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Tuesday, April 1, 2014

3MM average (corrected/updated)

Goal +/-                         01/2014 02/2014  *03/2014  *Projected Mo
Month Deliveries              4             4              10 8
3 M-M-avg                         8.0            6.3          6.0 7
Production Goal               10             10           10 10
Production Trend (+/- )   2.0             -3.7        -4.             -3

Wow, what a month. The moving average absorbs the FAA audits, factory configuration changes in Charleston, and the wing crack issue by putting out 10 787's. Further development on the 787-9 has offered another copy for preparation for flight, as Boeing begins to back fill 787-9's for its customers. Once it has completed testing by this June the moving average will climb easily to 10.

End of April will show Boeing slowly climbing out its hole of about 8 units delivered and gradually rising Moving average towards 10. Boeing will reach the 3MM of 10 by the end of June. All current problems will be resolved on the factory floor by then, baring any new reported issues.

As one can speculate Boeing is overly ambitious about hitting the 10 a month pace. Moving ten units a month out the factory door doesn't necessarily translate to 10 a month moved off its property, when cash is exchanged with its customers. A broader scope is for a financial impact from delivery, and the narrower scope goes out from the factory an efficiency standard for production managers. The ten a month goal is factory production only. The 10 a month moving average goal is an expectation of complete 787 sold to its customers, which is a proper way to look at the revenue stream from each facility.

Looking above at the chart, the Moving Average at the end of March shows an increase to a seven average, since it moved 9 units in March. The traded aircraft hits the bank as a revenue value entered into the accounting books. Boeing would like to average 10 paydays a month on the 787 program and will reach that goal by end of June. Investors should heed this revenue stream. If Boeing continues its advance on its aircraft through production and actual delivery then investors can monitor more closely the financial health of this project. I would expect that an average of ten units will enable Boeing a projection of Break-even in a more accurate manner. At break-even, Boeing will have the high ground for its investors as well as with its marketing team.

Monday, March 31, 2014

Flight Global Explains How The ANA/Airbus Single Aisle Order Sums It Up For Airbus.

Airbus Order Analysis excerpt: Flight Global

"Airbus will be pleased to have dislodged Boeing as ANA’s single-aisle vendor, having lost out to the US manufacturer a decade ago. That 2003 737 deal was a surprise at the time, as ANA was already established as an A320 customer and had been expected to stick with Airbus.


The airline retains 15 A320s delivered in the 1990s, but the majority of its single body fleet comprises 737NGs, with 37 in service, Flightglobal’s Ascend Online database shows.
However, orders for the 777X series were already outstripping those for the A350-1000. Airbus order data to the end of February lists 189 commitments for the -1000, while – assuming the ANA deal is firmed – Boeing has already garnered 300 orders for the revamped 777.
To an extent, the A350-1000 does not compete directly with the 777-9X, ceding around 30 seats and 200nm (370km) of range to its rival, but Airbus will nonetheless have pitched it to ANA. Save for theA380, it could offer nothing else."

The April Fools Day Winging IT Post Corn Beef Day Expose'

Flight Global exposes the Airbus Conundrum very clearly in the last paragraph above, where it is wedged between the rock and the hard spot of wide bodies. The Japan Airline order from last year, now becomes a one off anomaly in Asia as Boeing successfully wooed ANA with the Boeing wide body order. ANA was given solid assurances for upping the 787-9 orders. It has the most 787 flying of any single company in the world. Therefore, it has the best operational data of any airline over the last three years. Even Qatar or Air India can' match ANA numbers with its smaller fleets. ANA went ahead and ordered a substantial Amount of 787-9 with 14 units for fleet renewal of replacing its older 777 types in its fleet. As stated in the Flight Global article, Long ago Boeing wrestled away from Airbus by selling a fleet of single aisle 737 back in the 1990's. Airbus has now flipped ANA back against the MAX. Since the single aisle market is so volatile, it is possible to take some consolation that the MAX is several years behind the NEO for an ANA earlier first delivery. By the time these new NEO's are delivered the delivery books for both manufacturers are stuffed. 
Boeing (Dreaming) will have to deal with that by out producing Airbus at closer to fifty a month to fill the single aisle market with loads of Boeing 737 MAX types. They may want to consider a 32 a month NG line side by side with a 32 a month Max line for the next seven years. That would actually catch Airbus and sell more airplanes for an impatient market place. ANA considers the differences on the NEO vs MAX are small enough to get one NEO sooner rather than one MAX later. The MAX has to climb rapidly out of its R & D bunker rather quickly. The NG won't compete with the NEO in a head to head match, only as the NG can from a capitalization perspective. Its cheaper monthly interest cost buying the NG over both the MAX and NEO, and a cheaper NG with a diminished interest expense, off-sets its higher cost of operations. Flying an airplane with a smaller performance margin is paid for with the capitalization savings during its service.
An example of the capitalization model in simple numbers is as follows: 
How the  better performance aircraft cost more at the bank and has an off-set by higher interest expense costs, against that improved performance. However, an NG fleet may compete well with the NEO on the bottom line for that reason. Buying new equipment recharges a company's depreciation schedule. ANA needs to consider newer aircraft sooner, since the depreciation on older aircraft loses a tax affect as it ages. Airbus is closer to being ready than Boeing while ANA needs the pole positon for single aisle tax benefits. 

NG Purchase Price:                                          NEO Purchase Price
50 Million                                                            70 Million
-Annual Interest Cost on 50 Million                +Annual Interest Cost on 70 Million 
+Increased Net fuel/operation NG/NEO          - Decreased Fuel cost on NEO over NG

NEO Comparison For ANA customers.
NG keeps it fresh for RyanAir





RyanAir approaches its 170 Boeing 737NG purchases with a model that will compete on the bottom line with both the Max and NEO. Once those newly ordered 170 need fleet replacing, the MAX or NEO capitalization will have decreased by then, and warrant purchasing the newer generation aircraft at a cheaper than today's price.
ANA has taken the high road by model type, going with a guarantee of being closer to the front of the NEO line if they chose Airbus over Boeing. Airbus went stumping just to crack back into Japan's market. It has covered both wide body and single aisle with two different Japanese airlines. Boeing was in there slugging it out with Airbus for orders. In the Japan Airlines case, they were too late to the horse race gate. In the second attempt they won the race with Airbus with the wide body order exposing Airbus as a pretender not a contender. The A350-1000 is about as far out for delivery as the 777-9. With all things even Boeing won. What ANA also won was a great deal is made with Boeing using the threat of Boeing loosing another close call in its special market found in Japan. The ANA order with Boeing, exposes Airbus' Achilles heal with a thin line up.



Friday, March 28, 2014

Boeing to start demolition May 1 for 777X Everett wing plant

Boeing to start demolition May 1 for 777X Everett wing plant


So begins the onslaught of the 777X in Puget Sound Region. The Puget Sound Journal lays out the wing plant spot. Once 1.5 to 3.5 Billion $samolie are laid out for another ginormous 1.2 million square foot building, the dump trucks will roll and dump where those four buildings now stand in the Blue circle.  Reading assignment is given by opening the above Link and is required by all Aviation students.  The big building in the top middle center with the Iconic black and silver roof is where everything happens in Everett building for big aircraft.


3 million pound autoclave ovens, need a deep base of harden underlayment provided by thousands of dump truck loads of hard material and cement that will support three monster ovens and autoclave machines. 

A written report by aviation enthusiast is due in the Morning.

Bending Numbers Like Beckham Makes a Compelling Case In Japan

The recent ANA order has brought out the Analyst spirit in an Airbus weighted curve for the NEO and a Logical replete for the  777-9. The A350-1000 does not meet the 777-9 nine in an open market.  Several references  of a less than optimal 787-8 is now a secondary option when new orders will be opened in the next 5 years sounds like more Airbus Think Tank verbiage. Boeing has the future high ground in the orient with the 787-9 and 787-10.

Read Link:


ANA Goes Shopping: Our Analysis of the Order


After reading this article I don' t no where the numbers come from for the NEO aircraft for a model not yet in service. I don't know the Max numbers as well. However, I do know each airline customer lining up for a Max or NEO purchases get to gloat over its choice.  I tried to come to a conclusion for the ANA case on the NEO, from a seat cost per passenger and the distance range for the NEO. This being called an analysis, does not give a citation on raw numbers, but agrees with ANA's sensibility on how it will replace old equipment with new NEO's and New 777-300, -9's.

The Airbus A350 -1000  can't hold up against the 777-9. ANA filled its play book with more 787-9, as it will replace all older 767's in time. Where does this leave JAL with its wide bodies from Airbus? It leaves them hoping the Airbus sales team told them the truth about the Bus.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Airbus Tunnels Under A Boeing Fortress In Japan

Today, ANA announces a 40 aircraft deal with Boeing and a 30 aircraft Deal with Airbus. Before Boeing panics, as once again Airbus leaves on Boein's face, Boeing needs to back up a bit to JAL's deals last year as they bought 30 plus A350-9 and A350-1000. The come back and examine the sales effort by Boeing presented to ANA.

ANA bought a preponderance of dollar value Boeing aircraft for the 777-9 and 787-9 line of aircraft. A break down of model types and numbers will appear below. A total of 16.9 billion were ordered from both aircraft giants. Airbus sneaked a $3.3 billion order book out of Japan, where Boeing strongly and openely takes home $13.3 billion dollars in orders. A second ratio is the percentage of bank taken by these two suiters in the breach of Boeing's Japanese fortress. If this were a seige they (Airbus) only dented the wooden bridge over the moat and set it afire.

However, this is the second assault on the Japanese Market Place. One can see a clearer picture emerging with both Airbus and Boeing. Airbus is using these marketing battles and skirmishes as probes in a process of taking Boeing's castle in the orient. Boeing is upping the defense much to the delight of ANA. JAL may have rattled Boeing a bit, as Airbus successfully ambushed Boeing last year as, that Airbus Marketing team put down a sputtering Boeing team. What can be taken out of that loss to Airbus, is that Boeing disrespected the market and JAL got a sweet deal from Airbus.

The next round goes to Boeing with a message that Airbus has its foot in ANA's door with 30 NEO not Max's. The sub text could be the single aisle market for ANA is a sooner need for single aisle, rather than a later Max need. But Boeing should not brush that order off as an Need order for ANA. Boeing needs to flood Max orders into the Orient as soon as possible. Boeing needs to make those 30 NEO's order with Airbus as just a stop gap replacement of equipment order. That is a significant introduction into ANA's fleet. Boeing needs to counter strongly with a MAX order somewhere in ANA's market region. A head to head comparison is required by Boeing  to blunt the NEO invasion into Japan.

Boeing's order book is a wide body order in dollar value which is about an 80% of that $16.9 billion spent on these orders. Airbus walks away with only about 20% of the dollar value during this round of orders. The Gravitas for Airbus is that Airbus is there at all in the face of the Boeing's Max presence. This is a warning shot over Boeing's bow. Boeing worked extra hard with ANA as did Airbus. It was a marketing slugfest which went down to the mat. ANA was pleased with the outcome as Boeing tipped its hat towards all in the marketing ring. ANA likes these knockout rounds as Boeing no longer takes anything for granted with Japanese customers. The JAL breaches the Boeing market with its wide body Airbus order, and ANA with the single aisle order.

Boeing should keep it hand close to the vest during these next five years as other airlines mount new orders in succession, during the development years of both the 777x and the Max. Airbus will continue to give away airplanes much to the delight of its customers where the Boeing offensive will be the validation of its family of aircraft. Already the world is seeing the 787 advantages through the forest of glitches. Those glitch trees are eliminated one chop at a time. The 787 is the keystone of what Boeing is trying to accomplish for all its other models. The A350 is not the Keystone of its family of aircraft. The New Engine Option for both the the A321 and A330 is about the illusion of performance not a new design aspects as found in the MAX, The 787, and 777x. The Airbus models are rapidly becomeing a patchwork example of chasing Boeing all over the drawing board forgeting key engineering elements that Boeing has created through its own processes of design. An A350 that forgets what's in the 787. An A320 that slaps on new engines with addition enhancements. An A330 not yet announced as another NEO which strives to copy its own concept from the A320. This is a tit for tat battle fought with simple enhancements by Airbus and a more robust approach by Boeing.

I believe JAL blinked with its order of Airbus wide bodies and ANA cuffed a warning to Boeing with its single aisle order from Airbus.

Here is the sum of it all from the news bin:

All Nippon Airways Splits $16.6 Billion Aircraft Order

20 Boeing 777-9

14  Boeing 787-7
 6    Boeing 777-300 ER

Total: 40 : $13.3 billion for Boeing

Foot in the door order for Airbus

“Both aircraft makers were very aggressive in their sales pitches,” All Nippon’s president, Shinichiro Ito, told reporters in Tokyo. “That helped us secure even better conditions.”

ANA ordered 30 planes from Airbus, including:

  • 7, A320neo jets and
  • 23, of the A321neo model.


This comes to about $3.3 billion for Airbus

Besides giving Airbus additional sales in Japan, the deal also solidified its more general edge in selling the next generation of smaller single-aisle jets. Its Neo models have been outselling Boeing’s 737 MAX around the world.

The purchases from Boeing and Airbus also amount to All Nippon’s biggest order and will help bring its fleet to 250 planes.



Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Critical Systems Review Team or CSRT Boeing's Bill Of Health From The FAA

Those of you who are not familiar of audits on a mass scale are fortunate not to suffer from stress anxiety while on the the job. Those of you who have gone through that grist mill, learn to brace-up and except the inevitable, you job is under audit! Boeing has, after many a mishap for its 787 gone through a comprehensive performance audit for its manufacturing process and performance building this aircraft with a keen emphasis of processes, procedures and production of its all new aircraft, the 787.  A brief review for anyone wanting to know what's under the hood on the 787 , the CSRT report is a must read. Not so much for the detail of what was found, but more for the assurance of what has Boeing wrought with this 787.

The summary report generalizes the overview of the audit. A Team went in to find if Boeing did its due diligence not from the standard production scheme of legacy models such as the 737 or 747, but from a new perspective of all new critical systems with a whole new level of technology. Hence the Critical Systems Review Team. This blog is sort of a primer for this audit report. The audit title hints at the the audit scope in the area of critical systems. The audit will compare past practices and over-all performances of this new airplane, and will diagnose if Boeing has taken appropriate steps while it developed a completely new aircraft. It takes testing in a comparison of the former and compares it with the 787. The Critical system review looks at multiple steps in making a 787 that is so unlike the former aircraft and come up with measurable conclusions that are useful for Boeing and its customers alike.

While examining the former verses the present, the Team filled the audit score card with observations (a kind of word for findings) and then issues recommendations (another kind word/phrase for "do it this way"). Leaving only a proper response for Boeing of, "We Concur". Audit responses from Boeing generally will repeat the findings or observations by stating, "we have implemented a process that directly affects said recommendations on the following observations, we have concurred, as reported by the CSRT. The new process-procedure, or policy, will assure Boeing's reaches the stated audit goal and so forth.

What the CSRT hopes to achieve is a continuity from suppliers through Boeing's ultimate customers (airline company)  we all will have a stake in the ultimate goal of sound critical systems. Sounds simple, but it is intended to hone in on the key issue found during the R & D phase clear through the initial customer phase these last three years. While reading this report I kept in mind the "apples to apples" analysis of two divergent airframes. The all metal type compared to the all plastic type with all its new technology systems and millions of lines of code that make it fly. This is not your fathers airplane. What does the team say? The Boeing 787, as complex as the critical systems are, score about the same amount of issues as prior and less complex models (777) did when they were first introduced into the market place. It had comparable glitch numbers over the whole of it as the 777 did when it waas first introduced. That is a remarkable thought, an airplane that has million more parts, code and thousands of new technology benchmarks beyond what the 777 had when it was introduced. It comes out with about the same few numbers of problems.

Every day the 787 flies it just keeps improving as critical systems monitor, manage, and improve performance of the 787. The above last sentence isn't in the report, but it becomes an underlying theme to the 787 progressions forward.

Each day the 787 flies it pulls further ahead of the A350 attempts. Boeing now has a battery system that meets the initial promise. It has reduced its weight further than the first models. The production and supply chain continuously adjusts and improves. The FAA audit team concurs with Boeing that it is doing what it says in regard to a safe airplane. The after introduction period is equally important as the initial test period. During the first year the aircraft was flying it was not flying at the expense of customer safety. Boeing is committed to making the 787 fly safer each day it is in service. The first three year keeps pushing the performance and safety curve upward.

Without going into a line by line regurgitation of the audit report, read it if you will with a knowledge that auditors approach big guys like Boeing, with dull axes to grind away until they sharpen Boeing's back bone. The intent is to find everything possible within the audit scope and report it with no remorse.

Boeing just exhaled a big one. A validation on the over-all effort with the 787.  Dinner for everyone at Boeing, on the Boss! Being on both sides of  comprehensive audits, I can tell you its similar of a grand validation during finals week at school to get that "A". Boeing missed a few questions as expected by anyone in the loop. But it achieved a benchmark for the 787 history book. It is a "Safe Airplane". The press may recoil a little as glitches no longer merit a headline.  If it does print a Glitch Headline, Boeing responds with a statement, "That Dog no longer Hunts", "now go after a real story, the fix is in the works before it hits the press wires". The audit brings a third person imploring continuity for both Boeing's partners and Boeing in delivering a safe airplane. All parties, from top to bottom, will strive to get on the the same performance page when building the 787. After all, that is what Boeing has been working towards, since before the very first airplane was ever assembled.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

The Lurker Awards Top Five All Time Blogs

Below are the all time read blogs since its inception in November 2012. What readers viewed world-wide, during this period until this March 2014. This  listing by no means are the most articulated or grammatically correct, but represents just the raw impulse of a views or a repeated views. Over-all, it represents a divergent viewing of these Boeing topics over time.

All Time Lurkers Award Goes To :

"The 777X Project is Going Underground"


Sep 23, 2013, 



The second category is what's "Hot"  during the last 30 days.

 Top Five viewed "Winging It" Blogs  during the last thirty days.

Lurker Award goes to:

Is The A330 Blowing it Out Its Stern"

Entries


Mar 21, 2014, 




The last Lurker Award Goes in the category for: "Last Seven Days Extraneously Viewed In Rapid Succession Late at Night". Lurker Award For This Weeks Most Viewed Goes to : "Is The A330 is Blowing It Out Its Stern"

Entries



Mar 21, 2014, 




"777 Is Going Under Ground", leads most categories over time. From week to week and month to month, it remains in the top five viewed.

Thank You Lurker's, for your faithful patience on this blog, where I strive to bring forward an alternate view on the Boeing progress of building aviation's innovations.