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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.
Now people can fill out their "Mile High Club" membership forms before landing...
Sorry, not interested in browering during a plane trip, but as soon as they install a brewery I'll be the first to buy a ticket!
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In other words, the planes will be flying cubical farms!
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Boeing has to come with something new. This year will probably be the first year that Airbus will sell more planes than Boeing.
Well, maybe it is. When you read the article you will see that one of the plane's selling points is greater fuel efficiency/lower operating costs. It is being aimed precisely at airlines that are being forced to become more efficient in order to stay afloat. And Boeing is expecting the first sales to be to Asian airlines anyway.
This post is dedicated to all of those
Here is the link to the 7E7 site on boeing webpage. It has a few mock-ups so you can see what it looks like.
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You think they'll make a special "Fly along with your captain." version of MS Flight Simulator?
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As someone working in the aerospace industry I cannot help but wonder: how do these guy expect to develop such a plane in such a very short time? Unless it is heavily based on an existing design. Usually it takes up to 10 years to bring a plane up to production.
Anybody some information about that?
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.
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!)
is being aimed precisely at airlines that are being forced to become more efficient in order to stay afloat. And Boeing is expecting the first sales to be to Asian airlines anyway.
It's a gamble. Both Boeing and Airbus have realized that airlines want flexibility to cater to different passenger mixes on different routes. Airbus are going after the few-large-planes model: an A380 can sit 800 passengers in an all-economy configuration, or 550 in a mixed configuration that also includes entertainment facilites like shops (or casinos or bars or whatever). The stretch A380 will be able to seat 1000 in all-economy. It gives the airlines the ability to take advantages of economies of scale on busy routes for low fares, or to customize their aircraft into a premium service for people who are willing to pay. For example, when the economy picks up, it will be easy to attract investment bankers to fly from London to SF on a plane that has proper conference facilities (meeting rooms, comms, etc). Flat(ish) beds in business class are great for the redeye, but what if you could have showers too? And so forth...
Boeing are going after a different kind of flexibility, the many-small-planes model. The idea behind Sonic Cruiser was a premium for a faster service on mid-haul routes. The Dreamliner may be meeting a need that doesn't exist; certainly Asian airlines are huge fans of large airliners, they have the passenger numbers and distances that justify them. But the Dreamliner is in a bit of a funny niche. It has some of the facilities on board that business travellers would pay for - but without the amenities that allow the airlines to generate revenue actually in flight. If they all come kitted out with the fancy comms, how do you cater to budget travellers, especially on short haul routes where no-one really cares about entertainment anyway? You might be able to use them profitably on some business routes (i.e. London to Frankfurt) where everyone on board is a business traveller, but for a mixed load of business people and vacationers (say London to NYC) does Dreamliner cater to all those budgets?
I think that Airbus have the right idea, apart from the fact that the A380 standard - let alone the stretch - is so damn big that it will require upgrades to airport infrastructure to handle it. Everything from being able to board and deplane through existing terminals to just being able to park them in a hangar! But for mid to long haul routes, they're pretty compelling. I just don't see where Dreamliner fits in - too elaborate for short to mid, not elaborate enogh for mid to long and long.
'cut codes'? You mean 'write computer programs'?
Am I getting old? Or have you just been reading wayyy too many cyberpunk novels?
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
It seems to me that maybe Boeing is producing too little too late. As the Airbus representative said, "This is a market where we already have an airplane." And weâ(TM)re talking 5 YEARS away from rolling off the assembly line. They havenâ(TM)t even chose a site for manufacturing yet!
So it seems to me they have a few things to get ironed out if they have any chance of competingâ¦.
A) Tall people on 20-hour trans-Atlantic flights NEED MORE LEG ROOM! (Iâ(TM)m 6â(TM)3â or 195 cm) Iâ(TM)d WEEP FOR JOY and never ride in a competitorâ(TM)s plane again if I stepped aboard and found that I could comfortably plant my ass in a seat without having to put myself in uncomfortable positions to accommodate my long legs.
B) Some sort of ACTUAL reclining would be nice. Iâ(TM)m sure its possible to allow just as many people to board a flight and provide a little comfort without the fear that youâ(TM)re cramping the passenger behind you even more.
C) Iâ(TM)m sure all those 6 figure a year making brainy-boys out at Boeing could do a little tinkering and figure out SOME way of allowing passengers to use assorted electronic gadgetry on flights without causing nose-dives and fiery apocalyptic deaths for everyone on board. Perhaps some sort of array of jacks on the back of the seats that would allow all outgoing and incoming transmissions from said gadgetry to be channeled through a single antennae or array that could be monitored and checked against the data coming to the pilot in the cockpit, thereby avoiding disaster and making customers happier.
D) Do something about the food. Good lord you could excavate a TV dinner from the 1970s out of a landfill, heat it up and it would be more palatable than the garbage they serve on some flightsâ¦*cough cough* United *cough cough*
In my infinitely humble opinion, if Boeing would catch on to consumer demand and implement a few or all of these suggestions theyâ(TM)d be able to truly revolutionize the airline industry and make a few billion in the process and thus enhance shareholder confidence along with personal assets!
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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.
A320 A330 ranges etc.
The difference is that Airbus have been giving their customers what they are asking for and Boeing have been giving customers what they've got.
EasyJet are a prime example of a company switching to Airbus A319s over 737s because the operating costs are significantly lower.
http://www.easyjet.com/EN/about/aircraft.html
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Erm no it didn't; the tail was recovered in two pieces, the main structure of the tail and the rudder itself. What was unusual was that the rudder had cleanly separated from the tail.
The tail of that airliner passed all airworthiness checks and has been found to have exceeded its design requirements.
Flight 587 had flown into the wake turbulence of a JAL 747, the pilot followed normal procedures and tried to stabilise his aircraft using the ailerons, which is standard procedure.
When that failed, he used the tail rudder five times to add extra force to his corrections. These imposed enormous strains on the tail structure which was torn off of the aircraft.
Again, the tail did not fail because of any structural weakness, it failed because a load was imposed on the structure that lay outside of the design parameters. Such loads had never been anticipated during the design process, nor had they been experienced before this crash.
American Airlines and Airbus are still fighting over who is to blame. AA claim that Airbus withheld information about the upper limits of forces that can be applied to their airliners, Airbus say that AA did not train their crews correctly.
However, guidelines have been sent to all airlines and the operators of all types of airliner informing them of the possibility of failure of the tail during excessive rudder movements.
And remember that Airbus aren't alone in discovering unexpected behaviours in their airliners. The Boeing 737 seems to have suffered a number of crashes resulting from excessive or abberent rudder movements; notably United flight 585 in Colorado and US Air flight 427 in Pennsylvania.
Best wishes,
Mike.
I think one possibility is that Boeing may be pushing for sales of airplanes based on the 7E7 design to the USAF.
This means air-refuelling tankers, 2-3 VIP transports, a combination AWACS/JSTARS airborne radar platform and Electronic Intelligence/Signals Intelligence (ELINT/SIGINT) planes to replace the aging RC-135W/X fleet.
"I still don't see how this plane is going to solve Boeing's sales problems."
Consider that 800 737s are in the air worldwide at any given time. One 737 takes off every 6 seconds on average world-wide (per the NTSB). Its become the DC-3 of the latter quarter of the 20th century and first decade of the 21st.
Also consider that the 737 is coming to the end of its design lifecycle with the -700 series. And the 757 has been partially superseded by the 767, yet nothing quite fills its old niche (737 too small, 767 too big).
Airlines are looking for cheaper to operate, more fuel efficient aircraft that will lure back the business traveler, in the 180-210 passenger size (which probably constitutes a majority of the revenues for regional and US carriers).
The 7E7 fits that description quite well. So thats why they are spending the money - theres a market for this aircraft, the same market Boeing has dominated with the 737/757, and one that will be opening up by the time this aircraft becomes operational. The biggest gain is in operating efficiency (modular electronics, easier crew servicing of aircraft, etc) and fuel efficiency.
As an example, if United could drop its operating and fuel costs both by 10% annually, it would be profitable to the tune of several hundred million dollars, instead of in bankruptcy court.
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i like to code when i am high,
Hey, I think I'm maintaining your code now, you smeghead
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" it will be easy to attract investment bankers to fly from London to SF on a plane that has proper conference facilities (meeting rooms, comms, etc). "
;)
at whet point do tehy relize if they can conduct business while in the sky, why do they have to go at all?
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