Planemakers battle for Air N.Z.’s custom

Press, 12 July 1984, Page 31

Planemakers battle for Air N.Z.’s custom

NZPA special correspondent Paris

Boeing and Airbus are battling ferociously to sell three wide-bodied airliners, worth an estimated $314 million with spares, to Air New Zealand.

Air New Zealand's decision, expected within the next three weeks, will prove either a breakthrough for the European aircraft manufacturer or an American success in barring the route for its rival in New Zealand.

Airbus Industrie, a consortium grouping French, British, West German, and Spanish aerospace industries, is bidding heavily to sell its new generation, fuel efficient A3lO twinjet in the face of strong competition from Boeing’s 767. The rivalry between the A3lO and the 767 is intense. Both claim specific advantages over the other. But the two remain closely matched, and one of the causes of the friction is that a sales decision is often based on the provision of finance in a package deal. Airbus Industrie’s new 200-280 seat A3lO twinjet was introduced into service by Lufthansa and Swissair as launch customers last year. Today 18 airlines have ordered a total of 109 Airbus A3los. Thirty-one A3los have already been delivered and are in commercial service with nine airlines including British Caledonian and Air France.

The European planemaker is going all out to capture the Air New Zealand contract.

“Strictly business, we stand a very good chance to pull the deal,” said one Airbus executive.

The recent agreement between France and its Common Market partners on New Zealand butter access to the European Community has helped clear the atmosphere.

But the Airbus manufacturer is betting on the A3lo’s performance and direct operating costs and above all its highly sophisticated fully digital cockpit “designed by pilots for pilots.” Boeing has a slight advantage in that Air New Zealand already has a large fleet of five Boeing 747-200 S, nine 737-200 s, and one 737200 c. Air New Zealand also flies one McDonnell-Douglas DC-8-50f and 10 Fokker F 27500 s. But no Airbus.

The Airbus A3lO twinjet has been on an extensive 25,785nm/47,781km demonstration tour in the Far East and Australasia — to Hong Kong, China, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Singapore, Brunei, and Malaysia, but not New Zealand. Air New Zealand executives and engineers, however, have made a thorough evaluation of the A3lO, and New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon, has taken a special trip over the Pyrenees and the Atlantic in an A3lO on a visit to France earlier this year. Airbus Industrie prides itself at having built a plane which has attracted the enthusiasm of pilots for the one generation head airbus cockpit and of passengers for the A3los true wide body standards of comfort. Customers cannot afford to order an aeroplane which will not be a profit-maker in its network.

In many cases, rival aircraft are exactly the right size for the market which an airline foresees in the next decade. Apart from the price, advantages calculated in exhaustive investigations including a low-break-even load factor, the best direct running cost per seat in its operations, the lowest sector operating cost per seat, and the cheapest available tonne/km, it is invariably the total package that does it. The most significant de-

velopment in the progress of the A3lO in the last year has been the decision to launch the A3lO-300 extended range which has a 150-tonne maximum take-off weight compared with the 132 tonnes of the basic A3lO- - The A3lO-300 with 218 passengers will have an effective range of more than 4000nm/7410km and will be delivered in late 1985. The A3lO-300 will make use of a further package of weight and drag improvements together with an additional fuel tank in the horizontal tail. This novel feature will provide an extra five tonnes of fuel capacity with the minimum of additional weight.

All customers for the A3lO have so far specified either the General ElectricSnecma CF6-80A1 or the Pratt and Whitney JT9D7R4DI as the power plant. The double-spool fan jet CF6-80 family developed by General Electric delivers thrust ranging from 48,0001bs to over 60,0001b5. But with a redesign pylon, the Rolls Royce RB2U--524d4 engine could be an option, although none of the Airbus clients has so far ordered it. The A3lO-200 achieved significant sales success in, May this year when Singapore Airlines bought six in a deal worth $656.4 million including spares.

The latest customers are Air Algerie which has ordered two Airbus A3lO- - with 216 seats used on high density routes and Air India which has contracted to buy six A3lO-300S to replace five Boeing 7075. The A3lO-200, the extended range A3lO-300, the convertible A3lO C, all feature the most advanced flight deck now in use, designed for a two-man crew with colour cathode ray tube displays for flight, navigation systems and warning displays, digital avionics, and flight management systems. Like all new aircraft, the A3lO has had some teething problems which have long since been solved. These included the aircraft’s dual flight management systems in the first few months of running, but in no case were they serious problems.

Because the airliner’s flightdeck and systems management has been so greatly computerised, some of the problems Swissair and Lufthansa as launch customers have experienced with the A3lO have been new to them. They have learnt that the interaction among items of sophisticated electronic equipment' are complex: an initial lack of complete understanding led to inaccurate diagnosis and equipment removals when no real malfunctions were present. Not surprisingly, the software newly developed to handle the many thousands of electronically controlled flightdeck functions has thrown up minor discrepancies with the early users. But in spite of such software inconsistencies and < other initial technical prob- I lems, the airlines experienced high technical dispatch reliability rates with their A3los. Right from the start both Swissair and

Lufthansa have consistently achieved 97 per cent weekly and monthly averages, and in some recent weeks their figures have crept to 98 and 99 per cent. The pilots who regularly fly the A3lO are highly enthusiastic about its performance and handling qualities. Swissair’s deputy chief A3lO pilot, Alois Schneider, says: “It is fantastic. It is very nice, very exact flying.”

He attributes this to the A3lo’s electrically controlled flaps, slats, rudder, and spoilers. A symmetric spoiler is deployed to give a faster but more controlled roll rate at any speed. Veteran DC9 Super 80 pilots say that the A3lO can climb a lot quicker than the Super 80 and at a typical take-off weight of 100 tonnes can go straight to 41,000 ft.

In this way, the A3lO can ■often obtain more direct routings which allow fuel savings to be made. “So it is really a pilot’s aircraft,” says one A3lO pilot.

Operators report strong passenger approval of the new A3lO twinjet with the true widebody cabin being consistently singled out for special mention: the airbus fuselage cross-section allows amongst other advantages, true widebody comfort both in the economy and first class cabins. “The new electronics gave us less trouble than we had forecast,” says Lufthansa’s deputy chairman, Mr Reinhardt Abraham, in his early report. ’’Experience has shown that the A3lo’s performance and economics are equal or even superior to what was promised.” Officials of airports at which the A3lO lands regularly also appreciate the new aircraft which they praise as the quietest of its

The history of the A3lO dates back to the early 1970 s when the Airbus partners began a search for a reduced-capacity derivative of the basic A3OO Airliner which has a seating capacity for 350 passengers.

It soon became clear that advances in aerodynamics and the demands of fuel economy made a new wing imperative. The moves toward two-pilot operation, the adoption of digital systems and advances in propulsion technology also led Airbus towards a significant redesign and the A3lO emerged.

Altogether Airbus Industrie has sold 355 Airbuses including the 109 A3los. European efforts to challenge the United States in civilian aircraft manufacture took a new turn with a recent decision to enlarge the Airbus family with a new, advance technology, fuel efficient 150-seat Airbus, the A 320.

Boeing has felt the pinch and offered to take a share in the $3.14 billion A 320 programme, but the Europeans have politely turned it down. So Boeing is considering a match with its big 7-7. But right now the big fight is for the Air New Zealand contract.