Turkish Airlines orders more than 100 Airbus narrowbodies

Obviously very good news for the Airbus narrow-body programmes.

And Turkish Airlines (like USAir, for example & Lufthansa) are doing very good, probing analyses, before finalising their choices.

You see, the NEO, despite all the huffing & puffing, are not going to give "blanket" >15% improvement in fuel-burn efficiency. That is highly exaggerated.
The reatively old-hat air-frame technology is simply incapable of drawing out the quintessence of the engines, which, in turn, despite their “new generation modernity” simply cannot be "optimised" for these prior-generation airframes.

RR's arguments will be proved so right a few years down the road. Despite the fabulous order- of Airbus & Boeing on their respective NEO & MAX families, these aircraft merely delay the bringing-to-market of the truly requisite air-frame technology.

True quality of this NEO distraction is the in-rush of fresh treasury (new-order down-payments received), which, in Airbus’ Consolidated Treasury Management, is more than adequate to fund (with no recourse to disputed funding methods or alleged subsidies), the final development, cut-over into service, and production ramp-up of the Airbus A350-XWB, to meet the Clients' PUC needs for the fulfilment of their Business Plan Objectives. The Boeing anti-A350-XWB-financing bleatings to the WTO are flawed, unfounded & without credibility.

Boeing’s excellent CFO, James BELL, now retired, openly recognised that the Boeing MAX could NOT bring constant, sustainable fuel-burn efficiency gains of more the “single digit” values (i.e. below 10%). It will be the same on the Airbus-NEO.

Alleged AIRBUS net improvement of 4% fuel-burn efficiency by virtue of the adjunction of Sharklets is mainly theoretical, & almost an outright statistical fallacy. Sharklets will bring virtually no such gain versus to-day’s “wing-fences”.

For, to benefit from even the slightest, truly perceptible sharklet-induced fuel-burn efficiency gain, on a flight, the said flight’s flying time would need to be in excess of 2 hours. To attain the level of 4%, flying time would have to be between 3.50 hours an 4.00 hours. It is the same in principle for the P&W GTF & GE./ CFMI Leap Engines : the longer the effective flying time, the better the relative fuel-burn performance versus to-day’s current engines, on their current air-frames.

Note that, for all the shorter BOEING & AIRBUS single-aisle a/c, up to 90%-95% of all flights are reportedly of less than 2 hours, and up to about 85%-90%, are less than 75 minutes’ flying time. For the longer Boeing B737-NG’s, and the Airbus A321, only about 20% of the flights are over .1.75 hours.

This is why, for example, USAir, for domestic USA flights, (incl. USA transcontinental) has placed all recent new-orders for A321’s, in the configuration “Non NEO” (i.e. powered by IAE V2500 “Select One”), but equipped with Sharklets, owing to the “close-to-4-hours-of-flight” aspect. There is “cost-benefit spin-off”, in terms of Cost of Ownership (COO), and DOC. It is NOT always just a case of urgent PUC-needs and aircraft availability.

The same PRINCIPLES ring true & apply for the mix between ”CEO” (“Current Engine Option”) & NEO (“New Engine Option”) in the choices of LH & Turkish Airlines (and in the cases of other companies, too). Take a good look at Air Asia. Tony FERNANDEZ & his men really know what they are talking about in their analyses and choices.

Michael O-LEARY and his men at RYANAIR, too. The B737-MAX are no use to RYANAIR’s Business Case. Show us how many / what portion of RYANAIR’s flights do last more than 2.00 or 2.50 hours’ actual flying time.. Look at how many / what percentage last between 0;75 & 1.50 hours’ flying time !

Airbus NEO & Boeing’s MAX are “no-brainers” to MOL ! He prefers to roll over RYANAIR’s B737-NG’s, at knock-down prices, are a “wow” on “product knowledge already acquired”, crew training savings (flight-deck & cabin), and general COO & DOC !

Aerodynamics Experts & Engineers could tell us all this spontaneously. But they do not. And I am talking of real “wizards” working for the engine-makers and the Air-framers.

There is a lot to be written on these topics !

Many thanks for publishing my "cri de coeur" !