Proving what, exactly? :confused:

Only few of them regurlarly shops at Airbus or Boeing.
Armavia trashed (in a pretty stupid still sad way) an A320 a few years back.

It doesn’t make sense to lengthen the fuselage without making it thicker. If we apply the thickness ratio (length divided by fuseage diameter ) of a B757-300 to an A380, we arrive at something like a 100m fuselage. Problem is that this fuselage needs to be lifted, and even on the A380 it gets increasingly problematic to accomodate for the wing root. The loads acting on the intersections of fuselage and wing are tremenduous and a reason why the A380 is quite a heavy beast (more OEW per pax than a B747).

Making an aircraft even bigger will reduce the its overall efficiency. And just if anybody now thinks everything is gonna to be shiny with “advanced materials”: No, doesn’t change the game. The A380 uses quite a lot of that (for example a composite center wing box, the world’s first). The ability of Airbus to exceed its originally proposed OEW by less than 1.5% is remarkable, Boeing and its B787 is at ~5% currently, the B747-8 also has some weight issues.

Besides that, there is hardly a market for anything bigger than an A380-900ER.

Boeing have been through far worse than this minor blip.

Older members may remember that the B747 damn near bankrupted the company, for instance.

And Boeing didn’t bet the shop on the B787. Remember the “risk share” partners? Before Boeing gets into trouble, Vought or SpiritAerosystems gets into troubles.

For Boeing the B787 “issue”* will cost Boeing revenue of several billion USD, will serve Airbus to regain some market share simply because the whole B787 line gets shifted backwards, and will make Boeing more cautious in the future. Airbus also gains because its damaged reputation doesn’t hurt so much when your competitor ruins his own, too.

We aready saw the practical cancellation of the -3 in its current version and the -10 got shifted to infinity. So, the vision people had that Boeing will rule the world with the B787 got a sobering reality check. But the aircraft will fly, will get certified and will earn money. If there is one thing Boeing always did right, than that its aircraft were always [at least reasonably] successful (maybe except the lame B767-400ER and B757-300).

*: current news stand allows not to call it a disaster yet

As was shown by Multhopp years and years back the classical flying wing (lateral volume distribution) is only viable in the subsonic regime. The faster you want to go, and esp for supersonic flight you need a longitudinal volume distribution. Then you call the flying wing a delta, and when you go fast enough you don’t need wings at all.

I wouldn’t discount the chance of a flying wing going supersonic, the question is if it does make sense. For supersonic flight you need a sweep of 45° and a reasonably thin profile. The structural implications are quite a lot and it is unlikely that one can get enough volume, because volume is finally what we want (for Pax, fuel and bombs). So, a tailless Delta with fuselage might be more efficient.

If I were running Airbus, the KC-45 decision would cause me to pour resources into the A400 NOW, in order to get the thing flying ASAP. PS I am aware that engine development problems are beyond their control.

Airbus pours resources into the A400M, regardless of the USAF state of mind. At the moment there is nothing they can do beyond delivering the aircraft to their present customers.
On the long run they can check out their chances. An “American” A400M would need American content. That is considerably more difficult than it was for the KC-45A because most systems are unique. I guess they could source some structural parts from USA companies and check if anyone is up for an alternative engines. With an order of 150 aircraft looming, they might offer to make major changes to the basic aircraft.

Lockheed might go as far as producing the A400M under license, something US aviation industry did a number of times with British aircraft (T-45, B-57, AV-8) and engines.

Hello Star , I have worked with boeing and have been a consultant for the 787 uptil august of last year , i was at the rollout amongst all the smoke screaned fan fair.

I can tell you that the buisness case is not all bad , the execution is bad however once figured out the buisness case is going to get boeing good profit . Ofcourse some aspects of it are going to be ineffeceient and boeing might not like to replicate those however an era of using incresing no of partners , outsourcing design and manuf. work has come and boeing know that they cannot be competitive if they dont do all of this .

The B787 is basically: We share risk and BCA does not invest too much. Even if they don’t sell a single airframe Boeing won’t go bankrupt. Airbus bet more with the A380, and Boeing bet more on previous programs.

Boeing is a company placed on the stock market, and I think the heads of the company think more profit-wise they did some years ago (when it wasn’t led by MDD managers yet :rolleyes: ). Now, it is hard to tell your shareholders that you have suffered a billion USD defeat and did not everything to fight that decision. In this case I think Boeing’s case is pretty weak.

Boeing’s claims (at least those in the Aviation Week article) are fairly weak and miss the point entirely. The USAF decided for the A330 as it offered them more for equal money. Although they in the beginning did not want to have this “more”, they finally found that it suited them well. At the same time they decided that the disadvantages of the KC-45A are not that decisive. I am still surprised that a company like Boeing argues for its aircraft by mentioning the need for some additional concrete somewhere. With the cost of one aircraft the USAF can build enough ramp space for all KC-X aircraft.

….and J-79 on the F104, Kfir, Phantom, Vigilante, B-58 Hustler off the top of my head.

All aircraft you mention were designed with the specs of the J79 on the desk. In case of the F-104 the aircraft was actually designed around the J79: the smallest possible airframe around the most powerful engine.

You mean like the RR Avon, it was only fitted to the Valliant, Canberra, Hunter, Swift, Scimitar, Lightning, Comet, Sabre, Caravelle etc.
Or the Spey fitted to the Buccaneer, Phantom, BAC 111, Nimrod etc.
The Adour?

I guess you thought you have a point … actually you don’t.

Reading/quoting the whole post would have made yours superfluent. I’ll append the rest of my statement, so it is easier to see.

Every engine is unique and optimised for one type of installation. Either engine and airframe/intake are developed together, or the airframe/intake is matched to the engine (actually happened a lot in the 50ies and 60ies). Fitting an engine into an existing airframe/intake is a truly stupid decision, especially when the design mission points are so different.