A350XWB, the Plane Airbus Did Not Want To Build, Makes Maiden Flight 135
McGruber writes "The BBC reports that the Airbus A350XWB (extra wide body) has made its first flight. Like the Boeing 787, the A350 offers airlines the chance to combine long-range services with improved fuel efficiency. The A350's fuselage is made of carbon fibre reinforced plastic, while many other parts of the aircraft use titanium and advanced alloys to save weight. It also has state-of-the-art aerodynamics, and engine manufacturer Rolls Royce has produced a new custom-designed power unit. Airbus claims that all of this means the A350 will use 25% less fuel than the current generation of equivalent aircraft. It also points out that noise and emissions will be well below current limits."
"Plane Airbus Did Not Want To Build" (Score:5, Insightful)
Does any manufacturer really want to design new planes? The engineers do, it's their job & mostly their passion but the shareholders won't want to if they don't have to. Every time you design a new aircraft you commit to billions of investment and lots of risk, both financial and technical.
The saying I was most often quoted in my aerospace degree "How do you make a small fortune? Start with a large fortune and invest in aerospace".
The best that you'll probably get is that once it becomes clear that a planned development needs to start that the shareholders decide to go all-out for it, and the rest of the company commit to it 100%.
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it cost billions of dollars to develop. You proceed cautiously when there are billions of dollars that could potentially vanish if the design doesn't sell or doesn't work.
Re:At that price (Score:3, Insightful)
Theoretical life vs commercial life. There are plenty of A340-500/600s that have no remaining commercial value beyond parts, with less than 6-7 years of service.
And as for the /. summary, it is a carbon skin on Al-Li frame for the fuselage, not a carbon fuselage.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that Airbus needs to sell way more A380s to pay back development cost than Boeing needs to sell of 747-8s.
Twelve years after starting sales, Airbus still hasn't broken even on the A380. According to estimates, they need to sell 420 planes to break even. They have orders for 262. Based on recent order history, they are 5-10 years away from hitting that number of orders. But they are 10 years away from delivering that many planes. Basically, it will have taken them well over 20 years just to break even on the plane.
(Note that Airbus talks about reaching break-even in 2015/2016. But that just represents when they will stop losing money on a current basis on the program. After that point, they still need to pay back all the R&D and negative cash flow incurred to that point.)
If you read any of the industry news, you'll see that pretty much no one expects Airbus to ever end up with a positive total return on the investment. By the time the design is 20 years old, they'll have to start thinking about investing in modernized upgrades. It won't cost anywhere near as much as the new airframe did, but it'll further push back when they could possibly end up positive on a total return basis.
Boeing hasn't talked about how many units they need to sell of 747-8 to break even. But that airframe's sales have only been 30% lower per year than A380s. And it was an upgrade, not a completely new design, so development costs were significantly cheaper. No one at Boeing is jumping up and down over those sales. But 747-8 probably has a pretty good chance of providing a positive total return over its lifetime (although maybe only modestly), especially considering its popularity as a freighter. There is no freighter version of the A380.