On the subject of the DC-8, it had a fuselage cross-section of very similar dimensions to the 737.

The what-if question is; What if Douglas used the DC-8 cross-section on the DC-9, would it have been more competitive?

The latest cold-call from a Solar Panel company.

I’d rather spend the money on insulating the house, than getting some cowboy coming to the house and making a hash job of fitting rather expensive solar panels.

My thinking is this: Let’s pick an arbitrary number, 10,000 will do. So, it takes 10,000 Joules of energy to heat my house. And let’s say 30% is escaping the house through lack of good insulation. I then fit these fantastic solar panels that generate – arbitrary number – 3,000 Joules. Great, I just need to pay for 7,000 Joules of Electricity/Gas to heat my home. Therefore, my bills go down and everyone is happy. Err no, I’m still loosing 3,000 Joules of energy that I’ve still paid for indirectly through the acquisition cost of the solar panels. Fast forward a year, two, three years and electricity/gas prices have risen again, and again. I’ll be paying what I paid before, still paying off fancy solar panels, and still wasting 3,000 Joules.

Or, am I missing something?

Sorry, rant over…:o

Good news for Boeing and the 787 programme. It is interesting that these are replacing some of the 747s. Is this right-sizing of the fleet in response to increased competition from Middle East carriers?

Does the $32 billion also include compensation paid to airlines? Not to mention opening a new factory, buying out a subsidiary and wing root redesign. This figure is going to rise further after the battery problems.

It still doesn’t support your opinion. The Boeing 787 was initially slated to cost $6 billion. The A350 was originally to cost $3 billion ( which wasn’t a clean sheet design), but ballooned to over $15 billion after the initial warmed-over A330 didn’t appeal to airlines.

So far there is no evidence that there has been any damage to the Boeing Brand.

Any damage that has been done won’t show in the short term. Even looking into the future, it’ll be very hard to quantify the damage. Unless, of course, there is a dramatic shift in orders in the future.

It is going to be essential for Boeing to bring the 737MAX and 777X to the market without fault.

The A350-1000 isn’t going to replace all the 747-400s and A340-600s. There is a place for the 777-9X to replace the capacity left with the last 747s are gone.

That’s freakin’ cool! I particularly like the one with the 1:1 model.