Designing a new airliner is not an easy task. But the hard part isn't necessarily just the engineering and the actual designing by itself. One of the most difficult aspects of developing a new airplane is talking with the airlines to find out what they want, then figuring out how to balance all of the requests and design an airplane that you can sell before it even flies.
Both Boeing and Airbus have felt the sting of unhappy customers in recent months after new airplane designs weren't quite what the airlines were hoping for. In Boeing's case the most public example was being stood up by cargo carrier Cargolux for the first delivery of the new 747-8 after negotiations over performance issues could not be resolved in time (they were resolved a few weeks later). With Airbus the battle has been with both Qatar Airways and Emirates about the planned design of the new A350-1000, which has yet to even fly.
Since the early days of commercial aviation, airplane makers have spent a lot of time talking with the airlines they hope will buy their airplanes. This was usually done as soon as it was time to put pencil to paper. An airline would publicly or privately say how great business would be if only they had an airplane could carry X number of passengers for a distance of Y, while needing Z horsepower (or pounds of thrust) to name just a few of the variables. It is then up to the airplane maker to work X+Y+Z = Airplane in a way that makes the different airlines happy.
In the 1930s Boeing and Douglas Aircraft (and others) were busy trying to stay one step ahead of the other in completing this equation. During the golden era of aviation, rapid design improvements meant airplanes were becoming obsolete every few years.
Today the stakes are even higher as the airlines spend many billions of dollars developing airplanes they hope will sell for several decades. And while the Douglas DC-3 is still in widespread use today, most of the airplanes of the 1930s were only sold for a few years before a new design came along.
With the new Airbus A350, the two customers with the most orders have been unusually public with their frustration in how the design has been changed recently.
"We want the original specification" Emirates president Tim Clark told Aviation Week. "I don't remember that we wanted something new and I really wonder why they did not ask."
Emirates and Qatar Airways are unhappy with recent design changes and they believe the newest version of the A350-1000 will be more expensive to operate and will be overweight compared to the airplane they were believed they were buying. With the list price of an A350-1000 at $300 million (.pdf), the airlines feel justified in complaining when each have more than 70 on order.
Qatar's CEO Akbar Al Baker expressed his unhappiness at the recent Dubai airshow over problems with another Airbus order saying, “I think that Airbus still has to learn how to build aircraft.” Tempers cooled shortly after and Al Baker plunked down a few billion dollars worth of orders with the European airplane maker.
The A350 is expected to compete with the Boeing 777, an airplane that will also undergo design changes later this decade. The mostly composite design is expected to make its first flight in France sometime next year.
Image: Airbus