An Emirates Airbus A380 lands at Sydney Airport after a flight from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The carrier is one of the leading players in the highly competitive Australia-Europe market, which includes the so-called kangaroo routes to London. Traditional powers Qantas Airways and British Airways are finding it increasingly difficult to compete with Asian and Middle Eastern carriers that have geographical advantages due to their hub locations. Sydney Airport photo.

New A350 production plan could add big costs for suppliers

LAN Airlines expects to receive its first Dreamliner on Aug. 31.

The big order rates for CFM International's Leap and Pratt & Whitney's PW1100G geared turbofan engines that will power this decade's new single-aisle and regional jets are pushing up production rates at key suppliers, particularly for those with flexible strategies for working in the supply chain, such as fuel-systems-maker Woodward Inc.

Bombardier's CSeries jet, which is scheduled to enter service late next year, sports a clean-sheet design, next-generation Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan (GTF) engines and advanced materials. Unfortunately for the Montreal-based aircraft builder, the new 110-149 seat aircraft's technical merits have been overshadowed by the buzz about the program's struggle to gain market acceptance. While customers have ordered 1,425 reengined Airbus A320NEOs and another 649 Boeing 737 MAXs, the CSeries has won just 138 firm orders since its formal launch more than four years ago.

Virgin America celebrated its fifth birthday this month in style with a party to mark its inaugural flight to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. With legions of loyal fans—close to 400,000 on the microblog site Twitter—and a reputation for digerati chic in its San Francisco base, the airline seems poised to carve out a successful niche in the U.S. market. Behind the cheers and confetti, however, lay an uncomfortable truth: In five years of operations, Virgin America has never turned a profit.

Boeing has opted to enlarge its Portland, Ore., factory, a company center of excellence for complex machining, gear systems and flight controls, rather than turn to outside contractors as second sources.

LAN seeks synergies with TAM as it evolves its culture of change.