The passenger market has changed dramatically, and freight continues to expand
In 2021, the global air passenger market has ushered in a certain recovery in the midst of difficulties, and airlines are also optimistic that the Christmas holiday can create a peak of travel and create a good start for 2022... But this upward trend came to an abrupt end after the new variant of the new crown pneumonia virus, Aomi Kerong, swept across the European and American continents.
More than 3,000 flights were cancelled in the U.S. alone during the just-past Western Christmas holidays, and on Monday, Dec. 27, airline and travel-related shares in the U.S. stock market fell in tandem.
Under such a haze, what will happen to the civil aviation passenger market in 2022? When will the upward recovery curve that everyone expects really appear? Only time knows.
Compared with the air passenger market, the demand for air cargo has grown steadily this year.
On the one hand, although the epidemic has blocked people's face-to-face transactions, it has stimulated a surge in the volume of e-commerce business. On the other hand, the traditional logistics means represented by road transport and shipping are almost interrupted due to manpower shortages. Together, these two reasons have contributed to a surge in demand for air cargo.
In the United States, for example, due to the lack of road transport drivers, port operators and other manpower, the work cycle of traditional transportation methods has been repeatedly lengthened, and the cost has also risen, losing the advantage of low prices in the past.
In this dilemma, some logistics companies that were originally mainly engaged in maritime business have also begun to invest in air freight in 2021, including logistics giants such as Maersk, the world's largest container shipping logistics company.
UPS itself said that the surge in air cargo demand brought about by online shopping in the era of the epidemic has benefited UPS a lot.
The boom in the air cargo market has also allowed Boeing to set a new record for cargo aircraft orders in 2021: after accumulating 80 new wide-body freighters and more than 80 "passenger-to-cargo" orders, Boeing has recently received 19 Boeing 767 cargo aircraft with UPS worth $4.2 billion. At present, Boeing freighters have occupied 90% of the global freighter market.
For the future, Boeing also optimistically predicts in its report that air cargo demand will maintain an annual growth rate of 4% over the next 20 years.
Unprecedented single grabs and legal battles
When Boeing received orders for UPS freighters, its rival Airbus also won three new aircraft orders in a row in 36 hours.
The buyers of two of the orders, Qantas and the Franco-KLM Group, have a fleet of medium-haul airliners that used to be dominated by Boeing models. This time, Airbus not only succeeded in "grabbing orders", but in terms of purchases, the 100-aircraft order of the French-KLM Group was the largest single order in the group's history. In addition to the 100 order, the Franco-KLM Group signed four letters of intent for the A350 freighter.
Singapore Airlines, which purchases the A350 cargo aircraft, is not having a good time in the era of the epidemic. Directly affected by the epidemic and the closure of national borders, SIA's passenger business declined, and air cargo business accounted for two-thirds of its operating income.
The A350 is a significant model for Airbus. Previously, Singapore Airlines purchased the Airbus A350 cargo aircraft. Singapore Airlines plans to replace its seven aging Boeing 747 freighters with an order for seven new A350 freighters (and another five additional purchase options). From this perspective, Airbus hopes that the A350 cargo aircraft can shake or even overthrow Boeing's current position in the cargo aircraft market.
The French-KLM Group's intention to order may be a key user "vote" for the Airbus A350.
An undated image shows the Qatar Airways A350, which was grounded by Qatar Airways regulators, had paint peeling off, cracking and leaking copper mesh from the fuselage under the livery.
But the A350 isn't entirely good news. In an early reading in August, we followed a Qatar Airways news: Qatar Airways grounded the A350 due to "the discovery of accelerated aging of the fuselage skin".
Qatar Airways then negotiated several rounds with Airbus on this issue, as follows:
Airbus said that this performance of the A350 skin was only an isolated case (due to local climatic factors) and would not affect flight safety, and issued an EASA investigation conclusion. At the same time, Airbus said it can provide solutions such as repairs and repainting.
However, Qatar Airways said that similar problems have occurred in other airlines' A350s, and if it continues to develop, this problem may be serious enough to affect flight safety, and it does not accept maintenance programs.
Airbus bluntly denounced Qatar Airways for "malicious slander" against its products and considered resorting to legal means. Qatar Airways was tougher, filing a lawsuit directly, demanding that it be filed in court, "see you in the High Court of London."
This battle, which was originally just a "war of words", has now entered the "legal war" level, and perhaps in 2022, we can see its final chapter.
Qatar Airways switched to Supporting Boeing's 777X Cargo Aircraft after berating the Airbus A350. According to media reports, Qatar Airways is planning to purchase 35 Boeing 777X freighters.
When will the lost engineer culture be regained?
Some media analysis pointed out that the French-KLM group ordered Airbus airliners in part because of repeated delays in the delivery of the Boeing 787.
The "Dreamliner" in 2021 does make Boeing feel a little "dream broken": since the discovery of problems with titanium alloy components on the Fuselage of Boeing 787, the more problems exposed in its production and manufacturing links have been investigated... Finally, the FAA had to make it clear that it would strengthen regulation. Affected by this, the Boeing 787 final assembly line will be almost discontinued for a full year in 2021.
The Wall Street Journal reported on the problem of Boeing's culture: "When Boeing put profits above quality on the 737MAX, the results were tragic."
But U.S. inspection regulation is not the end of the story. Towards the end of the year, Italian prosecutors issued an investigation report saying that more than 4,000 of the parts produced by the Italian company MPS for the Boeing 787 in the past five years were defective.
As reported by many media, this news seems to confirm once again that Because of the priority of profit over quality, Boeing's products and corporate culture are declining, deviating from the former engineer culture and abandoning the original intention of perfectionism.
MPS Italian Company. Italian prosecutors pointed out in the investigation that the company is "shoddy" and uses materials that are much lower in mechanical and structural strength than titanium alloys, and the reason for doing so is "very simple", that is, to save costs.
A specific manifestation is that Boeing's subcontracting in the production and manufacturing of passenger aircraft is a layer of subcontracting oriented to profit maximization, and the final manufacturer has only one key indicator: cheapness. In this news about the Italian supplier, Boeing first subcontracted the production of the 787 fuselage to leonardo in Italy, and Leonardo subcontracted the 44th and 46th parts of the 787 fuselage to MPS.
Just like the scene in the movie "The Matrix", choose the red pill or the blue pill? Aviation giants such as Boeing Airbus are also faced with this choice: whether to choose economic returns or to ensure quality? Is it to build a new narrow-body machine, or to upgrade the Boeing 737 again?
Bloomberg asked Boeing in a report: What happens when a "great" American company chooses economic returns over quality? Was it the option to retire the Boeing 737 and launch a new replacement? Or do you choose to upgrade the Boeing 737 again?
The essence of this set of choices is to spend $20 billion (to build a new machine), or to spend only $2.5 billion (to change the old machine)? Apparently, Boeing's choice in the end was to launch the "new" 737 MAX8. The plane was "new" in a surprisingly large engine pod, and a software program called MCAS, and all of this became the beginning of the blood story that followed...
The milestone moment that capital and the public are looking forward to...
The all-electric aircraft "Spirit of Innovation," led by engine giant Lo Roy, first flew in September 2021 and set a record for the speed of an all-electric aircraft at 623 km/h in subsequent test flights.
As stated in last year's year-end article, the sky in 2021 is still not "cyber".
Although there have been some follow-ups in mid-2021, such as electric aircraft, flying taxis, hydrogen energy, zero emissions, supersonic airliners, etc., and have received continuous support and follow-up from major manufacturers in the industry such as Airbus, AirBraers, and Luo Luo, these are still quite far away from the cross-era scenes we are most looking forward to seeing.
In 2021, a number of aviation companies that focus on eVTOL and electric taxi concepts will ring the bell on Wall Street. But the performance remains to be seen: can the darlings of capital markets truly become agents of technological change?
Looking ahead to 2022, under the general trend of "green economy", the aviation industry will continue to pursue lower fuel costs, lower carbon emissions ("decarbonization" and even zero emissions). However, whether it is a start-up or an established aviation manufacturing company, it still needs the light and ideal of engineer culture to promote this technological revolution in order to achieve another aviation technology change after the jet aircraft.
Recently, the media reported that the "Blue Rice Dumpling Machine" X-59 Silent Supersonic Technology Aircraft (QueSST) is being transferred from Lo Ma's Skunk Factory to Texas for structural testing, which is a "front wave" in this round of supersonic airliner recovery tide.
Standing on the threshold of entering 2022, we loudly call for a down-to-earth engineer culture to deeply infiltrate the global aviation industry, resist the bad erosion of capital, and let the concept of safety, advanced and green lead the benign development of aviation technology and industry.