L'évolution du marché des mono-couloirs

Report: upstarts will slash Boeing and Airbus market share

Upstart commercial aerospace programs in Brazil, Canada, China, Japan and Russia will halve Boeing and Airbus' combined market share for 100- to 200-seat single-aisle aircraft in the next 10 to 15 years, according to a new report.

"That's a pretty shocking number," Addison Schonland -- who wrote the Air Insight report, "The Coming Aerospace Squeeze," with Ernest S. Arvai and Scott Hamilton -- said Monday.

The Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 families currently own 88 percent of the 100- to 200-seat single-aisle market, which is forecast to include 16,977 new aircraft, valued at more than $850 billion, over the next 20 years, the report notes.

Canada's Bombardier and Brazil's Embraer already have taken dominance of the smaller, regional aircraft market from European Union and U.S. manufacturers, the analysts wrote. "Could a similar transition occur for aircraft in the 100‐ to 200‐seat category? We believe that answer is yes, and that new competitors will begin to seriously challenge Boeing and Airbus in the 2015‐2020 time frame unless the two current industry leaders leapfrog their emerging competitors through technological innovation."

One reason these companies are targeting a move up into Boeing and Airbus turf is that the regional market is fading, the report says. "We believe the under 100‐seat regional jet market, with high fuel prices and low yields, is rapidly ending, reaching the inflection point of economic viability, if it hasn't already."

Meanwhile, it notes, competitors from China, Russia and Japan are invading Bombardier and Embraer's regional-jet duopoly.

Outsourcing has helped subcontractors gain skills needed to become competitors and made it easier for competitors to buy key systems from industry suppliers, the report says.

"Boeing and Airbus are feeding the hand that will come back to bite them," Arvai said in a news release.

The report says: "The critical skill necessary for success is the ability to integrate these elements and manage a program. Bombardier and Embraer have proven that skill with their Regional Jets, and the Russian aircraft industry has longstanding experience. Japan and China, whose aircraft have been relatively unsuccessful commercially, also have that capability and the resources to invest in order to obtain skills they may require."

The Next Generation 737 and A320 programs date to 1994 and 1988, respectively, meaning they're "not technologically innovative, and thereby ripe for competitive attack with more modern technology," the report notes.

Meanwhile, Boeing and Airbus are tied up with other programs (787 and 747-8 for Boeing; A380, A400M and A350 for Airbus) and have put off new single-aisle planes to at least 2020 and 2024, respectively. Re-engining 737s and A320s will put these planes against competitors that offer the same engines and more-efficient airframes, the report says.

So what could Boeing and Airbus do to fight this trend?

"Just as the A380 and 787 were ground‐breaking, Boeing and Airbus need to once again break ground with innovative new designs if they are to maintain leadership over their emerging competitors," the report asserts. "The potential for innovative designs -- from unducted fans mounted on pi‐tails to flying body concepts -- could provide the technological breakthroughs necessary to deflect a shift in market share. For Boeing and Airbus, the introduction of radical new technology is an imperative, rather than simply an alternative to consider."

By introducing radical new technology, Boeing and Airbus could cut their collective single-aisle market loss in half, the analysts wrote. "This will require significant investment and technological risk a level beyond those employed in the A380 and 787 programs, neither of which has been without difficulties."