The datapoints that suggest the market for new airplanes is underoing a severe repricing shock kept coming overnight, when just two days after Iran announced it had negotiated the "$16.6 billion" purchase of 50 737 planes and 30 777 aircraft at half the sticker price, and one year after we revealed that a used Boeing 777 can be purchased for as much as 97% off, overnight Delta Air Lines said that it would scrap an order for 18 787 Dreamliner aircraft, valued at more than $4 billion at list prices, which the company assumed as a part of its merger with Northwest Airlines.
In its statement, Delta did not disclose specific terms of the agreement. “This business decision is consistent with Delta’s fleet strategy to prudently address our widebody aircraft needs,” Greg May, Delta’s senior vice president of supply chain management and fleet, said in the statement.
Delta, which acquired Northwest in 2008 for $2.6 billion in shares, said it would continue to take delivery of 737-900ER aircraft through 2019.
As Bloomberg notes, Delta’s decision was not completely unexpected . While some Northwest pilots held out the 787 as a “star,” known for its fuel efficiency and a body made of composite materials, some of Delta’s 777 aircraft had nearly the same capabilities, said Bob Mann, head of aviation consultant R.W. Mann & Co. in Port Washington, New York. Also, Delta tends to fly bigger planes on average than its peers, and the larger 777 is more consistent with that strategy than the 777, Mann said. “I wasn’t surprised, but I was surprised they took 10 years to do it,” Mann said of the cancellations.
The disappointing news came just two weeks after Boeing said it doesn’t have enough orders to maintain the current 777 widebody jet-program production rate of seven planes per month and would cut production in Everett to five per month beginning in August. During an earnings teleconference in October, Boeing Chairman and CEO Dennis Muilenburg had projected that outcome if further sales failed to materialize within a couple of months. Zero 777 sales have been booked since.
Boeing's outlook was worse than the above figures indicate. In 2018, 777 deliveries would drop further to just 3.5 jets per month, as Boeing introduces blank positions in the assembly line before and after each of the first six 777X models it builds, to allow extra time for assembly of that new airplane.
It's not just Boeing however. Yesterday Europe's Airbus for the second time in 2016 announced it was cutting production plans for its flagship A380 superjumbo and now faces the prospect of losing money on the plane again already next year.
Airbus in July had to concede the outlook for the A380 was darkening when it cut production plans to just 12 A380s planes a year starting in 2018, down from the 27 it built last year. It had planned to build around 20 of them next year, reaching break-even on those deliveries. But Airbus Tuesday said it had to cut further. After a three-way agreement involving also Emirates Airline, the biggest buyer of A380s, and engine maker Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC, the plane maker will delay six A380 deliveries planned for next year to 2018 and another six from 2018 to 2019. Airbus wouldn’t detail the reason for the schedule change.
The move comes at a time both the European plane maker and its larger rival Boeing Co. face the prospect the era of the big, four-engine long-haul plane is ending. Airbus has struggled to win orders for the A380 and Boeing has had to cut production plans for its 747-8 jumbo jet owing to slack demand.
In this context, Delta's cancellation comes the company and other top U.S. airlines seek to slow flight capacity growth and in some instances shrink existing service in response to falling airfares. As Reuters adds, airlines like Norwegian Air Shuttle from outside the United States are adding flights that Delta says have exceeded passenger demand and hurt unit revenue.
Delta has 25 widebody aircraft from Airbus Group SE (AIR.PA), the A350, already slated for delivery that will add to its flight capacity this decade. Delta said earlier this year that it would defer the delivery of four A350s by a year or two from 2018 to make the schedule "more consistent with (the) expected pace of international market improvement."
“We’ve been working closely with Delta as their needs have evolved since inheriting the order from Northwest,” said John Dern, a spokesman for Chicago-based Boeing. “Delta is a valued customer and we continue working with them to meet their future fleet requirements. Customer interest in the 787 continues to be strong, with almost 1,200 orders to date.”
The problem, John, as the last recession showed, is that all those orders quickly turn to cancelations once economic conditions turns, which they now appear to be doing.