NAV20,
A lot of what you say strikes me as pretty much spot on.
However a few things that may fill in some of the detail, and perhaps lead some of us to come to different conclusions, not that I give a toss whether Airbus or Boeing survive in their current forms. (People who emote over brands are one my pet dislikes, like Holden versus Ford. Such a yawn, and such futile lives...but I digress).
Qantas has much less than 40 % of international traffic as measured by head count as a proportion of the total overseas market. In fact just before it started Australian it was down to around 31 %, and these figures, which can be accessed on a year-to-month basis on DOTARS bounce around a bit. These stats are also based on passengers carried in own metal, so a
BA flight on the kangaroo route is counted as all
BA, no apportioning of load being given to that portion actually travelling on a Qantas ticket etc.
I think Boeing has an immense amount of work to do to haul back the Airbus lead, and will get no benefit in its quest from either building or not building an advanced 744. It will be on track if several other things happen.
First of these, it has to convincingly roll out the efficiencies inherent in the 787 family, that is, make them work as promised. Secondly, it then has to migrate those benefits to replacement jets for all of the segments it wishes to contest. I believe Boeing already has plans to do this a line that will not only replace the 737s, but deal with the EMB 190 sized end of the market, right up to the A321 sized jet. Really smart of them to do that too.
We should give Boeing the benefit of the doubt on its abilities to deliver on these things unless events prove otherwise.
Thirdly Boeing has to build true commonality into the flight management systems of all of these new technology jets. That cannot happen overnight, but it has to happen.
In the meantime, I'm not among the doubters of the A380, even if the test crew drop one of them like they dropped the A330-300 at the end of an insanely long day of hard flight testing.
With Alliance engines, the A380 will be a predominantly US jet at a time when Boeing is slipping into minority US content. Sad really for Boeing.
At KSA we will see something really astonishing with the A380 leaving the ground much sooner than a 744 with equivalent percentages of MTOW, and it will be quieter, and it will climb more steeply. So it should. They started from scratch.
You will also see it become a two or three model familly, a capacity stretch, and an ultra long range version, perhaps with a new wing. After all a new wing for the A345/A346 wasn't a drama.
The biggest airlines in the world, the China combination now being planned, Emirates, and Eurohansa, or whatever
LH calls itself after it ingests a few more carriers, will probably be split fleets, unwilling to put all their eggs in any segment in the one basket. It is notable that the three most profitable long haul airlines,
SQ,CX and
EK, all have split fleets.
I'd watch what happens with the A350. The details seem very rubbery to me. I suspect it will grow in composite content, while the 787 falls, and they'll both end up around 40 % new materials, although differing in actual composition and manufacturing techniques. The A350 is also around 11 % bigger than the base 787, which more or less negates some of the fuel saving comparisons we have seen, premature though these may be.
Over the top of this comes the 'long emergency', of soaring fuel prices, climate change, insolvency for traditional unrestructured carriers, a stock market collapse, and an irreversible shift of economic power to the Indo-Asia hemisphere.
My grandchildren are going to have a planet in crisis to deal with. I don't think they'll give a toss what happens to Airbus or Boeing either, but I'm optimistic enough to think they will live long enough to see dazzling new flight technology arrive, to transport them on true 'dream liners' along the very edge of space to the other side of the once blue planet in only a few hours.
And their children will enter the age of planetliners and starliners. I can almost see them in my dreamings.
Antares
) as to how this would affect passenger loads on the "Kangaroo Route" from SYD to LHR on Qantas.
