Slashdot Mirror
Boeing 787 Dreamliner Delayed Again
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.
it scares the shit out of me just to think if Microsoft made airplanes.
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?
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?
I'm old... and I ain't gittin in one of them
thar newfangled plastic planes never no-how!
Delivery date met or not!
Dadnabit!
Git off my larn!
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
Probably nothing directly, but he did build a sub-orbital space ship out of composites.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
At this point, it seems everyone would be happy for it to arrive in any state.
Not me. When I catch a plane to California, I sure don't wanna end up anywhere else!
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.
Not Boeing, composites. Rutan has made a significant number of aircraft using composites on large scale. However, none within sight is the size of a B787, few intended for large-scale production, and none intended for the 365 days a year utilisation of a commercial airliner.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
By "superplane wannabe", I take it you mean "superplane"? What's "wannabe" about it?
The A380 and 787 aren't direct competitors. The A350 will be Airbus's 787 equivalent, but yes the 787 delays could help Airbus in the long run.
explain to me what issues are there for which in 2008 we still have to resort to sub-sonic air flights? I wonder that sometimes (and I also wonder on Concorde's failure for the same reason)
Yes, somewhat OT, but it's been bugging me for a while.
A CC-licensed illustrated horror novel
There are more air planes in the sea than submarines in the sky.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Early last year when we got into this discussion it was stated that Carbon Fiber had doubled in price because Boing and Airbus were buying so much of it. Unfortunately carbon fiber isn't exactly like oil and there aren't hundreds of websites tracking the costs minute by minute.
Anyone have any idea what the current price for carbon fiber is?
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
That'd be a 747 with a bit of smoked glass and a random reordering of seating positions.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
And I guess the executives who agreed on the name dreamliner are starting to regret their decision...
When you are talking about near supersonic or supersonic speeds, this is no longer true. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_divergence_Mach_number In fact, drag increases much more rapidly as you approach the speed of sound, but then much more slowly after that point.
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.
Man, that is so out of date.
Unix Express: Split into three operating companies.
Linux Cooperative:
All passenger bring a piece of the aeroplane and a box of tools with them to the airport. They gather on the tarmac, arguing constantly about what kind of plane they want to build and how to put it together. Eventually, the passengers split into groups and build several different aircraft, but give them all the same name. Some passengers actually reach their destinations.
All passengers believe they got there.
Apple Airlines:
The terminal is neat and clean, the attendants are attractive, the pilots very capable, the planes are beautiful, and you always reach the correct destination... unfortunately they have a fairly small fleet, most planes have no baggage compartment or overhead storage, and the seats aren't adjustable. Frequent Apple fliers are known to attack anyone who suggests that these are important features.
Legacy Air:
The terminal is neat and clean, albeit in an "industrial" style. You have to choose your plane ahead of time, because different planes only fly to different cities, and if your luggage doesn't match your plane you need to hire a baggage consultant to adjust it to fit. But the planes are fast, efficient, and always arrive on time or even ahead of schedule.
Windows Airlines:
The terminal is very neat and clean, with security barriers every few meters. The attendants are attractive, even if it's kind of creepy how much they want to "help" (especially in the restrooms). The pilots are allegedly very capable, though nobody ever sees them and there's an armed guard by the cockpit door. The fleet of jets it operates are immense. Your jet takes off without a hitch, pushing above the clouds, and at 20,000 feet a message pops up on the seat back in front of your asking "Should this plane explode now?". Some idiot always answers "Yes".
that Boeing which has a number of old MS engineers will have nothing to do with installing Windows in the cockpit and only rarely on the craft (they do use dos on the older seat controls).
OTH, Airbus pushes that crap. They (and jeppesen) went to MS to try and get MS to DO-178B ANY version of Windows. After reading it, Gates actually responded that it would be another 1-2 decades before they could even THINK about doing something like that.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In an era where we can communicate around the world with unprecedented ease and speed, shouldn't we be flying LESS?
I'm not thinking about social/pleasure travel, but business travel (which accounts for a large percentage of all flyers). If you work in IT, there are very few tasks you can't accomplish over the WWW, and it seems that most of one's travel obligation has more to do with proving to management that you actually exist. "Face time" is a crutch for managers who don't get it.
Oh sure, we do fly less - in percentage terms, not in absolute terms. At my workplace it seems there is some kind of telephone- or video-conference with the other side of the world something like every other day, for various projects. A videoconference is much cheaper and convenient than an actual meeting.
But, we are now used to a much higher degree of interaction with our foreign partners. So, if ten years ago it was two meeting and two flights a year, today it's ten meetings, of which 2/3 are by videocon - and three or four by plane. Only 1/3 of the meetings involve flying, but the number of flights has gone up anyway.
Because we had high speed transportation via airports for over 50 years from just about any city to another city. And it has been much cheaper than Europe's due to deregulations. Even now, the only high speed rail that really makes sense for the bulk of America (geographically speaking), is the transrapid Maglev (much faster than the TGV and far less energy). Keep in mind that unsubsidized flight is lower price than even our heavily subsidized slow trains. And a new highspeed rail would costs many times more.
About the only reason why we will see high-speed rail come here is the use of nuclear power. Our next president will no doubt be pushing nukes/AE and combine that with the expected carbon tax from EU and we will see change come here.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It still only has the ordinary symmetries of a plane. No supersymmetry in sight.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The biggest problem is the the US Government should have blocked the Boeing / Mc Donald Douglas merger. Then Boeing would have competition and have to actually work to be in business, not just know they had the US Military corporate welfare check in their pockets.
I think Boeing / MD should be broken up now under anyi trust laws.
While Boeing was scheming how far they could gouge the tax payers with the new Military tanker, they just forgot they have work to do on the 'VaporLiner'.
This is the perfect example of a good company caught up in greed instead of what they started as, building airplanes.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
It doesn't free up a spot if it takes just as long to unload, service and load one big airplane as it would two smaller ones. They increase spots by decreasing choices. It is getting more expensive to get direct flights. Two hop routes on bigger airplanes through a hub city are preferred by the airline because they can fill all the seats.
Your fear is unfounded. First and foremost, there is no evidence to suggest this plane is unsafe. We must compare incidents to flight cycles to know that. Considering how modern aircraft engineering is producing the safest planes historically, the odds are this model will be no exception. (The tolerances built into planes are remarkable. One such illustration of many is the 777 wing load test.) Furthermore, modern aircraft have incorporated composites for years.
I think you received negative moderation because your comment appears uninformed (the 787 is not made of plastic, as you suggest), and you may do well to learn more about 787 construction before expressing concerns.
(As an aside, people were similarly skeptical regarding bicycles, but nearly all high-end road bikes, for example, are built almost entirely from carbon fiber. This goes well beyond the frames, and includes component groups and even wheels.)
Sailboats
'... or simply going from NYC to LA?'
Waggons pulled by horses or oxen - your choice!)
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
It still only has the ordinary symmetries of a plane. No supersymmetry in sight.
It doesn't even obey ordinary physical symmetries.
If you build one out of antimatter from plans viewed in a mirror and then try to fly it backwards through time, it just explodes on the tarmac.
Incompetent engineers if you ask me.
But then again, I could be wrong.
You'd be surprised at how happy customers can get when they see an engineer/manager on site, helping them with their problems. For about 2 months, I was commuting by air back and forth between Boston and Philadelphia, working in a lab that does in fact have a VPN connection. When the project was done, the one thing the customer said made the most difference was the "face time" that we spent with them.
Say what you will about inept managers, but showing up in person makes a huge difference.
Well,not quite ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A350
Which, like the 787 is a composite carbon fiber aircraft. Airbus claims considerable efficiencies above the 787. Boeing has 930 orders for the 787 while Airbus has 580 orders for the A350 so this delay is likely to have an impact on Boeing by pushing more customers to Airbus.
]{
The main rationale for using a hub is fuel efficiency by reducing the overall number of flights. A fuel efficient small plane can tip the balance the other way and make point to point routes economically viable again, as well as allowing less-used airports become hubs (since the number of passengers per plane is lower, you don't need to as many passengers to justify a hub flight). Based on the number of pre-orders the 787 has gotten, it would appear that the airlines all did the math and it came out in favor of the point to point routes.
The first is that our cities are a lot further apart than Europe's, for the most part. The second is that it takes an absolutely enormous capital expense up front to build high-speed rail, and U.S. taxpayers are reluctant to front the money. The third is that we do actually kind of have high-speed rail on some of the routes where it'd be more reasonable.
To get more specific, these are the top four (by passenger volume) domestic air routes in the United States:
1. Boston - New York City
2. Los Angeles - San Francisco
3. Washington, D.C. - New York City
4. New York City - Los Angeles
Of these, #4 is totally unreasonable for high-speed rail, for fairly obvious reasons.
Of the others, #1 and #3 already have service on the Acela Express, which is fairly high speed (top speed 150 mph, averages more in the 80s), though significantly slower than the European standard. It's slowly being upgraded so it can travel its top speed for more of the route, and both routes are gaining passengers, especially as flying gets to be more of a hassle.
The remaining one, #2, is perennially talked about as a good candidate for high-speed rail, but it's just far enough, and has just enough mountains along the route, to be extremely expensive to build the line--estimates are somewhere around $30 billion. Nonetheless it's still officially being planned and preliminary work is underway.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Douglass Aircraft was, for all practical purposes, dead. McD-D had no real interest in building commercial aircraft and pushed much of the process out of the company.
After McD-D lost that big fighter contract, they were dead in the water. Boeing probably could have waited for the bankruptcy sale and picked up the pieces that they wanted. But the "merger" was a bailout for the McDonnell family. Had the company gone under, they would have gotten pennies on the dollar for their shares.
In fact, there are those who suspect that the Pentagon (friends of the McDonnells) encouraged Boeing to merge, using the last stage of the fighter contract competition as bait. It was a real sucker move on Boeing's part. Worse yet, much of Boeing's management has been replaced with McDonnell-Douglas management. That might be why we are seeing Boeing Commercial head down the same path Douglas Aircraft went.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm impressed by the phenomenal amount of shit everyone's throwing on boeing for this. This is completely par for the course, especially if you ever lived in washington state. About half the state has been employed by Boeing at some point in the past, and then laid off due to random Boeing-ness such as this. Think of it this way: have you ever seen a goverment contractor complete anything on time? Have you ever seen road construction finished in a timely manner? Boeing is a contractor for the government (millitary) and considering the number of airline bailouts the government has done in the past, you could almost consider boeing a government subcontractor for the civilian side as well.
moox. for a new generation.