AIN 2013 New Business Jets
As the global economic recovery slowly builds, a combination of new jet designs and block changes of existing ones is taxiing for takeoff across the size spectrum into ever-narrowing and fiercely competitive niches. Development schedules for several programs in both the brand-new and block-change categories have been pushed back anywhere from several months to more than a year so far this year, as OEMs struggle with the development of a new generation of avionics, composite structures, engines and fly-by-wire flight controls. Attempts to wring cost from programs, via sometimes complicated global supply chains, have also fostered some delays. To a lesser degree, some programs have been hampered by corporate cash-flow aerobatics that have produced schedule lags. Several major OEMs with multiple development programs under way are clearly stretched, both in terms of finance and manpower, in the battle to defend and expand market share.
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