Slashdot Mirror
Boeing Sonic Cruiser Project Shelved
jonerik writes "The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is reporting that Boeing is set to announce the cancellation of its Sonic Cruiser project tomorrow; not because the technology wasn't mature enough, but because the company was unable to make the case for an airliner that would fly at just under the speed of sound in the airline industry's post-9/11 business environment. Too bad, too. It was a very cool-looking plane. Instead, the company will focus on a new ultra-efficient airliner - codenamed 'Yellowstone' - that will look very much like its existing 767 and 777 models. The new aircraft is expected to be ready to enter service in 2008, two years after Airbus' mammoth 555-seat A380 is expected to be ready for service."
Cool-looking projects should never be canceled.
sPh
With major airlines folding, profit margins slim, a bear market because of any number of reasons, and a new highly expensive plane. I mena you do the math... what major airline is gonna want to dump a bunch of money into basically untested hardware that doesn't have a safety record while attempting to pay out stock dividends. If I were in charge of a major airline I wouldnt consider picking this up for now either. Now if the airline industry gets a major rebound then is the time, just not right now in this shitty economy.
one of the links mentioned that the sonic cruiser would reduce flight times by about 15% to 20% though...not 50%. if it did reduce the flight times by 50%, chances are they would not have shelved it since the benefits would be more substantial.
...when we have the Slashdot Cruiser?
Did whoever won that thing actually show up to claim it?
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
There has been a lot of rumbling in the aerospace industry that Boeing is a sick company. I wanted to believe that they were wrong because Boeing was getting out the Sonic cruiser and the Delta IV rocket (their successful EELV design). It looked to me at the time that the the people claiming such were just wanking and wanting a Big Aerospace (tm) to choke. (there is an undercurrent in some aerospace circles, not unlike some software circles that being BIG is bad).
Part of the reason I had thought that Boeing's Sonic Cruiser would do well is because, frankly, they'd been saying they'd had the airlines lined up from the get-go. However, Post 9/11 might have changed some airlines minds.
Which just sucks. IDK about the rest of you, but when I get on a trans atlantic flight, I'd *LOVE* for it to take only 80% of the time it would have.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
Why? It would seem to me that this would be the perfect time to sell people on ways to save travelers time, what with all the delays our new "security" has created.
A plane that goes faster makes up for lines at the gate that are getting longer and longer.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
The Sonic Cruiser, while cool-looking, is not that much faster than today's aircraft -- it would only cut one hour off the flight time from LA - NYC. It is still sub-sonic. More efficient airport procedures on the group, on both sides could probably cut at least an hour off the total travel time just as well.
Sometimes you just need to bite the bullet and do it. Screw the bean counters.
What keeps our society going is that the bean counters own stock (as do lots of other people)Boeing answers to the bean counters and must show an EXPECTED return on any project. If the market doesn't warrant innovation you have to go in a different direction. Going to the moon is cool but we can not yet achieve practical gains and thus we are not going. It is sad, I would love to see such a plane.
Personally, I feel the airline industry could do with being shaken up a bit. The basic business model hasn't changed at all in the past 40 years. It's simply a case of sell tickets as cheaply as possible by putting as many people as you can onto a plane.
Nothing wrong with this in principle - it works, and it drives the costs of flights down. It does tend to discourage risk taking though.
Still, it would be nice to give an airline the chance to compete on something other than cost. A faster plane would be preferable to may people than a marginally cheaper ticket. This also would have given greater flexibility since presumably there would be more planes, so flights would be more frequent.
This would also mean that there would be more point to point services. Since two planes can go to two airports, whereas a single 747 can only go to a single airport, requiring a second plane to travel the short distance to the alternative airport (hub and spoke model).
You are absolutely correct, but Boeing is also touting fuel efficiency as well. The design of the wing and fuselage is closer to a lifting body as another person mentioned, with the wing that far back, the ride is bound to be a lot smoother for everyone. Instead we will get another design by committee incremental improvement.
I have heard that one of the biggest problems in Aerospace and defense is the demise of the true large scale project teams. People just don't understand the tasks of coordinating large project teams for large development projects anymore.
"I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating. And in fourteen days, I had lost exactly two weeks. Joe E. Lewis
The problem is that history does not bear it out. Successful companies are built when risk-takers (i) come up with good ideas (ii) implement those ideas they way they think is right, regardless of what the spreadsheets say. See the history of General Electric, du Pont, DEC, Microsoft, etc.
Typically those companies start to die when the bean counters arrive and formalize everything with "rate of return" studies. See DEC for the the most extreme example of such a process, and consider that there could never have been a "rate of return" study for Ford Motor Company, since the market Henry Ford wanted to serve did not exist before his company created it.
sPh
come out with a plane that has the following features:
- Sub-space and trans-sonic capability (like the "hypersonic jet" talked about years ago) that would take passengers from NYC to Tokyo in 2 hours. Or at least go as fast as the late, lamented sonic cruiser.
- Explosion-resistant cargo bay to enhance survivability should a bomb make it on board.
- At check-in time, luggage is placed (carefully, gently, by robots) into Mylar-wrapped, bullet-proofed boxes to contain and reduce the impact of bombs. Damage by throwing and dropping will be eliminated by the mechanical process of loading and unloading.
- Detachable passenger cabin; in the event of an extreme emergency, rather than simply falling to the ground or thudding into a mountainside, the passenger and crew compartments would detach from the expendable portions of the craft and huge parachutes would lower them to the surface. Note: the design goal of the plane is survivability, not efficiency.
- 15" LCD displays in every seat, hooked up to satellite internet broadband connections. Unlimited browsing. Headphones would let people listen to streaming media available on the net. Interactive games also available.
- Pilot cabin inaccessible from passenger compartment except through a large, lock-able door. Pilots have guns. Two air marshalls on every flight, armed with guns and non-lethal pacifying tools; they'll be highly paid and well treated (unlike today).
- Vertical takeoff and landing capability for emergencies (or for regular use, if it could be made efficient)
- Any other ideas?
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
"What...people want AFFORDABLE air travel, not super-cool concept planes? Who do they think we are--Airbus?"
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
This seems a bit odd in light of recent moves away from hub/spoke routes toward regional routes. Some pundits have been citing over-reliance on hub/spoke to be part of the major airlines' financial problems. I live off the main track, and flying anywhere used to involve getting to a hub, first. For the past several years, flying anywhere has involved taking a regional jet, either directly to my destination, or to transfer at a non-major-hub airport.
Most of my recent flights have been on a 50-seat jet build in South America. Prior to that, I remember going to/from major hubs on much bigger planes, largely empty. It makes me wonder about the real economy of coming up with an airplane family that starts at 555 seats. IMHO, "eating low" in the airline chain is the way to go.
The new Boeing plane looked interesting in this respect, though I suspect pursuit of greater operating economy is more important than the speed. As someone else mentioned, delays at airports are more important than airspeed to the total travel time.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I don't think going just under the speed of sound is going to cut your travel time in half, although it will reduce it pretty significantly. How much good does that really do, though, when you spend two hours going through security?
I'd rather see more efficient planes than faster planes; given enough fuel savings, the cost of flight might actually come down a bit.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
And, of course, the Sonic Cruiser would have no effect whatever on the time that the typical aircraft spends waiting in line on the ground for a takeoff slot....
...it's been rumored for at least a couple of months. As an aero engineer, I have to say that the project was suspicious from the very beginning. The Sonic Cruiser would have been only fractionally faster from a super-jumbo (say the upcoming A-380): .87 vs .97 Mach (roughly 60-80mph difference) for about a third to a half the number of passengers.
.9 Mach means that the aircraft is smack in the middle of the "transonic" region, where parts of the aircraft would unavoidably be going sonic/super-sonic. The fluid dynamics in that speed region are not that well understood or easy to simulate. In other words, the Sonic Cruiser would have been a lot more expensive to develop for a very small benefits.
More importantly, going near
Maybe Boeing is just going to concentrate on turning the Pelican into a commercial aircraft. The Pelican is twice the size of the 747 (you could play a game of arena football inside it) and is designed to fly cheap, slow, and low --just above sea level. Right now, it's in development for the military, but there are obvious commercial airliner possibilities.
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
...is supposed to be in decline, why is the UK government proposing more and bigger airports with greater capacity? I expect this is happening elsewhere too. Something doesn't add up. Is Boeing being extremely shortsighted, or are governments being lead astray?
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
More proof, if it were needed, that "good enough" technology always triumphs over the best.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
We give in, you win. Here, here's the large commercial aircraft industry. Please take care of it, we don't want it anymore.
The cause of the recession was the internet and business traveler protest. The internet allowed casual travelers to get rock bottom prices. Business travelers, who have traditionally paid the costs of the airlines, were becoming increasing angry at the high prices they had to pay, which were often several times that of the casual traveler. If one looks at the pre-9/11 stories, one sees an industry responding to these crisis by dropping prices, dropping commissions, dropping services, and dropping profits.
Add to this other salient facts. Airbus is getting more contracts now, at the expense of Boeing(New Zealand in July). Many travelers who might have the money to fly on these jets are increasingly flying on private jets. Security is a prime justification to purchase private jets. The airline companies that are doing well, like Southwest, are focused of price and a very defined level of service. They do not randomly spend money on new toys.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Their own flight profiles didn't give the range to even accrue a 2 hr savings.
An hour less to London in day and age is trivial. Between ground delays and head winds you can spend over 11-13 hours on a plane going from Heathrow to Dulles. I do.
An A380 is a terrible idea. How many routes are going to be able to support this unless airlines stop offering more than one a day someplace? I mean look like if airlines do this then air travel will look more like steamships. Everyone will line up for half a day for the daily flight to who-knows-where.
That's a meme that the bean counters have worked very hard to instill in American business, with quite a bit of success I must say. The problem is that history does not bear it out. Successful companies are built when risk-takers (i) come up with good ideas (ii) implement those ideas they way they think is right, regardless of what the spreadsheets say. See the history of General Electric, du Pont, DEC, Microsoft, etc.
No, that is nowadays the truth. The company has NO right to be a risk taker unless its' shareholders are. In modern corporate America if the company takes an unapproved gamble and loses, the shareholders can go after them in civil court (though they usually lack size and organization to do so) and the Govt. may file criminal charges. Enron was close to that scenario. Corporations like Boeing are large committee driven creatures risk taking behavior tends to minimize in that scenario.
Companies do a lot of study before "creating a market" If you think that Henry Ford had no idea wether or not the car would take off, you underestimate his brilliance. The reason he designed his manufacturing process (that is really what he is famous for) was that he knew that he would need to mass produce his product.
The fact that I believe that reality does not usually reflect your comments does not mean that I do nnot personally agree with them. I love innovative, bold companies and their products.
it would only cut one hour off the flight time from LA - NYC.
Can you imagine what is does with the flight from La to Amsterdam, London, Paris or Berlin...
Stop being so US centric please. There is a whole world outside the US of A
So it only cuts off a little over 2 hours from an LA to (european city) flight. He was giving an example based on what he knew (LA-NYC is 5 hrs) as an illustration that shaving %20 off flight time isn't a big deal for any one flight. The only real advantage would be the cumulative time savings for the airlines.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I thought that most commercial airliners were already just under the speed of sound, whereas the Concorde was between mach 1 and 2. I seem to remember mach 1 being somewhere around 600mph, and airliners I've flown on for years are cruising in the 500's. What was so special about this anyways?
11*43+456^2
so they don't need to make things all that 'cool'. Planes can stay in service for decades, and american companies can't afford new, super-huge jets anyway.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Airbus and Boeing see the airline market evolving in different directions. Airbus says forecasts show airlines will be expanding the hub and spoke networks as they have been ever since the 747 introduced the idea of a huge airliner. Being sees more trend for direct flights, such as the cheap and profitable Southwest (USA) and Ryanair (Europe).
Hub and spoke requires big airliners to crowd ever more people into airports at the same time so they can make connections. Passengers like the connectivity but can't stand the cattle car planes and mammoth terminals and transfer problems; when airlines don't keep to their schedule, people miss connections.
Direct flights require more airplanes but smaller ones. People like the direct flights and smaller airplanes, but you can't get the same coverage as with hub and spoke. Direct flights skim the cream, sort of, and have been one of the reasons for the growth of regional airlines with small turboprop planes, which fill in the connectivity.
As for which will win out, my personal guess is that hub and spoke is reaching its limits, and bigger planes will be needed to keep them going. But these will only replacements for the current big planes, not new growth, because you can only get so many planes into one airport at the same time. True growth will be in direct connections, because these don't have to be prime time flights.
Also, business travel is the one that requires flights all around the clock, and especially the prime time flights, whereas tourists are more willing to take off peak flights and save money. Business travel is probably going to shrink as video conferencing, email, etc, takes the sting out of needing face to face meetings. Whereas tourism will only grow. I see this as favoring direct flights.
I believe, personally with not much facts, and not being in the industry, that Boeing has the right long term outlook, but things will change so slowly that the Airbus 380 will still sell well enough to pay for itself. It just won't have the impact of the 747. Airbus is following the old trend to its conclsuion, Boeing is going with the long term growth.
Infuriate left and right
It is not just total travel time that is important, passenger comfort is also a consideration. An hour spent sitting in the Admirals Club at the terminal is not the same as an hour spent in airline seats. Supposedly Boeing studies have determined that once a passenger has been crammed into an airliner for four hours, his discomfort starts to rise very sharply. The Sonic Cruiser would bring many important long distance flights down below that magic 4 hour mark where passengers really start to get unhappy. This goes along with the apparent strategy of capturing the lucrative business class and first class customers.
BTW, I was told by an ex-Boeing employee that anytime she had to take a business flight somewhere for the company that Boeing would pay to upgrade flights of over 4 hours to first class; so perhaps the company (or at least her part of it) had applied its passenger discomfort studies to use in is human resources dept. as well as in design.
There was an interesting article in a recent BusinessWeek magazine (sorry, online version requires subscription) that discussed the internal fighting going on about the future of Boeing's commercial aircraft division.
There is large support from some for the full development of a Blended Wing Body (BWB) airliner, and there are significant arguements for that development. The concept is over 50 years old (Northrop), the current design is at least 10 years old (acquired when Boeing bought McDonnell), and an implementation exists as the B-2 stealh bomber. There is very high interest from airlines and the military due to lower operating costs (more people, less fuel), increased payload, and ability to operate within current airports. Reportedly one airline has offered to pitch in $1 billion to develop the concept further, and the thought is that Boeing could get the US Government to grant at least several $billion more, since the plane has military applications.
The opposing side (unfortunately including the head of Boeing's commercial aircraft business) seems to really dislike the BWB, and favor(s/ed) the Sonic Cruiser. Tube and wings approach. The BWB isn't "sexy" enough. They claim that the downsides of the BWB are no windows for most passengers, and too much pitch in turns for the outside passengers (far from the roll axis). The first really is a silly reason to shelf a revolutionary idea, and computer simulations show that the second isn't really a problem if the pilot doens't act like he is flyinhg a fighter plane. Problem is, no one really WANTS the thing. It has increased fuel requirements (operating costs) for a small speed gain, and the airlines can't see the benefit to their bottom line.
The thrust of the article was that Boeing, or at least the pro-BWB faction inside Boeing, should keep up the research and development, keep pitching the idea upward (where *some* senior Boeing management seem to be keen on it - Phil Condit (CEO) for one).
Now that the Sonic Cruiser has been canned, it will be interesting to see if the other (r)evolutionary design, the BWB, gains traction and sees a greater chance of production.
Typically those companies start to die when the bean counters arrive and formalize everything with "rate of return" studies.
Keep in mind you're talking about two things - getting a company to exist - which takes lots of risk, and keeping a company alive - which involves playing it safe by comparison.
Keep in mind that for every DEC success story there are 50 equally large efforts which result in bankrupcy. But everybody talks about DEC - not about the risk-takers who ended up broke.
Now, for the original entrepeneur, the risk is mitigated by the fact that he has nothing to lose. On the other hand, Boeing has a lot to lose.
If major corporations took the same risks that small businesses took, they would have similar failure rates. Imagine opening the paper every day and seeing a headline that a company the size of IBM just closed its doors - EVERY DAY. Obviously that wouldn't be sustainable.
If you have a better idea for building an airplane, by all means hire a few engineers and put it together. The reason that Boeing doesn't do this is that it has a lot to lose. When you're at the bottom there is nowhere to go but up, when you're at the top...
...to make money. like their thriving satellite business.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Stop being so US centric please.
Very well. It cuts less than 2 hours off a 14 hour flight from LA to Sydney. I don't see this as a huge win for the flying public.
I'm surprised that in the bigtime news and even local coverage here in Seattle there's been no mention of the Blended Wing Body planes. Boeing has been working on this design for several years. The BWB plane promises much better fuel economy, which the airline market is more interested in than speed. I don't get why it didn't come up immediately with the news that the supersonic thing got cancelled.
I have a subscription to BW as well and saw that article. It was interesting and I think Boeing has lost its edge.
Yes people want more direct flights and yes people want more cheaper flights. But there is one thing that Airbus excels at. A pilot for Axxx can fly Axxx. That is the appeal of Airbus. For Boeing you have to have a license for each plane. This means that an airline could buy some smaller Airbus's and the A380 and shift their pilots depending on the demand.
Actually the BWB had lower operating costs and fuel costs than regular planes. I think the reason why Boeing is shelving the project is because they do not have the desire to move forward with a new design. For a beancounter it is too risky.... Na ja...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Flight itself is pretty cheap, I'd like to see airport fees and taxes come down. Heck half the price of a ticket from Calgary to Edmonton is user fees.
No, Southwest shows that Americans like freedom of choice. When I fly Southwest, if I don't want to sit next to some sweaty 400-pounder who hasn't bathed in a month, I don't have to. If some woman with a litter of bratty, ill-mannered, obviously undisciplined "because-we-don't-believe-in-striking-children" screaming brats sits down next to me, I can (and do) move.
Friend, if it's so horrible, fly somebody else! There are lots of airlines out there that offer assigned seating.
Does this policy have anything to do with why she is an ex-employee?
Hmmm, lets see SouthWest, Blue, Rynair, Easy Jet profitable. Everybody else sick! SouthWest, Blue, Rynair, Easy Jet REALLY CHEAP tickets = profitable...
No I think the reason why the other airlines are on the edge is because they mismanaged their companies. They focused on the wrong things and result they are totally unprofitable....
9/11 may have taken some hits, but not as much as the airlines are whining about...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
The problem with Boeing's Sonic Cruiser are twofold:
1. The plane would travel around Mach 0.97, which does not offer that much in the way of speed improvements compared to a 747-400 except on extremely long routes (routes over 4,500 nautical miles in length).
2. The plane only will carry around 200 passengers, which could lead to pretty high seat-mile costs.
I think Boeing is much more wise to develop what amounts to a Next Generation 767. Take a fuselage length somewhere between the 767-300 and 767-400, but replace it with a new nose, new tail design, all-new, lower-drag wings, and use the latest in high-bypass engines. The result is a plane capable of seating 225-250 pax but can fly around 7,000 nautical miles and also cruise as high as Mach 0.89. I think not a few airline would be interested in such a plane, especially for the Mach 0.89 cruising speed.
Try Concorde....
Then it takes less than half the time...
IN 1975.
Slashdot lameness compliant
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
It is a shame that the Sonic Cruiser is going into mothballs.
Boeing sure knows how to keep people excited about their products. Why, their new five year product will look exactly like a 767/757/707/Airbus but will get up to 15% better gas mileage. I can see all the little kids lining up to build models of that one to hang in their bedrooms.
Back when Boeing was actually run by people who loved building airliners there were products designed for more than corporate accountants.
Let's look at the Boeing Commercial Jets and what made the cool from a consumer point of view. What got people caring about the planes they flew in. What made Boeing a household name.
707 - First Really Successful Jetliner!
727 - Three Engines! In the Tail! Rear Exit Ramp Built In! WhisperJet Quiet!
737 - Tiny! Landed at little airports where there'd never been jets! Had oval engines!
747 - Huge! Two stories with a spiral staircase! Had a humped body when every other plane was a boring tube!
757 - Boring. Looks like a 20 year old 707.
767 - Boring. Looks like a 20 year old 707.
777 - Boring. Looks like a 30 year old 707.
747X - New look! Super-huge mega-jet! Killed
Sonic Cruiser - Radical new design! Canards! Higher speed! Killed
High Efficiency - Boring. Will look like a 45 year old 707 with winglets.
The lack of innovation started long ago and blaming it on short term downturns and 9/11 is bogus. American was excited enough about the Sonic Cruiser to pre-order the first two years production just to keep it out of the hands of their competitors. The airlines are desparate for some way to differentiate themselves. Boeing and Airbus, on the other hand, are desperate to prove they can build the same, identical, boring, generic products. Odd, how they're so risk averse when every risk they've taken paid off and every boring generic plane is in a tight fight against Airbus' boring generic planes.
Oh, and as for the efficiency increases, we've seen those in the 737 and 747 upgrades. Perhaps Boeing needs to look around to see why the 737 and 747 fleets are still out there. Perhaps its because those innovative planes actually did something new.
You ARE better because you got there 5 minutes sooner. You're better looking, better in bed, smarter, faster, more fun at parties, richer, and have more hair on your head. You car is more expensive, you house appreciates in value faster, you read more books for pleasure. You can program a computer. Caffeine doesn't affect your ability to sleep unless you choose for that to happen. Your shit doesn't stink. All your decisions result in ever increasing profits, so you'll never be fired.
So step right up to that line reserved exclusively for pass cards numbers 1-30 and take your place as one of the elites of our society. You surely are *beautiful* today!
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
The article mentions flying at 20 feet above the ocean to exploit the effect which makes me wonder how they'll handle the odd rogue wave.
I had my preorder in 6 months ago, damnit.
I bet the next thing you know my Segway isn't going to arrive.
How the hell am I going to get around at the speed of sound and torment the world by crushing the toes of those that oppose me?
-S
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
Innovative, exciting projects should never be cancelled.
Boeing used to make the inspiring projects that kids got excited about. And it worked as a business model. There isn't a plane that Boeing did that was risky and innovative that didn't pay off. The 707, 727, 737 and 747 were all radical for their day. And these innovations built Boeing and excited a generation of kids in the 1960s. And these risky designs were hugely successful against a huge number of competitors.
From 1970 on, though, Boeing became risk-averse and has built nothing but 707 look-alikes that have been marginally successful even when they only had one competitor in Airbus.
It's also worth noting that the lack of innovation happened first and the lack of competitors later. It wasn't a lack of competition that killed innovation. It was a lack of innovation that allowed the bean counters to drive each other out of a generic business.
The other issue is that they have to make the planes almost the same size because airports are not going to change structures just because it is a cool sonic plane that can fly faster.
Commercial airliners aren't built in secret. There are years of pre-announcements to get the sales from the airlines. Since a contract for a new fleet is planned up to a decade out, the PR for the new plane starts when it's still just a CAD model and some pretty paintings.
Nope. There's nothing to look forward to from Boeing until at least 2010 and probably longer. Innovation from them is just, flat out dead.
Consumers will flock to an airline with innovative, cool, sexy planes. American Airlines was buying the first two years production of Sonic Cruisers just to keep their competitors from getting one. That wasn't for the 15% faster flight time, it was for the cachet of having a new, sexy fleet when everybody else's planes were stodgy, boring 707 clones. (And all the Boeing and Airbus planes designed in the last 30 years really the same generic plane to the consumer)
Airlines kill for differentiation and an exciting new plane is one hell of a differentiator.
You feel just as shit after a 10 hour flight as a 12 hour flight
The latest Aviation Leak has an article on some think tank out of Reston VA who have several interesting ideas to speed loading and unloading. First, a high wing transport with engines above rather than below the wing. This has two benefits: one, engine noise is reflected upwrds by the wing. Two, it can park parallel to the terminal instead of nose in, and the passenger terminal can be ground mounted instead of having to slide out over the wing. To facilitate this parallel parking, they propose castering steerable landing gear, like on a B-52, so the airline can move at least somewhat sideways, even if it still has a forward movement at the same time.
By parking parallel, every door on that side of the airplane coudl be used simultaneously, a tremendous speedup in getting people on and off. The terminals would also be smaller and simpler, and it would be easier to move planes in and out.
Infuriate left and right
The A38O is for flights between NY,LA Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore/Bangkok, Lagos, Johanesburg, Rio/BA & Heathrow/Rome/Mandrid/Schipol/Frankfurt/Shannon/CD G.
Its to overcome landing slot congestion at these congested 1st tier international airports. As such it will be a great success, particularly when you take economies of scale & international duopoly route agreements into account.
You see many international routes are bound by bi-govt duopoly arrangements, where only one airline each from the 2 nations plys the direct route between their 2 countries. Replacing 747s with A380s means that instead of the 2 airlines both having one flight taking off & landing each day at either end, they can have a alternating day arrangement. This means huge cost savingS in landing slot costs, crew costs 'n fuel
Note that while Boeing disclaimed that the Sonic Cruiser design ever had any military applications in mind, observers were quick to point out that many of the features of the proposed design were clearly chosen with military applications in mind, such as the "stealthy" engine inlets.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Rule number one of business:
Don't fix what isn't broken.
Don't build radically new when what you have already works fine.
We don't see radical new car designs every year. Instead, we see minor improvments on last year's model. Or they take a truck and add a van frame and call it an SUV. Or they shorten a van and call it a minivan.
Or they take an existing model and make it cost 15% less to operate.
15% is big. Really big. Less fuel = less cost = cheaper tickets. Would you fly on a "cooler" airbus for 30% more? Perhaps, but probably not. Few people fly first/business class.
Airbus is looking for a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
Both the new Airbus A-380 and Boeing's sonic cruiser could have been useful additions to todays aircraft. There are people willing to pay a premium to go from LAX to Tokio in a 15% shorter time. Look at the Concorde between Heathrow/CDG and JFK. Obviously there's a market for fast aircraft.
There is however also a market for large (450+ ppl) aircraft on inter-continental lines. Major players on the trans-atlantic route are: BA, Lufthansa and Air France and on the US side United, American, Delta, etc. They all have full planes on that route. If you can operate an A-380 at the same cost of a 747 or 777, you make more money. When I'm on my way across the pond, I could wish a 30% reduction in flight time, which I can't afford, or a plane with seats roomy enough to spend 7 hours in. I'd rather have the latter.
The airlines with the highest profit margins are indeed the 'price-fighters' like Soputhwest, EasyJet, RyanAir. But unlike the big US carriers, the major European carriers BA, Lufthansa, Air France and KLM are not in the red as much.
Companies like southwest, EasyJet and RyanAir are useful, but the often do land at the same big hubs trans-continental flight land on. If I want to go from Amsterdam to Columbia, SC, I tend to pick one airline to fly with. EasyJet may be the cheapest between A'dam and London, but since EJ doesn't land on Heathrow I'd have to spend time traveling through London. I'd rather pay $100 more to do it easy and have BA fly me from A'dam to Heathrow, to JFK to Columbia.
The government bailouts of the airlines have been in large part a government bailout of Boeing, allowing those lease payments to continue flowing so that Boeing itself doesn't go bankrupt. But the United bankruptcy filing shows that the government has reached the end of how much it's willing to bail out the airlines for their long-term lease expenses. The next thing that's going to happen is that those long-term leases are going to get voided by the bankruptcy courts -- and Boeing is suddenly going to find itself with hundreds of idled jet airliners on its hands or on the open market (if those jet airliners had been leased by some other leasing company rather than Boeing Leasing), and no new orders for jet airliners anytime within the near future while airlines fill their needs from the used market rather than by buying new airliners.
Given that outlook, doing anything expensive or requiring any kind of large cash outlay is not only risky, but downright impossible -- the cash is not going to be there.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Innovative products succeed if they're competitive at all.
Successful and innovative to the consumer:
707
727
737
747
Marginally successful and boring to the consumer:
757
767
777
Why do people think that if a product is innovative it must be a moneyloser? History doesn't show that.
Nope. That's the number one rule of failing businesses. No great business was built by refusing to innovate but a lot of businesses have disappeared by "Don't fix what isn't broken" thinking.
Feel free to show a business that's succeeded by catering to the beancounters while refusing to innovate for the end-user. Really. Good luck in finding one.
Except that Boeing was the company buying out competitors (Lockheed, McDonell/Douglas) and now is the only US manufacturer of commercial jets. As such, they're guaranteed to succeed since the strategic requirements of the US require there to be a US manufacturer of their products (or at least the military versions of the civilian products)
At worst, Boeing would have a different make up of their shareholders. Big deal. It's not as though new owners would do worse.
People want to fly cheap. People want to fly fast. Airlines are the worst managed corporations on the planet. But, that doesn't change the economics. The Sonic Cruiser was an efficient, cheap to fly design. It used the same infrastructure as the current planes (same baggage carts, baggage containers, ramps, etc.) which is a big factor. And the airlines seem to be willing to upgrade some of that for the Airbus jumbo.
If consumers want to fly fast and cheap, give it to them.
BTW: Your $1000 is ludicrous and not related to the discussion. The Sonic Cruiser would cost a few percent more to run than a 7x7 at most. So the real question is whether people would pay $30 extra to fly on a new, cool jet that got them there a half hour sooner on a cross-country flight. I would. And that wouldn't happen anyway since the airlines didn't exactly give discounts for the equally good efficiency improvements in the 777. (Or have you found that 777 flights are cheaper than 767? I haven't.)
Nope. The difference is that the IBMs and Boeings of the world have huge cash reserves to buffer out the experiments that don't work out. Unlike smaller companies, they CAN innovate with low risk and that they often don't is a failure of management, a failure of vision and a failure of courage.
There is large support from some for the full development of a Blended Wing Body (BWB) airliner, and there are significant arguements for that development. The concept is over 50 years old (Northrop), the current design is at least 10 years old (acquired when Boeing bought McDonnell), and an implementation exists as the B-2 stealh bomber.
Good comment, but a couple of corrections: First, the BWB concept is far older than 50 years, and was pioneered by Vincent Burnelli in the 1930s, not McDonnell-Douglas in the 90s. Northrup was undoubtedly among the real pioneers (along with the Hortens and Lippisch in Germany, both of whom predated much of Northrup's work) in true flying wings, but there's a distiction between flying wings or nurflugels and BWBs or airfoil-body designs like Burnelli's (which have a notable lack of blending...)
For more good information on these vehicles, check out the following links from my own bookmarks collection on this topic:
The Nurflugel (German for "flying wing" more or less) Page: Great info on historical flying wing designs, and the difficulties that the problem posed for so long.
Aircrash.org: A good site about the Burnelli wing/body design and it's history. Unfortunately it's marred by repeated and rather shrill accusations of a giant conspiracy to keep aircraft unsafe. A good resource, but there are more than a few sour grapes here. Too bad, becuase the idea has obvious merit.
Luft46.com: A site that catalogs many of the incredibly advanced and innovative aircraft that the Germans were working on (in in many cases beginning prodction of) at the end of WWII. The Horten 229 (known variously as Ho IX, Ho229, and Gotha 229) is an interesting comparison to the current B2. Not only was it a fairly high-performance jet-powered flying wing fighter/bomber, but the German engineers had already begun researching stealth: its body was made of carbon granules sandwiched between two thin plywood skins, forming the first know radar-absorbing aerostructure. (One warning though: don't blame me if you spend all your Christmas holidays reading this site. There's some amazing stuff here, and it tends to be a pretty engrossing once you get into it a bit...)
Now that the Sonic Cruiser has been canned, it will be interesting to see if the other (r)evolutionary design, the BWB, gains traction and sees a greater chance of production.
Indeed. I worked on the GE Unducted Fan in the mid 80's, and there is a LOT of room for improvement in current designs. Even the UDF itself might have made it had they paid a high-schooler's attention to basic physics: The UDF had two rows of either 8 or 10 counterrotating blades. As is entirely predictable, the thing made a very effective siren when running, and the acoustic and air-impulse energy literally beat the adjacent body skins nearly to death. Why this problem didn't occur to GE when they know enough to always use a prime number of blades in turbine sections is beyond me...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Sometimes you just need to bite the bullet and do it. Screw the bean counters.
Remember, this is exactly what Enron did. I agree that significant businesses have resulted from big gambles (sometimes literally, as in Fred Smith's taking the the embyonic FedEx's meager cash to Vegas and winning enough to make payroll.) But public companies, by virtue of the fact that they *are* publicly owned and traded, do not have the same freedom to gamble as private firms, and if they choose to do so anyway, then the executives may properly do jail time.
FWIW: I worked with (not for) Enron and some of its predecessor energy trading companies like NorAm, and I'm convinced they just thought they were smarter than everyone else. For a while, they were. They did indeed bite the bullet and say, in effect, "screw the beancounters..." They just didn't know when to quit, and by that time they had so obliterated "the line" in thier own minds that they were unable to even acknowledge they had crossed it.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Aseries of 120 of them were s'pose to be built but in the end only 5 were built, but Volga Shipyard still has all the jigs 'n drawings, etc & will build more to order.
e no k.jpg
e no k4.jpg
/ ar ticles/i13/1306_5mg.jpg
? co de=0&id=413
The Orlenok page on The WIG Page site
The Orlenok page on at autospeed.com
Some pics:
http://www.airforce.ru/aircraft/ekranoplans/Orl
http://www.airforce.ru/aircraft/ekranoplans/orl
http://us1.webpublications.com.au/static/images
http://www.se-technology.com/wig/html/image.php
Too much competition gets in the way of economies of scale which are needed for sustainable cheaper prices (this is why govt gas/electricty/water/telco utility monopolies always do better).
The best thing that can happen to the airline industry is for United's chapter 11 rescue to fail. Afterall look how QANTAS is booming now Ansett has gone balls up. & prices haven't gone up much, economies of scale has ment sustainable low prices rather than the unsustainable low prices of unsustainable competition.
The A380 is for flights between NY,LA Sydney, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore/Bangkok, Lagos, Johanesburg, Rio/BA & Heathrow/Rome/Mandrid/Schipol/Frankfurt/Shannon/CD G.
It's to overcome landing slot congestion at these congested 1st tier international airports. As such it will be a great success, particularly when you take economies of scale & international duopoly route agreements into account.
You see many international routes are bound by bi-govt duopoly arrangements, where only one airline each from the 2 nations plys the direct route between their 2 countries. Replacing 747s with A380s means that instead of the 2 airlines both having one flight taking off & landing each day at either end, they can have a alternating day arrangement. This means huge cost savingS in landing slot costs, crew costs 'n fuel
Boeing did take a pretty big risk on the 777, many of the Boeing employees I know compare 777 launch to the 747 launch in terms of risk to the company and desire to build the best damn plane in the sky. Unfortunately they also tell me the 777 will be the last "great" airliner Boeing will ever build. Most of them feel Boeing is doomed to be a follower of Airbus from now on.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
That being said, I train to work. I'll also be taking to the train to Sacramento (from the SF Bay Area) and back over Christmas to avoid the hellish traffic and drunk drivers.
The 777 is the only two engine plane rated for over water travel. That means that from way out over the Pacific, if one engine goes out, you can still make it to the nearest airport on one engine. That's crazy! And have you seen the size of those engines? The look like they're going to snap the wings off! From a practical perspective, this makes the 777 cheaper to fly, compared with other planes in its size/range catagory. I think the 777 deserves a little bit more credit than you give it.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I hear their economy didn't get wiped out.
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-976828.html
I'm not saying that it isn't an engineering achievement. It was also the first Boeing to be built directly from the CAD files with no prototype to test fit parts.
But it isn't inspiring. It doesn't make anybody go "wow!" and that wow factor is important beyond what the Boeing and Airbus management think.
I think Boeing--now that it no longer needs the resources to devote to the shelved Sonic Cruiser project--will now concentrate on building a transport plane based on the BWB design.
The reason is simple: cargo transport needs. There are two places where the demand will come from:
1. USAF's Air Mobility Command. The Lockheed C-5A/B Galaxy are starting to get old, and even the current rewing/re-engine project for the C-5 won't extend the life of that large transport much longer than an additional 12-13 years. AMC will need a new transport with lower fuel burn and more carrying capacity, and the BWB design is perfect for such a mission (indeed, Boeing's Phantom Works has shown a BWB military transport concept complete with loading ramps).
2. Commercial cargo carriers. Whille the upcoming Airbus A380-800F can carry more cargo volume for longer flight distances, it still can't carry the type of outsized cargo that could fit through the nose loading door of the 747F series. A civilian variant of the BWB cargo transport I just mentioned would be of great interest to FedEx, UPS, DHL, CargoLux, Air Foyle HeavyLift, and the air cargo divisions of Northwest Airlines, Korean Air, Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific Airways, and Lufthansa. Such a BWB cargo transport could carry more cargo than the A380-800F, be able to accept outsized cargo, and even be able to fly Memphis, TN (FedEx's headquarters) to Tokyo, Japan fully-loaded nonstop year-round.
Eventually, we may see an airliner version of the BWB. Yes, I'm aware of the plane banking issue that could cause serious motion sickness for passengers sitting fairly far away from the airplane centerline, but improvements in aerodynamics and fly-by-wire controls will allow the plane to turn with very little banking to pretty much elminate that problem. The airliner version of the BWB has a number of other benefits:
1) The ground footprint of BWB is a small fraction of that of the A380-800. In fact, when you park the plane it doesn't take much more ground space than a 767-200!
2) Because the BWB is one gigantic natural lifting body, the plane will likely have much shorter runway requirements than the A380-800.
3) Because the BWB is a naturally efficient design the plane will have fuel burn some 20-30% lower than that of the A380-800. This means with the right design a BWB airliner will be the world's first airliner capable of flying between London, England and Sydney, Australia non-stop year-round, the last major hurdle in commercial aviation.
I wouldn't call the L-1011 a disaster, it just had more teething problems than the DC-10. This is understandable given the large amount of new technology that was in that aircraft. The biggest problem with the L-1011 was by the time it was being delivered to customers Lockheed wasn't sure it wanted to be in the commercial airliner business. Things might have turned out differenly had Lockheed marketed the aircraft more agressively. Of course things would have been VERY different had Lockheed introduced a jet transport to compete with the 707 and the DC-8 instead of the Electra.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
I don't know the 777 makes me go "wow!". For some reason it's the only one of the newer generation twinjets to do so. Maybe its just "wow! look at those huge f*ing engines!" but it still makes me go "wow!"
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
I dont believe that the airlines planned to use that plane on those kind of routes... That plane would have been used almost exclusively on high-demand, high-priced international segments like New York Kennedy - London Heathrow and San Francisco - Tokyo Narita.
Of course, less time getting annoyed by the crying baby behind you and the two CowboyNeal-sized people at both sides of you also means less time to get pampered by the flight attendants for the guys in business class and first class --the guys who actually pay for the plane, since most coach seats these days are awfully cheap and are sold below cost... So it makes sense to make a more efficient plane that wont cost that much to fly.
No sig for the moment.
Look closer, the reason Boeing hasnt made an innovative product since the 70's is the airline deregulation.
Before deregulation both Boeing and the airlines were guaranteed a steady supply of cash which has disappeared gradually since the advent of low cost carriers which only fly one model of plane and have nothing in terms of inflight service.
Sadly this trend will not reverse itself, and we will remember fondly the days of specially ordered meals, inflight movies, red wine with your steak or white with your salmon...
Instead, airlines will compete in basis of price alone, cutting more and more corners until the day we will be injected with a sleeping drug at the gate and get lugged inside a cargo container...
No sig for the moment.