Boeing Marketing Director to Speak (live audio webcast)

[Larry Dighera]

Here may be an opportunity to see what Boeing has in store for us or
at least get some information about what's on Boeing Marketing's
agenda.


The Boeing Company
<http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/index.html>

Boeing Executive to Speak at Analyst Conference

CHICAGO, May 08, 2007 -- Boeing Commercial Airplanes Marketing
Director Drew Magill will speak to the Merrill Lynch 9th Annual
Global Industries Conference in London on Wednesday, May 9, 2007.
He is expected to discuss Boeing Commercial Airplanes'
performance, strategy and outlook.

A live audio webcast <http://www.wsw.com/webcast/ml64/ba/> of Mr.
Magill's remarks will be available on the Internet at 9:20 a.m.
GMT.

Individuals should check the web sites ahead of time to ensure
their computers are configured for the audio stream.



You have to provide your name, company, and e-mail address to view the
live web cast. http://www.wsw.com/webcast/ml64/ba/

[Larry Dighera]

At this web cast, Boeing' director of marketing, Drew McGill said:

* 2006 was the second year of sales in excess of 1,000 aircraft.

* Boeing's backlog of 2,500 aircraft that, if the aircraft were
placed end to end, they would span 77 miles.

* 60% of the revenue of those orders is for twin-isle airliners.

* 17,000 worldwide airliner fleet will increase to 35,000 over
next 20 years.

* 9,600 replacement aircraft will be required over the next 20
years.

* Since 1980 worldwide air travel has increased 350% largely
through the use of more aircraft, rather than larger aircraft.

* In 1990 China there were 2,000 flights per week between Chinese
cities. By 2000 that increased to 12,000 flights per week. In
2006 that increased 29,000 flights per week, while average
airplane size has gone down.

* Large airliner fleet is only 10% and predicted to decline in
favor of smaller aircraft.


So it would seem that Boeing is predicting the worldwide airline fleet
to double within the next 20 years. Is there any wonder that Boeing
is pushing for ATC modernization? Imagine the NAS with twice as many
airliners in flight at any given time. Clearly that is not possible
with the current technology and infrastructure. And with UAVs poised
to start filling the NAS with freight haulers, the NAS is going to
become even more congested well before 20 years hence.

While Boeing's solution is to increase the capacity of the NAS, would
it make more sense to just put a cap on the number of concurrent
flights? What would be the downside to such a restriction?




------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Tue, 08 May 2007 23:45:28 GMT, Larry Dighera >
wrote in >:

>
>
>Here may be an opportunity to see what Boeing has in store for us or
>at least get some information about what's on Boeing Marketing's
>agenda.
>
>
> The Boeing Company
> <http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/index.html>
>
> Boeing Executive to Speak at Analyst Conference
>
> CHICAGO, May 08, 2007 -- Boeing Commercial Airplanes Marketing
> Director Drew Magill will speak to the Merrill Lynch 9th Annual
> Global Industries Conference in London on Wednesday, May 9, 2007.
> He is expected to discuss Boeing Commercial Airplanes'
> performance, strategy and outlook.
>
> A live audio webcast <http://www.wsw.com/webcast/ml64/ba/> of Mr.
> Magill's remarks will be available on the Internet at 9:20 a.m.
> GMT.
>
> Individuals should check the web sites ahead of time to ensure
> their computers are configured for the audio stream.
>
>
>
>You have to provide your name, company, and e-mail address to view the
>live web cast. http://www.wsw.com/webcast/ml64/ba/

[Bob Noel]

In article >,
Larry Dighera > wrote:

> So it would seem that Boeing is predicting the worldwide airline fleet
> to double within the next 20 years. Is there any wonder that Boeing
> is pushing for ATC modernization? Imagine the NAS with twice as many
> airliners in flight at any given time. Clearly that is not possible
> with the current technology and infrastructure. And with UAVs poised
> to start filling the NAS with freight haulers, the NAS is going to
> become even more congested well before 20 years hence.
>
> While Boeing's solution is to increase the capacity of the NAS, would
> it make more sense to just put a cap on the number of concurrent
> flights? What would be the downside to such a restriction?
>

Unless more runways are built, the NAS capacity for aircraft will be
more limited by available runways than airspace.

--
Bob Noel
(goodness, please trim replies!!!)

[Jose]

> While Boeing's solution is to increase the capacity of the NAS, would
> it make more sense to just put a cap on the number of concurrent
> flights? What would be the downside to such a restriction?

The downside is that there would be fewer concurrent flights. Guess who
would be the first to be squeezed out?

Jose
--
Quantum Mechanics is like this: God =does= play dice with the universe,
except there's no God, and there's no dice. And maybe there's no universe.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

[Larry Dighera]

On Wed, 09 May 2007 17:30:09 -0400, Bob Noel
> wrote in
>:

>
>Unless more runways are built, the NAS capacity for aircraft will be
>more limited by available runways than airspace.

It is clear to me that there are a shortage of concrete and terminal
facilities at present. It's so bad, that Los Angeles pax are driving
to Ontario to catch flights:


http://www.latimes.com/news/local/valley/la-fi-airports6may06,1,601658.story?coll=la-editions-valley
The airport is farther, but the trip may be shorter, cheaper
LAX rivals may offer less hassle and lower costs. Websites make it
easy to compare.
By Peter Pae, Times Staff Writer
May 6, 2007

Sandra Martin lives in Westchester, minutes from Los Angeles
International Airport. But she and her husband flew out of Ontario
when they took their two daughters on a trip over spring break.

It sounds kind of crazy until you add it up: The family paid $4
less a day for parking and dodged incalculable levels of stress,
breezing through security in five minutes, a feat with 7-year-old
twins. The hour or so on the road to LA/Ontario International
Airport hardly mattered to them, considering they saved $400 on
airfare by booking flights to Spokane, Wash., on a regional
carrier that doesn't serve L.A.'s biggest airport.

"We couldn't have done this at LAX," Martin says. ...


But to overlook the impact on the NAS that doubling the number of
flights concurrently airborne would be shortsighted.

[Larry Dighera]

On Wed, 09 May 2007 17:33:24 -0400, Jose >
wrote in >:

>Guess who would be the first to be squeezed out?

Those whom the NGO operating the NextGen ATC system wants to squeeze
out?

[Bob Noel]

In article >,
Larry Dighera > wrote:

[snip]
> But to overlook the impact on the NAS that doubling the number of
> flights concurrently airborne would be shortsighted.

worrying about airspace capacity is a waste of effort when there aren't
enough runways.

--
Bob Noel
(goodness, please trim replies!!!)

[Jose]

>>Guess who would be the first to be squeezed out?
> Those whom the NGO operating the NextGen ATC system wants to squeeze
> out?

That's us.

Jose
--
Quantum Mechanics is like this: God =does= play dice with the universe,
except there's no God, and there's no dice. And maybe there's no universe.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

[Larry Dighera]

On Wed, 09 May 2007 20:41:48 -0700, Richard Riley
> wrote in
>:

>On Wed, 09 May 2007 20:36:27 GMT, Larry Dighera >
>wrote:
>
>>So it would seem that Boeing is predicting the worldwide airline fleet
>>to double within the next 20 years. Is there any wonder that Boeing
>>is pushing for ATC modernization? Imagine the NAS with twice as many
>>airliners in flight at any given time. Clearly that is not possible
>>with the current technology and infrastructure. And with UAVs poised
>>to start filling the NAS with freight haulers, the NAS is going to
>>become even more congested well before 20 years hence.
>
>UAV freight haulers? In the NAS? Not in our lifetimes. Pilots are
>cheap by comparison.

You may be correct, but some UAV experts seem to disagree.

"Package delivery/freight" is listed as a suitable civil use of UAVs
by Sara Waddington (as published in Unmanned Vehicles magazine
Business Analysis Forecast December 2002):
http://www.uavworld.com/_private/reports/civil.htm

And LocMart is apparently developing a cargo UAV:

http://www.anyfreight.com/snews/index.php?id=2437
Lockheed Martin and Kaman will develop an UAV cargo helicopter
Washington, USA - The United States signed a contract of 3.5
billions dollar with the two industries
...
Past year the first K-MAX unmanned prototype successfully passed a
12 hours test without refueling round New England using the
autopilot utilizing only a pre-tracked course and his on-board
navigation system.

The helicopter will be 6 meters and it's weight will be 6000
pounds, its ceiling altitude should round 15.000 feet.
...
(024) 070509134959-1073418 (World Aeronautical Press Agency -
2007-05-09 01:49 pm)


And overseas:

http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/7/DAP_ORA_UAV_Letter_May05.pdf
Once a technological solution to the ‘sense and avoid’ requirement
becomes available (and it will in a few years), a demand for
civilian and military UAVs will probably quickly emerge. Civilian
applications could include police and fire service surveillance,
passenger and freight, coastal surveillance/patrol, agricultural
and geographic survey, power and pipeline inspections, mobile
phone and broadband relay etc. and as such will involve operations
in all classes of airspace.


Upon what credible information do you base your prognostication?

[...]

>Ummm... artificially make something rare, the price goes up.

I'm not suggesting anything artificial be created.

You've got to agree, that NAS airspace is a finite resource. As such,
there is doubtless an amount of air traffic beyond which it could be
said that its capacity has been exceeded. Given that today there are
some ~5,000(?) flights aloft at any given moment, what might the
maximum number be?

[Jose]

> Airplanes are concentrated in a few areas. If we improve
> the technology for how we route and control airplanes, we can easily
> fit more - a LOT more - into the NAS.

Sure we can "fit" them, but they won't be going where the clients want
them going. They are concentrated in a few areas because that's where
they =want= to be.

Jose
--
Quantum Mechanics is like this: God =does= play dice with the universe,
except there's no God, and there's no dice. And maybe there's no universe.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

[Larry Dighera]

On Sat, 12 May 2007 10:27:42 -0700, Richard Riley
> wrote in
>:

>On Sat, 12 May 2007 16:01:01 GMT, Larry Dighera >
>wrote:
>
>>
>>Upon what credible information do you base your prognostication?
>
>My day job.
>
>The technology for autonomous see and avoid isn't here yet, even in a
>transponder-mandated environment. It will be soon, but to fly a UAV
>in the NAS outside of a restricted area you have to have visual
>contact with the vehicle. See and avoid without transponders will
>take longer. See and avoid cars, houses and people on the ground
>while crashing with engine out and partial control will take even
>longer. Once that's in place (10 years at least, likely 20) there
>will be another 20 year lag before it's politically acceptabe.

From the information I was able to find, it looks like sense-and-avoid
is imminent:


http://www.shephard.co.uk/UVOnline/default.aspx?Action=-187126550&ID=7e2676f7-542b-4189-9b13-8df3c5e489fb
USAF progresses passive sense-and-avoid

Dr John McCalmont from the US Air Force Research Lab at Wright
Patterson AFB gave the army aviation community here in Atlanta a
valuable insight into USAF work on sense-and-avoid systems,
indicating that technical solutions to the problem are closer than
many have assumed.

He showed a video in which a prototype system fitted to a manned
Learjet for the test picked up an intruding King Air turboprop on
a collision course nearly twice as far way as a human pilot could
have. This is an encouraging indication that UAV sense and avoid
systems are likely to provide significantly more than the FAA
mandated ‘equivalent level of safety’ to manned ‘see and avoid’
procedures.

The prototype system is completely passive, using a
high-resolution day TV camera with a field of regard of 110
degrees either side of the nose and flow vector processing
software. This assesses the direction of visual flow – the
direction and speed at which the world appears to be moving past
the aircraft – and looks out for anomalies that appear to be
moving differently, particularly they don’t appear to be moving at
all, that being a reliable indicator of something on a collision
course.

The technology has grown out of DAS missile approach warning work
– Dr McCalmont has a background in defensive EW equipment for
combat aircraft. This is actually a much easier problem to solve,
he said.

Sized for a Predator/Warrior UAV, the current system weighs about
25 lb, so clearly needs to shrink for smaller vehicles. For larger
aircraft such as Global Hawk a radar can be added.

Regulatory requirements recently and suddenly changed from
insisting on human control of a UAV in a collision avoidance
manoeuvre to favouring complete automation of the process, he
said.

----------------------


http://www.colorado.edu/AcademicAffairs/engineering/ASEN/asen5519_arg/papers/2005_7177_194.pdf
26 - 29 September 2005, Arlington, Virginia
Development of a Sense and Avoid System

----------------------

http://www.uavworld.com/_disc1/00000042.htm
"The goal of the test was to be able to make a decision based on
radar data in enough lead time to manoeuvre the test aircraft to
avoid a close encounter with the intruder aircraft," said Glenn
Hamilton, UAV subsystems project manager at Dryden.

----------------------

[...]
>>You've got to agree, that NAS airspace is a finite resource.
>>As such,there is doubtless an amount of air traffic beyond which it could be
>>said that its capacity has been exceeded. Given that today there are
>>some ~5,000(?) flights aloft at any given moment, what might the
>>maximum number be?
>
[...]
>
>There are only so many cubic miles in the NAS. But in most parts of
>the country, if you look up at the sky most of the day you will see no
>airplanes. Airplanes are concentrated in a few areas. If we improve
>the technology for how we route and control airplanes, we can easily
>fit more - a LOT more - into the NAS.

So what is the maximum NAS capacity today?

What will that figure be under NextGen?

In any event, it's not unlimited.