Posted on 02/15/2006 3:43:53 PM PST by Paleo Conservative
That is what they said about the 747.
Like I said, the A380 is a great niche plane, much like the 747SP. Instead of long thin routes, the 380 will prosper on the long heavily travelled routes. It will do very well in Asia and the Middle East. Its not a real plane for North America.
Airbus makes great planes. My airline gets the first A350, hopefully we will take it to Asia where the money is.
Eastern... I used to fly them from DC to Asuncion, Paraguay: 24 hours, with stops in Miami, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Paraguay, finally.
Competition finally killed this awful route. AA switched it to DC-Miami-Paraguay, or one stop in Brazil. The competition picked up, and there was real service, real price pressure on an otherwise unheard of route. Ironically or not, the exact same thing happened with deregulation in the U.S.
Oh, and when American Air picked up the pieces, they found loads of coke hidden in all kinds of places in the old Eastern airplanes.
Wrong
Delta was still flying them DFW to Frankfurt as late as 1992.
and the company building them eventually went under.
And Wrong. Although the engine maker took one on the chin.
In the profits war I'm going to put my long term money on Boeing combination of the 7E7/787 and new 747. It's going to be interesting to see how it all shakes out.
I have never seen a L1011 cargo plane.
The L1011 wasn't doomed because of the EA crash. It was doomed because Lockheed had to compete against the DC-10. There was no room for both, and when Airbus came out with the widebody A300 and Boeing came out with the widebody 767 (both of which had 2 engines and a 2 person cockpig), the writing was on the wall for Lockheed.
Lockheed's only jet was the L1011, the Electra did well for a prop (one hell of a plane) but Lockheed missed the boat, they should have made a 2 engine 150 seat plane. When the L1011 was being sold, it was before the oil shock. PSA bought 2 L1011's to fly from San Diego and LA to San Fran, that only lasted about 9 months, the fuel costs were too high.
It was a good plane, but, at the wrong time, and it knocked Lockheed out of the passenger market.
7E7 will be a good plane. Not sure if Boeing will pull off the new 747. They tried to sell the same thing a few years ago and got little interest.
Embraer is the guy to watch out for, the Emb170 and Emb190 are the best plane in the A318/B717 market. 100-110 seats, much more comfortable than a regional jet and fuel stingy.
DL retired their last L1011's about 3 years ago. They used to do Hawaii with them. If you watch "Lost" the wreckage is a DL L1011.
I miss em, I flew on TWA and ATA and BWIA's Lockheeds.
They proposed a much more radical redesign with entirely new less hightly swept supercritical wings, fly-by-wire controls and new engines. This is a much more conservative update. Most of the technology updates for the 747 have been already developed for other programs. The wings have the same structural parts as the 747-400. The engines and avionics upgrades and interiors are borrowed from the 787. The wing tip concepts, landing gear and windows are borrowed from the 777. The wing control surfaces will be redesigned to be simpler and lighter.
Good idea. Keeps development costs down, doesn't stress the manufacturing lines. The product delays with the 380 won't hurt either.
You're thinking of the DC-10/MD-10/MD-11. Only 11 Tristars were ever converted to freighters. Nine additional were converted to gas passers/troop transports for the RAF.
Yes, thanks very much for the clarification.
The best L1011 is the one that Orbital Sciences has. They use it to launch sattelites while in flight. Pretty cool.
In addition to the below, I noticed a warning by India to the EU and Airbus not to criticize India's decision to go with the 787 Dreamliner.
Boeing wins $10 bln Qantas jet order
(Its Boeing, baby! Another $10B that Airbus DOESNT get)
Reuters
Posted on 12/14/2005 6:46:49 AM PST by Pukin Dog
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1540194/posts
"The Qantas order will push Boeing further ahead of Airbus in 2005 order numbers. Boeing had 800 orders as of November 30, its Web site showed. Airbus had 494 as of October 31, according to its Web site, but has since won a $10 billion deal to supply 150 single-aisle aircraft to China."
"Airbus’s ultra-large-aircraft forecast is consistent, Boeing’s follows every twist and turn," says Carcaillet.s/b, Carcaillet doesn't have any real criticisms, just abusive rhetoric used as a diversionary tactic, rather than answer the real criticisms of the A380.
They eventually got it right, and as the p-3 the basic structure is still in service, but early problems (crashes caused by wings falling off during flight) with the Electra and dealing with those kept Lockheed out of the first generation of jets. They had nothing to compete with the 707, DC-8 or 880. They tried a comeback with the 1011, but it was an uphill battle because they didn't have a family of planes to offer. If you bought Lockheed, you were going to have to also shop Boeing or Douglas, who could offer package deals with DC-9s or 727s/737s.
As for the comfort of the plane, I had originally liked them when they were new, but the last flight I took on one (1992) was miserable. There was no individual air control for each seat, and cabin air circulation was inadequate for the flight. I never flew Delta transatlantic again.
I'll yield to you on that. I don't know when they stopped flying them; I was going on the last time I personally rode in one.
I had a chance to fly on one for free a few years back on Reeve Aleutian Airlines.
Only problem is, did I really want to go to Adak Alaska? If they flew them to their Russian stops, I probably would have.
I have a buddy that used to fly them cargo around micronesia. He loved it, plus the fact that there really wasn't any other air traffic around.
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