The future in long haul is mid-size highly efficient twin engine jets and here Airbus is scrambling to catch up with Boeing in both sales and design.
Boeing clearly made the right call, but there's an element of hindsight at play. Emirates, Etihad and Singapore have been very successful as pure hub-and-spoke airlines and there's still a vast amount of traffic going through the major hub airports.
The lead time on new aircraft designs is immense - the A3XX project started in 1994 and took the first orders in 2000. Airbus made some strategic blunders and didn't respond quickly enough to market conditions, but in some respects they were just unlucky. Boeing's 747X project failed and they have struggled with sales for the 747-8, but they avoided heavy losses by re-using old IP rather than launching a completely new platform. Both manufacturers were caught off-guard by the events of 2008.
I heard an analyst say that you have to carry a lot of fuel to carry a lot of fuel. The optimal size from an efficiency perspective is the much smaller 737 -- the more you deviate from that, the larger the efficiency penalty.
Yep! Aerospace has been on the leading edge of manufacturing methods for many years because of it. Even worse is having a heavy airplane at the start of the flight (the weight is always there).
In school we were talking about manufacturing aerospace parts, and the joke is that you always take a nice chunk of aluminum and machine away 85% of the volume.
GE has been doing lots of work with metal additive manufacturing, in some cases increasing performance while also decreasing cost. It allows geometries which are otherwise impossible with traditional manufacturing methods.
Metal AM is also hella expensive. You won't see tons of metal AM parts on consumer cars anytime soon, as the metal powders and machines are expensive, and production rates are often slow in comparison to traditional manufacturing methods.
For reference, my professor passed around a part which weighed around 2 pounds and fit in your hand. The all-in cost to get that printed in steel was around $5,000, and around $8,000 for titanium.
https://www.ge.com/reports/epiphany-disruption-ge-additive-c...
In rocket applications, this is known as Tsiolkovsky rocket equation [0].
Yet still Boeing flexed their lobbyists.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSeries_dumping_petition_by_Bo...
Boeing's bid to Delta was some Embraer E series they had from an Air Canada trade-in. [1]
No model of 737MAX competes with the C Series for Delta's RFP. Both Boeing and Delta have readily admitted this when asked (see [1]).
Boeing has nothing in the market to compete with regional jets like the C Series. This is exactly why they are now looking into buying Embraer to counter Airbus acquiring a majority stake in the C Series. [2]
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/scotthamilton5/2016/05/17/embra...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-21/boeing-is...
Not sure how you came to that conclusion. Let me try again:
It's like going to a Ford dealership and asking them for a scooter. Because Ford doesn't manufacture scooters, they offer to sell you a Vespa instead because the last customer traded one in.
Sure, they'll make a sale, but it's not like Ford makes the Vespa or the replacement parts for a Vespa (maintenance contracts are a BFD in aerospace, often worth more than the initial plane order).
So now you (Delta) come and want to buy 100 Vespas, and Ford still doesn't make a Vespa and has no plans to. So while slagging Vespa (Bombardier) for detracting from Ford's scooter sales they start talks to buy Vespa's closest competitor (Embraer).
Yeah... Totally competing in the same segment...
So to bid against Bombardier, Boeing didn't even try to offer 737s, knowing they can't fit Delta's needs. Instead they offered 717s and Embrauers, both of which are used (Boeing canceled the 717 over a decade ago).
Foreign automakers can't sell trucks in the US.
It's pretty clear that airplanes are expensive to build, and every large plane manufacturer has government subsidies, but Boeing is being particularly anti-competitive in this instance and is getting away with it.
The fact that they have instigated litigation in what is, for them, a relatively fringe sector.
However this segment probably isn't big enough to justify such an expensive production line...
@frik - for some reason you are "dead" - no-one can see your comments since 5 days ago. Edit: now you're not! Congratulations I guess?
How Airlines Schedule Flights https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGXahSnA_oA
Say a business class ticket for a transatlantic flight is 5x an economy and a first class ticket is 10x an economy.
And the plane, of course, is largely fixed costs.
1) they could essentially justify a lightly loaded economy section due to Business / First passengers (I’ve done several cheap mileage runs before where I had multiple rows to myself in economy). When those $$$$ passengers switched to the nicer Emirates/Etihad/etc flights, they lost that marginal advantage.
2) on top of #1, another major factor is that Etihad/Emirates/etc are heavily subsidized by their national governments. Due to this, the slot fees were much cheaper for them than US based airlines further reducing any money to be made on those segments by US based airlines.
The end result of the above is that now you have to use an alliance partner + connection to get from US to the Middle East (or fly a MENA based airline) where as before you could choose from dozens of directs.
Not the fanciest interior/seat but the food and service were great when I've flown.
Both are done by BA, and both are stopping.
A380 is in its own league, super comfortable, super low noise. No 747, 777 or 787 can match the comfort. They are noisier, or have downsides.
The 787's larger windows (combined with being tall) means I get an almost 360 view around the plane through windows around me over people's heads (until they dim everybody's windows by default * shakes fist * )
Cost of a typical trip w/ shades x Cost of a typical trip w/out shades
Then account for the average number of trips in a year.
May seem like an exaggeration but the impact of some decisions, even though seemingly tiny, may be bigger than expected.
The actual number is almost double that, but that doesn’t negate your point. More than weight, I think it was seen as a “nicety”. I think with the new Gen 2 (and soon Gen 3) Windows, people won’t mind them as much as the newer generations are MUCH darker.
Also it doesn't get all the way dark. I just feel it was a piece of engineering that doesn't need to be there in my opinion.
1. Removing weight. 2. Removing moving parts. 3. Removing cleaning cost
Does not seem like a good idea?
I have friends that are involved in aircraft design. They tell me they count every tie wrap for wiring vs. weight requirements. The remove as many moving parts as they can to cut mantaince cost.
I worked at a company that made a complex piece of networking equipment. On the board they spent a ton of time engineering out caps. They only cost a few cents per board. The cost was not the issue. It turns out that removing as many as they could upped the MTBF by 40%.
Everything is never that simple. Boeing did not just add this type of window because they thought it was cool.
Correct, but not every window aligns directly with a row.
Let’s use an UAL 787-8 for example. There’s ~10 windows per side in first class, but yet only six rows of seats (6x6 = 36 seats for about twenty Windows). In economy, there’s about 32 windows (give or take 2) on each side and yet only 20 outside rows. The middle section has 21 rows, all sections having three across seating, for a total of 183 seats in economy.
> Also it doesn't get all the way dark.
As I said, the Gen 2 windows (just rolling out now) and the forth coming Gen 3 help solve that problem. Rather than the dark blue of the current Gen 1 windows, each successive generation gets darker with the Gen 3 windows being 100x darker.
Source: https://thepointsguy.com/2016/01/darker-windows-coming-to-78...
> I just feel it was a piece of engineering that doesn't need to be there in my opinion.
I mostly agree with you, but I personally enjoy seeing out the window without the glare of the sun in my face. YMMV
Are they scrambling? Not really. Boeing is making a fair amount more money than Airbus but they’re producing about the same number of planes (Airbus probably has a slight edge in order count). Airbus was formed as a program to address Europe’s concern about relying on North America for airliners. It’s not clear even today that they really care about actually making money from selling airplanes.
So yeah, I’d call that being a bit behind in that market segment.
To the end of last month there were 858 orders (133 delivered) for the A350 versus 1287 (625 delivered) for the Dreamliner. Considering the 787 had a head start (787 introduced in 2011, A350 XWB in 2015), the pressure’s on Airbus to keep ramping up deliveries (the last few years it looks like Boeing’s stabilised at ~130 per year) but that gap’s going to shrink pretty quickly…
TL;DR the 787 didn't have a 4 year head start. The A350 arrived 4 years late after a complete redesign.
The 787's been in production and delivering aircraft for 4 years longer than the A350 XWB, which is still ramping up [1]. If that's not a head start when we're comparing delivered aircraft between the two then I don't know what is; the fact that Airbus let Boeing have that lead by wasting their time trying to hawk an A330 with revised wings and engines is neither here nor there.
> Airbus plans to increase its production rate from 10 monthly in 2018 to 13 monthly from 2019, while the Boeing 787 production will increase from 12 to 14 per month in 2019, and six A330 are produced monthly.
850 + 425 = 1275
Looks pretty damn close to 50% more orders for Boeing, so I'm not sure what you are implying.
The A350 is considerably bigger than the 787, it actually competes against the 777 ( original and X ).
The 787-8 and -9 have the same floor area as the much older Airbus A330-200 and -300 respectively.
Airbus doesn't have a direct rival to the 787 other than the warmed-over A330Neo.
I agree with your first paragraph, but not at all sure about this. Current air transportation is very stratified, but some of its numerous rules could get a major rework in the next N years (N >= 10). Current setup has mid-size sweetspot when optimized on existing rules on routes, airport slots, weather requirements and in general ATC that is over 30 years old.
Even if only parts of the plans get accepted they can change optimizations significantly, e.g. if and when Nextgen allows planes fly directly from A to B (instead of along a few pre-defined segments) it might push sweetspot from mostly mid-size to a bimodal distribution: smaller for small airports, larger between main hubs. Or some other way.
Yes, and I believe they do not upgrade because it makes no business sense for them. Regulators say, for example, "install ADS-B so you are compliant with latest standards" which at the moment has no tangible benefits for the airline. If, by installing it airline would get useful additional capabilities, such as being able to fly direct from point A to point B or allow for lower separation I suspect they would upgrade quickly.
The above is not (really) bashing ATC -- there is a very low tolerance for mid-air collisions, so regulatory change is very, very slow.
Agreed. Those little wingtip flip-ups--man, those went through the industry like wildfire. I never saw those and then BAM suddenly they were on every plane I flew on.
The airlines can move like the wind when money is actually involved.
Isn't the A350 already a very good contender there?
The A350 has around 850 orders vs. Boeing 1250 orders for their 787.
So "scrambling" is highly subjective and suggestive.
The governments of Dubai and Abu Dhabi have invested a fortune into their international hubs. The shift away from hub-and-spoke is a demise for them, too.
It's pretty clear—Canada. That said, there's a significant change: sales, and post-sales work, will mostly be handled by Airbus, who already have much more contact with many more airlines and leasing companies than Bombardier.