Is it all a number game? – Aircraft Consolidation

There is a curious consolidation in the making from either side of the Atlantic by two major airframers. While the regulators are packing their bags and the fair-trade lobbyists still basking in the sun. Both these consolidations will certainly see the light of day in the not so distant future, in fact, a lot sooner. What probably baffles pundits, is in as little as 10 years ago, these consolidations would have been unthinkable. A time when Airbus was full steam ahead with its much talked about A380s and while Boeing was bragging  similitudes with 747-8 and its fully extended tops. Those were the days of the “Megas” when passengers numbers per aircraft, neared the ‘one thousand’ figure and ultra-long ranges reaches. Bigger and longer was indeed beautiful. As smaller airports eagerly, funneled spending billions on infrastructure developments for the accolade of being an airport with the super heavies, the ATCOs and ANSPs debated the conundrum of spacing in an airspace with diverse fleet mixes. Fast forward to 2018, and who would have thought Airbus would be flouting its buyout of Bombardier and Boeing’s tango with Embraer. Both Embraer and Bombardier were market leaders in the narrow-bodied, short to medium range twin-engine aircraft segment.
This, 60-120 seater segment was in the comfortable hands of Embraer with the E-Jet family and Bombardier’s CSeries. While Airbus has already renamed the CS100 project as the AB220 series and Boeing will probably follow suit with its own numbering of Embraer’s E-jet series. Perhaps with a move away from its fascination with the number seven (707, 727, 737 and so on) and start off with threes, maybe 303 with three series. Who said it wasn’t all about the numbers.

So, what brought about this drastic but a real and imminent shift from aircraft manufactures
to focus on smaller aircraft segment. This discussion is something that will reverberate the
aviation scripts over the coming months if not years.