Posted on 04/09/2005 8:08:48 PM PDT by COEXERJ145
BOEING is to strike back at Airbus with the launch in a few months of a new version of the venerable Boeing 747 called the 747 Advanced. British Airways may become one of the first customers.
Revelations of Boeing’s plans will intensify its commercial rivalry with Airbus, which is due to stage the first flight of its new $13.5 billion (£7.2 billion) A380 within weeks. It will supersede the 747 as the largest passenger airliner.
The Boeing move will also add fuel to the trade battle between Europe and America over subsidies to aircraft makers. A breakdown in talks last week between Peter Mandelson, the European trade commissioner, and Robert Zoellick, his US counterpart, means the issue may now have to be resolved by lengthy litigation through the World Trade Organisation.
Boeing has flirted with new versions of the 747 for more than a decade, but to date has failed to win interest from airlines, leaving the way clear for Airbus to develop the A380.
The advent of the A380 has killed off sales of 747 passenger aircraft, although Boeing is still working through a small backlog of orders and continues to sell 747 freighters. If Boeing fails to back the new plans, 747 production could end next year.
Senior sources at British Airways said the airline had held talks with Boeing about the new aircraft. Japan Airlines and Cathay Pacific, which like BA have not ordered the A380, have also been in negotiations over the 747 Advanced.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
FYI
Boeing (aka "my company") should have done this 10 years ago. It would have put even more pressure on Airbus. The A380 is going to be the worst decision Airbus ever made. Unless they give the tickets away, passengers are going to hate it.
Boeing still builds them best!
To say nothing of Cargolux (who have substantial operations in, of all places, Huntsville, AL), the largest all-cargo airline in the world, who have an all Boeing fleet and have been pressuring them like hell to go through with the Advanced.
Looks like "catch-up" tactics. They should not do this. The Dreamliner is sufficient and doesn't leave them looking as if they missed the boat. Whoever thought this up needs to be fired...YESTERDAY
Maybe they do still build 'em best, but they have a narrower margin of error than Airbus. With the heavy government subsidies that Airbus receives, Boeing is not on a level playing field here. This is a bad idea; if Boeing wants to make a bigger plane, to supercede the A380, it should be for cargo applications. Boeing's already got the mid-size passenger market shored up. That's the best way to stay competitive with Airbus.
There are a lot of airlines that can use (or will need in the future) an aircraft larger than the 747 but not as big as the A380. The 747 Advanced would be perfect for them. It will also be much cheaper to integrate into their fleets than adding the all new A380.
Also, the cost for developing the 747 Advanced will be much lower than the cost of developing an all new aircraft. Much of what will go into the 747 Advanced is already being developed for the 787.
I think the Advanced is a much lower risk project for Boeing than the A380 is for Airbus. It isn't that big a stretch of the current 747, and it uses technologies used on other Boeing aircraft. By recontouring the wings, Boeing can give a supercritical wing without having to develop a whole new wing box. In the future, if there is a viable market for 550+ passenger capacity aircraft, Boeing could stretch the wings to add more lift and fuel capacity to allow a further strecth more range.
It's too bad the original proposal for the 747-300 (a three engined version of the 747SP) was never built. If it had been, the same configuration could possibly have been used for a stretched 747 using the same engines as the 777. Such an aircraft would be free of ETOPS restrictions but could have had the same economics as the 777 half a decade ago.
P.S.You should have heard the The Blue Angels pass over my parents' house at very low altitude at about 11:00 AM CDT this morning. Those F-18's are loud. I wish I'd known how close they would fly, I'd have tried to take pictures.
Sorry, that's "fly in and out" and not "flying and out"
Part of me thinks that it would be ideal for Boeing to sit back and let the A380 turn into a very expensive dinosaur, which I think is the likely result. Another part thinks that any company that wishes to be in the forefront of a tech and capital heavy business like aircraft construction needs to constantly be developing new stuff; which includes showing potential customers that they are always working on new stuff. I don't know the answer.
Thanks to more fuel-efficient engines derived from the 787 program engines and more fuel capacity, the 747 Advanced (which will probably be called 747-700 by Boeing officially) will likely sport a still-air range of around 8,500-8,600 nautical miles, easily enough range to fly most of the world's long routes. I think Cathay Pacific may be interested in this plane because it will allow Cathay Pacific to fly between Hong Kong and eastern North America (Toronto and New York City) non-stop in both directions year-round.
But it would be a direct competitor to the proposed A380-700 a 475 passenger shrink of the A380-800. The 800 is already oveweight, and the shrink will have even worse compared to the 450 passenger 747 Advanced. By going ahead with the Advanced, Boeing will prevent the overweight 700 from ever being built. This will cut down on the sales of the A380.
I don't quite understand how they compute passenger capacity. If you go to SeatGuru.com or SeatExpert.com, the actual configured capacities are significantly less. What I can't stand about most 747 configurations is their sardine class seating. If you've ever flown across the Atlantic Ocean, 31" pitch is torture if you have long legs like me. It is harder to tolerate close seat pitch on 10 hour transoceanic flight than on a three hour flight from Houston to New York. Why don't more airlines do what British Airways does and have a premium economy class with a more reasonable seat pitch like 38"? There's no way I'd pay $10,000 for a first class round trip ticket to London or $7000+ for business class, but I'd be willing to pay $1,100 or roughly double the restricted economy fare in order to have some decent leg room.
I think that is the idea. With a really big airplane, you increase revenue with little increase in costs.
30 more passengers? That's kind of like adding the contents of a very small commuter. Boeing is definitely going for the "small solution."
That being said, I hope it works for them, they make a great plane. One plus I think is that this airplane will not need all that airport reconstruction, it'll be able to land anywhere.
Remember this: it is not Boeing that determines the pitch on seats. It is the airline. So if you do not like the seat pitch on one airline, try a different one. It could be different.
As my brother has pointed out, as a retired chopper pilot; there are airport constraints in order to accomodate differing sizes of aircraft. Not so much with helos, but with fixed wing larger aircraft. He picks up a lot of nav chatter when the larger aircraft are preparing for landing.
But they have been puting out several proposals over the last ten years. First, they proposed the 747-500 and 600 that had significant stretches of the fuselage and new wings. Even more recently they proposed the 8,000 nautical mile ranged 747-800X with a recontouring of the existing wings plus an 8' plug inserted into the wing to increase wing area and fuel capacity. The 500 and 600 had places in the overhead area behind the hump for beds for (presumably for us poor passengers who can't afford lie flat seats in first of business class). Up till now, none of the airlines were interested in new versions of the 747.
Hello
Can the A380 fly. It was supposed to show of it's wing at the Paris Air Show, but now it apperar it will be only a static display.
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