ABSTRACT
Airlines are complex organisations engaged in the daily miracle of safely moving millions of people and goods by air from one place to another. Fleet planning involves the timely acquisition and management of a portfolio of aircraft types in order to rent packages of short-term capacity to operators requiring a flexible approach to their fleet composition. Aircraft development in today's world involves the establishment of a global supply chain network of hundreds of companies, large and small. Airbus found an elegant solution to the 'middle of the market' conundrum by reformatting the largest member of the A320 family as the A321neoLR, a long-range version of the A321neo. Bombardier are credited with kick-starting the 50-seat jet market with their original CRJ models in 1991 and the overall CRJ family is by far the most populous regional jet today. Cargo aircraft can only realistically be designed around the sizes of the many unit load devices and containers already in existence.
