Comparing Airbus A350 and Boeing 787- Fleet Growth Trends

Lufthansa announced today that its growing fleet of A350s will be seen more frequently across North America. Today the new route is from Munich to Denver. This follows the aircraft coming to Chicago and Newark. Next up is Vancouver (May 1). Yesterday Qatar announced it deployed an A350 to Atlanta this past weekend. Qatar's A350 replaces 777-300ER service. Over the weekend, Delta deployed one of its new A350s from Atlanta to Seoul. Airbus delivered 156 A350s as of March with EIS five years ago. Compared with the Boeing 787, which after the first five years had 363 in service. Boeing, of course, benefits from two FALs for the 787 compared to one for the A350. Airbus has stated it plans to go to rate 10 by end of 2018. Our calculations suggest the A350 line is potentially at eight per month now, despite a slow start to 2018. If the Toulouse FAL averages eight per month for the year, the chart shows they could reach 235 in-service by year-end. This is an ambitious goal. But as the lines on the chart suggest this would be in symmetry with what Boeing is achieving. Looking at the two programs in terms of deliveries by month for the first five years we see the following. The 787 deliveries were interrupted by the well-published fumbles. But the program recovered fast. It is clear the program's two FALs are humming. The trendline shows they could be close to a potential rate of 12 soon. Next the A350. As we can see the program also had hiccups. It appears the FAL is easily capable of rate eight now. Which is why we think for 2018 an average of eight per month is feasible, if ambitious. Supply chain management is key to the delivery process. Airbus has had some supply chain challenges, especially from Zodiac. The A350 program looks like becoming a highly successful project. There has been little news of hiccups after the initial Zodiac problems. Even the Rolls-Royce engines seem not to have attracted the same attention as those on the 787.

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