Slashdot Mirror
US Air Force Selects Boeing 747-8 To Replace Air Force One
Tyketto writes Following up on a previous story about its replacement, the US Air Force has selected the Boeing 747-8 to replace the aging Presidential fleet of two VC-25s, which are converted B747-200s. With the only other suitable aircraft being the Airbus A380, the USAF cited Boeing's 50-year history of building presidential aircraft as their reason to skip competition and opt directly for the aircraft, which due to dwindling sales and prospects, may be the last 747s to be produced.
which due to dwindling sales and prospects, may be the last 747s to be produced.
the 747 has been around forever, with many upgrades over that time. it has a proven track record. Now, generally im against no bid contracts, but this one makes sense.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
So...$1.65 billion to buy the planes from Boeing, and how many millions per year to have Boeing keep a tooling line up for spare parts?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Even if Boeing stopped building 747 variants tomorrow, they'd be around for ages. They're the mainstay for long-haul travel, and dwindling sales probably are more related to market saturation - as in, there are enough in the air now to meet current demand - than any inherent shortcoming in the design.
I suspect that there are more refinements to come - it's just too useful an airframe to discard. It may take Boeing a bit to roll in some of the working dreamliner tech but it seems reasonable that they'd try to do that when time and demand permit.
"Truth is what works" -- William James "It works!!" -- o-dark-AM comment
So they could whine about all the protectionism in the US, to justify their own protectionism.
Learn to love Alaska
I don't think any other country is unduly concerned about us not opening up bids on a project like AF1. It's one or two planes. The symbolic value of the plane is significant, and honestly, isn't really what is beggaring the country.
No foreign corporation is going to seriously complain that they didn't get to build the one plane for the head of state for another country over a local builder.
The symbolic requirement isn't good enough to force the rest of the government to buy all Boeing, but unless the 747-8 was a complete pile of shit or twice the price of the comparable Airbus model, that one plane is not really a big deal.
And, 2 engines are actually more reliable than 4 - less that can go wrong.
Right, which is why nobody would ever buy a server with 2 power supplies when 1 will do. Nobody would ever build a cluster of low power systems rather than using a single high power machine, etc.
And, 2 engines are actually more reliable than 4 - less that can go wrong.
No.
Let p be the probability of one engine failing during a typical flight. We can assume p is a very small number, because the engines are designed and maintained well.
The probability of both engines failing on a 2-engine aircraft is p^2, an even smaller number. The probability of all 4 engines failing on a 4-engine aircraft is p^4, a number that is even smaller still than p^2. So, having 4 engines instead of 2 reduces the probability of all engines failing, and makes the plane more reliable.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
The Airbus A-380 is about 20% less costly than the 747-8. They're wasting taxpayer money as usual.
So you think that flight time costs have much all to do with the total bill for shuttling the president of the United States around?
You need to get out more often.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
This seems like an obvious question but why does one guy and his staff need a more than 400 passenger plane? Wouldn't something built for extended flight time, reliability, and speed that held closer to 75 or 100 passengers still be overkill? I certainly don't know a lot about airplanes so maybe a better alternative simply doesn't exist and this was the best option. Are there better 100 passenger options?
Saying "all faiths are equivalent" is akin to saying "all drugs are the same".
Cone of Silence?
Your Beaver is NOT pressurized. Airliners have airframes whose service lives are based in part on the number of pressurizations/depressurizations. Every time the airliner ascends it inflates a bit like a balloon and when it descends it contracts again, and each of these cycles not only stresses the Aluminum skin generally but it specifically stresses any area around a hole (like around rivet holes and large holes like doors and windows).
This is why a B-25, for example, can be kept flying forever but a pressurized airliner will eventually be scrapped. Again, this is not based on airfarme age in years, but rather in cycles. There are still 727's flying today - but they are ones that flew infrequent long flights rather than lots of short hops (those airframes becale razor blades long ago). These pressure cycles can lead to a relatively young (in years) airframe failing if that airframe makes lots of short hops, like between Hawaiian islands as with Aloha 243
Why not convert a C17 - its more manoueverable, and can use smaller airfields