Civil Aircraft Market

Following up on the review in Chapter 1, about the current status of the civil aircraft market, this section describes how to generate aircraft specifications that will help to sell the product and generate a profit. The coursework starts here with a mock (i. e., representative) market survey leading to what must be designed – that is, the conception of the aircraft, the Phase 1 obligations.

Input from operators to manufacturers is significant and varied. The manu­facturer needs to group the requirements intelligently in a family of aircraft sizes and capabilities. It is necessary to cover as much ground as the market demands yet maintain component commonalities in order to lower development costs of the derivative aircraft in the family. This book lists only those market parameters that affect aircraft aerodynamic design, the most important being the payload-range capability of the aircraft, which has the greatest influence in shaping the aircraft. Details of other requirements (e. g., systems requirements, maintenance, and pas­senger services) are not discussed here but are briefly introduced.

For the mock market studies, students may be asked to table aircraft require­ments as if they are representing the airlines’ interest. It is understandable that due to inexperience, they may list requirements that are not practicable. It is therefore the instructor’s responsibility to provide reasons for discarding each impracticable point and then coalesce the remainder into a starting point. Section 2.7.1 suggests interesting cases for coursework experience. There is a wide variety of civil aircraft in operation; following are requirements for the three classes addressed in the scope of this book.