In the list in the beginning, I missed An-148. It is now in service, and enjoys firm orders to the stretch version An-158.

A high-wing aircraft designed from a military transporter is the worst you can get. Some people might find it interesting, but airlines apparently not. No big name under the customers, and they just delivered the first aircraft, after achieving first flight in 2004.
Ilyushin Finance and this funny Iranian conglomerate HESA make 80% of the orders.

Just want to make sure I understand, you believe the composite 787 with all new GeNX engines won’t be able to compete with the 1993 technology A330, and that the 360-540,000 lb MTOW 787 is gonna kill off the 545-766,000 lb MTOW 777 series? In the wake of the fuel spike of the last few years, the 787 seems like the right airplane at the right time to me. I guess everyone has an opinion, but I can’t say I agree with yours. Seems like the airlines don’t either, with 700ish 787 firm orders still on the books and a healthy backlog still existing on the 777.

I also find it rather interesting that you feel a 3-5% weight savings on an airplane with a 610,000 lb OEW is economically unjustifiable. Especially at a time when the entire A380 program appears to be economically unjustifiable on the basis of sales performance to date. Even Airbus stopped publicly quoting a breakeven airframe figure in 2006, at what was it, some 430 frames?

I’ll buy you a beer when MSN700 rolls off the line, providing I am still alive in 2040. Perhaps the Chinese will have replace Boeing by then and Airbus will have long term competition.

A business case to design an aircraft that only gains by reducing the OEW about 3-5% is indeed not working. There is not potential in terms of engines (and you can basically retrofit every new engine technology to the A380). The whole thing is very unattractive for a profit-oriented company, especially as sales seem not to be so wonderful.

The B787 replaces B767-300 in the first place, competes versus the A330-200 and may replace some B777-200ER. Strange that no B777-200 was sold since, but quite a lot A330s.

And don’t fixate on the fact that A330 was first rolled out 1993: even the aircraft designed in the 60ies or 70ies are remarkably efficient, see B747 (which even in its newest version bears very strong resemblance to the 1968 design).

I’m wondering how competitive the A380 will be when Boeing applies all the composite airframe knowledge they are gaining now on the 787 program to their future VLA 5-10 years down the road? If Airbus gains the same knowledge on the A350, its gonna cost an awful lot to rebuild the A380 as a composite airplane….

Very competitive, as the “composite illusion” will really be understood in a few years. The B787 has issues to be competitive versus the A330 and Boeing rushed the whole industry into a rather stupid rush of replacing very useful aircraft (B777, A330) before their time was due.
By the way: the A380 uses in many areas the same level of composites as the B787, they just didn’t have management telling them to use it all over, but they used where it made sense.
I wouldn’t expect more than a 3-5% weight saving, which doesn’t justify the business case. The A380 may be running bad lately, but that ensures that Boeing will never build a competing design.
SIA will replace MSN007 by MSN700.

Some Tu-154M were built in the 1990s and 2000s, they are anything but museum pieces. Technically outdated for long, they have their upsides when operated under “Soviet” conditions.

It is linear, but not a straight line. There is a formulae I’ve seen (But log forgotten).
So, it’s not “Linear” in the perfect sense, but one can draw a line on a graph.

Depends: if you increase in preliminary design, yes, it is more or less linear. But when the aircraft is basically set the issue is more tricky, especially as most operators will operate the 787 much below its design range.

Operating aircraft outside its design mission: I could write a paper about it.

The closest competitor to the 787 will be the A350XWB 🙂

A350XWB competes with B787-9.
The B787-8 has no real Airbus competitor in the A350 line, and yes, the A330-200 is the direct counterpart.

The OEW increase is not just another technical problem, it somehow proves the points made by old_shape few posts ago. The CFRP structures apparently fall short in weight saving potential. The stuff you read in all the books doesn’t seem to work on the big scale.

Apart from the CFRP, they use excessive amounts of Titanium. Damn, if you put a B767 next to B787 and compare complexity of production, the 767 looks like a failed exercise for undergraduate students. Not sure if the organization can cope with this drastic increase in complexity.

I close writing Aboulafia style:
Yours, ‘Til the day our children cannot drink beer from cans made of old airframes any more,
Schorsch

When the A380 first flew it was about 80 tonnes overweight. The weight was shed throughout the flight test program through continuous refinment. Does anyone know if the 787 will come in on weight or will it fly overweight?

Steve

80 tonnes? Are you drunk?

It was more like 4t, less than 3% of its OEW (it is now below 2%).
The B787 is above 6% and I don’t see them coming down to their proposed figures. Guess why Boeing had issues with the center wing box and the body-wing joint? Not because they are too stupid to design aircraft but because they took the weight saving and under-strengthening a bit too far.

And guess why they basically scrap airplanes 1, 2 and 3 after certification. Not done in civil aviation since the late 1950ies. Good news for the Museum of flight in Seattle: They have a Dreamliner long before most customer airlines have one*.

* Advanced Reading: while keeping the first aircraft makes sense, the non instrumented 2nd and 3rd are just dead weight on the Tarmac with very little value as soon as certification is finished.

The cross-section of the fuselage is identical (the length of ARJ21-700 does not match the length of any DC-9 model).

Taking out some frames from the constant section is a no-brainer.

So that it would not grow past ARJ21-900… and would not compete against CS100. Whose fuselage and wingbox are also made by AVIC. And Cseries does have a new cross-section and new tooling.

The Chinese are not stupid. They know that fighting an A319/A320 is not working. They are taking existing stuff off the shelf and try to do it themselves, basically a use-case for their industry. the results don’t impress, but it is a big learning program for their industry.

The CF-34 is a safe choice, not truly inventive, but taking General Electric into the boat helps the business case (which isn’t meant to produce any cash anyways).