THE RETURN OF WIDE-BODY AIRCRAFT

26 February 2023

They were said to be obsolete, too expensive to operate, too CO2 consuming, and too old, in short, they had all the defects. For decades, they were the only ones that could be operated on distant destinations. To cross the oceans, twin-engine aircraft needed an ETOPS rating (Extended-range Operations by Twin-Engine airplanes), i.e., the number of flight hours allowed to reach the first airport on a single engine. The first jets were authorized ETOPS 120, that is, they had to not exceed a distance of 2 hours to reach an airport. Gradually we went to ETOPS 180, or three hours for most jets, and we are now at ETOPS 370 for the A350 XWB. Even the new A321 XLR is authorized at a distance of 8700 km, so it can easily cross the Atlantic.

In other words, the field of activity reserved only for four-engine aircraft can now be occupied by much smaller aircraft. The latter is more easily filled and at a time when airlines were trying to focus on load factors at the expense of comfort and even fare, it made more sense to replace wide-body aircraft with lighter aircraft. And now Covid has arrived at the right time to ground the Boeing 747 and Airbus 380. While these devices were widely preferred by customers, they were of an old design and operators wanted to get rid of them as soon as possible. The opportunity was too good, it was seized immediately.

The world has emerged from this disastrous period and even if the conflict between Ukraine and Russia still pollutes the atmosphere, the demand for transport has suddenly resumed. Ecological injunctions have certainly been taken into account by the sector, but the results are not expected for twenty years. In the meantime, we must give satisfaction to the market. And, icing on the cake, tariffs have increased very significantly, by around 30%, which makes it much easier to reach the break-even point. Of course, the brand new large jets, the Boeing 777X and Airbus 350-1000 can carry more than 400 passengers, which brings their capacity closer to that of the latest Boeing 747-8 and Airbus A380, but customers still prefer the latter, which still carry 200 more passengers. And then manufacturers are struggling to deliver the recently ordered devices.

So we take the four-engine aircraft out of the aircraft cemeteries where they were stored. Not surprisingly, Emirates has put its A380s back into service. It was the first, I would say as usual. And it worked so well that the B777s were gradually being replaced by the flag aircraft, mainly for the higher classes, First and Business, for which the A380 had no equivalent. But the Boeing 747-8 has still not said its last word. It is also newer than its competitor Airbus. This is how the big carriers bring out the biggest devices when they thought they would never reuse them. The demand for transport is present, it is dynamic and the approximately 4 billion passengers transported in 2019 will probably be reached in 2023, but with a much higher turnover given the rise in prices. This phenomenon can be seen in all continents, following Qantas' recent announcement of the return of its A380s, the last carrier to return to service with its B747s, is Korean Air, while Asian countries were the last to fully open their borders.

We buried the magnificent devices a little quickly. They have made air travel prosper and they have allowed new layers of less fortunate customers to still benefit from the freedom attached to this mode of transport. The very high demand will not be able to be supported solely by the multiplication of smaller aircraft, even if they make it possible to open new direct services without going through the "hubs" so complicated and so expensive to operate.

Major airports are again close to saturation. Aircraft parking lots and the number of walkways cannot be developed infinitely except to create new platforms very far from urban areas. But then it will be necessary to take into account in the calculation of CO2 emissions the increasingly distant journeys to get to the terminals.

It might be wise for the two major manufacturers to get back to the dough to create new, more efficient versions of aircraft with more than 600 seats. Boeing has made 8 versions of its fabulous 747, Airbus only one of the A380 despite the enormous insistence of Tim Clark the boss of Emirates who says he is ready to be the launch carrier of the big aircraft of the future.