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The CEO of Embraer, reflects on his company's dramatic ascent to its position as the world's leading regional aircraft manufacturer. Since becoming a private company, Embraer had successfully introduced seven commercial aircraft models to the market, including its latest, the 118-seat EMBRAER 195. Now, he is concerned because Embraer does not know what to expect from Bombardier, Boeing, and Airbus regarding their competitive response to his company's recent attacks on the commercial aircraft market. How would they respond to Embraer's successful launch of its recent family of jets? Would Bombardier really follow through with its launch of the CSeries? Would Airbus and Boeing perceive the latest attacks by Embraer and Bombardier as attacks on its own family of jets? Most importantly, given Embraer's expectations of rivals' future competitive moves, what should it do next to protect its position and influence its competitors' actions?

Air cargo was traditionally considered as a by-product of passenger air transport. However, in the last decade a defined strategy for air cargo has gained a key position in the strategies of most combination airlines, contributing largely to the cash and profit levels of these airlines. The global air cargo industry is nowadays a mature industry with over 60 billion USD in direct revenues. The strategic context is, therefore, far beyond the basic entrepreneurial framework in which an emerging and young industry tends to operate. This chapter aims to gain an enhanced insight into the strategies of airlines that transport cargo, either in the bellies of passenger aircraft or in full-freighter aircraft. A Cluster Analysis generates a typology of seven representative clusters of air cargo operators’ strategy models. The typology proposes a spectrum of strategies for air cargo, ranging from the cluster group “Carpet Sellers” up to the “Cargo Stars” cluster. While the former tend to be the small airlines or all-cargo carriers which barely manage to cover their costs with their revenues, the latter are profitable, very large globally operating airlines that focus on both passengers and cargo with passenger and freighter aircraft. Within this spectrum there are five other main strategy groups: the “Basic Cargo Operators,” the “Strong Regionals,” the “Low Cost Low Yielder,” the “Large Passenger Wide-body Operators,” and the “Premium Cargo Operators.” Our findings suggest the existence of superior strategy models that could be defined as “winning strategies” that differ according to airline size.

This work aims to deal with a comprehensive review of design methods for aircraft directional stability and vertical tail sizing. The focus on aircraft directional stability is due to the significant discrepancies that classical semi-empirical methods, as USAF DATCOM and ESDU, provide for some configurations because they are based on NACA wind tunnel (WT) tests about models not representative of an actual transport airplane.

The authors performed viscous numerical simulations to calculate the aerodynamic interference among aircraft parts on hundreds configurations of a generic regional turboprop aircraft, providing useful results that have been collected in a new vertical tail preliminary design method, named VeDSC.

The reviewed methods have been applied on a regional turboprop aircraft. The VeDSC method shows the closest agreement with numerical results. A WT test campaign involving more than 180 configurations has validated the numerical approach.

The investigation has covered both the linear and the non-linear range of the aerodynamic coefficients, including the mutual aerodynamic interference between the fuselage and the vertical stabilizer. Also, a preliminary investigation about rudder effectiveness, related to aircraft directional control, is presented.

In the final part of the paper, critical issues in vertical tail design are reviewed, highlighting the significance of a good estimation of aircraft directional stability and control derivatives.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, Boeing and Airbus, the leading manufacturers of large aircraft, were locked in a battle for market share that drove down prices for their new planes. At about the same time, the two industry heavyweights began developing new aircraft families to address the future market needs they each projected.

Aircraft take many years to develop, so by the time the new planes made their inaugural flights, significant changes had occurred in the global environment. First, emerging economies in the Asia-Pacific region and elsewhere were growing rapidly, spawning immediate and long-term demand for more aircraft. At the same time, changes to the market for air travel had created opportunities for new products. These opportunities had not gone unnoticed by potential new entrants, which were positioning themselves to compete against the market leaders.

In October 2007, the Airbus superjumbo A380 made its first flight. The A380 carried more passengers than any other plane in history and had been touted as a solution to increased congestion at global mega-hub airports. Four years later the Boeing 787, a smaller long-range aircraft, was launched to service secondary cities in a point-to-point network.

The case provides students with an opportunity to analyze the profit potential of the global aircraft manufacturing industry in 2002 and in 2011. Students can also identify the actions of participants that weakened or intensified the pressure on profits within the industry.

Audio format (.mp3 file) available with purchase of PDF. Contact cases@kellogg.northwestern.edu for access.

Europe has adopted the Flight Path 2050 (FP2050) challenge demanding that by 2050, 90 per cent of the travelers are able to reach door-to-door destinations in Europe within four hours. A hypothesis can be formulated that without the Small Air Transport (SAT) system, optimized for short distances and for multiple but narrow passenger flows, this challenge cannot be met.

This paper defines design goals and necessary research focused on small aircraft concepts, as a required condition to fulfil the FP2050 challenge “90 per cent d2d 4h”.

The new small aircraft concepts have been defined as SAT Aircraft Family Program. Three demonstrators with common modules could be proposed: two using the same turboprop engine (first, one engine, 9 passengers; second, two engines, 19 passengers) and third demonstrator could be with a diesel hybrid engine.

The SAT Aircraft Family Program depends on demand optimized for specific regional features (passenger flows, passenger time value spectrum and infrastructure) and a set of matured technologies as a result of Clean Sky 2 (CS2) devoted to SAT.

This practical implications consist of developing on SAT technologies in CS2, deploying the demonstrators by the small aviation industry and launching an SAT system pilot phase.

FP2050 has changed the approach to a citizen-oriented from an atomized technologies taxonomy-oriented one. The challenge “90 per cent d2d 4h” also covers the needs of remote regions. This niche could be filled by the SAT system using the small aircrafts family.

The paper value is in defining entry requirements, answering how to build the SAT Aircraft Family Program satisfying the FP2050 challenge “90 per cent d2d 4h”.

Purpose – The purpose of the chapter is to sketch the historical and evolutionary development of the Wichita Aircraft Manufacturing Cluster from inception to present and provide a descriptive narrative of aircraft industry knowledge spillovers currently driving effort to establish a Medical Device Manufacturing Cluster. The chapter illustrates how carbon-fiber composite materials knowledge and technology developed for use in the aviation industry is facilitating the creation and growth of medical device manufacturing.

Methodology/approach – We use an historical case study approach to trace the development of the aircraft cluster in the Wichita, KS metropolitan area. A number of technologies are identified that had initially been adopted by one firm but eventually diffused through other firms in the local cluster and ultimately throughout the industry.

Findings – In addition to providing examples of within industry knowledge spillovers, we provide an example of technology-based knowledge that is diffusing through the aircraft manufacturing industry and is now being used as the basis for establishing an unrelated industry manufacturing cluster. The use of carbon-fiber composites in aircraft manufacturing has diffused from one manufacturer to many in the industry. Subsequently, the knowledge base surrounding carbon-fiber composite materials is being used in a local R&D effort to create a second manufacturing cluster producing medical devices ranging from surgical instruments to joint-replacement implants.

Originality/value of paper – The chapter illustrates a unique example of a manufacturing cluster, intra-industry knowledge spillovers, and inter-industry knowledge spillovers to create a new manufacturing cluster.

The purpose of this study of which this work is only the first part, is the development of conceptual design tools to perform an optimized design of the rear fuselage and tail surfaces. The development of a new and extensive database of transport aircraft and an analysis of certain general, rear fuselage and horizontal stabilizer parameters of the aircraft are presented in this paper.

In addition to the development of a comprehensive high accurate database, linear and non-linear correlations between different parameters of the aircraft have been established. Data were analyzed using comparison criteria between aircraft database based on the mission, the number of engines installed or arrangement of the tail surfaces.

It has been possible to obtain very relevant, linear and non-linear correlations for critical design parameters to optimize the design of the rear fuselage and horizontal tail.

In the case of the tail cone, the data have not yielded significant correlations. On the other hand, there are some regressions that do not work well in some cases and for which it would be good to further expand the database.

Results obtained greatly improve the existing methods for conceptual design, which usually pay no attention to the rear part of the aircraft. Besides, these new procedures are adapted to different categories of aircraft, allowing greater optimization of the designs.

The novel contribution of this work is focused on the development of a new high-fidelity database and includes many more aircraft than any other work previously released. Also, new correlations, linear and non-linear, additional parameters not considered in previous studies, and differentiated by category of aircraft studies are provided.

AEM will be exhibiting in Hall 4, Stand G1. The exhibit will illustrate AEM's comprehensive range of accessory repair and overhaul services for electrical, hydraulic, avionic and safety equipment. Farnborough will also be used as the official launch of AEM's Boeing 737 Landing Gear Total Support Pro‐gramme, which encompasses a complete exchange and overhaul service. Copies of Aviation Accessory News will be available on the stand.

Westland Industries completes 100th door for Jetstream 31 Production at Westland Industrial Products Limited, the Weston‐super‐Mare based subsidiary of Westland Group, passed a significant milestone with the delivery of the 100th passenger airstair door for the British Aerospace Jetstream 31 regional turboprop airliner.