Boeing 787 Dreamliner Delayed Again

An anonymous reader writes "It's not just that the Boeing 787 Dreamliner may be unsafe or vulnerable to hacker attacks. At this point, it seems everyone would be happy for it to arrive in any state. The 787's carbon-fiber construction and next-generation technology have pushed back their delivery schedule once again, this time requiring a redesign of the plane's wingbox. Airlines will have to wait 18 more months to get it delivered, which is an extremely serious blow to the credibility of the company and their financial standing, as they would have to pay penalties to the buyers of more than 850 of these planes. And we thought Airbus had problems." Good thing Boeing can still count on its patent portfolio.

Good for them

[Bananatree3]

It's good they are at least owning up to the fact it isn't ready rather than sweeping design problems under the rug. Sure they probably shouldn't have had the huge 787 rollout fainfair [flickr.com] months ago.

it scares the shit out of me just to think if Microsoft made airplanes.

It matters. But really it doesn't.

[Anonymous Coward]

The advantages of the 787 so ridiculously out class it's peers (weight savings with agressive use of composites) that as long as there's nothing forth coming that competes with it, it won't matter. Back in the 90's when I paid 98 cents for a gallon of gas shaving 1 lb off the weight of an aircraft saved airlines 20k a year in operating costs for that aircraft. Now with oil prices so high, imagine the savings by shaving up to 1/3 of the weight of some parts looks like?

Comparison

[The Bender]

Ok, so everybody schedules aggressively, and everybody has unforseen delays. It's kind of funny now remembering how Boeing were crowing over the A380 problems, but what I'd like to know is how the 380 vs 787 delays stack up against each other.

Anyone got a clue?

Wrong

[Hognoxious]

At this point, it seems everyone would be happy for it to arrive in any state.

Nope. I'd rather have it working properly in a year than have it falling out of the sky right now, thanks all the same.

Re:It matters. But really it doesn't.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that depends on what your calculations say. Does running three 787s on one route twice a day work out cheaper than two A380's once a day? What do your projections say: do expect to continue running the same route for the next ten or twenty years?

When the bill is hundreds of millions of [dollars|Euros] you don't make your decision based on whether one is made with a cooler process than the other.

Re:They had a shot at Airbus

[Anonymous Coward]

By "superplane wannabe", I take it you mean "superplane"? What's "wannabe" about it?

The A380 and 787 aren't direct competitors. The A350 will be Airbus's 787 equivalent, but yes the 787 delays could help Airbus in the long run.

Re:Can someone enlightened with engineering....

[Richard_at_work]

Sound and fuel costs. We currently have no way of stopping the sonic boom caused by an aircraft, so flying over populated areas supersonic is completely out of the question, and designing an aircraft that can carry an economical number of people longhaul while traveling at supersonic speeds but also while not costing an arm and a leg to operate is not an easy feat - you have to use a tremendous amount of fuel to get to your cruise speed (fuel usage drops off quite sharply actually after around Mach 1.2 - the biggest fuel usage area is the Mach 0.95 - Mach 1.5 areas) and people are no longer willing to pay the sort of money that would take.

Its worth noting however, that Concorde, while a program failure, was quite profitable for British Airways in operation - at some points it was BAs most profitable area of operations across its entire business.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Can someone enlightened with engineering....

[call-me-kenneth]

explain to me what issues are there for which in 2008 we still have to resort to sub-sonic air flights?

Simple. Drag increases as the square of velocity [wikipedia.org]. Have you seen fuel prices lately?

Aren't airplanes a little "Last Century?"

[sticks_us]

In an era where we can communicate around the world with unprecedented ease and speed, shouldn't we be flying LESS?

I'm not thinking about social/pleasure travel, but business travel (which accounts for a large percentage of all flyers). If you work in IT, there are very few tasks you can't accomplish over the WWW, and it seems that most of one's travel obligation has more to do with proving to management that you actually exist. "Face time" is a crutch for managers who don't get it.

Seriously, folks.

Re:It matters. But really it doesn't.

[Y-Crate]

Well, that depends on what your calculations say. Does running three 787s on one route twice a day work out cheaper than two A380's once a day? What do your projections say: do expect to continue running the same route for the next ten or twenty years?

Not to mention the serious decline in the number of open takeoff and landing spots at many airports. The rise in air travel combined with the trend towards smaller aircraft has helped choke many of them.

Airlines are being faced with the situation of not having the ability to add more and more flights to their schedules from certain locations. So it's not even necessarily a choice between fuel cost X and fuel cost Y. More like "We've got Z number of landing spots, and we can free up three of them with one plane. We can serve other markets with the two open spots the A380 gives us."

The Airbus isn't some magical solution applicable to all situations, and there are many where the 787 is the better option, but it's disingenuous to say the A380 is some kind of relic of a time gone by, a plane that doesn't meet the requirements of today's airlines.

Re:Can someone enlightened with engineering....

[evilviper]

in 2008 we still have to resort to sub-sonic air flights?

Exactly the same reasons we "have to resort to" sub-200MPH car travel...

"Getting there faster" should never be a goal in designing a commercial passenger jet. The vast majority of flights are so short that you spend more time on the ground, in the terminal, than you do in the air, so the overall improvement would be minuscule.

The Boeing 787 significantly reduces fuel consumption, which should reduce ticket prices, and hopefully put airlines in a more tenable position.
The Airbus A-380 forgoes any fuel savings, and opts, instead, for fitting far more people in a single plane, which should reduce the epic congestion problem causing delays at airports.
Both are laudable goals, and a supersonic aircraft would not-only fail to address either problem, it would make both issues far worse.

The fact that passenger aircraft have increased in speed over the years is really almost accidental. Jets became popular NOT because they were faster for the passengers, but because the maintenance costs were so much lower than traditional propeller aircraft. In fact, even slower turboprops look to be making a comeback, due to their lower fuel costs. If fuel prices continue to rise unchecked, it won't be long before we'll all be back to traveling in passenger trains, and trans-oceanic steamers. Maybe they'll rename "coach" seats "steerage".

Re:Newfangled

[cjsm]

People frequently get modded down for making reasonable comments on Slashdot if it doesn't fit in with standard Slashdot groupthink. You were not offtopic, you were implicitly stating you didn't trust composite aircraft as opposed to aluminum. A reasonable and on topic statement. God forbid anyone saying they think downloading music without paying for it is wrong.

Re:Comparison

[Richard_at_work]

Only while Airbus prices its aircraft in dollars (its studying a move to Euros) and while Airbus predominantly sources parts outside the dollar zone (the A350 will be built more than 50% in the dollar zone).

However, the weaker dollar is certainly going to harm Boeing - it pays all of its suppliers in dollars, regardless of their local currency, and there is a certain point at which the suppliers can no longer build the parts cost effectively with the dollar so devalued (they still need to pay their workforce and local suppliers in local currency, with the dollar nose-diving they get less local currency for their wares) - at that point, suppliers start telling Boeing to either cough up or go elsewhere.

Re:Aren't airplanes a little "Last Century?"

[at_18]

In an era where we can communicate around the world with unprecedented ease and speed, shouldn't we be flying LESS?

I'm not thinking about social/pleasure travel, but business travel (which accounts for a large percentage of all flyers). If you work in IT, there are very few tasks you can't accomplish over the WWW, and it seems that most of one's travel obligation has more to do with proving to management that you actually exist. "Face time" is a crutch for managers who don't get it.


Oh sure, we do fly less - in percentage terms, not in absolute terms. At my workplace it seems there is some kind of telephone- or video-conference with the other side of the world something like every other day, for various projects. A videoconference is much cheaper and convenient than an actual meeting.

But, we are now used to a much higher degree of interaction with our foreign partners. So, if ten years ago it was two meeting and two flights a year, today it's ten meetings, of which 2/3 are by videocon - and three or four by plane. Only 1/3 of the meetings involve flying, but the number of flights has gone up anyway.

WHY no high speed rail.

[WindBourne]

Because we had high speed transportation via airports for over 50 years from just about any city to another city. And it has been much cheaper than Europe's due to deregulations. Even now, the only high speed rail that really makes sense for the bulk of America (geographically speaking), is the transrapid Maglev (much faster than the TGV and far less energy). Keep in mind that unsubsidized flight is lower price than even our heavily subsidized slow trains. And a new highspeed rail would costs many times more.

About the only reason why we will see high-speed rail come here is the use of nuclear power. Our next president will no doubt be pushing nukes/AE and combine that with the expected carbon tax from EU and we will see change come here.

Re:Can someone enlightened with engineering....

[Detritus]

"Getting there faster" is a legitimate issue for international flights. I find flying to be stressful, and the thought of being stuck on an airplane for 12+ hours makes me cringe. It takes nearly 24 hours to fly to Australia from the USA.

Re:Aren't airplanes a little "Last Century?"

[borgasm]

You'd be surprised at how happy customers can get when they see an engineer/manager on site, helping them with their problems. For about 2 months, I was commuting by air back and forth between Boston and Philadelphia, working in a lab that does in fact have a VPN connection. When the project was done, the one thing the customer said made the most difference was the "face time" that we spent with them.

Say what you will about inept managers, but showing up in person makes a huge difference.