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There can be quite a large amount of innovation even in iterating on existing designs.

Boeing is using new materials, and the new high-bypass engines for the 787 and 747-8 are quite a technological achievement.

People also forget that Boeing like many other aerospace companies rely on government funding and military contracts.

Many of Boeing's commercial aircraft either started as military designs for long range bombers and cargo aircraft or were a sister project of one.

Airbus was pretty much a hail mary effort by Europe to revive their aerospace industry, the UK, France, Italy and Germany have dumped billions of tax payer money to get Airbus off the ground. Airbus got preferential treatment in the EU market, and even it relies quite heavily on it's military wing for a large part of their profits.

As far as individual programs go the 787 like the 777 doesn't have military variants at this point, the "newest" Boeing aircraft with military versions is the 767 (there are plenty of 737 tankers and CIC/AW aircraft out there, and even 707's) and it does't look like they will ever receive one.

But it's also very hard to estimate the worth of a program, the 787 might not break even in the books, but the technology, experience, patents and intellectual property that came out of that program may very well be highly profitable.

+1 for pointing out that Boeing has significant revenue from military contracts. The Seattle Times analysis seems not to take that into account, but rather focuses on purely commercial aspects.

New passenger planes are extraordinarily expensive to develop, and only 2-3 corporations in the entire world are capable of it.

Boeing traditionally has introduced new models with advantageous features, then continued selling them for decades, gradually rolling out slightly modernized versions that the airlines can purchase to refresh their fleets without completely retooling to support a newer model (retraining mechanics, purchasing new parts, etc.).

The article argues that Boeing will take ~5 years to break even. That actually sounds pretty good. I would give them 10-15 years.

The fact that only one Boeing person seems to have been consulted for this article suggests that it's mostly speculation by outsiders and former insiders, and not a realistic analysis based on comprehensive data. If Boeing's betting on military contracts to keep it afloat while the more profitable 787-9 and -10 models come online, so what? Sounds like a reasonable thing for this kind of manufacturer.

And those designs live for quite a long time, the brand new USAF tankers which will come into service in 2017 are based on the 767.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_KC-46_Pegasus

Those tankers however will use new technologies from other projects like the cockpit displays and avionics from the 787.

And these ones will slowly replace the USAF current tankers the KC-135 which are based on the Boeing 367 (which turned into the 707 for it's commercial release) which has been flying since the mid 50's.

People underestimate the life span of most aircraft designs, at least of the good ones if the design is superior it's practically timeless.

The US is still building new U-2's because there's nothing comparable to it still.

> The US is still building new U-2's because there's nothing comparable to it still.

Last built in 1989 I'm afraid, though they're still pushing off retirement because drones haven't quite taken over the game yet.

What can a U2 do that a drone can't do?

The U2 carries pretty much every airborne sensor we've built so far, when it comes to ISR roles the U2 can fly much higher and further than any drone, and give both line of sight and over the horizon coverage which most drones cant. The Global Hawk can almost match the U2 in altitude 60,000 feet vs 70,000 but it can carry only a fraction of the sensors that the U2 can, and it also is currently more expensive than the U2.

If it retires I hope that the US will preserve some for private sale, I would rather fly in a U2 at this point than than on the spaceship one, there's just something about a minimalistic design from the dawn of the "atomic age" which is still relevant today that can bring you to 1/8th of the way to low earth orbit that is inspiring.

The last air-frame was built in 98, and they are still rebuilding older ones to the new U2-S specs, and now in 2016 it will again get upgraded with new tech.

>New passenger planes are extraordinarily expensive to develop, and only 2-3 corporations in the entire world are capable of it.

There would probably be more if it weren't for the vast subsidies thrown at both boeing and airbus. That pretty much locks out all potential from competition from anywhere except maybe China.

Europe tried that and it killed their aerospace industry which resulted in them having to pay tenfold to revive it.

Aerospace companies just like space programs are force multipliers their value is several orders of magnitude greater than what they make because they propel all industries within a nation forward.

While for-profit companies should not be funded on the same level as government organizations I would not advocate more for removing subsidizing from the likes of Boeing than I would for the stop to NASA funding because they are one and the same.

The US government partially funded the development of the Falcon 9 launch system and the department of energy grant was critical from keeping Tesla from going under. Government funding of key technology sectors is something we should all strive to increase because it's one of the few government spending programs that later pays for its self 10 times over.

That wasn't a suggestion or a value judgement. It was a statement of fact.

> Boeing is using new materials, and the new high-bypass engines for the 787 and 747-8 are quite a technological achievement.

There are no "new" materials in the 787, and the engines were developed by GE and RR under their own financial risk. They fit on the A330Neo and A350 just fine, too.

The now mostly-forgotten Raytheon Premier light business jet was the most relevant pioneer of all-composite commercial aviation structures[0] and the 787 is basically a scale-up of those principles, with a wound-barrel fuselage.

It's really the engines and the high-aspect ratio wing that make the 787 more efficient than the previous generation of airliners. All the other fluff is just marketing.

[0] and even that was decades later than all-composite home-builts, and the Learfan, Beech Starship, Avtek-400 and whole buch of others... plus of course Airbus have been using composite structural components since the late 1970s.

The Trent 1000 and GEnx are bleedless engines so no they would not fit the A330Neo and A350 just fine.

How many private company has more space flight knowledge, patents, or design experience than Boeing?

Agreed, do people not realize how involved Boeing is with the commercial space landscape?

>we're seeing less improvement because no one, in terms of passengers, wants to pay for the cost involved to really inovate.

We tried this with the Concorde. The pricing was terrible and it was a turkey in the sky that even rich people didn't care enough to use frequently. Saving x amount of time for y dollars didn't work. As a side note, I saw a Concorde at the Air and Space museum recently. Its huge. About the length of a 787 and with less than half the seating capacity. From a cost perspective, there's no way something like would ever be financially sound. How many people are in such a hurry and willing to pay such a premium?

Just because speed has reached a status quo of speed vs fuel, doesn't mean you can't innovate in other ways. The interior and driving experience of a 2015 Honda Civic is far, far better than the 1979 Civic. Yet they both do the same 65 mph on the expressway and both are cheap.

Blaming consumers is short-sighted and unfair here. The industry competes largely on fuel efficiency anyway. The 787 is 20% more efficient than the 767, for example. Nicer entertainment systems and creature comforts are an added bonus.

To avoid the "bet the company" issue, maybe the future of new aircraft designs will be to create a company specifically to design and build one new aircraft. That company will have a management and marketing agreement with the aircraft company that created it, and will issue equity and debt to finance the design and build. Most of its staff will be on secondment from the "parent" company, and it collects royalties on the eventual aircraft sales/leases.

You pretty much have to give equity for that kind of risk, because the interest on bonds you could sell would not be commensurate with the projected cashflow.

But "betting the company" doesn't mean in this case that the company would disappear. It would just go bankrupt. That is a scary word, but in a case of Boeing, (some) equity would just be transferred from shareholders to creditors; operations would not be affected.

So you're saying the next big thing is indie aircraft?

That literally will not fly, at least not in the commercial space.

Perhaps not in commercial space, but given liability structures in private and small aircraft, the situation for quite some decades has been that innovative design has largely emerged in kit aircraft. I recall discussion of this when John Denver died in the crash of his experimental airplane in 1997.

You still need to pass quite a bit of regulation for private aircraft because you know if they fall they can kill more than just their pilot.

Kit aircraft can only be licensed as "experimental" under FAA rules AFAIK which quite limits the potential customer base which is quite small to begin with.

Understood. Point being that manufacturer liability means that there's been exceptionally little innovation in basic private aircraft (e.g., Cessna, Piper) for decades. Your basic designs date from the 1950s/1960s.

Private jets, somewhat less so, but still pretty conservative.

There's also very little profits in the market, most aerospace companies that sold aircraft to individuals have died, all business jet makers have also died.

Learjet wen't bankrupt, it's now owned by Bombardier, Gulfstream is owned by General Dynamics and even before that it had to shed much of it's design and manufacturing capabilities and had to license the designs for their most popular jets like the G100 and 200 series from Israel Aerospace Industries.

Thanks for the additional info. I didn't realise the business jet space had consolidated.

Most of what I know about Lear is Chrystal Shanda.