fiightglobal.com 15 December 2015-4 January 2016 | Flight International | 25
a year in aerospace
Rate expectations
Mentally ill pilot kills 150
Boeing orders pace cools
A
irbus waited until the last days of October before confirming what many
suspected: that it intends to raise output of its best-selling narrowbody
to previously unheralded levels. From mid-2019, the airframer will produce
60 A320neo-family jets each month across its four final assembly lines in
Toulouse, Hamburg, Tianjin and Mobile.
It says analysis of its order book suggests the backlog for the re-engined
narrowbody – presently at over 4,400 and rising – is sufficiently robust to
support the increase. Discussions with key suppliers – particularly engine
manufacturers CFM International and Pratt & Whitney – have given Airbus
confidence the supply chain can cope with unprecedented levels of output.
The manufacturer had already committed to taking output to 50
A320-family jets per month from 2017, with Boeing taking production of its
competing 737 to 52 per month. Airbus’s move, of course, puts pressure
on the Seattle airframer to match the increase. The opening of a third pro-
duction line in Renton, Washington creates capacity at the final assembly
stage for Boeing to build as many as 63 737s. Spirit AeroSystems, which
supplies the narrowbody’s fuselage, has made similar capacity adjust-
ments at its manufacturing site in Wichita, Kansas. Boeing, too, has made
changes to its Renton wing assembly line to support the higher rate. But
now it is a matter of persuading the supply chain, especially engine manu-
facturer CFM, which has exclusivity on both the current-generation 737 and
the re-engined Max, to ramp up production as well. However, all of that has
to be considered in the context of rate rises on other programmes: Boeing
intends to push the 787 to Rate 12 in 2016 and Rate 14 by the end of the
decade, as Airbus struggles to meet ramp-up targets on the A350.
AirbusBoeingAction Press/Rex ShutterstockAirbusB
oeing set an internal orders record a year ago, but it couldn’t maintain
the pace in 2015.
The company’s net order tally in 2014 rose to 1,432 aircraft overall, a
figure swelled by demand for new models such as the 737 Max, the 777X
and the 787-10.
By the end of November, however, Boeing’s year-to-date net orders in
2015 stood at just 568. Boeing chief salesman John Wojick pledged at the
Dubai air show in mid-November to sign as many orders by the end of the
year as the company would deliver: 755-765 aircraft.W
hen a Germanwings Airbus A320 en route from Barcelona to
Dusseldorf crashed in the French Alps on 24 March, killing all 150
on board, the rarity of catastrophic problems in the cruise phase of flight
immediately rang alarm bells that this had been no ordinary disaster.
Sadly, early concerns proved justified when the recovered cockpit voice
recorder showed the captain to have been locked out of the cockpit as the
aircraft began its descent from 38,000ft, apparently at the deliberate con-
trol of co-pilot Andreas Lubitz, who had not responded to numerous radio
calls from air traffic control. Amid anguished tributes (pictured), realisation
the aircraft had been deliberately crashed prompted calls for two crew at all
times in the cockpit and reviews of post-9/11 cockpit door locking rou-
tines. But there may be no complete protection from mental illness.