3 Links I Love: Boeing’s 797 Hints, Maintenance Takes Center Stage, Open Skies in Brazil

Mar 16, 2018

More Reading on This Topic: Boeing, Links I Love

This week’s featured link:
This is Boeing’s NMA – JonOstrower.com
If you haven’t heard, Jon Ostrower is no longer with CNN, and that’s a big loss… for CNN. Fortunately for us, he’s channeling his inner-FlightBlogger and has returned to the world of blogging at jonostrower.com. You’ll want to bookmark that. In one of his first posts, he picks apart an artistic rendering of Boeing’s new NMA, aka the 797. While he notes that this will never be the final airplane that flies (assuming it does get launched), you can get a sense of what Boeing is thinking as it moves forward through the process.

Two for the road:
New Boeing jet to accelerate services shake-up – Reuters
How about a Boeing two-fer? Thanks to Red Shirt on Twitter for bringing this article to my attention. Boeing makes a lot of airplanes, and now it thinks it can use that leverage to step up its after-market services. If it can pull this off, it can cut its aircraft prices further and win orders by making a boatload on maintenance for the life of the airplane. (It’s Gillette and the razor/razor blade model.) This is something to keep an eye on.

Azul, LATAM Group outline plans for US-Brazil Open Skies – ch-aviation
With Brazil’s Senate passing open skies, we can finally see some action on joint ventures with airlines in the US. LATAM and American have already submitted theirs and are just waiting for some movement. Now Azul and United appear to be making some nice It will be interesting to see how Avianca and JetBlue feel about that.

Brett

10 responses to “3 Links I Love: Boeing’s 797 Hints, Maintenance Takes Center Stage, Open Skies in Brazil”

Kilroy

Mar 16, 2018 at 5:44 am

As the Boeing maintenance article mentions, jet engines are already sold on a “razor-and-blades” business model, and given the complexity of airliners having the manufacturer be more involved in the maintenance does make some sense.

For smaller or startup airlines, a contract offering a fixed maintenance cost per flight-hour might be an interesting concept, if someone isn’t offering it already.

Reply
A

Mar 16, 2018 at 5:50 am

While it’s true the Boeing “797” is a lot of speculation right now it is nice to get teasers from Boeing. Last year I was on well over a dozen 757 aircraft that will need to get replaced someday. I’m more than a little interested in what I might be jetting around in ten years from now.

Reply
Matt D

Mar 16, 2018 at 7:05 am

So far, how is every rendition of the “797” NOT just either a shrink of the 787 and/or a rehash of the A310?

And we all know what’s been happening lately: “stretches” end up outselling the base model anyway. So that would just about put this in line with the existing 787-8, thus rendering it effectively obsolete and redundant before it even gets the formal go-ahead.

The only suitable replacement for a 757 would be….another 757.

But Boeing has already lost that war too, to the A321.

They’ve been dawdling and sitting idle for far too long here. And so I’m not convinced this NMA concept is to even be taken seriously. Ditto for the small, short/medium range 100-130 seat market as well. The niche once held by the 737-300 and MD-80 has been lost/surrendered/abandoned to the CS and ERJ-70/190 planes.

Boeings bread and butter seems to the 738 series, 787-9, and 777-300 series. And that’s probably what they’re going to stick with.

Reply
JB

Mar 16, 2018 at 8:29 am

This new 797 needs to have the L2 boarding door. In my opinion, it’s one of the best features of the 757. It essentially splits up the boarding, making it go faster than L1 boarding on a 737 that’s nearly as long as the 757. Those long 737s take forever to board and deplane. By using L2, the first class/premium cabin can get on and be out of the way while they get their drinks, etc., while the rest of the economy section can get to their seats.

I will say the 2-2-2 seating seems awesome, but can we really trust any airline to go with that if it’s possible to jam in an extra seat?

Reply
DesertGhost

Mar 16, 2018 at 9:12 am

I may be missing something (which is quite possible) but based on most of what I’ve read about Boeing’s mid-sized market aircraft, it seems to me that it’s going to be a rehash of the 767 with updates. So it might be easier to simply re-engine the current 767, creating a 767 max.

Reply
1. Anthony
  
  Mar 16, 2018 at 6:56 pm
  
  That’s been my opinion too…. at least for the short-to-mid-term. As Matt D says, Boeing has already lost the race for the lower end of the mid-market, because Airbus is there right now with the A321LR. If Boeing wanted to have a product for the upper mid-market without making customers wait seven years, the answer could be a “767-X” (767-200 size, with composite wings and new engines). But a Boeing executve recently said the company would not resume passenger-767 production.
  
  Reply
Dave Starr

Mar 16, 2018 at 4:19 pm

Interesting observations from Jon in this article. At least, as many have heard me say before, we MUST have a twin-aisle replacement for the 757. We’ve gone far too far down the road of “shrink everything to save fuel”.

Economics are important but you can’t make profits from saving fuel alone. I really feel though as Desert Ghost feels, Boeing is simply being stubborn regarding the 767. A 767neo program combined with some good old fashioned cleanup and weight savings would make a suitable replacement for the (smallish) 757 market segment.

No if Boeing really wanted to become the aircraft company it ought to be, they would be working on the small twin-aisle replacement for the 737. That’s how you move the industry forward. Take your most successful product and leapfrog it forward will the competition is sleeping at the switch.

Reply
Tory

Mar 18, 2018 at 5:51 pm

Would love to see a post on this, Cranky… The End of United Polaris? https://viewfromthewing.boardingarea.com/2018/03/18/end-united-polaris/#sthash.L9VnR4U5.uxfs

Reply
1. CF
  
  Mar 19, 2018 at 7:55 am
  
  Tory – That’s just pure speculation and not something I’d write up until there was something concrete.
  
  Reply
MK03

Mar 19, 2018 at 5:39 pm

Off-topic to the links, but it seems like Canadian ULCC start-up Canadian Jetlines is having difficulty taking off, and apparently it might be low on funds. Really weird considering I remember CAPA writing an analysis a few years back that was bullish on Canadian Jetlines and fellow start-up Jet Naked (which I’ve barely heard about since).

On-topic though, the thing about the 797 seems interesting, since it seems to be pretty hard to find a compromise between the wants of US airlines and Asian airlines. I guess they don’t want a repeat of the 767-400 to happen.

Reply