Boeing boosts range of 7E7

Boeing, anticipating a launch of the 7E7 “sooner rather than later” this year, has decided to boost the range of the baseline aircraft nearly 9% from 7,800 nm to 8,500 nm.
Primary reason is to improve cargo performance, said Senior VP-7E7 Program Mike Bair. “It will add a few more city-pairs into the mix, but most of the interest is in taking advantage of the airplane’s huge cargo volume,” he said. For example, “it adds about six tons of additional cargo capability” on routes of 5,000-6,000 nm, such as New York-Tokyo.
The 3,500-nm range of the short-range version and the 8,300-nm range of the 7E7 stretch remain unchanged, Bair added, but since the stretch will come several years after the baseline and the SR, “no doubt the range of the stretch will move around.” Fuel volume and engine thrust already are adequate for the range increase but some “additional plies” of material will be added to parts of the wing and fuselage. Bair said he did not know the airplane’s new maximum gross takeoff weight.
On other matters, he said the aircraft’s list price, announced during Asian Aerospace as being in line with that of the 767-300ER, “$120 million, plus or minus $5 million,” has been well-received.
Most major manufacturing partnerships have been decided, Bair said, with the nacelle, strut and engines the remaining big pieces and the engine decision due in mid-April. He told ATWOnline that market reaction to the engine offerings is more important than the financial deals between Boeing and the engine makers. “It doesn’t matter what the financial package is if you can’t sell it.”
A 7E7 innovation will be the ability to switch between engines of different manufacturers in 24 hr., accomplished through use of a common wing/strut interface and a cockpit software change, Bair said. This new ability offers aircraft owners “a lot of downstream flexibility” by eliminating the chance that an aircraft might have the “wrong” engine for a potential new operator.