Lufthansa Top Up Order Speculation

Because this blog has been dreadfully boring lately, I'm going to speculate about Lufthansa. If you don't remember, they ordered 20 747-8Is, launching the Intercontinental program into reality. They eventually cancelled one of them, line 1435, which was used as a test frame and considered too out of spec to take. Out of their remaining 19 frames, 15 have been delivered. One is ready to deliver any day now, two more are on the flight line going through testing, and the last frame is finishing up on the Final Assembly Line.

There have been rumors that Lufthansa is going to take back line 1435. If this is true, then they'll eventually announce it, and if they announce it, I think it's likely they'll announce a small top up order for the 748 as well. A small order is a huge order for the 747 right now. Anyways, based on cues and clues, I'm starting to feel it's likely Lufthansa will announce an order for about five or six 747-8Is early this year, including putting line 1435 into service. It would be great to see 1435 enter passenger service, as she's been through a lot of testing (both for the original 747-8I test program and then as the sole dedicated test frame for the PIP package last year), and needs some stability in her life. I also think 1435 will get the retro livery Lufthansa has talked about applying to one of their new 748s.

Again, this is just me speculating based off what is observable. If it comes true, I can brag about my amazing prescience. If it doesn't, you won't notice me silently deleting this post from the archive. You can ridicule me or praise me in the comment section.

Asiana Drama Bomba

The unofficial word is that Asiana was looking to buy four or five 747-8Fs. Lines 1501, 1502, 1520, and 1521 were supposedly earmarked for them, and it seemed to be going that direction, with line 1501 getting Asiana grey on her tail and nacelles.

The paint tells the story however, and now lines 1501 and 1502 have gotten full "white tail" paint jobs and look headed for a long stay in the desert under ownership of Boeing. Judging from this order of events, it seems the Asiana deal has been taken off the table.

This is sad. But more worrisome are the apparent conditions of this deal. Now, to be clear, this is all my speculation, but it seems Boeing built two freighters for an airline without a deal in place. If this was a standard deal, there'd be heavy penalties in place Asiana would have to pay if they cancelled. This seemed to be more of a good faith thing on Boeing's part, building first and assuming a deal could be worked out. That shows some desperation, not surprisingly, on the 747 sales front.

Because this is mostly speculation from what is observable, this could be inaccurate and Asiana could have just delayed the deal for half a year or more. But if they did cancel, why? They already operate the 747-400 freighter, including some very old and ill-favored 747-400BCF (Boeing Converted Freighter), so they would seem a prime target for the 748F.

Worst of all, now I'll have two more stored 747s to obsess over for the next god-knows-how-long...

GECAS Cancels Two Freighters

Judging by the updated Boeing orders page, two 747-8Fs were cancelled this week, and they must be from GECAS (General Electric Capital Aviation Services). Boeing shows a total backlog of 42 frames, 15 freighters and 27 passenger frames. That gives us:

• (1) Cathay
• (9) NCA
• (3) Cargolux
• (2) Korean Air Cargo

For a total of 15 freighters (ABC's order for one is still not showing on Boeing's site), and:

• (4) Lufthansa
• (10) Korean Air
• (6) Air China
• (4) Transaero
• (2) Arik Air
• (1) BBJ

 For 27 Intercontinentals. 

That freighter backlog is THIN! Especially considering they have four of them built and waiting for test/delivery, three unclaimed frames already built, two more claimed and two more unclaimed in the pipe. No matter how you interpret those numbers (for example, line 1437, and are the current unclaimed frames white tails or will they go to an existing customer if they can't be sold to a new one) that leaves a mere three to six frames left to allocate in the build order.

Surprisingly the Intercontinental has the stronger backlog right now. I still expect the Arik Air orders to be officially cancelled sometime in the future, and four of those frames are already built, so that leaves a backlog of about twenty frames to build.

With an official sales total of a big fat negative one frame for 2014, and about 1 1/2 years of backlog to build at the current build rate, Boeing needs to make things happen. For better or worse, there's going to have to be some substantial 747-8 news coming from them in the near term.

Minus five orders

Dubai Aerospace Enterprise cancelled their last five 747-8F's, which was no surprise. They cancelled their first five last year, and the writing was on the wall for the remaining orders. So the count is down to 105 total orders for the 747-8 now, with about 60 of them already built. You can see why Boeing slowed down the line recently.

Etihad Airways is long term leasing a 747-8 from Atlas. I wonder which of Atlas's nine it will be. Apparently it will get a new Etihad paint job. The article says number eight, which if literal, would be line 1471. I'm still hoping it could be line 1437, the last unclaimed Atlas NTU.