Does American Airlines Airbus A321XLR Order Send A Secret Message?

প্রকাশিত: 20 June 2019, 9:10:05 pm

It’s official: a relatively small airliner, the just-announced Airbus A321XLR, is the biggest hit of the Paris Air Show. The official “hit” imprimatur was placed on the long-range plane with an American Airlines order for 50 A321XLR aircraft. The order from the world’s largest airline comes on top of orders from International Leasing Corp, Middle East Airlines, Qantas, and Frontier Airline’s parent. Just announced this week, the A321XLR already has 191 orders.

While the new Airbus offers great range and presumed low cost of operations, could airlines like American also be sending Boeing a not-so-subtle message with their A321XLR orders?

One message might be frustration at the continued grounding of the Boeing 737MAX, itself sold as a long-range, afford operating solution up until its grounding for safety issues. “The MAX is so efficient that in some cases, it is even replacing widebody service,” notes a Boeing article from 2018. “Aerolineas Argentinas replaced its 4-times weekly A330 service from Buenos Aires to Punta Cana with daily MAX service. That route covers 3,252 nautical miles.”

To airlines fed up with their costly and currently unusable aircraft, the purchase of the A321XLR might provide insurance, or at least back-up, against continuing 737 MAX issues.

A second message to Boeing from the airlines might be about the need (or lack of same) for an airplane that does not yet exist. Some pessimists even claim its prospects were damaged by the A321XLR at the Paris Show. That would be the Boeing NMA, or New Mid-Market Airplane, sometimes called the B797. An announcement of the much-rumored plane, supposedly an all-new 220-250 seat model that will replace the aging Boeing 757 and 767, did not appear at the Paris Air Show, as Boeing grapples with the 737MAX issues.

Now Boeing is sniping back, claiming the A321XLR addresses only “a sliver” of the market for a new mid-sized airplane.

Of course, the A321XLR (extra-long range) isn’t an all-new plane. We wrote about it a year ago, when journalists debated whether it was the aviation industry’s version of “vaporware.” With a 4700 nautical mile range, the 180 to 220 seat A321XLR can fly even farther than the current Airbus A321LR (long range). Both LR and XLR are variants of the Airbus A321neo, itself a stretched and re-engined version of the company’s popular A320 family of twin-jet, single-aisle airliners.