Both Boeing and Airbus have a great selection of single aisle aircraft for domestic/trans-continental service in their B737 and A320 series families.  Both have excellent widebody families for medium to long haul service too.  The single aisle families can carry anywhere from about 130 to 190 passengers and that’s a pretty nice cross-section.  The current widebody families (and I’m excluding the 767 from this characterization but you’ll see why in a few minutes) accomodate a broad range of passengers ranging from about 270 to 400+ passengers.  Each even has new widebody family aircraft being introduced now and over the next 5 to 7 years that promise fantastic efficiency at incredible ranges.

Where is the aircraft to serve the 200 to 250 passenger count on a trans-continental/trans-Atlantic system?  Yes, the A330 and B767 are there but they’re really not quite the aircraft for that anymore.  The A330 is best as a -300 series aircraft and that encroaches into the 270+ territory.  The 767 is still being built but it is, for all intent and purposes, a discontinued aircraft. 

Previously we had the 757 and 767 capable of carrying that 190 to 250 passenger range on routes ranging from 2800 to 5500 miles and that market remains very active.  But no one is building a new aircraft for that segment.  The 787 misses it by a touch too many passengers and the A350 misses it by much more.  Neither the 737-900ER nor the A321 is capable of traversing the Atlantic ocean from the east coast of the US to points inside the middle of Europe.   They can barely make it across the continental United States.

Everyone is interested in aircraft for long haul routes that are intercontinental / trans-Pacific routes that yield quite a bit of revenue but for which there remains a fairly limited market.   Who is going to build the aircraft capable of flying from Northeastern United States to Berlin or Rome or Athens or even Helsinki without being too much aircraft?  Yes, the 787-8 can handle that route and probably handle it pretty well but it offers only a small marginal improvement on efficiency for those routes. 

It would appear that the world market could stand to see another A300/767 sized aircraft that offers the kind of efficiency we see being promised in the 787/A350 aircraft being built today.  And that really shouldn’t be difficult at all for either manufacturer.  The fuselage sizes and engines necessary are known quantities.  The technologies to raise the efficiency needed for those routes are all available today.  There is no challenge to building this kind of aircraft but it doesn’t even appear to be on the drawing boards (or, rather, CAD screens) of either company. 

There are a lot of 757/767/A300/A330-200 aircraft still out there but they’re aging fast and have a limited lifecycle left at virtually any airline.  I do wonder why airlines aren’t pushing more for a 200 to 250 passenger, 5500nm aircraft particularly since we’re talking about routes that are medium haul, bread and butter routes for much of the global airline system.  It is a sweet spot being ignored and I think that the manufacturer that identifies it and addresses it sooner, rather than later, is the manufacturer who enjoys a healthy order book for the next 2 to 3 decades.

Filed under: Airline Fleets by ajax