the A320 orders. Reports say it has committed to 25 of the aircraft with option for an additional 25. In addition to the MAX order, the airline has also signed an order for 34 of the freighter variant of the 777X with option for 16 more.

Another lawsuit in the making! Boeing is already in tight schedules and manufacturing large scales need lots of infrastructure rather than money which Boeing is seriously in shortage of.
Again Boeing has only given timelines and not given any definite deadline. And if Boeing fails to do so, Akbar Al Baker won't hesitate to pull Boeing to court as well! Sure the huge funding from Qatar and other major airlines have given Boeing the required funds to kickstart the process.
And then Qatar might turn to Comac for future prospects. Only Akbar knows what he's going to plan!

[theflyingguy]

Looks like Airbus has made up it's mind on fighting Qatar now. It has cancelled the orders for 2 more aircrafts. Alghough these being the same A350s which are bone of contention, not sure if Qatar would have accepted the delivery anyway but the intent from Airbus seems clear.

[govindremesh]

Originally Posted by theflyingguy

Looks like Airbus has made up it's mind on fighting Qatar now. It has cancelled the orders for 2 more aircrafts. Alghough these being the same A350s which are bone of contention, not sure if Qatar would have accepted the delivery anyway but the intent from Airbus seems clear.

Adding link to the news

This battle is far from over. If Airbus decides to cancel the remaining 21 A350-1000s, it will signal the end of a relationship. If that happens, I wonder how it might impact the maintenance of existing aircrafts for Qatar airways, since they would still needs to depend on Airbus for spares?

Unless Qatar decides to sell all of its Airbus aircafts out of sheer ego - impractical since Airbus aircafts form close to 50% of Qatar's fleet.