Airbus and Boeing supremacy secure despite turbulence

LONDON

Boeing's safety troubles and the Airbus scramble to ramp up production should have left a gap for smaller rivals to challenge their dominatiion of the commercial airliner market.

Yet the American and European giants face little near term threat to their lock on the medium and long-range aircraft markets, industry experts say, as the barriers to entry are too high for China's COMAC or Brazil's Embraer.

COMAC did not bother to bring its new C919, its first entry into the key single-aisle medium-range aircraft segment, to last week's Farnborough airshow, Europe's top aviation industry gathering.

Airbus and Boeing meanwhile added more than 260 planes to their massive order books of nearly 15,000 aircraft.

This despite the fact that an airline that orders a medium-range Airbus A320 or Boeing 737 MAX today will likely have to wait until the end of the decade to receive the plane. Both companies face supply chain and other problems that have hampered efforts to step up production.

In the coming two decades airlines are estimated to need 42,000 new aircraft to rejuvenate their fleets with models that guzzle less fuel and emit less CO2, as well as to meet an expected doubling of global air traffic.

"A significant narrow-bodies deficit remains through 2028 for the A320 family and longer for the 737 MAX," said Richard Evans, an analyst at aviation sector data firm Cirium.

Narrow-body or single-aisle aircraft are the workhorses of the commercial aviation industry, each carrying between 175 and 250 passengers on medium-range flights.

Despite the opening in the most popular commercial aircraft segment, it will not be easy for COMAC or Embraer to profit from the opportunity.

COMAC's C919 has begun commercial flights in China. A state-owned firm, COMAC has nearly 1,200 orders for the jet, almost exclusively from Chinese airlines.

Beijing wanted the plane to reduce China's reliance on foreign technology and to gain a foothold in the global aircraft market. However, the plane has to date only been certified for use in China and production remains low-scale.

Without certification from the Federal Aviatioin Authority in the United States and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) the two major markets remain closed to the C919.

"Chinese airlines are the target market for the C919," said Pascal Fabre at AlixPartners consultancy.

He said there are too many barriers, including political, for major Western airlines to add it to their fleet.

Airbus and Boeing still expect COMAC to become a rival.

"We do take COMAC as a serious competitor," said Christian Scherer, who heads Airbus's commercial aircraft division.

But not immediately, as they believe the C919 does not offer airlines anything new compared with Airbus and Boeing aircraft.