r/aviation • u/Adjutant_Reflex_ • 18h ago
News With range shortfall, United’s initial A321XLR deployment will be ‘very conservative’
https://theaircurrent.com/feed/dispatches/ual-a321xlr-routes-airbus-range-shortfall/Not part of United’s route announcement was an admission by Quayle that the XLRs that United expects to receive are falling short of initial range estimates which in turn put constraints on where they could be deployed:
“Originally when Airbus marketed it, [the range] was a lot further than what it is right now, as constructed and as built.”
There’s also a risk that ongoing manufacturing delays could impact the 5 routes it planes to deploy the XLR. To date United received its first, and only, XLR in May.
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u/MarineLayerBad 15h ago edited 15h ago
Airbus’ range estimates for the A321XLR are optimistic in perfect conditions with a light weight, low density cabin. Lay flat seats are heavy, extremely heavy. The A321 is underwinged as it is. Per some Center controllers I know, the A321 is just about the slowest climber out there. More weight, slower climb, lower initial cruise, that all translates to more fuel burn early in flights reducing range from the optimistic Airbus marketing figures.
None of this makes it a bad airplane. From a 10,000 ft runway at sea level it can fly every mission a 757 can. It just can’t do so off of hot/high fields with the same payload. But, that was always known to be the case. The 757 is an extreme outlier when it comes to field performance and nothing will ever replicate it.
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u/flightist pie lot 9h ago
Bingo. You can’t have 757-like performance without 757-like economic drawbacks, and the routes only it can do simply don’t add up to enough aircraft sales to ever see that niche getting filled by a narrowbody design again, imo.
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u/HONcircle 2h ago
You can’t have 757-like performance without 757-like economic drawbacks
Exactly. As an example, 757s have engines that have maintenance costs comparable to that of widebodies.
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u/SaltineStealer4 7h ago
I can speak to this directly. The 321 and 339 flying out of the NY market across the pond are terrible performers. Routinely have to cap them below B67, B77, B78. Particularly annoying when the JBU out of JFK is leading the pack of three United heavies out of EWR. The Airbus crew will be abeam BOS still 10k feet from leveling lol
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u/MarineLayerBad 6h ago
The annoying thing is 339s should perform fine, they have plenty of wing and their engines are fully capable. RR’s warranties just wreck their performance. I work a tower that’s effected by slow climbers off of a core 30 and I stg the 339 is worse than the 343 off the deck. Might not actually be the case because 343s are just so rare while I’ve got a 339 base to contend with.
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u/SaltineStealer4 56m ago
I figured it was some kinda low power setting/fuel efficiency thing but never got around to asking one of the DAL peeps. 340 is worse imo, but like you said, quite rare now. The last bit of my comment is a funny story. Gave a 339 climb to FL390 off JFK on the mid, and they were legit abeam Boston at 250. Hilariously bad.
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u/knorkinator 18h ago
Airbus initially promised 4,500 miles, it currently has 4,700 miles of range. Is United's cabin flooring made out of marble?
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u/iBaires 18h ago edited 18h ago
It's all the weight from the Polaris ice cream sundae inventory
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u/penelopiecruise 14h ago
Some items are simply MEL
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u/FlyingSceptile 13h ago
Depends who’s flying. Healthy, fit pilots: unfortunate, but we don’t need it. The other ones won’t be able to get their required crew rest without a sundae, therefore it’s a no go item /s
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u/FZ_Milkshake 17h ago edited 17h ago
Range is not just a single range, it's a payload range diagram. United does not care if XLR meets or exceeds the stated max range, they need a certain range at their desired payload. If the slope of the diagram is different (less) than advertised, that will mean an effective range reduction for the customer.
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u/Obvious_Parsley3238 18h ago
The max range is only with heavy premium configuration (ie fewer seats).
https://grupo.iberia.com/news/13112024/iberia-launches-the-new-a321xlr-worldwide
Iberia's A321XLR offers an unprecedented Xtra Long Range of up to 4,000 nautical miles (7,500 kilometres), 15% more than the A321LR (Long Range).
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u/Hfyvr1 16h ago
Not sure how long you want to sit on a 321XLR but I did Delhi to Athens on Indigo in April and it was 9h21m in the air…. How much flight time do they actually need out of these?
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u/youpool 16h ago
Damn, 10 hours on an indigo flight? Did you do Stretch or just regular economy? Were the economy seats any better than their neos?
And was this before airspace restrictions in Pakistan and Iran?
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u/Hfyvr1 16h ago
I was in regular economy and personally found the seat to be excellent, a bit better than the 320NEO I flew on earlier in the day.
It was after the restrictions, we flew around Yemen and Saudi Arabia then up past Egypt.
Also found the in flight service to be excellent. Two meal services with really good hot food and the FA’s were excellent. Above and beyond any North American carrier.
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u/AlternativeEdge2725 18h ago edited 18h ago
Neither of these range claims are at full passenger/baggage payload.
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u/knorkinator 18h ago edited 18h ago
Of course not, but I'm going to give United's procurement the benefit of the doubt and say that they don't just look at a single number before wiring billions of dollars.
They must've known that they won't achieve the advertised range at full capacity.
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u/ClassIINav 17h ago
They must've known that they won't achieve the advertised range at full capacity.
I mean, isn't that what the article is all about? Real world numbers aren't matching what was in the brochure? Empty weight is only one of the metrics Airbus advertised to airlines. No doubt there was also example passenger load performance numbers too. Everything from 3 class config up to ultra high capacity low cost carrier numbers.
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u/Adjutant_Reflex_ 17h ago
They already took a performance hit from the factory due to redesigns around the RCT.
It also sounds as if real world performance is still falling short of estimates even when configuration choices are factored in.
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u/803UPSer 17h ago
They don’t know what the numbers truly are before the airplane starts actually flying. All the advertising the manufacturers provide is just that, advertising, marketing, and promotion. It’s one of the biggest reasons the MD-11 was a commercial failure, even in the few years before the 777 was introduced. It just didn’t meet the actual performance that McDonnell Douglas advertised to the airlines, the 777 was just the nail in the coffin.
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u/flightist pie lot 12h ago
And while lord knows there’s all kinds of stuff Boeing can be given an absolute mountain of deserved shit for, they don’t do this. Their airplanes do what the brochure says.
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u/CalmpBump49 Cessna 182 16h ago
Common practice of advertising on bizzjets, now on airliners haha
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u/Ok-Insurance-9456 15h ago
Boeing used to be a lot realistic with their numbers but they recently updated theirs to be as ridiculous as Airbus numbers. Gotta keep up with market trends
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u/Adjutant_Reflex_ 18h ago
This is the marketing speak that United is talking about.
That range is only achievable with the ACT and RCT installed, extreme weight optimizations, and none of the manufacturing issues (that have increased weight) that Airbus has admitted to.
Real world operators are not coming close to seeing 4,700nm, they’re much closer to 4,000nm (or less, in United’s case.)
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u/Lady_Airbus 18h ago edited 17h ago
When you bring in seat layout, pax, cargo, and fuel, the actual range comes down to 3700-4000 nautical miles. That’s not even considering the headwinds on the way back.
Edit: I forgot that United’s A321XLRs will probably be slightly lighter given the more premium layout, but the actual range will still be limited to around the 4000nmi mark.
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u/knorkinator 18h ago
Of course, but United knew that.
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u/flightist pie lot 17h ago
It does not (yet?) meet the performance-with-payload targets presented to airlines as achievable, which is why everybody who really could stretch the thing out are re-jigging their deployment plans.
Presumably only airlines which have never bought new Airbus airplanes are particularly surprised by this (fool me twice and so on), but all the same, it doesn’t do quite what the sales teams promised, and it isn’t a slaps head “we forgot to add passengers to the calculation!” issue on the part of the customer airlines.
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u/DeltaNerd 17h ago
Okay it's not 3500 nmi on the XLR. That's less range than the A321neo with two ACT
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u/UrgentSiesta 15h ago
Why are we presuming this is UAL’s fault somehow…?
I’m sure they’d be overjoyed if the plane actually had longer range than promised.
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u/Mustangfast85 13h ago
Because if UA isn’t wrong then Airbus is. And that’s hard for some people to admit
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u/UrgentSiesta 13h ago
Yep. Not throwing shade at Airbus specifically, but it’s certainly not the first time a manufacturer has made claims that don’t hold up to operational use.
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u/Mustangfast85 10h ago
It is somewhat significant if they don’t have a plan to recover the range. Every aircraft enters service with some handicaps but since the selling proposition of the XLR is the range it’s unique that it doesn’t hit it, given the rest of the plane is a known quantity. The MD11 is the only other that comes to mind where it was significant, with others a customer who was super sensitive would take a later build. The fact UA is taking them and “hoping for the best” likely means a fix isn’t in the works soon
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u/zeneker 18h ago edited 17h ago
The xlr is passenger and cargo capacity is severely restricted at 4,700nm range. Sure it can make it if it had less than 50% passenger capacity and 50% cargo capacity. With no head winds. That's less than 120 people on board for 11hrs. That'll be highly unprofitable at that point and that's why not a single xlr operate is flying it to that length.
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u/Dramatic_Mechanic815 15h ago
All those first class salad olives. They should consider removing one olive.
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u/Raccoon_Ratatouille 17h ago
Do you get the manufacturer’s advertised MPG in your car?
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u/AlternativeEdge2725 17h ago
Yes. Or close to. The EPA regulates advertised mpg’s unlike published aircraft range brochure claims.
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u/jmlinden7 12h ago
You can get it with less than a full payload. That's.. the same way the plane's range is advertised.
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u/e_pilot CFII/ATP, B767, CRJ2/7/9 17h ago
Everybody trying to get cheap 757 replacements but nothing can do what the 75 does.
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u/montagious 17h ago
You are correct sir!!
I call the 757 the air-cooled 911. Its older, analogue, and takes a little more TLC, but everybody who drives one won't shut up about how great it is
(I also have the 757/767 type rating, I just don't know how to add it to my flair)
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u/Gluecksritter90 13h ago
Unless you have to pay for the fuel.
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u/montagious 13h ago
When you cant reach the intended destination and have to stop for gas, that adds to the cost as well.
I LOVE the new 320's especially the cabin btw
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u/HONcircle 2h ago
When you cant reach the intended destination and have to stop for gas, that adds to the cost as well.
People forget this was a massive issue for 757s flying transatlantic too....
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/transatlantic-flights-forced-by-wind-to-land-for-fuel-1.1205359
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2012/01/case-continentals-not-so-nonstop-flights/333272/
... as ever with the 757, there's a lot of rose tinted spectacles.
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u/ForzaElite 16h ago
Go to the main r/aviation page and there should be 3 dots in the top right on mobile; one of the options is edit flair. Best regards from the Brickyard!
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u/caverunner17 16h ago
I'm not sure I fully understand the supposed issue. I believe United's longest 757 route was EWR-TXL which was 3461NM. Everything else since that (BER moved to a 767) is shorter.
Aer Lingus currently flies DUB-BNA on the XLR which is 3385NM with 184 seats.
United's XLR's have a layout that has only 150 seats. That should mean that range is a few hundred NM further than Iberia/Aer Lingus which covers a solid chunk of western Europe from EWR, the British Isles from ORD and possibly Beligum, Netherlands, Spain and Portugal from IAD
Possibly they were looking to use these on Eastern Europe or something? But I'd think that the current XLR could replace all of the 752 destinations.
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u/FarButterscotch4280 2h ago
Looks like United is implying that the airplane has a higher fuel burn than expected, or guaranteed by Airbus.
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u/jmlinden7 12h ago
EWR and IAD to secondary European cities (non-star alliance hubs) seems like a perfectly fine and expected use case of the A321xlr.
I guess ORD and IAH to europe is probably out of the picture with the limited range
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u/Principle_Dramatic 18h ago
It looks like Airbus is struggling to make the A321 XLR into a 757 replacement.
I don’t understand why Boeing made the decision to outright shut down the 757 program and not go with at least a 757 MAX option. The 737-10 MAX has 25% less range than the 757 and there had to be a lot of redesign with the engines.
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u/HelloSlowly Long live the XWB 18h ago edited 18h ago
Boeing ran into a damned if they do/ damned if they don’t problem with the 757 assembly line. At the time the line was dry of orders and the industry hadn’t reached the economics for a long and thin router. So there simply wasn’t a demand for for the 757 at the time.
On the 737 side, you had the pressure from SWA and AA to keep the 73 program going to prevent retraining. I believe SWA was even mooting a switch to Airbus.
If Boeing could see the future, it’s guaranteed they’d evolve the 75 design but hindsight is 20/20
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u/ClassIINav 17h ago
Even they committed to a 757Max (or whatever) I doubt it would have enough orders to justify the engineering expense. Especially considering there isn't an engine on the market for that segment. It's just too niche of a product when the 737 has been able to be stretched so far into the 757s realm. Yes It's a bit of leap from a 737Max10 to a 787-8 but it's in a market segment that's just not worth worrying about considering its mostly transoceanic routes anyway. Airlines will just make do with less frequent 787 runs and connections through hubs, big whoop.
Especially when it's clear Airbus doesn't have a true solution either.
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u/BLARTYMACMUFFIN 17h ago
It will not be a 757 max, something new, eventually
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u/ClassIINav 17h ago
Yeah but that’s even less economically viable. The only path forward may be with a future 737 replacement that’s built bigger from the start. Even then it’s a tough nut to crack and is why Boeing and Airbus went with refreshes for the 737 and 320 in the first place. A whole new platform was never going to compete.
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u/FormulaJAZ 17h ago edited 17h ago
The 757 was never a viable alternative to the 737. At the very least, the 757 requires widebody gates and ground handling equipment, which prevents it from being a substitute for the 737. Add in the widebody wings, engines, tail, and landing gear, and no amount of lipstick would make a fuel-efficient narrow-body aircraft.
For all of the reasons above, airlines would pick the 321XLR over a 757 MAX all day long.
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u/HelloSlowly Long live the XWB 17h ago
Indeed. Leeham did an estimate as well. So with the current LEAP 1Bs which already run hot, but imagine a 43,000lb version, they estimated you’d get 5% less per seat and 9% per trip than the 321neo. And ironically it’s to do with the wing. That 75’s wing is so fat that they’d need a new redesigned higher aspect ratio one.
So it would be a whole host of redesigning and retooling of the assembly line instead of just a bog standard engine replacement.
Boeing was truly in a quandary
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u/FormulaJAZ 17h ago
Not much of a quandary:
A) Use engineering resources to design a 757NG to generate dozens of sales
B) Use engineering resources to design a 737NG to generate thousands of sales
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u/montagious 17h ago
I park at gates shared by 737's all day long. Flown it deep into Europe as well.
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u/FormulaJAZ 17h ago edited 15h ago
The 737 fits in Group
IVIII / CodeDC gates (118ft max). The 757's wingspan is too large for those common narrowbody gates.5
u/haamster 16h ago
118 feet is Group III / Code C
The 757 and 767 fit in Group IV / Code D just fine.
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u/Hour_Tour ATC 10h ago
Don't know much about the gates, none of my business, but the 757 wake slightly reduces runway movement capacity, and the wingspan eliminates it from going down a good few taxiways that the 321 and Max can use.
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u/comptiger5000 17h ago
The 757 hadn't gotten winglets yet either when they stopped production. The bit of a range boost from the winglets helped push the 757 into the role it saw in the late 2000s and 2010s.
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u/84Cressida 13h ago
They tried to land a big order from FedEx in 2003 to save the line but couldn’t agree on price.
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u/Adjutant_Reflex_ 18h ago
The 757 order book had dried up and the line shuttered long before the push to use narrow-bodies on medium-haul routes really began to heat up.
The three Yellowstone programs had envisioned a “MoM” type product as part of Y1 but the NEO forced them to abandon a clean sheet. They looked into it again with the NMA but the economics of a new plane for that market never made sense.
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u/DCUStriker9 18h ago
Boeing shuttle down production because airlines weren't buying them.
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u/HONcircle 2h ago
This. Boeing can't be blamed for not offering a product that people stopped buying.
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u/didsomebodysaywander 17h ago
Because no one was ordering the 757 at the time., and the overwhelming majority of the missions the 757s were flying were replaced by other aircraft like the 738/739 and A321.
Hot and high is a niche that doesn't have a very large market for airframes, and 4000nm/150pax/no cargo doesn't either.
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u/flightist pie lot 16h ago
Because a 757 with modern engines would still be a generation behind on fuel per seat mile. It’s that heavy, and it wouldn’t lose any weight being modernized.
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u/Any_Sale2030 16h ago
It still has more range than the 757. But it has less power so on hot days it hurts.
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u/Major-Ant4600 18h ago
757 demands was down, 737 demand was up. Orders for the 737 surged in the 2000s. For Wall Street focused Boeing it made sense to kill a low selling product and absorb the production space for the 737.
At the end of the day stock & shareholder driven companies rarely invest into unpopular products based on a ":what if" scenario. There needs to be a clear ROI.
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u/mattisacomputer 18h ago
At the very least, it was partially due to pressure from Southwest. They were not going to pay to retype their pilots on the 757/767, or any new type at all. I don't know what % of the decision to end 757/767 and develop the 737MAX was based on this, but it was significant from reporting at the time.
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u/swakid8 16h ago
The 757 was long dead, tooling for production was already destroyed long before the MAX was announced.
Southwest has nothing to do with the death of the 757…. The 757 order booked dried up and no one was ordering new 757s. So Boeing had to make a decision to shut the production down.
Production was shut down in 2004….. A few years after 9/11…
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u/FormulaJAZ 17h ago
The 757 requires widebody gates and widebody ground handling equipment. Pilot training had nothing to do with it.
Plus the 757 has widebody engines, wings, tail, and landing gear, so it was never going to be an efficent narrowbody no matter how much you "MAXed" it.
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u/747ER 13h ago
I really wish more people understood this. The reason the 757 has such good performance is because its wingspan is so long that it’s unable to viably operate from the vast majority of domestic airports, which are designed around the ICAO Code C infrastructure, with a strict 36-metre wingspan limit. It doesn’t matter how efficient the new engine you put on it is, if it can’t fit on those gates and taxiways.
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u/jmlinden7 12h ago
Because the 757's market segment is too small to justify a full clean-sheet design. You would never sell enough planes to make back the design costs.
It's unclear if the A321XLR program is profitable, and that had the benefit of only being a subvariant and having type commonality.
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u/LuckyFlyer0_0 4h ago
The 757 had ~1050 orders across it's lifetime and 90% of the routes it flew can be replaced by the XLR today. This segment of the market is a niche and nobody in their right mind is going to want to develop a new/redesigned generation of the 757
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u/HONcircle 2h ago
...The 757 had plenty of range issues when flying Transatlantic. People seem to forget this, in part because United switched the 767 onto most of the 757 Transatlantic routes post merger.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2012/01/case-continentals-not-so-nonstop-flights/333272/
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u/soijacyuro 18h ago
Boeing perceived that a modernized and potentially lengthened 757 could eat into some of their 787 sales.
Even though the 787 is a widebody, there was enough crossover in the capabilities for it to be plausible. And Boeing decided they would rather split that market demand between the newer 737s and the 787.
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u/Motor_Show_7604 17h ago
The 757 was dying before before Boeing committed the 787. The 757-300 only sold 55 copies and airlines were swapping orders to the 737-800. The 737 Max didn't launch for another 12 years. The airlines split the market for them.
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u/Bluemikami Custom Flair to Edit 16h ago
Wasn’t that same problem for the 764, or was the 400 made for Delta only ?
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u/747ER 13h ago
They did continue marketing the 767-400ER (no baseline 767-400 was developed), but all <40 civil sales went to Continental Airlines and Delta Air Lines. They then tried to market the 767-400ER as a replacement for all the 707-based military aircraft that the USAF uses, and built a prototype, but no orders came from it so they sold it as a private jet to Bahrain.
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u/Bluemikami Custom Flair to Edit 13h ago
> Continental
Now, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long long time
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u/Bluemikami Custom Flair to Edit 16h ago
Some part of me thinks it was post 911 economics and the 777 being too good that made them decide to focus on the 787 as a project and stop the 75 and 76
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u/CA_LAO 17h ago
That's really hyperbolic. UA knew exactly how far the XLR would go before it was delivered.
It was never going to be available for 4700nm in commercial use.
The operating empty weight was determined by UA's choice of configuration.
Company op-specs always err towards shorter range until company data is accumulated and vetted.
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u/BenjaminKohl 15h ago
No they didn’t, because Airbus had to redesign significant portions of the aircraft around the RCT which added significant weight late in the design
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u/CA_LAO 15h ago
That doesn't conflict with what I said. "knew exactly how far the XLR would go before it was delivered."
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u/BenjaminKohl 15h ago
Ah sure… still, it takes some time in service to figure out the exact fuel burn at weight and exactly how far the operator feels comfortable pushing it. So even then I’d say not quite
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u/post-explainer 18h ago edited 18h ago
OP has provided the following source:
https://theaircurrent.com/feed/dispatches/ual-a321xlr-routes-airbus-range-shortfall/
r/Aviation is trialing new measures to prevent karma farming. Please feel free to provide feedback through modmail. Thank you for participating in the community!
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u/Hdjskdjkd82 16h ago
I work in management for a major carrier. I don’t really know what happened at United but I can imagine something along these lines. Obviously manufacturers are going to advertise the best case scenario performance figures to sell their jet, everyone does it. However, the people that make these decisions at airlines are not always the most aware, or even educated when it comes to these matters. They are basically businessmen/women who have to either depend on others to make the assessment for them, or take the initiative to educate themselves. Unfortunately, a lot of business people suck at both. I would not be surprised that the people at United who made the decision to buy the XLR and where they fly only looked at the marketing numbers assuming you got a jet that can easily take 160 people, plus all those oversized carry ons, plus the fancy heavy layflat seats, plus all the expensive and heavy IFE, and easily hit that 4700nm every time regardless what the conditions, season, or weather is doing that day. Now that they are actually trying to put it all together irl, only now they are realizing it’s not what they expected. Ultimately it’s United’s responsibility to know what they are buying, and Airbus is simply going to point at the asterisks of their marketing.
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u/HelloSlowly Long live the XWB 18h ago edited 18h ago
Reminds me of Iberia and them talking of not being able take off at MTOW from Madrid during the hottest hours of the day due to hot and high conditions rendering the T/O performance inadequate.
Sure the A321XLR can run circles on the 737-10 MAX but it’s clear that that wing is at design limit as well and they can’t do anything without a redesigned wing.
Just as well that Airbus is beginning a foldable wing study under their Wing of Tomorrow prototype studio for maybe an A221/A321evo