3 ms·

>When is a more fuel-efficient jet not a good idea? There are 2 different business perspectives to forecast: (1) The manufacturers' perspective -- the article

by jasode 5y ago

>When is a more fuel-efficient jet not a good idea? There are 2 different business perspectives to forecast: (1) The manufacturers' perspective -- the article says Boeing estimates $15 billion to develop a brand new clean sheet airplane that's maybe 10% more fuel efficient. The business risk is that they won't get +$15 billion in new airplane orders to get a positive ROI. (This is not hypothetical when you consider that the Airbus A380 is more fuel efficient than Boeing 747 at max passenger configuration[1] but they didn't get enough new orders to recoup development costs. Therefore, the A380 is considered a financial failure.) (2) The buyers' perspective -- some airline operators won't see 10% as enough of a savings to buy a new $250 million airplane. Consider that airplane buyers such as Delta Airlines, FedEx, and UPS deliberately buy older less-fuel-efficient airplanes. The savings on buying/leasing the old planes outweigh the projected fuel savings costs. It's not that strange that a new fuel-efficient airplane is not a slam dunk in business terms. I have a 100 watt incandescent lightbulb in the attic but I'm not going to spend $8 for a brand new efficient LED light that takes 20w because I'm hardly ever in the attic. Even at 1/5th the energy usage, I would take me 20 years to make back $8 in energy savings. [1] https://www.quora.com/Is-the-A380-or-the-B747-8-more-fuel-efficient https://www.quora.com/Is-the-A380-or-the-B747-8-more-fuel-ef...

notahacker 5y ago
Other relevant context: - evolutionary design approaches already result in aircraft ~1% more efficient every year, with much of the R&D offloaded to the engine OEMs - clean sheet designs have to save enough in fuel vs evolutionary ones to offset the additional operational costs of operating a brand new aircraft type as opposed to a variant model. Airlines like having lots of the same kind of aircraft (and nobody has the production capacity to replace an entire fleet at once) - clean sheet designs are much more likely to have significant delays, groundings and safety concerns. For an airline, this diminishes the value of the planned-to-be-more-efficient aircraft. For the OEM, it's a massive reputational risk, and if you screw up the clean sheet design badly enough your competitor captures the entire narrowbody market. Boeing lost enormous market share for a patchable software bug in a direct descendent of the most successful aircraft ever; now imagine a "clean slate" which doesn't deliver on its fuel economy promises and has unforeseen issues with the long term structural stability of its wings vs Airbus cheaply updating its established design - if the project is wildly successful, it's not all good news: you've wrecked the expected commercial lifespan and residual values of existing aircraft models, which doesn't please your customers or your aircraft leasing subsidiary. Also, your competitor learns from your successes and your failures when launching their "clean sheet" aircraft which has lower research costs, a shorter time to market and is more mature when it does launch

by jasode 5y ago

notahacker 5y ago

Other relevant context: - evolutionary design approaches already result in aircraft ~1% more efficient every year, with much of the R&D offloaded to the engine OEMs - clean sheet designs have to save enough in fuel vs evolutionary ones to offset the additional operational costs of operating a brand new aircraft type as opposed to a variant model. Airlines like having lots of the same kind of aircraft (and nobody has the production capacity to replace an entire fleet at once) - clean sheet designs are much more likely to have significant delays, groundings and safety concerns. For an airline, this diminishes the value of the planned-to-be-more-efficient aircraft. For the OEM, it's a massive reputational risk, and if you screw up the clean sheet design badly enough your competitor captures the entire narrowbody market. Boeing lost enormous market share for a patchable software bug in a direct descendent of the most successful aircraft ever; now imagine a "clean slate" which doesn't deliver on its fuel economy promises and has unforeseen issues with the long term structural stability of its wings vs Airbus cheaply updating its established design - if the project is wildly successful, it's not all good news: you've wrecked the expected commercial lifespan and residual values of existing aircraft models, which doesn't please your customers or your aircraft leasing subsidiary. Also, your competitor learns from your successes and your failures when launching their "clean sheet" aircraft which has lower research costs, a shorter time to market and is more mature when it does launch