Airbus extends ex-C Series range to challenge Boeing

Bloomberg

Airbus SE will enhance the capabilities of the A220 single-aisle jet it acquired last year from Bombardier Inc in a bid to challenge Boeing Co by opening up potential new routes.
Airbus will boost the range of the former C Series plane by about 450 nautical miles, sales chief Christian Scherer said in a briefing at the European planemaker’s base in Toulouse, France. That will permit new services from Western Europe to the Middle East and between Southeast Asia and Australia.
While the European planemaker inherited an order book of more than 530 aircraft when it took over the A220 in July, it’s seeking a slew of new contracts as it focuses its own sales force on the programme.
Airbus is also preparing to add an assembly line in Alabama to Bombardier’s original plant in Montreal in an effort to lower production costs with higher volumes.
The improved plane, with a range of 3,400 miles for the baseline A220-100 and 50 miles more for the bigger -300 variant, will be available from the second half of next year.
The maximum takeoff weight will increase by 2.3 metric tons, but no additional fuel tanks are required, Airbus said.

China Opening
Scherer said a regulatory cooperation deal between Europe and China reached this week will start the process of getting the A220 certificated for the Asian nation. Sales have also been hindered in the US, where the threat of tariffs over alleged Airbus subsidies is hurting demand among local carriers, he said.
Bombardier bet more than $6 billion to develop the A220 over more than a decade. Airbus said the enhancements could help the model win the lion’s share of the 100- to 150-seat aircraft market, which it puts at 7,000 planes over the next two decades.
The A220’s capacity means it sits mainly below the smallest versions of the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 families.
The extended range should make it more competitive on longer routes where demand is insufficient to support the bigger planes.
Scherer said it’s too early to reach any conclusions about whether a bigger A220-500 plane might be built.

China airlines seek damages for Boeing Max groundings
Bloomberg

China’s biggest airlines sought compensation from Boeing Co for order delays and losses caused by the grounding of its 737 Max jet in the wake of two deadly crashes.
Air China Ltd and China Southern Airlines Co filed
formal claims with the US aircraft manufacturer, the carriers’ representatives said. China Eastern Airlines Corp said it had sought compensation, stating that the suspension has caused big losses that continue to widen.
The “big three” state-run carriers operate 53 of the
96 Max planes now lying idle in the country, according to data from local aviation statistics provider VariFlight. They also account for 65 percent of passengers who flew Chinese airlines in 2018, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
“The 737 Max aircraft have been grounded globally for security concerns and the technical problems have yet to be solved,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lu Kang told reporters in Beijing when asked about China Eastern’s claim. “A company can claim its legitimate rights.”
The back-to-back claims could give the airlines leverage to gain concessions as China’s influence in the aviation world soars. The country was the first major authority to ground the top-selling Max in March, disregarding the views of the US authority at the time that the plane was safe to fly.