Thursday, July 5, 2012

Further comments on Aircraft Demand forecast

Yes, another article about market forecast, after Boeing's recent release a lot of traffic about this topic is appearing in internet, so I will keep on with the tendency.

Reading Leehman forecast analysis I have notice several important strategic decisiones made by the airplane manufactures companies. Part of this decisions can be understood from their market forecast. I would like to base the analysis in the following information that can be extracted from the different documents:
  • Boeing (following Leehman) analyzes the regional market (70-90 seats) just one segment below their B737-600.
  • Airbus analysis considers the peak of demand on the segment 150-175 which matches with the current demand of A320 and B737-800. However Bombardier declares a similar demand size in the smaller segment (100-150) segment already covered, and with the market experience from Airbus (A319) and Boeing (B737-700) doesn't seem to be the biggest market.
  • Bombardier stops at that segment, up to 149 seats.
Analyzing just this information, my reflections are not very possitive for Bombardier. Boeing and Airbus seem to have a better market forecast experience at this aircraft size segment which has been mastered by them in the last decades. However, a newcomer moves the forecasted market peak to smaller aircrafts, segment already covered by both airplane manufacturers having already available data. Probably, Bombardier has performed their business analysis based on a market share on a bigger cake that actual one, finally giving them an important amount of airplanes sold to satisfy the business case of a new airplane development in the segment. If the market forecast is wrong, have they made the wrong movement? Risking to create a completely new airplane configuration (first time Bombardier develops a wing-mounted airplane), why don't reach the biggest cake?

Is interesting to see as well, that Boeing is taking care at the regional segment. Is this a forecast intended to understand potential movements of regional manufactures or reflects an intention from the company?

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