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Aerospace leaders prepare for bumpy ride to recover long-haul flights

Plane manufacturers fear the coronavirus pandemic will give them and their plane buyers, airlines and rental groups, a near-death blow. Eighteen months later, passengers were back – but mostly on short-haul routes.

As passenger demand approaches or even matches pre-pandemic levels on shorter journeys where smaller single-aisle jets are used, long-haul traffic still declines with many wide-body aircraft flying intercontinental routes remained inactive.

With more than 1,400 of these twin-aisle jets still stored in hangars as of early December, a recovery in the widebody market remains uncertain, according to data from aviation consulting firm Cirium. sure.

Although the numbers are down from the peak of the pandemic in March 2020 when about 3,586 twin-aisle aircraft were in storage, it still represents nearly 30% of the current fleet flown by airlines. These planes are back in service.

It stands in sharp contrast to the pre-pandemic era when some executives said there were too many larger planes after a decade of strong production and deliveries.

Christian Scherer, commercial director at Airbus, said that when Covid took hold, there was a “slightly elevated backlog of widebody aircraft” after “a bit of an order frenzy”.

Business Class on a Qantas flight on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner © James D Morgan / Getty

The pandemic, he added, has helped to “sober up” and “inoculate the big airlines a little bit, away from the big planes and towards less risky, lower-trip cost models.” .

In times of impending crisis, Boeing and Airbus both want to boost their wide-body jets.

There is a lot of “excitment about the Boeing 787 and the Airbus A350” [both wide-bodies] Kevin Michaels, executive director of Michigan-based AeroDynamic Advisory, said.

“It was a period of time [the past decade] of strong air travel growth. We’ve grown at this breakneck speed, and you have this weirdly high fuel cost with a low capital cost. Bring the two together with new technology and a strong period of development. . . All of that has led to airlines having to order heavily,” he added.

However, Scherer is “absolutely convinced” that market demand will continue for twin-aisle jets “with a lot of vengeance” as the short-range or domestic market, once traffic flows. International and intercontinental access resumes.

But it could be “between 2023 and 2025 not allowing anything else” before long-distance journeys recover, he said. After that, it will still take longer to return to pre-pandemic production levels for wide-body aircraft.

Tree chart showing the future in doubt for ultra-large jets as 300-seaters dominate Twin-aisle Passenger deliveries over the next 20 years (by number of seats) G2052_21X

Other industry executives assert a long-term recovery and broad-body market will happen, but concede it will be tough.

Warren East, chief executive of British aviation engine maker Rolls-Royce, which is heavily exposed to the wide-body market, said in early December that any recovery won’t be linear, especially with the Omicron variant. “It will be a story of 10 steps forward and two steps back,” he said.

Ed Bastian, Delta executive, echoed East’s comments, alert that Omicron hit reservations in January, mostly for international travel. The drop shows “anywhere. . . countries have put in place travel restrictions,” he added.

Ihssane Mounir, Boeing’s senior vice president of commercial business, said “everyone wants to travel” and stressed that demand remains strong in the long term. However, he acknowledged that it is still “too early to call” when the manufacturer’s production rate for the 787, which peaked at 14 a month in 2019, will reach that high again.

“We have to build two to five, then see how it goes,” he said.

Independent analysts share Scherer’s view that the recovery in widebody production rates will take until the middle of the decade.

A Boeing 777X, the US manufacturer’s next wide-body model © Terray Sylvester / Reuters

“I do not believe the rate of new wide-body production will return to pre-pandemic levels, at least for many more years,” said Scott Hamilton, of the aerospace consulting firm Leeham News. aerospace consulting firm Leeham News.

AeroDynamic’s Michaels agrees, saying it could be the 2030s before the twin-engine 787 production rate hits a 2019 monthly high of 14.

For the biggest jets, the four-engine planes, the market has almost completely disappeared, said Rob Morris, head of consulting at Ascend by Cirium. “Many of them are being broken up or eliminated.”

According to John Plueger, chief executive officer of Air Lease, one of the world’s largest aircraft leasing companies, there are still green shoots for new twin-engine jets. “We’ve seen demand for the next-generation widebody grow slowly, but it’s certainly not nearly as strong as single-aisle.”

The need for cargo capacity, he said, is one of the reasons for the rise in widebody demand, as airlines use passenger planes to try to capitalize on cargo and high rates.

Forecasting demand, however, was complicated by Boeing’s lingering production problems with the 787 Dreamliner as it struggled to fix quality issues. American Airlines said it would have to readjust its summer schedule because the promised 787s did not arrive.

Plueger, another Dreamliner customer, who canceled three orders due to problems, was clearly frustrated by the delays, saying: “We are an industry that cannot be in one place. . . where one of the two airframe manufacturers is unable to supply one of its key products. . . The industry needs these planes and we need at least two strong main competitors, Boeing and Airbus.”

Boeing is also betting big on a resurgence in international flying with its next wide-body model, the 777X. Offered in two variants, the 777-8 and 777-9, which can carry up to 426 passengers on long-haul routes, it is the largest version currently discontinued by the Airbus A380. The 777 has begun testing, but is running at least two years behind schedule.

Some observers think it will prove too big to attract audiences of pandemic-hit airlines.

“The 777-9 is simply too big for most airlines – it’s the next A380 and 747 in the wrong size in today’s market,” said Hamilton, of Leeham News.

However, others argue that people shouldn’t count 777-900 wide-body jets. Michaels said Boeing will find customers among the major Middle Eastern intercontinental airlines. He also hopes Boeing will launch the 777X freighter.

Boeing’s Mr. Mounir said the 777X will be the largest jetliner on the market as airlines begin replacing their largest planes in 2025 and 2026. With more than 300 orders for the aircraft already, “definitely the time has come,” he added.

Despite the uncertainty over the widebody market’s recovery time, there is one big bright spot for the industry: demand for single aisle planes has returned, with airlines clamoring for innovation. their fleet after the crisis.

Airbus’ Scherer said demand remained stable despite the rise of the new Omicron variant. The aviation community as a whole has realized that “when people can travel, they will travel, and they will do so for revenge,” he said.

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