Showing posts with label Pilatus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pilatus. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

International Aviation Market Forecast for 2015

Interesting chart in Aviation Week about commercial aircraft production.  Comercial being jetliners, regional jet liners, utility aircraft.  No biz jets.  No military aircraft and no helicopters.  Sales forecasts are all for the next ten years. 
First thing that comes out in that there are only two real makers of full sized jet airliners, Airbus and Boeing.  Airbus is projected to build 7000 jet liners.  Boeing is projected to build 7400.  When you think that each aircraft sells for $50-100 million, that's a lotta business. 
  Then there are builders who are pretty much dead.  Ilyushin is projected to build just two IL-96 wide body jetliners.  At that production rate, they are losing barrels of money on each plane.  And we have Tupolev's TU 204/214 single aisle jet liner with a forecast of a mere 9 aircraft.  Let's guess the Russian government is subsidizing Ilyushin and Tupolev to keep the production lines open just in case they can line up some orders.  Good luck with that.  I hear the Aeroflot is advertising that they fly western built aircraft on all their overseas routes. 
   Then we have the regional jet liners.  These look like regular single aisle airliners, but they are smaller and seat few passengers, less than 90, as compared to a 737 which seats 150-180 depending upon model.  The regional jet liner makers are new comers, Embraer (Brazil) , Bombardier (Canada), and Comac (China).  Presumably it is easier to break into the jet liner market at the bottom, and perhaps small jets can be sold to the various puddle jumper airlines still flying small turboprops.  Sales projection are a hundred or so for each maker.  This market doesn't look all that hot.
  And then we have some surprisingly strong utility aircraft.  Beech King Air is forecast to sell 1302 aircraft.  That's more than all the regional jet makers put together.  The Pilatus PC-12 is forecast to sell 846 aircraft.  Even though utility aircraft don't bring in the money that regular jet liners do, that's still a nice bit of business.