The grounding of Boeing’s 737 Max, already roiling the civil transport world, is having a similarly disruptive impact within the rarified VIP completions community.
“A lot of our industry is in shock with the Max,” said Wieland Timm, senior director for VIP and special-mission aircraft at Lufthansa Technik LHT. “The information given to us is very limited, and currently nobody can work on their Max projects.”
Said Richard Gaona, founder and chairman of Comlux Group, which has the first Boeing Business Jets (BBJ) Max at Comlux Completion, its Indianapolis, Indiana facility: “I don’t have any more information than you can read in the U.S. press. Nobody knows when we’ll be able to fly,” adding, “Once you have a delivery [program] that has stopped, the completion market is affected.”
BBJ declined to answer questions from AIN regarding the Max program.
Market Ready for BBJ Max
The BBJ Max appeared ready for a warm welcome among narrow-body VIP airliner shoppers. Based on Boeing’s 737, the Max’s CFM International Leap-1B engines and improved aerodynamics offer 14 percent improved fuel efficiency over its predecessor, in addition to numerous airframe, avionics, and interior enhancements for the executive market’s version—a more than worthy competitor to rival Airbus Corporate Jets’ (ACJ) neo, introduced in 2015, a year after the BBJ Max launch.
At last year’s NBAA Convention, Boeing Business Jets announced 20 Max orders in hand, comprising three Max 9s; 13 (first-to-market) Max 8s; and four Max 7s, the last sale in July 2018. (The Max 9/8/7 models are equivalents of the BBJ3, BBJ2, and BBJ respectively.)
The fleet was grounded by regulatory agencies worldwide after the March crash of a newly delivered 737 Max, which followed a similar accident last October. In the interim, Comlux took delivery in December of the first BBJ Max, with the second going to Jet Aviation. Before the grounding, BBJ Max 9 deliveries were to commence this year, with the BBJ Max 7 following in 2021.
Describing completion centers as “frustrated” and Max customers as “confused,” Timm said some of the latter “don’t know if they’ll keep the aircraft,” while completion teams are in the dark regarding potential changes to cabin design or installations that return to service could require. “I only know,” said Timm, “the BBJ organization is very busy visiting customers and giving some further information that is not displayed in the market.”
In addition to the Max in hangar, Comlux has two BBJ Max 9s on order, their delivery schedules now unknown. (The Group, with a transaction division, handles acquisitions for its completion customers and its own VIP charter fleet). Gaona noted the four ACJ320 completion contracts in hand will keep the facility “full for the next two years,” but said, “We count on the other product” to bolster its offerings and income stream.
Meanwhile, the premier BBJ Max 8 stands across the center’s purpose-built completion hangar from the vanguard ACJ320, as if silently witnessing its outfitting, resigned to being left at home on prom night.
From LHT’s Hamburg headquarters, Timm sees a spillover effect across the ocean. “American completion centers that need certification help for other projects do not get the support they need, because everybody at the FAA is busy with the Max,” he said. “This will disturb all [U.S.] completion projects.”
Basel-based AMAC Aerospace has a BBJ Max 8 induction planned for the fourth quarter and a Max 9 in 2020 on its completions calendar. At EBACE in May (before announcement of the Max 9 contract), COO Bernd Schramm said, “The customers we have are committed to the aircraft. We just need to know exactly when we’ll get” the grounding resolved. Asked for an update before NBAA, a spokesperson said AMAC is “not in the position to comment on any OEM’s” issues.
AMAC’s neighbor in Basel, Jet Aviation, which has the completion contract for the second BBJ Max, is also in a holding pattern while awaiting information from the OEM. Meanwhile, “We are here to support Boeing in any way we can,” said Jeremie Caillet, Jet Aviation’s v-p, VIP for completion programs.
777X Efforts Suspended
Compounding BBJ’s platform issues, last month Boeing suspended testing on the 777X—whose BBJ variant was introduced at December’s MEBAA trade show in Dubai—following the failure of a cargo door during final high-pressure testing on the static airframe. The failure occurred “at approximately 99 percent of the final test loads, and involved a depressurization of the aft fuselage,” according to Boeing. It is “conducting a comprehensive root-cause assessment,” expected to last several weeks. “At this time we do not expect that this will have a significant impact on aircraft design or on our overall test program schedule,” the Chicago-headquartered company said.
Less than two months prior, Boeing confirmed a program delay associated with redesign of a stator in the compressor of the 777X’s new General Electric GE9X engine that exhibited more wear than expected during testing, pushing expected first flight from this year to early next.
The 777X features a fourth-generation, foldable-tip, composite wing 22 feet longer than the current span, improving takeoff, reducing thrust requirements, and increasing cruise performance, while passengers luxuriate in the tallest and widest cabin of any commercial transport airframe. The cabin altitude at its service ceiling has been lowered to 6,000 feet.
The BBJ 777X will be available in two models: the 777X-9 and 777X-8. The former was initially slated for service entry in the first quarter of 2021. Meanwhile, Boeing has slowed development work on the 777X-8 “to reduce risk,” the company said; no dates for certification of that model have been announced, but industry observers had expected service entry by late 2022. No launch customer for the BBJ 777X has yet appeared. “We’re hunting the first,” Greg Laxton, BBJ head, had said at the program’s unveiling in Dubai.
BBJ 787 Dreamliner completion activity has also faced challenges. Following problems some completion facilities have allegedly experienced with the composite Dreamliner, in June ACJ established “an outfitters advisory board” for its composite A350XWB. The board will “ensure total quality” in the completions process, ACJ president Benoit Defforge said at September’s Russian Business Aviation Exhibition in Moscow. “They sold 14 aircraft, and only four are flying,” he said of the 787. “Their outfitters are in the middle of the difficult situation they had not anticipated,” Defforge said, promising completion centers a “different story” with 350XWB completions. “We shall be a wiser team.”
Asked separately about any impacts the Max grounding has had on ACJ’s programs, a spokesperson said the company is “focused on our new models—namely ACJ319neo, ACJ320neo and ACJ350—for which there continues to be much interest.”
As for Max customers, “We have to be patient,” Gaona advised. “The situation [Boeing] is facing is quite unique and difficult to endure.”
Patience, indeed. “It could be two years before all the authorities around the world give a clear okay so the Max can be used,” said Timm. “Everybody will look into the papers, because [national regulatory authorities] will not follow directions from the FAA without an internal survey. This is what we heard.”
Once returned to service, Timm is optimistic four to six new Maxes and a similar number of AJCneos will enter the completion market annually. Until then, “without the Max, 50 percent of the industry potential is missing,” he said.
