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Boeing Moves Towards New Planes
maliabu writes "Boeing has named its new plane DreamLiner with plans for its future, which is set to fly in 2008. It'll be interesting to see how 'internet-ready' this 7E7 is. It can be very entertaining for all ages as you can brower the net, check emails, weather, watch movies (on demand), listen to music (on demand) or even cut codes some 30,000 feet in the sky! These articles also stated that "The 200-seat 7E7 is meant to replace [a faster plane called] Sonic Cruiser as Boeing's next new major commercial initiative" " I think most people following the airplane builders knew the Sonic Cruiser was dead before birth; but I still don't see how this plane is going to solve Boeing's sales problems.
Boeing has to come with something new. This year will probably be the first year that Airbus will sell more planes than Boeing.
There is almost nothing new with this airplane. Its baiscally a modernized 757/767 with more fuel-efficient engines and light-weight material. Similar materials are used on the Airbus A380. I am not an airbus fan, but something like the A380 is just way more spectacular than this. Even the new 747-800 that was just announced is a way cooler airplane.
E for e-enabled? Come on! Conexxion by Boeing can be put into pretty much every Boeing and probably most other major aircraft as well. I had a lot of fun on Lufthansa LH418 surfing the net 30000 feet above Iceland and I would really like to see this on every long-haul flight. But there's no need for a new airplane to offer this, its already there. Lufthansa will soon offer this on most of their trans-atlantic flights.
They rely on marketing to make this plane look like something so spectacular that it deserves a "real" name (not sticking to the 7x7 tradition). But the technology is plain boring. I can understand their decision, given the current market situation, but trying to sell this as something extraordinary is prettty dumb.
They'll give you 8 hours on the entertain-net instead of the usual 8 hours of bad movies and sitcom... Funny, I don't see much improvement in this trade-off as I'd much rather reduce the 8 hours to a mere 4 for the same trip.
No matter how E-nabled this plane is, I just don't like to be packed tight in a flying sardine box for a long time!
How can anything solve Boeing's sales problem when there's whole fleets of aircraft sitting idle in the desert?
I'd have thought the airlines will bring those back into service before they start buying new planes.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
Well, have a look at Airbus and Boeing's current products: they're all derived from common ancestors:
:)
Airbus A300 and Boeing's 767 (which was derived from the 747 which in turn came from the 707): there hasn't been a great breakthough in airliner technology since the 60's. Granted: materials are different (better, lighter, cheaper and stronger), control systems are now digital (miles of wire instead of hydraulic hoses), engines are much more efficient and quiet but the shapes are still very reminscent of what was state-of-the-art in 1958.
So, this is just an educated guess but they'll probably use many parts from the 777 & 767 family to reduce cost and the time required for design.
When you don't have time to re-invent the wheel, you just use it
According to the current issue of the Economist, it's not what you build, it's how you bribe.
I think Boeing has identified the following rationales for the 7E7 design:
1. A lot of older widebody twin-engine airliners are going to have to be replaced before 2010. The older Airbus A300B2/B4 models are starting to be phased out from airline fleets, as are the older production 767's dating from the early to mid 1980's.
2. The plane's very modern use of aerospace materials will mean relatively low weight of the plane carrying 200-250 passengers, lowering the fuel burn on a seat-mile basis. This means lower fuel costs on routes anywhere between 2,000 to 7,500 nautical miles.
3. Because the 7E7 will use contemporary aerodynamic research, the plane could actually fly faster than the 747-400, if the right engine design can be found. This means the possibility of Mach 0.89 to 0.90 cruise speed, which offers most of the benefits of the Sonic Cruiser with far technical risk in terms of new technology needed.
4. The plane will offer Boeing's Connexion broadband Internet access system as standard on the longer-range models. Imagine being able to access the Internet at minimum one megabits per second download speed in flight.
I think you'll be surprised how many airlines actually DO want a more efficient medium to long range 200-250 seat airliner with reasonably high cruise speeds. While the Airbus A330-200 has been a sale success, the plane is still too heavy and big for many airlines and its cruise speed still can't keep up with the Boeing 777-200ER's and 747-400's that dominate longer range flying today.
I am not sure if Boeing is currently supplying anything major to the USAF, but there is probably still an internal conflict of interests.
To sell more commercial jets, they need world peace and real (not percieved) end to terrorism. They can pursue this by lobbying and puching the US administration in the direction of sanity.
However, if their military contracts bring more money, there is more profit in pushing in the opposite direction.
The really cool thing that this article does not :)
talk about is the changes coming for cockpit
instrumentation. One of the things Boeing was
showing off at the Paris airshow was the new
Electronic Flight Bag, which is basically a
multi-function flatpanel display which could
ultimately replace a variety of fixed function
displayes and paper charts. Unlike previous
displays, this one is an 'open architecture'
that can be loaded with new programs and features
over time. Of course the EFB's operating system
and any programs loaded on it will likely still
require FAA certification, which last I checked
required careful auditing of every line of source
code. This begs the questions: What operating
system does this thing run?
The idea is to move into markets which aren't served by massive jumbos and couldn't fill one anyway.
Look at the Atlantic market. Used to be you had to go to NY or Boston to fly to the UK then into only London. Now 757s, 767s, and 777s leave from smaller US cities for smaller UK cities. (Phoenix to London anyone?)
Boeing is betting that the Asian market will start looking more like the Atlantic market in the late 90s than the superhub hub dominated Atlantic market of the 70s and 80s. They figure that the A380 will be more jet than these markets need or want.
re:Not only is Boeing trying to compete with what many consider is an inferior product...
IMO,
If you mean Boeing's products are inferior, I have to strongly disagree. I have flown both and find that on the issue of quality, Boeing has a significant advantage. Boeing also have a better approach to automation. However, Airbus are more afordable and cheaper to operate and maintain because they have achieved commonality (training, maintainence, parts) across models that Boeing have yet to achieve.
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
I don't think it is different models, it is different market segments. There was a (probably) market for one new huge plane, but not two. Building two A380 class machines would have guaranteed huge losses for both. So Boeing and Airbus arm-wrestled for about eight years to decide who would do it. But actually, it was a one-way bet: Boeing would be cannibalising the market for its 747, whereas Airbus had nothing to fear. The only worry was that Boeing, bysouping up the 747 one more time, could take enough off the bottom of the A380 market that it would not make the break-even volumes. But eventually Airbus jumped, and Boeing backed down.
So where now? They tried the "faser" route, and tha answer was a big yawn. So now they try the cheaper route. Their 757 and 767 are already being beaten up by Airbuses A330/340. It doesn't look as if they would have much market left for those in, say, five years time. I think they are expecting to get something like 20% better mileage-per-seat than the Airbus products - and over the lifetime of an aircraft, that is a lot of fuel.
The alternative, I suppose, would to have been to have gone down a size and replaced the 737 to compete with the Airbus A318/319/320/321 family. But I could believe that there is not so much economy to be screwed out of these short-hoppers by new technology. And if the killed the 737, they would risk losing the "single type" airlines such as Southwest to Airbus.
If they can deliver what they promise, and if Airbus don't manage to retrofit the same technological improvements onto their products, I can see it working for Boing. But the next few years are going to be "Interesting Times" for the company.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
I think most people following the airplane builders knew the Sonic Cruiser was dead before birth; but I still don't see how this plane is going to solve Boeing's sales problems.
The main problem Boeing is facing is that Airbus has the most efficient long haul carrier as of right now. The 7E7 is expected to be ~20% more efficient than Airbus' long hauler.
Several people here have asked a couple of questions that I think need to be addressed:
1) How is this going to solve Boeings sales problems?
Well, this is not expected to be a cure all for Boeing. Being 20% more efficient than Airbus' best long haul carrier will go a long way to making inroads for sales. Other things being done by Boeing include redesigning the 737 (a short range carrier) with winglets and new composite materials to reduce weight and creating new version of the 747 (the 400ER). The first 400ER was just delivered to Korean Airlines this week.
Internationally, there are other reasons Boeing has a hard time competing.
2) How can Boeing design a plane in such a short time?
I saw someone answer that large reuse of old designs, such as using the same general airframe and what not, made it possible. The problem is that the 7E7 does not use the standard 7x7 airframe. The standard is usually called a double bubble and if you look at any previous 7x7 you will see what I mean. The 7E7 will have a single bubble airframe. This is a new design for Boeing.
How will they develop the plane so fast? Two ways: First a large portion of the electronics and other interior assemblies are being contracted out to other companies. Boeing will act as a large system integrator. Second, Boeing learned how to overcome the prototype manufacturing problems that crop up when moving from paper to the "real thing" with the 777. Using Catia and some other CAD programs Boeing can assemble a plane on computer before assembling it in real life thus allowing them to fix all the pieces that do not properly fit before manufacture. This used to be a major factor in the time to market for planes.
3) How internet ready will it be?
Probably as internet ready as some of Boeings other planes.
Or, you could skip the link and just look at a 707, 757, 767 or 777. (Of course, if you look at a 727, 737 or 747 you'll see amazingly successful, innovative designs but Boeing doesn't do innovation anymore)
an A380 can sit 800 passengers in an all-economy configuration
There's still the very much open question of whether world public opinion will tolerate the deaths of 800 people in a single crash. Remember, a single crash can destroy not only an airline but an entire airframe. When an A380 goes down, nobody knows what the response from the flying public will be.