Well, I don`t seem to be able to get my point accross… 🙁

Anyway the other thing I heard from the guys at Embraer is that the current KC390 fuselage is sized for military cargo, putting emphasis on weight over bulk, a civilianized freighter would amost certaily have a longer fuselage with greater volume capacity than yje militare baseline version. Exactly like the L-100-30 over the regular L-100 Hercules. The Brazilian Post and Telegraph Company has been repeatedly pinpointed as the first client for the civilianized C390 (no point having the “K” features here, right?). These guys currently hire 3rd party cargo airlines to run the country`s nightly mail runs. One point that has been highlighted on behalf of this idea is that these aircreft are automatically reserve cargo planes in a time where all civilian aircraft tend to be leased from international financial corporations….

Regards,

Hammer

I’m so sick of hearing “yea,lets leave Afghanistan/Iraq and let it fall,then the whole region will fall”. This is the same CHILDISH NONSENSE that was being said during Vietnam.”If we withdraw from Vietnam,the Communists will have all of SEA for the pickings”.Yea,I remember that everythime I see a RTAF Flanker or a Philippines Fulcrum.

Hi F-14!

Well I see things rather differently than you, The whole political domino effect that scared the US leaders in the 60s has proven itself to bel rubbish… For instance the communists HAD to take over in Vietnam in order for their leaders and people to see that system just does not work… If the US had stayed in Vietnam into the 80s it would probably have acheived little more than to drag this conflict in the same manner as the one in Afghanistan is doing. As long as the war was on against the “imperialist hordes” all government shortcomings could easily be placed on the Western shoulders.

Now look at VietNam, it is following China’s example and opening up the economy to local and foreign ownership. The same can be said about the Taliban. After Western armies move out how long would it take for them to run down the Afghan economy into the ground? And then, who would they blame for it?

On the poppy fields issue, if I recall correctly during their reign the Taleban they actually destroyed local opium production only to see it reinstated in full after the US led troops kicked them from power in Afghanistan… Which is quite the exact opposite from what you state.

Finally, Thailand has a hand full of Swedish built Gripens, certainly not Flankers and the Phillipines has n o t h i n g at all, lest Fulcrums…

Maybe you were actually refering to Indonesia and Malaysia but to claim they both bought Russin aircraft out of of some sort of “Neo-marxist alignment” with Moscow is way beyond the reasonable, don’t you agree?

Regards,

Hammer

Hi Swerve,

I wasn’t trying to suggest that the PD-14 has an embargo risk.

The lack of any user base so far (well, it’s new . . .), & the current lack of civilian orders which would build one up, are commercial & operational risks even if you’re absolutely sure that Russia will never embargo anything.

From my perspective the most relevant problem of buying a military plane with russian components (specially engines) is definetly not an” embargo issue”, it is certainly being able to feel totally confortable that the crucial post sale support will be there when you need it… Price wise the Russians have always been very VERY competitive, it is in the suppor arena they have been found lacking before. This does not meen that they are condemned to be inneficient forever, it is just a fact that they are not there yet. Most KC390 future client base will be probaly come from western or nob aligned nations, the option for the IAE engine makes choosing this plane much more easy, don’t you agree?

If an engine is installed in thousands of aircraft all round the world, your supply chain is very secure. The manufacturer will be making a steady stream of spares to supply all those aircraft. If new parts aren’t available direct from the maker for any reason, you can buy spares from stocks held by airlines in depots in many countries, perhaps including your own, and you have a pretty sure medium-term supply from old airliners being sold for parting out. That means you have less risk than if there is a small user base, in a few countries. In that case, the manufacturer may make only small batches of spares, when required. They may be expensive, because of low volume production. Holders of temporarily surplus stocks will probably be reluctant to part with them, because of irregularity of supply. There will be few or no parted-out aircraft for a long time because the engine is new, & then only a small number.

All those factors increase operational risk, & potentially increase costs.

I don’t have the faintest idea what the relative prices of the two types will be, but I’m not sure that the presence of western vs Russian/Indian subsystems will make a big difference. Western civil aviation firms tend to source stuff from whoever can supply the requisite quality cheapest, & reliably. The KC-390 is deliberately tapping into civil supply chains – and neither Russia nor India has much presence in the international civil aviation market. Where they have, they’re not markedly cheaper than their Western competitors. Achieving the requisite quality isn’t cheap.

How many of the MS-21s ordered to date have been specified with the PD-14, & how many with the P&W engine? If the PD-14 was cheaper & as good, surely it would have swept the board? And so on. Look at the lists of suppliers for the MS-21 & SSJ 100. See how many are Western? But these are commercial aircraft, where costs are everything!

Perfect reasoning!

Regards,

Hammer

Hi Trident!

The vast majority of the flying done by the likes of FedEx/UPS/TNT doesn’t require Ro/Ro capabilities or operations from unprepared strips, so more efficient, airliner-derived freighters will always constitute the mainstay of their fleets.

They sure may have found a way around not using Ro-Ro but you cannot say that this feature (if available at a competitive prices) would not be a very nice thing to have and as weel as I’ve put here before, a major “operational cost cutter” for them…

About “Efficiency”, it is YOUR assumption that the civilianized KC390 would be less efficient than civil aircraft designed more than two decades ago… There is one thing your logic seems to be forgetting, buying a used plane, (or car, ship, motorcycle, whatever…) is always significant riskier and potentially more expensive in terms of maintenance, whoever you buy them from, then buying a brand new one from the factory dealer showroom. Now if the cargo airlines have settled into going down this road before, they did it because there were at a time a good number of pretty new airframes available in the market at reasonable (give away!) prices.

Now look back at the last 6-year period: there have not been ANY major airliner aquisition programs for the US major airlines, which has seen them using their old pax configured aircraft much longer than before and turning these into even worse fleet renewal prospects for the cargo corporations to convert. In this scenario they might have to rething buying used aircraft due to the sheer unavalability of good airframes. And if you go new-built, why not buy a far more suited aircraft than a converted many thousand-cycle old lemon?

If EMBRAER expects to sell more than a handful of KC-390s for feeder services to such cargo airlines I fear they will be rather disappointed, just as the L-100 and C-160 were never serious players in this market. As a jet it should fare slightly better, but all in all it’s still too big for most feeder routes to remote locations where military-style capabilities would be useful and not competitive with converted airliners on major hub-to-hub connections.

Personally I think that the cargo market of the next 10 years or so ought to be significantly different than the one that existed when the C-130s and C-160 where in production (I’m voluntarily ignoring the C-130J because it carries with it all the structural inefficiencies of the original Hercules design of the 1950s. Also let’s not forget Lockheed has absolutely NO practical experience in supporting commercial aircraft around the world since the demise of the SuperConstellation (let’s just leave the little-selling Electra out of this, OK?), a much different situation from Embraer’s, do you agree? The KC390 may really end up being a “feeder” aircraft but it will certainly feed very large intercontiental hu2hub freighters such as the 777 freighter or, who knows, maybe the initially proposed A380 Cargo version…

No doubt EMBRAER could sell a few (and combined with them likely securing the majority of the L-100/Transall/An-12 replacement market this will add up to a worthwhile number), but they shouldn’t get their hopes up too high.

Let’s see how this shapes up… 🙂

Regards,

Hammer

Hi Fedaykin, I’m under the impression that Embraer,s idea for a civilian transport derivative goes WAY beyond replacing L-100s and vintage Russian cargo planes. From what I gather they would like to turn this into the standard aircraft for FedEx, DHL and other of the like. Do the math: there is probably a larger market here than in the military role!

Coments?

Hammer

Hi guys!

Swerve’s hit the nail on the head here. Embarer studied dozens of possible configurations befor setling on the current published one. One insider told me that the choice for the turbofan over the turboprop was a simple one and in the end this was validated by the amount of problems that the TP400 (the only appropriately sized turboprop not from russian/soviet origin) showed in the A400M’s testing cycle.

This source also indicated that the faster cruising speed of the jet powered version actually translated in a significant faster turn-around time in the expected military operational profile expected for the new tactical lifter. Thus a smaller number of smaller aircraft might end up carrying the same cargo tonnage of a larger slower transport in less time (exempting, naturaly , outsized items that are just too big for the KC390).

The Brazilian Air Force required a 19ton payload similar to the Hercules, but in the end the empty weight of the KC390 proved to be lighter then expected allowing it to carry up to 23 tons over the same range initially expected for the aircraft carrying 19 tons, a major performance boost!

Embraer sources have also told me that the TP400 is a monstrously complex and expensive engine and that is bound to scare off non-industrial potential export buyers, thus explaining the choice for a more “plain vanilla” engine for the KC390 such as the IAE V2500. IAE has lost their mealticket with the arrival of the new A320 Neos and I asume should be desperate to find out some other programa to keep the production lines runing. Being a “proven design” it surely allows IAE to fund the configuration and customisation costs lowering the development costs for Embraer and for the Brazilian AF, not a bad pick at all.

One major concern in Brazil and in many other prospective clients is the risk of US parts embargos if the political environment of the client does not suit US foreign Policy objectives. By using a widely available civilian engine it should make it quite the more simpler for an “embargoed” air force to source these components, maybe from their own national airline’s stock of parts (if they operate A321, of course!).

Still on this “EMBARGOABILITY” issue the IAE engine was the least US origined components when compared to the CFM56 that was the other competitor in this particular case.

Does Embraer’s decision make more sense to you now? 😉

Regards,

Hammer

Embraer took the decision to build a jet rather than a turboprop for reasons which remain true. Whether it’s the right decision is another argument than which jet engine should be used.

I suspect that Embraer wants an engine which is mature for reasons other than just availability for testing. KC-390 is meant to be easy & cheap to buy & operate. A large installed customer base for the engine helps with that. A few percent saving on fuel consumption in airliner flight profiles is very important to passenger airlines, but less crucial to the military, & to freight operators flying into austere fields in obscure corners of the world. That could be part of the reasoning.

Commonality with the A400M is only useful for anyone who also buys A400M, or can operate a common maintenance pool with an A400M operator. That probably won’t apply to most KC-390 customers. Commonality with airline engines is likely to be of more value to them.

Poor old Taiwan!
Shafted again by the United States for political and economic gain :confused:

Regards
Pioneer

Like we say over here in Brazil Taiwan is “clearly in the woods without any dogs”… Soon enough it will be in the US Government’s best interest to see Taiwan as an integral component of Mainland China, until then the Nacionalists will have to do with the current US oblivion as the future will certainly be worst than today.

Regards,

Hammer

This week the Brazilian post office started its move towards setting up their own air cargo operator. Rumour has it that the goal is to operate around 15 civilian certified versions of the Embraer 23 ton payload military transport KC390. It seems Embraer firmly believes that there is a global market for this baby C-17 do you guys believe they may find one at FedEx? Here’s some speculative artwork.

Regards,

Hammer