A “tariff surcharge”.
That’s the term executives at GE Aerospace tossed out during the company’s first-quarter earnings call on 22 April. The executives are considering imposing such a surcharge on customers to offset the cost of US President Donald Trump’s new import taxes.
Just how much will the new tariffs cost GE and other aerospace manufacturers? The estimates are coming in.
GE predicts the current tariff structure, if unchanged, will cost it $500 million this year. RTX, meanwhile, puts the impact at $850 million this year, to be absorbed in relative equal shares by subsidiaries Collins Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney, RTX said on 22 April.
Boeing has not yet said how the trade war might impact its business, though Chinese carriers have reportedly refused to receive some new 737s. The US aircraft maker on 23 April said it lost $31 million in the first quarter – a substantial improvement. Boeing also on 22 April revealed plans to sell its digital business, including Jeppesen and ForeFlight, a move that will raise cash and see Boeing focus more on its core aircraft-manufacturing business.
Russia’s airline and aerospace industries have also been making news lately.
The country’s civil aerospace sector remains defiant in the face of international sanctions, after the domestic industry resorted to home-grown innovation in response to government ambitions to resurrect self-reliant capabilities last seen during the Soviet era.
Inevitably the timelines for Yakovlev MC-21 and SJ-100 service entry have suffered as Russian enterprises have scrambled to develop and manufacture equivalents to major foreign-supplied systems and components – notably engines and composite structures.
While the MC-21’s Aviadvigatel PD-14 is still to be certified, the Russian industry ministry has already initiated an improvement programme for the powerplant intended to cut weight and reduce noise.
The smaller PD-8, stablemate to the PD-14, is intended for the SJ-100 – a successor to the Superjet 100 – and flights with the engine commenced in March. United Engine, which has also been developing powerplants for the modernised Ilyushin Il-114-300 turboprop, is pushing for PD-8 certification by the end of the year.
With the Western aircraft stream shut off, and a shifting delivery timetable for domestic models, Russian airlines have started exploring alternative capacity sources – legislation recently permitted wet-leasing, and further laws are set to expand this to international sourcing.
But new airliners are not the only capacity option for connectivity; the eastern carrier Aurora is setting up a new division focused on unmanned aerial vehicles, taking advantage of technology to diversify and adapt to the challenge of serving remote regions.
While Russia’s industry wrestles with conventional engines, the initial sprint by Western firms to pursue cleaner alternatives to kerosene power, based on hydrogen and electricity, appears to have turned into a crawl as enthusiastic optimism runs headlong into harsh economic reality.
Airbus’s pushing back the ZEROe programme has forced a rethink of priorities elsewhere, while the continuing fallout from the collapse of Lilium Aerospace – after the high-profile failure of Universal Hydrogen and the halt to Eviation’s Alice development – are a reminder of the substantial difficulties involved.
But this embryonic industry is still achieving progress. ZeroAvia is to modify its Dornier 228 platform for liquid hydrogen tests. Electra has obtained further funding for its EL9 concept, and Archer Aviation – developer of the Midnight electric air taxi – has been detailing a proposed network of airport connection services with United Airlines as its partner.