What are Boeing's plans?

Smutny wrote:

The bottom line is that Boeing as we've known it for 88 years is no
more. As a Seattle resident, it pains me to see the plants being torn
down, to see engineering and sales buildings turned into parking lots
where the circus sets up a couple times a year.

BAe has done this to Hatfield ( formerly owned by Hawker Siddeley and de
Havilland ) , the home of the jet airliner, just to name one significant
product made there.

Oh, sure, the management said they would *never* close Hatfield.

The real estate was worth too much as a business park and BAe wanted to
concentrate on defence contracts instead of commercial.

Sounds kinds similar.


Graham

Matthew Chidester wrote:

737 next generation a mistake? they just got a huge order from the navy to
replace the p-3...

I agree, it seems like Canadair and Embraer will take over the small stuff
and most start up airlines are sticking with Airbus (lower maintenance
costs?)

Don't forget, the A320 series includes the A318 now ( 108 seats IIRC ). I was
quite surprised that the A318 was developed as a result of customer demand (
Lufthansa ? ) but when you consider that the A320 series encompasses a greater
than 2:1 pax capacity with unified sytems - it kinds makes sense.

I wish someone would post the prices and performance of the aircraft
so we could compare and see why airlines pick the planes they do.

I wish ! Of course that would also depend on your ( the airlines ) accounting
methods too.


Graham

Thomas Borchert wrote:

Jarg,

Because we like American companies to be successful as it translates into
more jobs and more money for Americans!

And who would be "we"? This is the Internet, not the USAnet.

Mercuns tend to forget they're not the planet's only technically competent
inhabitants.


More to the point: A large portion of the A380 (40 percent, IIRC) will be
built in the US.

It will ?

Where did you hear that ? News to me.


You ever heard of this new-fangled thing called globalizaton? It's here,
man.

It also involves many 'first world' nation jobs being outsourced to mainly
asian countries. I see trouble looming as the asian countries get the expertise
and no longer require *us* !

I speak from some experience of the situation.


Graham

Peter Stickney wrote:

In article ,
Pooh Bear writes:
Peter Stickney wrote:

In article ,
Pooh Bear writes:

BA actually made good money on Concorde for a significant number of years -
hence why they were keen to get it fixed and re-introduced after the Paris
crash. They had the interiors refitted too.Of course 9/11 had reduced passenger
numbers by the time it was back in service.

The made money on it - only after the R&D and production funds were
written off by the Government, and British Airways was basically made
a gisft of them. They made enough out of them to pay the operating
costs, but nowhere near enough to cover development and construction.

Agreed, but that wasn't their problem.

Actually, I'd say that it is. In the Real World, it still costs money
to develop and produce something. That money gets paid out no matter
what. If you can't make it back, its a net loss of resources.
Now, I suppose that you could subscribe to the delusion that
Government Money isn't really money, and so doesn't matter, but even
the most Ardent Socialist would agree that it is a marker for
resources spent that could have been spent otherwise. How many Dog
Shelters in Battersea, or Labour Exchanges in East Acton could have
been supported with the dosh that was dumped into Concorde?

In the short term, yes you could have had more dog shelters.

If you want to talk about employment exchanges, I suggest you consider how Margaret
Thatcher's industrial policies ( large scale unemployment to cripple the left ) were
funded by North Sea oil revenues ( taxes ).

In the long term, Concorde paved the way for Airbus.

Without Airbus there would be no European aviation industry of note.

I doubt that anyone could have truly seen that far ahead - but the mould was cast back
then.


Graham

Dylan Smith wrote:

In article , Peter Stickney wrote:
(Well, the COmet IV may have, as well) Everythig else - Vikings,
Ambassadors, Heralds, Britannias, Vanguards, VC.10s - (And those are
only ht eones that made it into production) all ended up as losers,
economically.

Don't forget the Trident!

If de Havilland hadn't been obliged to scale down the Trident to suit BEA
and then later scale it back up again ( to suit BEA ! ) , it would have
been far more sucessful.


Graham

On Sat, 18 Sep 2004 at 10:07:50 in message
, Peter Stickney
wrote:

Without a doubt, for revenue service. An inflight emergency on the
San Fran-Hawaii leg would have meant a lost airplane due to fuel
exhaustion, in most cases. Plus, even the shorter legs are still
damned long - Even if you duplicated the route of the Pan Am flying
boats - San Francisco-Honolulu-Midway-Wake-Manila-Hong Kong -
it's still unworkable wrt safety, and the stops would have added
tremendously to the travel time, annoyed the passengers, and shortened
the life of the airframes.

I am pretty sure that a Concorde flying from London to New York could
be forced to descend halfway across to subsonic cruise and still make
the destination. As I recall it was postulated that it might
occasionally be necessary due to a sudden upsurge of Solar radiation.
Radiation levels were monitored on the aircraft. A loss of one engine
could also be dealt with in the same way.

Just dug out a Concorde brochure, written when they still optimistically
hoped to sell many and fly them all around the world.

Pacific routes are included as follows

West Coast of USA; Anchorage, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San
Diego and Acapulco were all shown as legs to Honolulu. Onward links from
Honolulu were to Tokyo and to Auckland and Sydney via a stop at Nandi.

West Coast USA to Australia in 2 stops - that's all.

Other routes include London to Vancouver and Los Angeles via Churchill
in Canada and flown subsonic over the USA to Los Angeles.

I am not convinced that the subsonic range of Concorde was
significantly different from the supersonic range.

--
David CL Francis

well I hope boeing comes out of this and stays alive, from a pilot
perspective I'm not a fan of joysticks on the side for flight controls and
i've worked around them.. they're pretty aircraft, I just wouldn't want to
fly in that cockpit.

Matthew

Smutny wrote:

As I mentioned, it is in the long run. I didn't say that the 737 in
all its variations was a mistake. That would be ignoring the
historical sales figures.

And they go back a long, long way !


What I was pointing to was that Boeing should have continued the
product line commonality idea started with the 757/767, bringing to
market a whole new airframe to replace the narrowbody fleet. That
design would have been reaching full production about now. Instead,
they opted to re-hash, for a third time, a 1960's design.

So..... Airbus's idea of making multiple capacity variants of the ( 737
competitor ) A320 ( A318, A319, A320, A321 ) was more sensible I guess ? Same
cockpit - same operating procedures - same handling ( fbw ) .

Then they made bigger twin aisle versions ( A330, A340 ) with the same flight
controls and similar handling - making conversion very easy.

Was that what you reckoned Boeing should have done after 757/767 ?


Boeing has put itself in the precarious position now of developing a
new design as the worlds major airlines are struggling.

A380 is a pretty new concept too ! Mind you, I saw a documentary where Airbus's
Chief Exec simply jokingly described it as an A330 stuck on top of an A340 !

Similar cockpit ( but somewhat larger ), controls and handling to other fbw
airbuses are promised. Ease of conversion once again.


Graham

Kevin Brooks wrote:

The 7E7-3 will doubtless replace even 737's (and their Airbus equivalents) on
some routes that can use the greater capacity.

" that can use the greater capacity " is IMHO the ctical factor.

If you don't need the capacity ( or its range ) - you don't need 7E7 - period.

Do you *really* see 7E7s replacing 737s ? Sounds bonkers to me. Totally
different operating scenarios.


Graham

Airlines that use 737's on trans-Atlantic routes may benefit from the
7E7 as a replacement if load factors increase. But the vast majority
of 737's live in a high cycle, short flight environment. Not
something touted as a big selling point of the 7E7.

-j-


On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 06:21:33 +0100, Pooh Bear
wrote:

Kevin Brooks wrote:

The 7E7-3 will doubtless replace even 737's (and their Airbus equivalents) on
some routes that can use the greater capacity.

" that can use the greater capacity " is IMHO the ctical factor.

If you don't need the capacity ( or its range ) - you don't need 7E7 - period.

Do you *really* see 7E7s replacing 737s ? Sounds bonkers to me. Totally
different operating scenarios.


Graham