pitz

That's exactly how it works. Airport authorities enthusiastically embrace their customers operating larger airplanes that bring more business to the airport. Heck, YQR spent crazy millions just because TS happened to bring an A330 there a couple winters and the facilities at the time, while they could handle it, didn't handle such comfortably.

If AC committed to using more widebody a/c's in place of narrowbodies, the airports would do whatever renos necessary. Its a lot less expensive, to the industry as a whole, to alter ground facilities, than it is to constrain aircraft types in terms of capacity. "gates are cheap, airplanes are not". To the point of this thread, I think it would be more efficient for AC to go larger with their aircraft, given that they basically capture little to no monetization of 'frequency' on most of their routes above 5X daily, than to go smaller. That means that it would probably be foolish to try and lean on more CS/A220 deliveries to substitute for B737/A320-class aircraft. Let alone the very serious question of availability of such, relative to the abundance of widebody capacity that exists at AC or even globally due to the downturn that is clearly in progress.

Stranger

Precisely. AC's 223 seats 137, vs. 120 for the A319, 146 for the A320. BTW the 318 was pretty much still born. How many did they sell, how many remain in service?

I think you are wrong here. Two examples: DC-9 to MD80, Canadair to the CRJ1000. The latter started at less than 80 passengers. Went up to 180. The real issue, however, will be whether Airbus bought the CSeries to kill these possible extensions encroaching into the A320 series, or if they will the potential as a plus. At the point it's the A321 that represents the true potential of the 320 series. mostly as the 321LR and 321XLR. The new 707/DC-8. Success of which likely meaning the end of the road for the Boeing "middle of the market," even if it's not quite the same, just taking enough sales from it to make the project inattractative.

Fiordland

The issue of the C-series eating into A320 series sales is only relevant before Airbus buys into the C-series. Now that they own the C-series (or part of it); who cares on the Airbus side. If they sell an A220-xx or A319 it is still a good day for Airbus and bad day for Boeing/Embrear.

Stranger

Still, the 220 is only half aibus while the 320 is 100%. My point is, we don't really know what their view would be, are they going to support designing the derivatives that Ben Smith is begging for, or not?

WildcatYXU

According to Wikipedia they sold 80 A318's. As of 2017 there were 67 of them in service.


I stand corrected. The MD8x is 45 meters long with a fuselage diameter similar to the A220 and it was a quite successful model. It remains to be seen if Airbus is willing to stretch the A220. However, the hypothetical A227 would be a real 7M8 killer. It would be interesting to see how would Airbus handle one of the A220's big problems - lack of cockpit commonality with other Airbus models.

Symmetre

I expect lack of commonality would prove less of a problem than having a big chunk of one's fleet parked on the tarmac.

WildcatYXU

Agreed.

CZAMFlyer

Some days it seems that way. In the case of AC, they can be very blunt in their assumptions, and are often left sputtering when a request comes back with a "sorry, no".

Quote:

Originally Posted by pitz

That's exactly how it works. Airport authorities enthusiastically embrace their customers operating larger airplanes that bring more business to the airport...If AC committed to using more widebody a/c's in place of narrowbodies, the airports would do whatever renos necessary. Its a lot less expensive, to the industry as a whole, to alter ground facilities, than it is to constrain aircraft types in terms of capacity. "gates are cheap, airplanes are not".

That's actually not exactly how it works. Some routes/aircraft are enthusiastically embraced; others are declined. Again, the 2nd busiest airport in Canada does not enthusiastically embrace AGN VI sized-aircraft such as the A380 for example, and actually went so far as to ask KE to cease bringing their AGN VI aircraft: the B748i, which visited daily. The reason: no physical space. Yes, the airplane can be landed, taxied and gated, but then there arise restrictions upon what can taxi behind or beside it. Such aircraft can only park at the northern gates, and similar aircraft can't then taxi behind it without risk of bumping (AC/Edelweiss style), so you have to expand the apron northward, displacing the vehicle corridor, which in turn displaces the parallel taxiway, which in turn displaces the north runway, which in turn displaces... Starting to see the knock-on effects? "Whatever renos necessary" is a concept that does not always apply in aviation. Yes, LAX physically shifted their runways to accommodate the A380 and that cost billions...but LAX sees many of those daily and the business case made sense for them.

People can keep stating "gates are cheap", but until they begin to understand what lies beyond the gates, they often lack the insight that this airport design stuff can be complicated. I believe I explained this (much to the disbelief and seeming chagrin of some) in another thread, stating that if AC ordered the new B777-9, they might face some operating restrictions along a similar vein.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pitz

To the point of this thread, I think it would be more efficient for AC to go larger with their aircraft, given that they basically capture little to no monetization of 'frequency' on most of their routes above 5X daily, than to go smaller. That means that it would probably be foolish to try and lean on more CS/A220 deliveries to substitute for B737/A320-class aircraft.

There are many valid reasons to consider less-frequent service between two points using larger aircraft. But the airlines, driven by you, the customers, are loathe to do that in many cases. I can't envision asking AC to trim down to say, eight daily flights each way between YYZ-YVR using widebodies only. The business customer believes the existing daily frequency is required, and as long as they're willing to fill those seats, the airline will do everything in its power to satisfy that demand.

Let's return to debating whether AC took on too much simultaneous risk (they didn't) when introducing the A220 while the 737 Max remains grounded. Using larger airplanes to cover the lost Max supply is a natural and effective tactic, but my point remains that there's a limit to which this can be employed at some airports in Canada - whether or not some of you choose to believe it.

pitz

Both the DC-9 and the Canadair were designed before the era of good computer modelling, especially the DC-9. So there was plenty of additional structure engineered into them, simply because they couldn't model, with great certainty, the structure being able to take loads within the required factor of safety.

In modern aircraft, like the A220/C-Series, they designed it with very advanced computer modelling, so they were able to optimize the airplane to a baseline (but not built) CS200, a shrink CS100, and a stretch CS300 -- a fact that shows up in the airplane being many thousands of pounds lighter than its equivalently sized competitors. It should not be taken for granted that a CS500 or a -700 could be spun up in quite the same manner that it was possible to use operational experience (and test instrumentation) and more advanced computer modelling on a DC-9, to determine that indeed the initial design was grossly overbuilt and thus capable of further stretches. In short, "there is no free lunch" -- the optimized nature of the CS makes it far less possible to stretch than other aircraft that were, at their outset, far less optimized. If a double stretch was easily possible, why didn't Bombardier bring it to the table when its existence would have certainly improved the value proposition of the CS over and above the currently actually offered lineup? The primary answer to that I've heard was "Bombardier didn't want to compete with Boeing", but that literally makes no sense given that a CS500 or -700 would be a knock-out product economics-wise if it could be built.

Stranger

While at some level there may be some truth to that argument, structurally, for a fuselage, it's the hoop strss that's critical. I.e., circumferential, not longitudinal. Wings etc. might of course need being redesigned. But still, comparing with a fresh design, or 35 or 50 years old one...

RangerNS

pitz and Stranger

Would the same ultra-optimized computer models not make it easy to quickly test new structural augmentation? My knowlage of aircraft statics can be written on the back of a boarding pass, a co-op student and an afternoon can add some more members to the CAD and test it overnight.

Or in mostly realtime if they use kerbel or xplane :P

jaysona

Lolz!! I can't believe some are still hanging on to this myth. There is no -200 design of any kind.

The -100 is not a "shrink" of anything, and the -300 is not a "stretch" of anything. Back in 2003/2004 when the concept was still being refined by the small but very talented advanced design group, Bombardier had some very specific reasons for designing the -100 and -300 as separate and optimized designs intended for specific purposes.

Whether some of those purposes will ever be realized is now up to ACLP and Airbus SE. Airbus SE is still in the process of reviewing and understanding certain aspects of the design of the BD-500 platform.

The business case (meaning money available and allocated) was only for the -100 and -300 platforms. There is also some truth to the not wanting to complete directly with Boeing as Bombardier knew back in 2004 that such a battle would ultimate kill the program and the company, that is one of the reasons why Gary Scott was hired in 2004 to head up the C Series program.

YXUFlyboy

Not sure anyone should be relying on the A223 with recent altitude restrictions.... 27,000ft is basically as high as the DH4 goes and we all know how well that plane navigates weather due to that.

jaysona

There is no altitude restriction for the A220.

There is a restriction on engine power when aircraft are flown above FL290, the maximum N1 setting is limited to 94% N1 when aircraft are flown above FL290.

The full TCCA AD:
https://wwwapps.tc.gc.ca/Saf-Sec-Sur...-2019-37-E.PDF

YXUFlyboy

AC is operating at FL270 on YYC-YYZ routes with the A223 they have. Perhaps they'd climb and reduce engines if weather were a factor but that's not SOP for narrowbody jets which normally operate closer to FL370.