Boeing 787 Makes US Debut 317
thomas.kane writes "After years of delays, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner is set to take off from Bush Intercontinental Airport this morning bound for O'Hare. Designed to make the flying experience 'revolutionary,' it is constructed from composite materials, has larger windows than previous jetliners, and high efficiency engines. United Airlines became the first U.S. carrier to take delivery; they've ordered 50, but due to processing delays, they only have 2 right now. Start looking for more to take to the skies early next year."
Ceiling Lighting (Score:4, Interesting)
Watching the "Passenger Experience" video it was almost obnoxious how much attention they kept giving the ceiling lighting, but looking at the different settings for the dynamic LED lighting it is actually pretty cool. I like that it not only changes the brightness but also the color of the cabin for things like meals and pre-landing.
Re:Did I miss something? (Score:3, Interesting)
First American carrier to use an american-built plane made mostly of composite materials.
Don't get me wrong, Carbon Fiber is absurdly strong, and computer models help negate design flaws.... but CF's failure mode tends to be sudden and...explosive. Steel bends long before it breaks, and Aluminum is somewhere in the middle, but CF just.... goes when it fails. I think Airbus has been including CF on their tail fins for a while (with some failures) and the technology is supposedly mature... but it's hard to ignore Aluminum's nearly 100 year reputation. Maybe I'm just getting old.
There goes another "feature" (Score:2, Interesting)
I always try to get a window as .. gasp .. I like looking out the window! But in a lot of US long haul domestic flights they "encourage" you to shut the window shades in the middle of the day. Generally you can "comply" with this by pulling the shade down 3/4 of the way and still give you some window to look out of. However with the Dreamliner's electronic dimming of the whole window you won't have a chance of balancing your desires with the cabin crew's requests.
And in a bit of conspiracy thinking, I wonder if the cabin crew has a master switch to force the windows to darken when they want - Hello Zaphod's Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses!
Re:Did I miss something? (Score:4, Interesting)
ACtually, the difference is less than you think. 10-15%, to be exact. Modern airlines do not use plain aluminium. Most recently, Alumnium-Magnesium-Lithium alloys have been introduced, for example
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember landing in Seattle for the first time. I could just see miles of runways figuring out; there is the airport! It went on for a while before actually getting to the airport. It turns out they were Boeing factory runways.
Re:That doesn't really show anything. (Score:2, Interesting)
>not saddled with the costs of an American labor force.
That's a bizarre non sequitur. How does that keep foreign carriers from getting into a race to the bottom like we're seeing in the US? And why are you excluding the Europeans?
Re:That doesn't really show anything. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you compare US airlines to foreign airlines, foreign airlines (excluding Europe) have far better soft product (food, service, etc) because they are not saddled with the costs of an American labor force.
Except that if you compare US airlines to foreign airlines including Europe, they have far better "soft products" despite labor costs..
I remember taking a coach flight from Glasgow to London with British Airlines, and thought they had upgraded me to business class, based on how much space I had at my seats, and having only experienced flight in the US up until that point. They don't cram twice as many seats as there should be in their planes. Good service too.
Re:Awesome (Score:4, Interesting)
Just saw one at Beijing in ANA colors - looked a lot like a mid-sized twin engine airliner.
I spend a lot of my life on airliners. The things that matter to me are:
Big overhead bins: 787 has them, but so do lat model 747s and 777s.
AC power sockets: These could be put on any plane, but usually airlines only have them in business.
Legroom: Entirely up to the airline to set the seat spacing, nothing to do with the airplane.
In seat video with a selection of movies: Again up to the airline for the interior configuration.
Sufficient restrooms: Again, an airline configuration issue.
The improved fuel efficiency will reduce costs some - which is nice, but that is an ongoing trend. Presumably the airbus A350 will be the next step, followed by a 797 or something. I occasionally look out the windows, but most of the time there isn't much to see - so big windows are only a minor change. If they really operate the plane at lower cabin altitude that would be nice, but the extra weight burns more fuel - I doubt they actually operate that way for long. I couldn't care less about the multi-colored lighting.
It looks like a nice plane, but not in any way a game changer. Give me a Mach 3 SST, or a sub-orbital that can do Shanghai to SFO in 40 minutes and we'll talk. We've had Mach .85 airliners for >50 years now.
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
In this country, executives get paid for performance-- or at least for tweaking the stock price. Unions, with their incessant demands for decent working conditions, interfere with the creation of totemic representations of shareholder value.
That was a joke right? "Shareholder value" when talking about passenger airlines is pretty much zero. The lifetime profit/loss of the industry is a loss. Every legacy US airline has declared bankruptcy at least once. Southwest has not gone belly up, but you would have been far better investing in the S&P 500 over the last five or ten year periods, perhaps longer.
The problem is that owning airlines is "sexy" and way too much money is invested in it. The result is that shareholders are completely and utterly screwed. The problem with airlines is not the execs, the unions, the corporate structure, or even fuel costs. The problem is the "sexy" factor has caused there to be way too much capacity built and no airline can operate at a long term profit because of it.
Unions Killed GM (Score:0, Interesting)
..so your arguments aren't shedding light on the whole issue. Overly aggressive unions are a big problem and you can see it on a larger scale in Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy. They have legislated "100% job security" under the pressure of labour and the effect is that employers simply don't hire and the whole economy is in the crapper. Large parts of Italy have only companies of less than 10 workers because the "total job security" principle only applies to companies of more than 10 workers. Imagine what kind of insane economic incentives these are....
They can only "afford" this, because Germans have scrapped the most idiotic "worker protection" laws and work themselves into burn-out, so that German economy is very strong. All the money gained in Germany is then channeled into the countries mentioned above.
The whole "Pax Americana" world from Tokio to Warsaw suffers under the self-dilusion that more and more welfare handouts and excessive entitlements can somehow be financed and of course be expanded. Japan is extremely indebted, America on the best course into the same situation and large parts of Europe (including the UK) more or less under water, financially.
Who cares about carbon fiber, bigger windows, etc. (Score:4, Interesting)
All I want is some godammed leg and elbow room.