Aircraft Economy for Design Tradeoffs

Abstract

Before the go-ahead is given on the further development of a new transport aircraft design a number of questions need to be answered. The airframe manufacturer needs to know whether it can breakeven on its initial investment easily. The airline will only order this new product if it can expand its market, reduce its cost and increase its revenues. The traveller wants a low ticket price and high comfort. The society as a whole wants this new technology to improve the economy while safeguarding the environment. Since all of these views are in conflict we can only evaluate a new design by comparing it with existing transports, keeping in mind that the life of a new design can span a quarter of a century or more. The content of this section follows is loosely based on my report [38] "An Economic Model for Evaluating High-Speed Aircraft Designs" of 1989. This report has been updated and reevaluated after my experiences at Airbus. The present model has been developed to give realistic results to tradeoff engineering features of a design to improve aircraft economy. It is not intended to present an accurate picture of pricing policies of airframe manufacturers and airlines. The first sections of the paper deal with a market in equilibrium. The economic viewpoints of the manufacturer, airline and passenger are based on the commodity product jet travel is today. These equilibrium market conditions can also be used to make design trade offs for a supersonic transport but we would have to be very careful to infer more. The question of whether such a supersonic aircraft can be sold and