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Comment by eroded | Hacker News Reader

Alas the 787's expectations are too high, as the aircraft is basically an update of the Boeing 767. As with all launches, there’s a lot of hype and Boeing has certainly made a big deal out of it, but it’s not a radically different experience for passengers. While aviation buffs will know better, I think most of the flying public are expecting an improvement on the 777 and unfortunately it’s not – at least from the passenger’s seat.

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It's actually a huge improvement from the passenger's seat as well. The new Sky interior gives the compartment a much nicer and cleaner feel, while opening things up and making the plane feel much larger. Normally I can't stand up straight in a plane; I'm too tall. I can stand in a sky interior plane. The overhead bins are much bigger, as well. They work on a different mechanism which will keep overstuffed bins from spilling their contents on poor souls beneath. The ride is also much quieter inside than previous models. Then, on top of that, you have the dimming windows, which are just plain cool. It's a huge improvement.

The plane is made primarily of composite materials, allowing it to be an efficient enough proposition for the airline for me here in Boston to go direct to Tokyo. No layover. I can feel that from the passenger seat. Ok so it isn't the successor to the Concorde, but 20% efficiency is not insignificant.

Another important difference is that the 787's lower weight means it doesn't require runways to be as long, and so can land at smaller airports, opening up more flight plans and destinations.

Source: guide talked about it when I went on the factory tour.

It's not just composites either. One interesting innovation about lower weight comes from the way the wings are designed. Someone on Reddit explained: But the 787 wings are less stiff, proportionately to their size, than those of most other airliners. This is because there's a system that, during heavy loads, puts most of the load on the area of the wing that is closer to the fuselage, so the wing bending moment is alleviated, i.e. the wingtip never experiences loads as high as on other airplanes. So you can get away with less wing structure. http://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/wb764/these_compos...

What about the air pressure difference? As someone that works in a high rise, and has allergies, ear discomfort is a very daily thing, and sometimes downright upsetting when flying.

I suspect the higher cabin humidity and higher cabin pressure will make the airliner significantly more comfortable. These, combined with the larger windows could actually make a difference in terms of how air travel feels. It's hard to say whether they'll be too subtle to notice, though.

Yes, the 787 will have a max cabin altitude of 6000ft. Other airliners work to 8000ft. The upshot is denser, more refreshing, air which makes for a comfortable and less fatiguing journey.

The upshot is "potentially" denser more refreshing air - the airline still gets to decide how much fuel (=$$$) it's wants to 'waste' refreshing that air.

This is (almost entirely) a myth.

http://www.salon.com/2009/09/25/askthepilot335/

It's a myth that the pilot can "turn up" the amount of oxygen.

But the ratio of fresh air that the airline has selected depends on how much fuel that they want to waste heating the -50C fresh air to cabin temperature, and how much humidity they want to put on the airframes life.

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