What’s WRONG with the Airbus A350?!

- Is there something wrong with the Airbus A350? With the larger A380 now out of production, are Airbus about to start losing sales to Boeing at a time when a lot of airlines are choosing the replacements for their older widebodies? Stay tuned.

(playful chime) A number of air shows were cancelled during the pandemic years for obvious reasons. And the first big international air shows like Farnborough returned in 2022. And the numbers of both visitors and exhibitors only got higher in 2023.

The Paris Air Show in June this year was a big success and, of course, these shows tend to turn into unofficial competitions between the two largest aircraft manufacturers. And by all accounts, the 2023 Paris Air Show was won by Airbus, by a large margin. Out of around 1,100 aircraft orders that were announced, about 830 went to Airbus, mostly thanks to two huge orders from India which, by the way, were the two largest aircraft orders ever made.

Air India's order of 470 aircraft included jets from both Airbus and Boeing but IndiGo's 500 aircraft order was only for Airbuses. Now India's rapid growth is a fascinating story on its own but the point here is that Airbus clearly dominated completely in Paris, 2023. But in November this year, there was another large air show in Dubai where the picture between the two manufacturers turned out very different.

- This is Dubai Air Show, 2023. - On the first day of the show, Boeing got the ball rolling with a number of orders and at least one of those caused a huge shock to a lot of people. That day initially saw several relatively small orders for 787s from airlines like Royal Jordanian Airlines and Royal Air Maroc and there was also some decent orders for 737s from SunExpress, a joint venture between Turkish Airlines and Lufthansa.

But before the show, the greatest expectations for new orders for both Airbus and Boeing involved the airlines from Dubai itself, the industry giant, Emirates and Flydubai, which is a state-owned lowcost carrier. Flydubai kicked off by announcing that they would order 30 787-9s which would be their first widebodies. This means that they are now moving into the low-fare long-haul game, a topic that I actually covered in a recent video.

As for Emirates, they also placed their order for five more Boeing 787s whilst modifying their existing orders slightly. And there is some talk of Emirates and Flydubai actually sharing certain aspects of their future 787 operations. But the real eye-catching order that came out of Dubai involved Boeing's 777X.

Emirates added another 90 of these giants to their order books, 55 of which will be the 777-9s, which is the bigger model and the remaining 35 would be 777-8s. Now remember these are widebodies. So orders of this size might not sound as impressive as those that Airbus got in India for the summer but in reality, they are pretty staggering for twin-aisle giants like the 777X.

With this order, Emirates now expects to receive 205 of them in total. So all of this is obviously brilliant for Boeing but what about Airbus and the A350 and why were people so shocked? Well, Airbus did get some orders during the show but not the ones that everyone, including Airbus themselves were expecting.

Before the air show, aviation insiders had expected Emirates and Airbus to announce a pretty big deal for the A350-1000 model which is now the largest wide body that Airbus makes and the closest alternative to Boeing's 777-9. But that order for this particular A350 variant never actually came true. And on top of that, it also became clear that another big order from Turkish Airlines wasn't ready to be announced in Dubai either, making for a very difficult atmosphere over in the Airbus camp.

Airbus and Emirates did eventually announce a relatively modest order for 15 A350s but, crucially, these orders were for the smaller A350-900. Airbus also announced sales of 11 A350s to Ethiopian Airlines and another 10 to Egyptair. All of these were also for the 900 model.

Now, at this point, you might ask yourself is this actually a big deal? All right, Boeing clearly got more sales but does the particular model of A350 that Airbus sells really matter? There are loads of aircraft models that have different subvariants, some longer in length, some shorter and the aircraft manufacturers normally make all of them on the same production line.

So does Airbus really care which specific version they sell as long long as their order books looks good? Well, the thing here is that Airbus knows full well that when it comes to an airline like Emirates, a bigger aircraft is always better. If Emirates had their way, they would actually love to convince Airbus to continue making the A380 just for them.

This is because, as I've explained in some previous videos, Emirates and other Gulf airlines are operating from a single big airport hub. And to fully maximize their hub capacity and keep the number of aircraft arrivals and departures at manageable levels, they need really, really big jets. In fact, these are actually some of the few airlines in the world that can keep behemoths like the A380 full all-year around.

But in addition to their A380s, Emirates also have a lot of Boeing 777-300ERs, over 120 of them and quite a few of those will soon be up for replacement. That replacement is what Emirates is now looking for and Airbus had designed their A35-1000 model, precisely for airlines interested in replacing their 777-300ERs. So Airbus knew that unless it could sell this, the largest A350 to Emirates, the airline would probably turn to Boeing and get the 777X as a replacement instead.

So what is it about the A350-1000 that Emirates doesn't like then? Well, as it turns out, the answer to that is its engines and I will explain to you what that means and the serious threat this could pose to the A350 program after this. .

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Thank you, AG1. Now back to the video. The Airbus A350 is a quite unusual aircraft model because its largest variant, the A350-1000 actually has a different engine than the smaller 900 does.

Originally, Airbus planned to produce an even smaller model, called the A350-800 which would have shared the engines with the 900 model, and that 800 model was later dropped probably because it clashed a bit with the larger version of the A330neo. But dropping the A350-800 meant that Airbus now had one aircraft with two subvariants, each of which had a different engine and that was not ideal. You see, airlines don't like having to deal with more engine types than necessary since each type would normally require a unique set of spare parts and sometimes even differences in engineering training.

Now to be clear here, it isn't unusual for different variants of an aircraft model to have engines with small differences between them. Heavier aircraft generally come with engines that have a higher thrust rating and achieving this might involve small internal differences, often only in anciliary components. But in the case of the A350, things go much further than that.

And this is where we have to start talking about the Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engine family. I have looked at Rolls-Royce and its history in a different video where I explained that, for many years now, the company has specialized in jet engines for widebody aircraft. Rolls-Royce has already produced multiple versions of its Trent engine family for the Airbus A330, some 340s, the A380 and Boeing's 777s, as well as the 787.

Each of these jets has a different variant of the Trent engine, although some of them are quite closely related. For example, the Rolls Royce Trent 1000 that powers the Boeing 787 and the 7000 model that is used for the A330neo are incredibly similar, with the biggest difference being that the one used in the 787 doesn't have a bleed air system since the 787 uses electricity for that. But in the case of the A350, the differences between the engines of the two variants were such that they are effectively different models.

For one thing, they have different engine fan diameters. The 900 uses the Trent XWB-84, with 84 being its fan diameter in inches, about 2. 1 meters and it generates a maximum thrust of 374.

5 kilonewtons or 84,200 pounds. The larger 1000 model needed an engine with considerably more power than that. So Rolls-Royce made the Trent XWB-97.

This one obviously have a fan diameter of 97 inches or nearly two and a half meters, generating a thrust of 431. 5 kilonewtons or 97,000 pounds. Now these are very impressive numbers and these engines make the A350 incredibly efficient.

So as it turns out, Emirates and its president, Tim Clark, really wanted the A350-1000 but its engines ruined it. So why is that? I want to be very clear here NOTE Paragraph to say that this is not a safety matter.

Instead it has to do with how Emirates would be able to use the 1000 model because of the specific needs of its engines. And by the way, I am being a bit careful here because the description of this problem is a topic that raised some tensions between Emirates and Rolls-Royce. In an interview during the show, Tim Clark said that the service requirements of the A350-1000 engines are just too high and specifically that its time on wing performance is really, really low.

As the name suggests, time on wing is the way that we measure how quickly an engine needs to go into maintenance and therefore, have to be taken off the wing. More simple maintenance and routine checks are done on the ramp between flights with the engine still attached to the aircraft but anything heavier than that would require the aircraft to be taken out of service which can be both really costly and time-consuming. Now newer engine models will always require a bit of time to reach optimum levels of service performance and this is also true for evolutions of existing engines like those on the A350 family.

According to Emirates' president though, the time on wing on the Trent XWB-97 engines is only a quarter as long as it should be, a level of performance that he described as defective. Now this use of the D-word really didn't go down well with Rolls-Royce. The engine manufacturer immediately jumped to defend their engine but they also acknowledged that there is some smoke behind this particular fire.

Rolls-Royce chief customer officer, Ewen McDonald explained that this issue has to do with the climate in Dubai where Emirate operates. He said, "The engine works really well in what we call benign operations but in sandy, hot conditions, it's challenged as any modern engines are because the temperatures are just very high. " And to be fair to Rolls-Royce, we have had other examples of relatively new engines that initially didn't do very well in hot and dusty climates, with more frequent inspections and shop visits as a result.

Both CFM and Pratt & Whitney have also had relatively short time on wing intervals with both their LEAP-1 and the geared turbofan engine. Recently though, both of these engine makers have been increasing their on-wing times but this is a slow process that could involve redesigning some internal parts. Now during their standoff with Emirates, Rolls Royce were also quick to point out that Emirates would not be the first airline to put the A350-1000 into service in hot and dusty climates.

Two other airlines in the Gulf have not only already ordered the A350-1000 but they've also taken delivery of them and have been keeping them in service for quite a while now. These two airlines are Etihad and Qatar. Etihad ordered five of these jets and has operated them since 2019.

And Qatar was a launch customer of the type so they started taking delivery of them even a year before before that, in 2018. Qatar currently have 24 A350-1000s with 18 more still to come. But it's likely actually the service experience of these airlines that ended up turning off Emirates in the first place.

All of this is obviously frustrating Airbus a lot because it looks like the aircraft maker had actually finalized the negotiations with Emirates about a huge order of the 1000 model, 35 to 50 of them, in fact, before the show. But contracts for engines and, of course, engine maintenance are negotiated separately and this is where the deal seemed to have unexpectedly fallen through. So why couldn't Rolls-Royce and Emirates agree on this deal then?

Well, there are two possible reasons for this. One of them may have to do with a change in policy within Rolls-Royce. You see with previous contracts like those agreed with Qatar and Etihad, for example, Rolls-Royce would cover the costs of any additional maintenance that its engines required.

This is important because engine-makers normally rely very heavily on the income that they get from servicing the engines that they sell over their lifetime. So obviously, an engine that needs several times more service than expected can really derail an engine-makers economics. And like I said earlier, Rolls-Royce has specialized as a widebody engine maker.

And with long-haul travel suffering a lot during the pandemic, Rolls-Royce's finances, therefore, suffered a lot as well since they were depending heavily on the usage of those big engines. For this reason, Rolls-Royce have been getting more careful in the ways they write contracts recently to ensure that they can remain profitable and increase their margins, no matter what happens. And in this case, their terms just didn't satisfy Emirates.

But also from Emirates' perspective, there's another equally big reason why very frequent service intervals simply wouldn't work. You see aircraft only make money when they're in the air, preferably full of passengers and cargo. Therefore, they don't make money when they're sitting on the ground, either parked or in service hangars.

So even if Rolls-Royce agreed to foot the bill for the extra maintenance, Emirates would still have to cancel flights or even scramble to buy even more aircraft to cover the shortfall. So worrying over service intervals isn't a case of Emirates being unreasonable. It's simply something that directly impacts their operations.

And by the way, something that directly impacts the operation of this channel is you hitting the like and subscribe button below. And if you click the notification bell, that will avoid prolonged downtime. Anyway, all of this means that the consolation order that Emirates placed for 15 smaller A350-900s didn't really satisfy anyone.

Emirates need big jets and this situation shows that, at least, for the kind of climates that the Gulf airlines work in, Airbus doesn't have a practical answer to Boeing's 777X at the moment. By the way, it's worth mentioning here that Boeing's 777X has its own interesting but very troublesome story which I'm going to cover in detail in a coming video. But what makes Boeing's sale of 90 777Xs during the Dubai Air Show particularly interesting is that Emirates hasn't been very complimentary, let's say, about the 777X in recent years, primarily because of its very long development delays but also for some other reasons.

That is why this particular episode really hurt Airbus. They should have been able to take advantage of the delays that Boeing is facing with the 777X, especially since the A350 is already in service. And with a fleet of 123 777-300ERs, another 10 777-200LRs and, of course, those 115 A380s, Emirates isn't the customer that Airbus can afford to ignore or lose.

Now at this point, some of you might be asking why does Airbus rely on just one engine manufacturer for the A350? Wouldn't it be better to have a couple of options? After all, that's exactly what they're doing with the A320neo family where their customers can choose between the CFM LEAP-1A or the Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan.

While It's certainly true that having multiple engine suppliers used to be the norm for a lot of widebodies, Airbus actually had no less than three options for its legacy A330 family, the General Electric CF6, Pratt & Whitney 4000 and the Rolls-Royce Trent 700. Boeing's 777 family also used to have three options from the same three engine-makers and the 787 had two. And if we go even further back to the 747, 757, 767 and even further back to the 707, we will nearly always see more than one engine option on the table.

But recently, the trend that we have started to see is that aircraft manufacturers tend to concentrate the design efforts on just one engine option. And this is because as aircraft become more complicated, this also means that certification times go up and with that, costs. So a second or third engine would only increase these development times and costs even more.

Also it should be said that, in practice, if an airline buys, let's say, 100 aircraft and their engines have issues, they can't really swap in a different engine after the fact anyway. That would be super expensive and time-consuming if it would even be possible. So fixing whatever issues that the original engines have is always the best way to go.

That's why even Boeing's 777X only has one engine option, the General Electric GE9X. And even the later version of the legacy 777 only had the GE90 as an option. So where will Airbus go from here then?

They can't simply give up on sales of their A350-1000 in hot and dusty environments. And by the way, Airbus are working on a third A350 variant, the A350F, freighter whose size is somewhere between the two passenger versions but closer to the larger A350-1000. So unsurprisingly, since this will be a heavy freighter, it will be using the bigger Trent XWB-97 engines, the same engines that Emirates are currently really disliking.

And that aircraft will obviously also have a Boeing competitor in the 777-8F. Well, the good news here for Airbus and its A350 customers is that Rolls-Royce are working on sorting this out. In a recent call to investors, Rolls-Royce's new CEO, who joined in January, Tufan Erginbilgic explained that the company needs to quadruple its profit margins over the next five years.

And their main way of doing this will be by increasing the time on wing for their widebody engines which I'm sure is music to the ears of Airbus. To make this happen, Rolls-Royce will be using technology that it's already testing for the UltraFan concept which eventually will become the replacement for the Trent family. But where does this leave the Airbus A350-1000 right now?

Well, the reality is that Rolls-Royce can't really afford to abandon a customer like Emirates any more than Airbus can. So whether or not the 1000 model will be successful or not, at least in the short term will depend a lot on how quickly Rolls-Royce can iron out the servicing needs of the plane's engines and I'm sure that a lot of airlines are looking on with huge interest since the Airbus A350 is a fantastic aircraft. Let me know what you think in the comments below and don't forget to subscribe if you like this kind of content.

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