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First Airbus A350 XWB Delivered, Will Start Service in January
jones_supa writes The wait is finally over for aviation aficionados wanting to book a flight aboard the Airbus A350 XWB. Qatar Airways, the global launch customer of the plane, accepted delivery of their first A350 of 80 in order, during a ceremony at Airbus' headquarters in Toulouse, France, on Monday morning. This particular A350-900 will enter regular commercial service in January, operating daily flights between its Hamad International Airport hub in Doha, Qatar and Frankfurt, Germany. There are three different iterations of A350 XWB being built: the A350-800, the A350-900 and the A350-1000, which seat 270, 314 and 350 passengers, respectively, in three-class seating. The "XWB" in the name means "extra wide body." The A350 is the first Airbus with both fuselage and wing structures made primarily of carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer. Curious what it was like to be on the Tuesday delivery flight? Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren was onboard that flight and chronicled the landmark trip in photographs.
Hopefully the A350 can make up for the anemic A380 sales
The A380 is really huge. A lot of the long-haul flights that I've been on in the last couple of years haven't been full, even when they're the one flight of the day between two points and are on a plane with half of the capacity of the A380. It's a very economical plane to fly if you can fill it up, but if it's likely to be under half full then it's very expensive. The big-planes, infrequently model doesn't really work with the hub-and-spokes model popular in the USA, because it either needs more coordination with short-haul spoke routes, or layovers (and the cost of near-airport hotels means that these can often make it cheaper to book a different airline's flight).
I flew on the 787 (LHR - IAH, both directions) for the first time this year and it was such a massive improvement over earlier models that I actually enjoyed flying for the first time in ages. Even in the cheap seats, there was lots of legroom, lots of overhead space (so you didn't feel cramped), the air pressure stayed good for the entire flight, the seats reclined comfortably without invading someone else's space. I managed to get more uninterrupted work done on the outbound flight than any other time over the surrounding few months. I'm really looking forward to airlines using similar craft on all long-haul routes.
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The 787 has more legroom than any other plane I've flown in and this is aimed as a 787 competitor. Note that it depends a lot on the airline though - they get a lot of say in the exact layout of seats, so you'll see different amounts of legroom for different carriers and the same aircraft.
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If they don't sell seats (which really depends on how much they want to undercut to fill), they can always ship more cargo, which can actually be quite lucritive, though probably somewhere south of an economy ticket, but I don't know those details.
Bye!
I'm afraid the airline chooses the seat pitch, seats and cabin layouts - its not the 787 giving you most of your experience there, its the airline.
It's like processor performance ratings: AMD, er, Airbus PR800 -> 270, PR900 -> 314, and PR1000 -> 350. No doubt Boeing will roll out its own bCOMP index to rate its aircraft: Take the number of passengers, multiply by the number of engines, divide by the average delivery delay, multiply by the number of consonants in "Rolls-Royce Trent 1000", and you have the bCOMP index, which oddly enough works out slightly higher than the Airbus Performance Rating in all categories. I hear that Airbus are planning to overclock their engines in order to get higher numbers than Boeing for their next release...
We're so weird about planes. If the local bus company got a new bus we wouldn't be rushing down for a demo ride.
Airlines have an interest I'm sure, as the service does effect who I'd travel with. Bit that is only one ends to a means.
Close and don't show me this again damnit!
The reason is Chinese superstition. 8 is a lucky number in Chinese, because the sign for 8 shows two triangles pointing up. By the way, 4 is considered an unlucky number in China because it sounds similar to the word for death. Since most customers for both Airbus and Boeing are assumed to be in East Asia, their marketing departments put eights into their newest products wherever they can. The newest version of the 747 is called 747-8.
Do you spot a pattern?
You know it's time for the next revolution when your rulers' names end with roman numerals.
I also vastly prefer train travel to air travel within Europe.
Dunno about other parts of Europe, but at least here in Sweden, SJ have started providing free wifi on most of their regional and cross-country trains. You're limited to 200 MB on the regional trains, but that's plenty to surf and do email with for 1-2 hours, and hey, it's free.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Pedanticism strikes, there is no such plane as the A-350 nor the A-380. The aircraft is called the A350 and the A380. Airbus doesn't use hyphens in its main product name.
The big-planes, infrequently model doesn't really work with the hub-and-spokes model popular in the USA
Also, apparently American airlines typically use revenue management software optimized for smaller aircrafts, compared to that used by European carriers. http://www.businessweek.com/ar...
You're not kidding about Etihad! You get three %$#@! floors! There's like a living room/entry, a private en-suite bath/shower, and finally a double-bed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Still, that's a bargain compared to Justin Bieber's new 60 million dollar Gulfstream 6, with at least $3000 an hour operating costs, not counting the pilot.
Hey, I'll bet you can pick up a cheap used Gulfstream 5 from Bill Cosby soon for the right price.
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
Within Europe, the door-to-door time on trains is probably better anyway, and with no more worries about weather.
If your travel is 1-2 hours with train, then flying isn't really an option, that would be a 10 minute flight or something? But I much rather have a 50 minute flight than a 6-7 hour train ride.
High speed rail says hello. I know americans still think rail is deadlocked to 19th century technology but guys you know that 300-400 km/h trains do exist. And that speed is 1/2 of that of an airplane. Trains can do city to city and you spend less or at the worst the same amount of time a plane would need. And no TSA and balls groping either. Win win for rail.
Why does Qatar need 80 new planes, let alone 80 planes? The land mass of Qatar is 4,468 sq miles. That's about 67 miles on a side if you make is a square. If you evenly place these 80 new planes along the border of Qatar, there would be one every 3.3 miles. If these planes were taxiing around the border at the standard 30mph, and you stood there, one would pass you every 6.6 minutes.
I see. Border patrol.
Must have had an Amazon handslapping.
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
Because everyone in Europe has a high-speed rail station outside their house from where they can take a train all the way to their destination by the direct route without stopping anywhere in between.
You're right that flying makes little sense on short routes, due to the time taken to get on and off the plane. But high-speed rail makes little sense on those routes, either. When I lived in the UK, even the relatively slow 220-ish km/h inter-city trains used to spend about the first half hour crawling out of London before they could get up to speed, then, after a few minutes at that speed, they'd be crawling in and out of the stations where they stopped along the way.
From my preliminary understanding of things, you wouldn't be using Qatar Airways for flights within Europe anyway. They're more of a long-haul hub-and-spoke model airline that could take you from Europe to Africa or east Asia with a one-stop trip. For intra-European air travel you'd use a different airline, and probably a different model of airplane, optimized for fuel efficiency on shorter-haul trips (and possibly a narrowbody plane, if the airports in question aren't so busy that they're trying to max out every landing slot).
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I was referring to the regional trains. Cross-country takes longer, e.g. Stockholm to Malmö is 4-5 hours. Last time I took that route (something like 6-7 months ago), they'd just started including wifi with a paid ticket. I can't recall whether or not it was unlimited. The free wifi on the regional trains just started a couple of months ago.
For me, Stockholm to Malmö or Copenhagen takes about the same amount of time by train or by plane. I'm about a 20 minute subway ride from Stockholm Central, I only need to be there maybe 10 minutes before departure, and the other end of the journey is the central station in the destination city. Whereas Arlanda airport is about 90 minutes away for me, I have to be there at least an hour before takeoff, and it's 30 to 45 minutes from Kastrup into the downtown area of either city, which pretty well cancels out any speed advantage from flying.
And when I go by train, I don't have to worry about my bag being overweight or containing anything I'm not allowed to take on an aircraft.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I've flown first class before, but the value proposition isn't really there. Given the choice between flying first, or flying economy and keeping the price difference, I'd pick the latter (I'll happily fly first when someone else is paying and I don't have the choice of taking the money though). Economy (well, Economy Plus, but it's United, so Economy on any other airline) on the 787 was the first time I've been sufficiently comfortable in an economy seat to get productive work done - usually I just sleep or zone out and watch bad movies. The interesting thing was that the first and business sections didn't seem any different from the 777, only the cheap seats improved.
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First class and business tend to have their products refreshed on a more regular basis, because there's more involved in each rather than "seats" and "entertainment" in economy, and in the case of the 787 most airlines had planned to launch new first and business products with the introduction of the 787 into their fleets, but then the plane was hit with 5 years worth of delays so those products got launched on older aircraft instead.
Just here to spread a little FUD... I did a ton of engineering work on another one of EADS' fine products, the AS350 "A Star".
Now, granted, that's rotary-wing, and it's another division, but... trust me on this, guys, the electrical system was seriously lacking. Cartridge fuses, for one. Say the hydraulics go out. You have to unscrew the fuse holder, find a replacement on this little holder in the footwell (there's one on either side, a bit lower than the knee), make sure it's the right one, and screw it back in. God help you if it's a real emergency and you don't have time to do all that.
Generally, the rule of thumb is, if you can't live without it, you are allowed one reset of the circuit breaker. Either it immediately re-trips, or it starts working again and you have some time to plan an emergency landing.
Airbus has a similar thing going in that there are some systems that if they trip or are disabled, they cannot be re-enabled by anyone except maintenance, on the ground. There are arguments for this, but the thing that we pay pilots for is to, essentially, do absolutely nothing all the time - UNTIL a human is really, really required, in which case they become heroes. Every once in a while Sully has to lay it down in the Hudson, you know? Everything else is completely automated and there's very little that humans actually *need* to do to control a flight.
Boeing, on the other hand, gives humans ultimate control - it's assumed that if the pilot is trying to do something that looks dumb, that it's not because it's a dumb move, it's because he is an expert and knows better. Maybe there are extensive cautions and warnings, but, hey, if you have to push that button, it'll let you in the end, because maybe the risk of starting a fire is worth it and we really need the fuel pump NOW, or maybe because enabling the fuel transfer pump will dump all the remaining fuel outboard through a chunk of destroyed structure, and the flight computer cannot figure out why you would ever want to do that - perhaps you're already gliding, and you need landing weight to come down more than you need fuel?
Same philosophy with the 777 / 787. Composites had never been used on that scale before, so they were only used in noncritical applications. The wing roots were still metal, but the fuselage was composite. It's not that is wasn't an advanced design, the fan blades in the turbines could even be composite, but systems that if they were to fail would certainly kill everyone on board were built using proven tech. You can have a rotor burst and make it home OK, but if you lose a wing, well...
Airbus jumped right in and made really important things out of composites the first go. They chose correctly, in the end, but the aviation industry is built on the corpses of companies who were really, really good... but chose wrong *one time*. All this tech is pretty awesome and all, but when I am magically being hurtled through the stratosphere like a Greek god, I prefer reliability over all else. Plus, Boeing is made in America, so fuck yeah.
Tl;dr:
Boeing: Trust humans more, also America fuck yeah.
Airbus: Trust the machine more.
Plane: 90+60+30+70 min flight time = 4h 10 min hour. Train: 20+10+5.20 train time = 5h 50 min. You have a 3 hour 20 minute difference in travel time for a return trip.
On the other hand, pretty much all of those 4h10m are spend being unproductive if flying. Barely any time to do any work in between moving to the next stage, standing in line, and waiting for a few minutes here and there. However in the train scenario only half an hour really prevents work from being done, leaving a solid 5 hour work block to be utilized.
Flying might get you there faster, but you'll get more done on the train. Depends on your priorities and needs.
A lot of the long-haul flights that I've been on in the last couple of years haven't been full
Let me guess: You fly USA <=> Europe. Every USA <=> Asia flight I have been on the last two years has been 100% full.
IIRC Boeing was putting some pressure on the airlines not to make the 787 economy class too much like a can of sardines. That may well change when they're not trying to hype them anymore.
Always Europe at one end, Asia or the USA at the other end. I've been on one or two full flights from the USA, but I've also been on one where everyone in economy plus had a row of 3 seats to themselves, though economy was packed. Flying ANA to Japan there were quite a few empty seats.
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Hopefully the A350 can make up for the anemic A380 sales
The A380 is really huge. A lot of the long-haul flights that I've been on in the last couple of years haven't been full, even when they're the one flight of the day between two points and are on a plane with half of the capacity of the A380. It's a very economical plane to fly if you can fill it up, but if it's likely to be under half full then it's very expensive.
This has more to do with the way the US hub and spoke model is designed. If you travel between Europe and Asia or Asia and America the A380 is quite popular. Its taking over a lot of the routes that 747's were used for. QANTAS is replacing it's custom 747-ER aircraft with stock A380's for it's pacific routes.
The A380 has a bigger issue that gates at older airports need to be upgraded to accommodate the A380. Despite this, Airbus have delivered 147 airframes since release. Its really the 747-8 that is floundering.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I'm not sure which Singapore Airlines A380 you flew on, but the ones I've flown on have subjectively more legroom than any 747, 777 or A330 I've flown, mostly because the gap under the seats is slightly higher than older designs and free of added metal boxes for the retro-fitted entertainment systems, while keeping the same seat pitch.
Could you have picked a worse example? That train ride is less than the 2 hours that you are recommended to be at checkin before an international flight from a busy airport like Schiphol. Just getting from downtown Amsterdam to the airport has already lost you 30 minutes.