Viable SST...

[jcf]

Hi Archie,
I also have no desire to turn this into a slanging match. Get tired of that in the "other" place.
As I've said I have a personal bias towards the 747 having worked on and around her for the last decade or so. Currently I'm on the 787.

One thing though its 159 sales for the A380, not 159 customers...and the number has been stagnant for a long time. Lots of folks playing a waiting game , no doubt.

As to increased density hubs versus point-to-point  route fracturing...the latter has been the reality of the last ten years and shows no signs of slowing.

Cheers, Jon

[rallymodeller]

And all of this A380 business is on hold anyway until Airbus can get some really basic problems with manufacture/assembly sorted out. Meanwhile Boeing just supersizes the 747. Time will tell.

Not for one or the other, really. I just think that the A380 smacks of the old Soviet attitude of building big for big's sake and then trying like hell to rationalize it (a la An-225).  

[Archibald]

Hi Archie,
I also have no desire to turn this into a slanging match. Get tired of that in the "other" place.
As I've said I have a personal bias towards the 747 having worked on and around her for the last decade or so. Currently I'm on the 787.

One thing though its 159 sales for the A380, not 159 customers...and the number has been stagnant for a long time. Lots of folks playing a waiting game , no doubt.

As to increased density hubs versus point-to-point  route fracturing...the latter has been the reality of the last ten years and shows no signs of slowing.

Cheers, Jon

You're a boing'boy.. that explains many things
And that's why airbus will launch the A350

As I said in another post, all this noise about the war between Boeing and Airbus is BLUFF. Officially, the new boeing is the 787, and the new Airbus the A380. This would mean two different strategies (your ultimate sentence)
In reality...you have this A350 to counter the 787, and the 747-8 to attack the A380. So both constructor reply to the other with a quite similar model...they have the same strategy!
Rallymodeler is right beeing "Not for one or the other, really"...

[jcf]

Boeing boy? Not quite, while I've worked for the company off and on for the last decade...layed off twice as a direct and currently a contractor, I have little love for the company as an entity. I have however been a hardcore aircraft fan since childhood and am familiar enough with engineering, physics and aerospace for the whole super-jumbo notion to give me the heebie-jeebies. But then I'd rather fly in a Cessna than an airliner any day of the week. Best of luck to Airbus, but so far it hasn't lived up to the predicted sales numbers.

I was working at Panasonic last year on IFE systems and we were being beaten up over weight issues for A380 wiring and components last summer and had been appraised of the general wiring problems...so much for it being a "surprise". The push to aluminum wiring because they couldn't get the weight out of the structure has caused much of the problem...especially as the wiring and cabling part of the CATIA suite wasn't fully developed and evidently when they made the switch to the aluminum wire the software wasn't updated to reflect the material change and thus the system didn't correctly refigure bend radii and other installation/manufacturing considerations. The result was little short of disastrous.

And of course the Open Skies concepts and agreements the US has been pushing tend to work against the government-controlled centralised-hub model that the A380 was designed to serve and that was the standard model when the aircraft was conceived...so no surprise on the bureaucratic foot dragging in the EU, the foreign ownership issue(in my opinion) being a straw horse and realistically an issue of little import that could be settled later.

On some levels it is more than just differing company philosophies, it is also a matter of differing political philosophies.

Time will tell.

As to the 747-8 being completely a reaction to the A380...not quite, except for some787 tech thats being used in the design, the basic stretch combined with a new wing, in one form or another, predates the A380. Simple stretch concepts go back to the late seventies. Customers have been directly asking for a stretch since at least the late eighties. It was lack of management will rather than lack of customer interest that prevented it from happening ten years ago. I'll give you that the A380 was an element in the decision to finally go ahead...but more importantly there were some very important changes in Boeing at the upper levels.

Cheers, Jon

p.s. the A340-600 is one of my favourite aircraft, it is very elegant and I don't mind being a passenger in the A319/320 series...nice aircraft.

[elmayerle]

Jon,

From my point of view, having worked for Cessna, it's a matter of which Cessna I'd be flying in as to whether I'd prefer that to an airliner.  I know enough to have my personal predjudices that way.  IMHO, they missed a good but by not crossing the 185 with the 206 to yield a larger taildragger.

cheers,
Evan

[jcf]

Hi Evan,
an old one of course, preferably a 195 or the 1949 170A I jumped out of a few times.

Cheers, Jon

[Archibald]

It was lack of management will rather than lack of customer interest that prevented it from happening ten years ago. I'll give you that the A380 was an element in the decision to finally go ahead...but more importantly there were some very important changes in Boeing at the upper levels.

Sincerely, I asked myself how Boeing could lost 6 years (1996-2002) when Airbus was growing and growing. They lacked a new model after the 777...
I remember following the various studies, 747-500X (1996-1998) Sonic Cruiser (april 2001-december 2002). All were abandoned...At the same time, the 767/757 were aeging when the A330 was new, the A340-600 attacked the 747 (low-cost alternative, slightly less passengers with more range).
Finally the 787 put an end to this strange period. You say its because of management problems at high level?

[Ollie]

Evan, John,

I choose the 208 over all the other Cessna singles!

   

[jcf]

It was lack of management will rather than lack of customer interest that prevented it from happening ten years ago. I'll give you that the A380 was an element in the decision to finally go ahead...but more importantly there were some very important changes in Boeing at the upper levels.

Sincerely, I asked myself how Boeing could lost 6 years (1996-2002) when Airbus was growing and growing. They lacked a new model after the 777...
I remember following the various studies, 747-500X (1996-1998) Sonic Cruiser (april 2001-december 2002). All were abandoned...At the same time, the 767/757 were aeging when the A330 was new, the A340-600 attacked the 747 (low-cost alternative, slightly less passengers with more range).
Finally the 787 put an end to this strange period. You say its because of management problems at high level?

Lost six years? Not really, there was a lot of preliminary work going on in the background for the multi-model program that came to be known as Yellowstone...the Sonic Cruiser, 7E7(787) and 747-8 are all part of Yellowstone. The 737 replacement is another aspect of Yellowstone.

The relatively rapid growth of Airbus since the mid-eighties, after a very slow start in the seventies, has given some folks a fairly skewed view of the realities of commercial aircraft design, development and production.

The A340-600 "attack" on the 747 fell flat, it also lost out to the extended range 777 models...even with, or maybe because of, the silly "4-engines are safer than 2" ad campaign. Some existing and potential Airbus customers were not amused.

As I've said before, while  the 747-500/600 program, which was different from the 747X program BTW, was not proceeded with much of the work done was incoporated into the 747X and later the 747-Advanced programs which led to the 747-8.
What most people don't know is that the basic 747 fuselage structure and assembly method was redesigned in the 90s. The majority of fuselage is built in seven "Super-panels" that are positioned by robot arms in the assembly tooling, a new tooling that was designed and built at the same time as the fuselage redesign and that went into service in 1999.
This tooling was designed and built from the start to allow the production of a stretched fuselage...so much for losing time. The design is actually more advanced than the 777 body tooling.

There was major management problem as the then bosses were not willing to take risks and the bean-counters were allowed the final say on all proposals...to be honest without the ethical scandals and the resulting shakeup its very possible that the 787 would not have received the go ahead as the sitting crew had a bad case of derivative-itis and a "maximize return for the stockholders above all else" mindset.
Derivatives of the 777 were a smart move because of market forces, but derivatives alone don't grow a business.

There was a lot of arrogance and complacency, a trap that it seems the now gone Airbus leaders also failed to avoid.

Cheers, Jon

[Archibald]

There was a lot of arrogance and complacency, a trap that it seems the now gone Airbus leaders also failed to avoid.

Its aparently unavoidable when you're the leader...don't worry, Airbus crisis lasted some months when Boeing crisis was abit longer to solve

"4-engines are safer than 2" ad campaign

That was demonstrate in real world... on 17 march 2003 over the pacific, a 777 had to finish its trip on one engine
The ETOPS rules were modified just in time for the 777 transpacific flight (I remember that the time needed to join the nearest airport grown from 180 to 207 minutes)

10 years to mature a streched 747 when Airbus needed the same time to create a brand new aircraft?

after a very slow start in the seventies

Thanks, thanks again Eastern Airlines and Frank Borman... your buying in april 1977 save Airbus at a time the A300 was on the verge of cancellation...


Thanks for the precisions on Yellostone.

[Sentinel Chicken]

That was demonstrate in real world... on 17 march 2003 over the pacific, a 777 had to finish its trip on one engine
The ETOPS rules were modified just in time for the 777 transpacific flight (I remember that the time needed to join the nearest airport grown from 180 to 207 minutes)

Doesn't matter whether you have two engines or four engines. If one goes out, you're diverting. So that argument is a red herring given the amazing reliability and power of modern turbofan engines.  

[rallymodeller]

Back to the topic at hand (Concorde vs. B2707 vs. Tu-144)...

Global Security has an excellent article about the rise and fall of the American SST program:

Boeing B2707 SST

Boy, if anything could have gone wrong with this program, it did...

[Archibald]

Thanks, rally...    

[jcf]

Its aparently unavoidable when you're the leader...don't worry, Airbus crisis lasted some months when Boeing crisis was abit longer to solve

10 years to mature a streched 747 when Airbus needed the same time to create a brand new aircraft?

Riigghhttt...the A380 has been Airbus' main focus for over a decade, lots of money and thousands of engineers. The 747 derivative programs on the other hand have had small teams that have waxed and waned over the same period, at times there was no one assigned as all work was suspended. Hardly a reasonable comparison.

As to the 2707...it left a mark on Boeing and some have suggested that the experience is one of the reasons Boeing was leery of getting into a slugging match with Airbus for the Super-Jumbo market. Too many unknowns.

As I've said before best of luck with the A380, I hope it pans out because as someone who works in aerospace I know how much the Airbus folks have invested, personally as well as financially.

As to the Airbus crisis being "over"...well, maybe and for their sake I hope so. These things have a way of lingering and playing "iceberg".

Cheers, Jon

[Zen]

Well the GE.4 worked, possibly the ONLY bit that did of the US SST effort, and ironicaly Concord would have benefited from that engine, I suspect you could power Concord with just two GE.4s, certainly three.