Recently in Aerospace manufacturing Category

Sometimes winglets look right and sometimes they don't. On the 767-300, it turns out, they look just about perfect. Great pix here courtesy of my colleague Jon Ostrower and Aviation Partners Boeing. If only they made sense on the -200 - could've solved all Boeing's problems.

Mario Heinen is moving inside Airbus and his job as head of the A380 programme is being taken by Alain Flourens (left). He's been running the narrowbody programme for the last couple of years, but was president of Airbus Military in its earlier days. Heinen will now head the transnational cabin and fuselage centre of excellence, replacing Rudiger Fuchs who is leaving the company for reasons I know not. Flourens is replaced by one Daniel Baubil, a procurement expert. Full announcement below.

Boeing VP marketing Randy Tinseth is in London today where he personally presented the company's 2008 Current Market Outlook (CMO) for the next 20 years. This is aerospace we're talking about - the numbers are bemusingly huge and they make the industry's traumas look like a minor hiccup in the long run. If you believe them of course. Like Airbus' Global Market Forecast, Boeing's is produced bottom-up, airline by agonising airline, so it's hard to argue with.

But, the suspicion is that neither of them can resist giving it a little self-serving spin at the end. Here are my key points out of it - to stress, they're mine, not Boeing's.

It's quite a beast - the "largest engine/prop combination ever to be designed and produced in the Western world" in fact. And here's the first released pix of yesterday's ground run on a C-130 at Marshall Aerospace in Cambridge, UK. The engine, produced by the pan-European Europrop International consortium of Rolls-Royce, ITP, MTU and Snecma is the critical factor in the timing of the first flight of the four-engine A400M this summer. The eight-bladed prop is courtesy of Ratier-Figeac and Hamilton Sundstrand.

Sukhoi flew the Superjet 100 yesterday. Sales still slow, but at least it's in the air. China and Japan not so far behind however. Despite the best efforts of Alenia and Snecma this programme is not progressing to market as quickly as it needs to. Looks nice though. Text of the press release below.

The USAF has apparently filed its arguments rebutting Boeing's protest of the KC-X tanker selection - and they're pretty robust. Reuters has the scoop here on the document that the service has sent to the Government Accountability Office. Thanks to Scott Hamilton for highlighting it.

It's not really the same situation, but the UK has today finally signed on the dotted for the EADS-supplied, Airbus A330-based Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft. It's buying a princely 14 of them from the Airtanker consortium. But the contract is worth £13 billion ($26 billion) because of the way it's structured.

This is a first, right? Boeing has gone public with a blog spreading the word on the KC-X protest. I don't recall any company using a blog in the context of a live competitive procurement. (Could be wrong - it's not really my area.)

I've asked before who it is that the Bombardier CSeries competes with. My thesis being that, while nobody yet properly understands the answer, one way or another that aircraft is going to shape what happens in the narrowbody sector big-time. Reason being that those undetermined competitors are going to have to react, and quite possibly not just with yet another aircraft - more likely something a little more structural in the industry. There were some hints over the last few days from two of the players - Embraer and Boeing.

As luck would have it Boeing's announcement of its protest of the KC-X award to Northrop Grumman / EADS came on the eve of EADS' annual results press conference in Paris. I got in late to Paris last night for the event which kicked off at 07:00 today, so woke up to news of the protest. And I'm blogging from this room in the Westin Hotel, which beats the office.