Boeing sets (another) date for first Dreamliner flight Boeing yesterday announced that the first flight of its 787 Dreamliner will now take place in the second quarter of 2009 ahead of a first delivery in Q1 2010. The Boeing Dreamliner in All Nippon Airways livery. Source: Boeing Boeing says the new schedule "reflects the impact of disruption caused by the recent machinists' …
Given the problems and delays how long before the 787 is renamed The Nightmare Liner?
Fifty years of both setting the standard and meeting the needs of the industry by innovation and rapid response to individual customer needs could count for nothing if this project drags on into further delays or, heaven forbid, finds any problems when the aircraft eventually flies.
The only thing going for Boeing with this at present is the world wide recession which is keeping attention from the project, both in the general media and in the minds of customers who have much greater problems to confront than the delay in putting an new aircraft into service. In fact many customers will be relieved thay are not faced with the costs at present - or for the next number of months.
when you don't have a multi-government socialist cartel that can force all subsidiary industries (parts and materiel suppliers), as well as support (entire airports and their loading gates) using the combined weight of taxpayer money and legislative fiat to overcome obstacles to developing new aircraft.
Boeing couldn't innovate with the Sonic Cruiser because its configuration didn't fit existing loading gates, and airports didn't want to spend the tax money needed to adapt. Airbus wants to build their superjumbo that didn't fit existing loading gates, EU government forced the change to make a market for the aircraft.
Of course, I admit to being jealous-having a government that is fanatically protectivist towards it's own industries to the detriment of all foreign economies if necessary, versus our government that sells our industries down the river to support foreign business interests. We'll destroy our industries for "green" causes, subsidize an illegal working underclass to drive down legitimate wages while allowing a corrupt neighbor to bleed off angry population, we'll give off "most favored trade" status to subsidize foreign slave labor, go to the effort of creating special immigration and tax codes to short change locally trained expertise for cheap foreign outsourcing, and allow our education system to be castrated by political correctness, a policy of indoctrination and medication over education, and out of control teachers' unions. To add insult to injury, our "government" comes up with this "bail out" b*llocks to try to support-not repair-the damage they caused in the first place!
... out of a cannon in to the sun for the following:-
"However, Pat Shanahan, 787 program vice president, assured: "We're laser focused on what needs to be done to prepare for first flight. We will overcome this set of circumstances as we have others in the past, and we understand clearly what needs to be done moving forward."
laser focused AND moving forward in the same short blurb...
Why do people still insist on using these horrific buzzword phrases?
Learn to use the English language properly
</rant>
He can't be talking about the US because he claims the country he's talking about is not protectivist and anybody who thinks the US is not ultra-protectivist has clearly tried to be a foreigner buying one of their airlines. As opposed to the UK where outside investment and ownership are positively welcomed.
So he must talking about the UK but simply be unable to spell.
build the BelGeddes Airliner #4, maybe spruce it up with some modern engine concepts, even in its original design it was far more comfy and fuel efficient than 727s and 747's are today.
It was designed to *sleep 600 comfortably* as in staterooms, tennis courts, restaurants .. the whole red carpet cruise ship treatment ... in an airplane. Complete with a crew of around 155, lifeboats and even 2 small aircraft to go for help. What's more it was designed to carry over 600,000 pounds of cargo (about 273,000kg) .. more than 4 times what a 747 can manage. I'd think Fed-EX and UPS would be drooling at the thought.
As long as you don't mind a nice 48hour cruise across the Atlantic. Oh, and with a service ceiling of 10,000 feet and pressurized cabins you won't get swollen ankles.
http://haha.nu/misc/the-bel-geddes-airliner-4/
http://home.att.net/~dannysoar/BelGeddes.htm
The 787 is an ambitious project. Not just in terms of the final product (most fuel effecient airliner ever, a whole new class or plane designed to be used in a way that has never been practical before, featuring key technologies that have never been off the testbench) but the many brave predictions Boeing made about its development - I believe it is the shortest project ramp-up, the most complex risk-sharing arrangement, the shortest test program and the fastest (projected) production rate increase they have ever attempted.
The whole thing seems predicated on the idea that "Nothing can possibly go wrong". So far they literally can't even get the nuts and bolts right. The boys in Seattle and Chicago seem to have forgotten that Murphy was an aerospace engineer.
Pat Shanahan, 787 program vice president, assured: "We're laser focused on what needs to be done to prepare for first flight. We will overcome this set of circumstances as we have others in the past, and we understand clearly what needs to be done moving forward."
I vote "laser focused" as the most annoying new saying for 2008!
So the EU bullied it's well-known domestic airlines of Quantas, Emirates and Singapore into ordering the plane? And forced airports all over the world to upgrade their facilites to accommodate the Great White Whale?
Methinks someone is over-estimating the global clout of Brussels by several orders of magnitude.
Trygve , what is this about the EU bullying Quantas, Emerates, and Singapore airlines into buying the Airbus, and forcing airports to upgrade.
I thought that Airbus had worked hard on showing the airlines the virtues of the 380, but as I am tucked away in remote New Zealand maybe I don't know what you know
Perhaps you can elaborate on this cloak and dagger stuff.
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