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Boeing 787 Dreamliner Delayed Again

Posted by kdawson on from the just-make-it-fly-please dept.

An anonymous reader writes "It's not just that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner may be unsafe or vulnerable to hacker attacks. At this point, it seems everyone would be happy for it to arrive in any state. The 787's carbon-fiber construction and next-generation technology have pushed back their delivery schedule once again, this time requiring a redesign of the plane's wingbox. Airlines will have to wait 18 more months to get it delivered, which is an extremely serious blow to the credibility of the company and their financial standing, as they would have to pay penalties to the buyers of more than 850 of these planes. And we thought Airbus had problems." Good thing Boeing can still count on its patent portfolio.

5 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. It matters. But really it doesn't. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The advantages of the 787 so ridiculously out class it's peers (weight savings with agressive use of composites) that as long as there's nothing forth coming that competes with it, it won't matter. Back in the 90's when I paid 98 cents for a gallon of gas shaving 1 lb off the weight of an aircraft saved airlines 20k a year in operating costs for that aircraft. Now with oil prices so high, imagine the savings by shaving up to 1/3 of the weight of some parts looks like?

  2. Comparison by The+Bender · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ok, so everybody schedules aggressively, and everybody has unforseen delays. It's kind of funny now remembering how Boeing were crowing over the A380 problems, but what I'd like to know is how the 380 vs 787 delays stack up against each other.

    Anyone got a clue?

  3. Wrong by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At this point, it seems everyone would be happy for it to arrive in any state.
    Nope. I'd rather have it working properly in a year than have it falling out of the sky right now, thanks all the same.
    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  4. Re:It matters. But really it doesn't. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, that depends on what your calculations say. Does running three 787s on one route twice a day work out cheaper than two A380's once a day? What do your projections say: do expect to continue running the same route for the next ten or twenty years?

    When the bill is hundreds of millions of [dollars|Euros] you don't make your decision based on whether one is made with a cooler process than the other.

  5. Re:It matters. But really it doesn't. by Y-Crate · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, that depends on what your calculations say. Does running three 787s on one route twice a day work out cheaper than two A380's once a day? What do your projections say: do expect to continue running the same route for the next ten or twenty years? Not to mention the serious decline in the number of open takeoff and landing spots at many airports. The rise in air travel combined with the trend towards smaller aircraft has helped choke many of them.

    Airlines are being faced with the situation of not having the ability to add more and more flights to their schedules from certain locations. So it's not even necessarily a choice between fuel cost X and fuel cost Y. More like "We've got Z number of landing spots, and we can free up three of them with one plane. We can serve other markets with the two open spots the A380 gives us."

    The Airbus isn't some magical solution applicable to all situations, and there are many where the 787 is the better option, but it's disingenuous to say the A380 is some kind of relic of a time gone by, a plane that doesn't meet the requirements of today's airlines.