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Latest-generation airliners ordered by SA-listed airline group

4th April 2014

By: Keith Campbell

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

  

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South African airline group Comair has ordered eight future-generation Boeing 737MAX airliners for delivery in the period 2019–2021 and has taken options on eight more. The eight aircraft are worth $830-million, but the South African company, which operates two brands (British Airways in Southern Africa and low-cost carrier Kulula), is receiving a discount and so is paying less. The scale of the discount is a commercial secret.

Comair CEO Erik Venter described the 737MAX as the world’s most advanced single-aisle airliner and described it as a “phenomenal aircraft”. The new type is not yet in operation and Comair has become the first airline in Africa to order it. The first flight of the 737MAX is scheduled for 2016, with deliveries to customers starting in 2017.

Announcing the order, Venter highlighted that, since 2005, Comair had cut its fuel expenditure by 28% and the the 737MAX would add 14% to that, taking it to a total saving of 42%. He pointed out that 92% of the company’s efficiencies were passed on to the customers and 8% to the bottom line. This was not altruism but kept passenger volumes up.

He pointed out that the group could not have undertaken “this massive upgrade” without the help of Boeing and engine manufacturer CFM. “We’ve had fantastic service from CFM as well as Boeing.” Both companies, he assured, took a long- term view of Comair. (CFM is a 50:50 joint venture between General Electric, of the US, and Safran, of France. Comair has been operating CFM engines since 2001, starting with the CFM56-3C.)

This new order comes as Comair is still receiving the next-generation 737-800s that it ordered in 2010. That order was also for eight aircraft, of which four have now been delivered. The remaining four 737-800s will be delivered in 2015 and 2016.

“It’s all been driven by fuel prices and exchange rates,” Venter told Engineering News. “Operating costs are a priority today. “The 737MAX aircraft, although quite expensive, are efficient to operate.” Comair’s cost index per aircraft has risen by 168% since 2001, but air fares have only increased by about 14%. “It is modernise or die,” he affirmed. “There is no alternative. We’re continuously upgrading, and have been since 1996/97.”

The 737MAXs will be used to replace Comair’s current fleet of 737-400s. “By 2019, we think our -400s will only be breaking even,” he said. “They might perhaps even be making a loss.”

The 737MAX is powered by a new-gener- ation engine, the CFM LEAP-1B, the develop-ment of which is “right on schedule”, CFM International executive VP Cédric Goubet reported at the 737MAX acquisition announcement. The first flight tests of the new engine will be in the first quarter of next year. Comair’s order for 737MAXs naturally includes the 16 LEAP-1B engines that will power them.

Compared with

the current CFM56 engine, the LEAP-1B is 15% more fuel efficient and has nitrous oxide emissions that are 50% lower than Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection (CAEP) sixth meeting standards. (CAEP is an agency of the International Civil Aviation Organisation.) So far, more than 6 000 LEAP engines have been ordered.

The airframe of the 737MAX has aero-dynamic improvements over the next- gener-ation 737 family, including winglets which employ laminar flow. The 737MAX also has a completely new cockpit.

“Comair is investing in their future. “They cannot go wrong with the [737]MAX,” affirmed Boeing Commercial Airplanes VP: Africa, Latin America and Caribbean sales Van Rex Gallard to Engineering News.Because of the demand for the new aircraft, “[i]f you want to have the MAX early, you have to commit early. “In the next five years, I see another ten operators for the MAX in Africa. This is the beginning of the MAX in Africa.”

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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