Tag Archives: GMF

September 5, 2012 · 9:00 am

Airbus vs. Boeing, comparison of market forecasts (2012)

Yesterday, John Leahy, Airbus COO Customers, unveiled at a press conference in London the new figures of the 2012-31 Airbus’ Global Market Forecast (GMF, PDF 5.6MB).

The last two years, I already published comparisons of both Airbus’ and Boeing’s forecasts (Current Market Outlook, CMO, PDF 3.0MB). You can find below the update of such comparison with the latest released figures from both companies.

Comparison of Airbus GMF and Boeing CMO 2012-2031.

Some comments about the comparison:

  • Boeing sees demand for 14% more passenger aircraft (excluding regional a/c) with a 19% more value (including freighters).
  • Boeing continues to play down A380 niche potential (56% less a/c than Airbus’ GMF), though for second year in a row it has slightly increased its Very Large market forecast, this time by 20 a/c, or 3.5%.
  • On the other hand, Boeing forecasts about 200 twin-aisle and 4,200 single-aisle more than Airbus, clearly pointing to its point-to-point strategy versus the connecting mega-cities rationale presented by Airbus.
  • In terms of RPKs (“revenue passenger kilometer”), that is, the number of paying passenger by the distance they are transported, they see a similar future: Airbus forecasts for 2031 ~12.8 RPKs (in trillion) (a ~4% increase vs last year GMF) while Boeing forecasts 13.8 (also increased about 3%).

The main changes from last year’s forecasts are:

  • Both manufacturers have increased their passenger aircraft forecast in about 500 a/c, less dramatically than last year’s change.
    • In the case of Airbus it has increased the single aisle segment, probably reflecting the success of the A320neo launch.
    • In the case of Boeing, they decreased both single aisle (130 a/c) and small twin aisle (300 a/c), but increased the intermediate twin-aisle in 900 a/c… selling internally a new version of the 777?
  • Both manufacturers have increased the value of RPKs in 2031.
  • Both manufacturers have increased the volume (trn$) of the market in this 20 years, 12% Airbus (to 3.7trn$) and 10% Boeing (to 4.4trn$).

Some catchy lines for those who have never seen these type of forecasts:

  • Passenger world traffic (RPK) will continue to grow about 4.7% per year (5.0% according to Boeing). This is, doubling every ~15-20 years.
  • Today there are about 15,500 passenger aircraft around the world, this number will more than double in the next 20 years to above 32,500 a/c in 2031.
  • The A380 market equation: Urbanisation + Mega-cities + Wealth = VLAs (Very Large Aircraft, i.e. A380 and B747).
  • Emissions of aviation industry amount to 2% of man-made CO2 emissions.
  • Centre of gravity of world travel will have moved from the Atlantic Ocean (in 1971) to the Middle East (2031).
  • A key driver here is the propensity to fly of the people as the economies of their countries grow. This is captured well by the graphic below, a classic in the industry. This time, Airbus mentioned in the GMF that it has carried out a survey during summer asking 10,000 people around the world whether they expected to fly more in the future. This was true especially in China and India.

Trips per capita vs. GDP per capita (source: Airbus GMF).

Again, I strongly recommend both documents (GMF and CMO) which, differences apart, provide a wealth of information of market dynamics. The complete book from Airbus will be published online next week according to Chris Emerson (SVP for Future Programmes & Market Strategy).

In case you find it tough, to read those kind of booklets, you may take a look at the video of the press conference, a great class on global economy, world aviation, forecasting, trend spotting…

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October 3, 2011 · 10:00 am

Airbus vs. Boeing, comparison of market forecasts (2011)

Some days ago, John Leahy, Airbus COO Customers, unveiled at a press conference in London the new figures of 2011-30 Airbus’ Global Market Forecast (GMF, PDF 28.8MB).

Last year, I already published a comparison of both Airbus’ and Boeing’s forecasts (Current Market Outlook, CMO, PDF 3.2MB). You can find below the update of such comparison with the latest released figures from both companies.

Comparison of Airbus GMF and Boeing CMO 2011-2030.

Some of last years’ comments still apply:

  • Boeing sees demand for 15% more aircraft with a 21% more value (excluding regional a/c).
  • Boeing continues to play down A380 niche potential (57% less a/c than Airbus’ GMF), though it has increased its Very Large market forecast by 40 a/c, or 7.5% (Did Emirates new order at ILA change their minds?)
  • On the other hand, Boeing forecasts about 600 twin-aisle and 4,000 single-aisle more than Airbus, clearly pointing to its point-to-point strategy.
  • In terms of RPKs (“revenue passenger kilometer”), that is, the number of paying passenger by the distance they are transported, they see a similar future: Airbus forecasts for 2030 12.3 RPKs while Boeing forecasts 13.3 (in trillion).

The main changes from last year’s forecasts are:

  • Both manufacturers have drastically increased their single-aisle forecast: +1,300 a/c in the case of Airbus and +2,200 in the case of Boeing.
  • In general all numbers have been increased: single-aisle (as mentioned above), twin-aisle (between 50-150 more), large aircraft (between 40-80 more), value of aircraft and RPKs… it seems that for commercial aircraft manufacturers not only the crisis is passed but they see a rosy future lying ahead.

Again, I strongly recommend both documents (GMF and CMO) which, differences apart, provide a wealth of information of market dynamics. I am especially happy to have encountered this year again full version of Airbus GMF, not only a short one [PDF, 4.7MB].

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December 19, 2010 · 11:00 am

New entrants in the commercial aircraft business

In a previous post, I mentioned the new entrants in the large commercial aircraft business (Bombardier CSeries, Embraer, Russian MS-21, Sukhoi SuperJet, Comac C919, Mitsubishi…). Now that the latest market forecasts both from Airbus (Global Market Forecast) and Boeing (Current Market Outlook) are available, I wanted to briefly note how they are treating the segment that most of these entrants would enter: single aisle jet aircraft.

For example, Boeing in this year’s CMO already splits the single aisle between 90-175 passengers (where new entrants would fall into) and over 175 passengers (still the safe harbor?). In previous studies Boeing didn’t offer such sub-segmentation. On the other hand, Airbus hasn’t published yet such differentiation.

It is even more interesting to compare last year’s GMF and CMO with this year’s ones.

  • Airbus saw a demand for 16,977 single aisle aircraft in 2009 while in 2010 sees a demand for 17,870.
  • Boeing saw a demand for 19,460 single aisle aircraft in 2009 while in 2010 sees a demand for 21,150.

In other words Airbus has increased the single aisle market forecast in 893 aircraft, while Boeing has increased it in 1,690 aircraft… Both have made the forecasted pie bigger before it will have to be shared.

On average, they see ~1,300 more single aisle aircraft than what they saw last year… In the case that these extra aircraft was room made for new entrants, that would leave the new entrants a market share of 6.7% of the single aisle market… not much.

However, those entrants are not yet delivering in that segment and most of their deliveries would come at the second half of the 20-year period. By 2029, it could well be possible that their combined market share is around 10%… still not a big share, but already ~7bn$ yearly business (in 2010 dollars); a ~4.4bn$ after discounts, an amount the size of Embraer revenues (the 3rd company in commercial aviation, reason enough for them to enter the segment).

Boeing even concedes that of the 21,150 single aisle aircraft, 86% of them will be between 90-175 passengers, precisely the market sub-segment that will be ferociously fought.

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December 18, 2010 · 11:00 am

Commercial aircraft market size after discounts (update)

In an older post I already made an analysis of the aircraft discounts related to the published list prices (by the way, Boeing just raised its list prices 5.2% a couple of days ago). In that case, I used the revenues and deliveries of Boeing in the previous 3 years (38% discount was the result!).

Using that information, now that the latest market forecasts both from Airbus (Global Market Forecast) and Boeing (Current Market Outlook) are available, we can say that the real market size in the next 20 years will be in the order of 2,100bn$ (average of both forecasts in 2010 dollars).

Flow of airplanes

Another very interesting feature that Airbus published in last year’s GMF (it is not yet in this year’s publication) and Boeing used for this year’s CMO is a graphic showing the dynamics of aircraft. In it you may understand how from today’s fleet, adding new deliveries, retiring old aircraft, converting some from passenger to freight transport they arrive to the forecasted fleet in 2029.

I include below both graphics.

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December 17, 2010 · 11:00 am

Airbus vs. Boeing, comparison of market forecasts

Airbus announced on Monday its latest Global Market Forecast (PDF, 4.6MB) for the 20-year period 2010-2029. Media has already highlighted the main points: ~26,000 new aircraft will be delivered with a market value of ~3,200bn$.

Some months ago, Boeing published its equivalent study, the Current Market Outlook (PDF, 8.2MB) for the same period.

It is interesting to compare the two of them. In that way we can see how each other treat competitors’ products (mainly A380) and how they try to shape the market and send messages to it (point-to-point & hub-spoke).

However, it is not easy to compare the studies as they use slightly different segmentations, disclose in different ways the value of aircraft for the segments (list prices) and is not always clear how to discount freighter aircraft from global figures. I dig for some time into those numbers and arrived to the following table:

Comparison of Airbus GMF and Boeing CMO 2010-2029.

Some comments on the comparison:

  • Boeing sees demand for 13% more aircraft with a 10% more value.
  • However, this higher demand is not applicable to all segments: Boeing sees ~60% less A380s or equivalent being delivered over the next 20 years, while 18% more single aisle (A320s) and 12% more twin aisle (A330/A350s).
  • Boeing plays down A380 potential, but sees a very similar number of RPKs (“revenue passenger kilometer”), that is, the number of paying passenger by the distance they are transported. Airbus forecasts for 2029 12.03 RPKs while Boeing forecasts 12.60 (in trillion).
  • The difference of less than 5% in RPKs means that out of the 13% difference in aircraft deliveries over 8% comes from the different business model each company is trying to push.
  • Finally, we can see that Boeing uses again higher average prices for smaller aircraft and a lower reference price for A380s.

Enjoy the two documents, differences apart, they gave a very good piece of information and insight about the market.

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