Eleven seats is now the difference in the lucrative heart of the narrowbody market.
Ten days after Airbus unveiled a 189-seat A320neo, Boeing struck back with a plan to add a 200-seat version of the 737 Max 8.
The move by Airbus was intended to match the baseline version of the 737 Max 8, which is limited to 189 seats due to its exit capacity. As Boeing often notes, the 737 Max 8 enjoys an 2.24m (88in) advantage over the A320neo in fuselage length, leaving Airbus little if any room to raise the seat count even higher.
Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary, one of Boeing’s biggest 737 customers, was not present at the show, yet he seems largely responsible for Boeing’s decision to offer a 200-seater. For several years, the low-cost carrier has agitated for Boeing to raise the seat count on the 737-800 to 199 seats, which is the maximum accommodation allowed before a fifth flight attendant must be added.
Boeing has not yet announced any customers for the 200-seater, nor has it settled on the final branding (despite a confusing exchange between reporters and Conner during a media briefing). But Boeing expects that the new variant will appeal to the growing field of low-cost and ultra-low-cost carriers, which prize density above all in the cabin.
“It’s certainly a big enough market to go for it for us,” says Conner.
Only a year ago, the size of the market had not impressed Boeing enough to come through on O’Leary’s demands. Airbus’s move to add nine seats to the A320neo clearly motivated a response from Boeing, but competitive forces were only factor.
Indeed, Boeing has become steadily bolder as the company becomes more comfortable with the design and performance predictions for the 737 Max.
It must be remembered that Boeing launched the re-engining project in August 2011. The 787 finally entered service two months later, and Boeing was still in no mood to take on anything that seemed risky.
In the past year, however, there have been signs that Boeing is regaining a bit of its old swagger while still being careful to limit risky “moonshot” development projects.
The 737 Max has reflected Boeing’s more confident mood. A year ago, Boeing accelerated the entry-into-service milestone by three months to the third quarter of 2017. More recently, Boeing executives hinted that the delivery schedule could be advanced even further. The aircraft’s predicted performance has also improved, with specific fuel consumption rising by 1.5 percentage points.
So it follows that the airframer’s position on the 200-seat 737 Max has evolved. A year ago, Conner answered all questions about a 199-seat Max by repeating a line that Boeing was focused on delivering the 189-seat version first, and only then would entertain even minor variants. Twelve months later, the company feels more confident about directly and swiftly responding to the 189-seat A320neo.
“We got a little bit more comfortable about where we were and where we are,” Conner says. “It was a matter of comfort and it was a matter of whether or not the customer base really showed a lot of interesting in that airplane.”
It was never a question of whether the technology was available. Boeing introduced a mid-cabin exit door on the 707. In 2006, the company unveiled the mid-cabin exit complex on the 737-900, which allows seating capacity on that larger variant to increase from 189 to 215. The same exit door will be installed on the 737 Max 9, and now is being brought forward as an option on the 737 Max 8.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
