Ship 741I am trying to spot what the problem is with B777-300 non-ER.
Yes, it is big. Longer than 747, actually. The main deck can have 550 seats – a Japanese airline flies over 520 seats on 777-300. It is still slightly smaller than 747-400 or 747-300 with their big upper decks, but quite comparable to the short upper deck 747-100 or 747-200.
And the maximum range of 747-100 is 9800 km. Shorter than 777-300 non-ER. 747-300 range is something like 12 400 km.
How do the costs of a 777-300 non-ER compare against 747-200 on the same route? And if airlines want to decrease plane size, why is 777-300 non-ER not a popular 747-300 replacement?
Sorry that I haven’t seen the numbers for 773 non ER vs 742 or 743 but roughly speaking the 777-300ER carries about 90% of the load of a 744, yet burns 26% less fuel. I remember seeing those numbers somewhere and don’t know if the fuel was block or per seat. I would imagine the ratios would be similar for the 773 non ER vs 742/743.
IMHO the reason that more airlines aren’t replacing 747’s with 773’s is that they simply don’t want that big of an airplane. The 773 is still too big.
However, I have my doubts on how (much) the newer generation (A350/B787) are going to open new point-to-point markets. Obviously, the premise that point-to-point avoids hubs is obvious, but how cost efficient will it really be to base, or fly these new generation into smaller airports – fuel aside, crewing, ground handling, engineering are going to cost similar. I suspect these newer generation aircraft will continue to do as A330/B767 do just now, hub-to-hub, and hub-to-point.
I should point clarify something I said incorrectly earlier. The B767 opened more non-traditional hub to point service than it did point to point. I am sorry that I said otherwise. A more accurate way to describe the fragmentation brought about by ETOPS and the success of the B767 (which paved the way for the 777 and 330 btw) was that traditional hubs have been bypassed increasingly. This has made the Very Large Airplane less and less desirable since the hub to hub flying is less.
Boeing believes that the 787 is going to fragment the Pacific market like the 767 did in the Atlantic. In other words, bypassing Narita for example for flights from the U.S. and going directly to smaller Japanese cities or further into Asia without stopping at the gateway hub.
Ship 741Hello,
Ship 741, that is one way to look at it, but another is that these smaller aircraft are getting more and more capable.
Agree with that completely.
And also agree with Bmused.
Boeing saw the markets were fragmenting years ago…..smaller airplanes overflying International hubs (like JFK for example, which passengers avoid like the plague) with more point to point service. I consider the success of the A330 rather accidental. Why did Airbus even build the A340 if they were planning on the A330 being so successful? IMHO the 330 has not stolen orders from Boeing, as it has a unique size that Boeing doesn’t have a product to match specifically, but rather the 330 has killed the 340. And the 380 continues to languish. IMHO the “action” for the future is in the 787/350 range. Boeing was right…..ETOPS won out and changed everything.
Ship 741Too many variables in your questions and too many invalid comparisons, ie., comparing an A333 that seats 300 people to a 773 that seats almost 400.
In general, airplanes are getting smaller and smaller, Widebody twins flying on routes formerly the purview of 747s and three holers, and narrowbody twins flying longer and longer routes. 737’s now routinely fly transcon U.S. routes and 757ERs have been flying the North Atlantic for some time. Thus the arguement that the A380 is not needed and will never be profitable.
Ship 741Scroll down to second item:
http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/flightblogger/
As you may have noticed, ZA002 touched down at Boeing Field with its landing gears doors open instead of stowed as we saw on ZA001 last Tuesday. The reason for the open position at the time of landing had to do with the resolution Neville and Carriker used to fully straighten a component of the nose landing gear.
The Seattle Times has reported that “Part of the gear assembly “was tilted to the aft by 15 degrees.”
Specifically the part in question was the nose landing gear drag brace that, according to an airline pilot who holds type ratings on both the 757 and 767 and flies for a major US carrier, a drag brace “braces the airplane [landing gear] gear when a rearward load placed on the gear. This will help prevent gear collapse under higher than normal load situations.”
Boeing says the telemetry room, or TM, noticed a conflict in the readings on the nose landing gear and asked for a visual inspection by the T-33 chase plane.
The chase plane reported that the nose landing gear drag brace was “not completely straight,” adding “there’s about a 15 degree angle to it.”
Neville cycled the landing gear doors and later the landing gear a few times to try and properly align the drag brace.
The crew ultimately selected the Alternate Gear extension option which unlocked the nose and main landing gear doors, dropping the landing gear into position, resolving the issue, and explains why we saw the doors open on arrival. Additionally, the use of the ALTN GEAR option ensured that any potentially unresolved issue with the nose gear would not be an issue on touchdown.
It’s quite common to see a 777 making an approach to KPAE after a production test flight with the landing gear doors open, such a condition is a common occurrence during a test flight and even more common during the first flight of a new aircraft. Ultimately, while this minor issue was encountered, the redundancy in the landing gear system was tested successfully in flight.
Naturally, the gear was inspected after landing and the system will obviously be tested once again when ZA002 flies again. One anomaly on a first flight is hardly indicative of a larger issue. If this same problem is found in the other test aircraft, then that would be something requiring a larger change, but there’s absolutely no evidence to support that after just five hours and six minutes of flying the 787.
Ship 741Haha, speaking of classifications, I just remembered how we all like to dispute the category of ‘events’. I think this is definitely a ‘crash’ instead of an ‘accident’ or ‘incident’.
I don’t know of any regulatory organization that uses the term “crash.” While it is appropriate to recognize that different countries/organizations (military) have differing classifications with regard to what constitutes an incident or an accident, I think that most classify any event that causes a fatality or a hull loss would be classified as an accident. This certainly looks like a hull loss to me.
Ship 741Seems the Russian problem in the commercial arena is always with the engines…too heavy, too high fuel consumption, too low time on the wing.
And yet, wasn’t one of the Russian airframes supposed to use PW2037 engines 10 or so years ago? Whatever happened to that plan?
If this is a decent airframe, why can’t they just call GE and use the CF-34? For that matter, imagine what the big Antonov could do with GEnx engines….:)
Ship 741As noted by earlier posters, several large airliners have had the capability of carrying a spare engine to an outlying station. It was originally thought that this would prove utile to airlines, however in practice the capabilty has not been widely utilized. Engines are usually transported by other means, sometimes in a chartered freighter, everything from a C130 to a 747 has been used.
It is interesting to note in the picture that the fan has been removed and only the core engine has blockers installed….no doubt this reduces the drag compared to blocking the entire engine…….. though I suspect the drag is still significand and that the resultant performance of the mother ship still leaves a lot to be desired. Carrying an extra 15,000lbs or so would also be quite a significant payload hit. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone on the commercial forum can actually locate some performance charts for carrying a spare engine around this way.
Ship 741Airlines are making all kinds of interesting decisions right now due to the economy.
Many of the airplanes removed from service are being sent to the desert for storage but not scrapping. Some are only sent there through the low season, which is winter for many carriers. If it is a small fleet within a carriers, sometimes those are uneconomic to keep flying. I think if you do some research you will find there are some airplanes less than 10 years old in the desert, even some A330’s. They come up against a maintenance time limit and get parked until springtime when the maintenance has to be done in order to get them into service for the summer rush.
Pity the poor pilots getting paid to sit at home all winter (furloughing a pilot is a 2 year decision and if airlines don’t intend to furlough for at least that long they just carry the extra pilots on the books for 6 months or so)
Ship 741I guess per seat fuel, because all else is non-sense..
Sorry, can’t agree with that. I believe block costs are very important. If they weren’t all airlines would be flying biggest airplane available everywhere.
By the way: the L1011 was technically a great aircraft, having many unique features. Just: civil aircraft don’t sell by being advanced but by being competitive in pricing and operational costs. Boeing never really pushed technology that far, but always created very competitve packages.
Concur wholeheartedly. I would add also that L10 never reached critical mass in terms of production numbers.
Ship 741Only a fraction of the quoted “20%” (which is actually versus a B767-300 on a long range mission, versus A330 or B777 the difference is single digit percentage, mission dependent of course) is due to savings in structural weight.
Remember we are in an era where some passenger airlines are removing pillows from planes to save weight. Please tell us how much of the 20% comes from the structural weight savings and what that percentage equates to in fuel savings over a 25 year/60,000 flight hour service life. At what point in your opinion does a structural weight savings become significant enough to pursue? I can imagine a lot of people would say: “any”
Also, I always feel it is important to point out block fuel versus per seat fuel. My understanding is that the 20% figure was versus a BLOCK 763 long range mission.
Most A380 fanboys want to talk about it’s low per seat fuel consumption and don’t want to discuss block fuel. Most Boeing 767/777/787 fanboys want to talk about their low block fuel and don’t talk as much about per seat fuel burn, since they have relatively fewer seats.
Ship 741perhaps they meant dearth of experienced airline pilots IN INDIA.
Ship 741With all due respect to Airbus, didn’t one of their top managers (T. Allan McArtor, an American hired gun) recently say that 787 style delays (and A380 style delays for that matter) were bad for the industry, and for Airbus, and that therefore they hated to see them?
You would have expected Airbus to issue some congratulatory message like Boeing did though.
Ship 741Nope
We’re now going to hear about every single little thing that happens in the 787 program from now till a few years after EIS.
Such is the price of leadership.
Ship 741In spite of so much attention being given to the revolutionary composite structure, I am very interested to see how the equally revolutionary systems perform. All the new electric stuff (packs, brakes, etc) combined with a whole new generation of electronics in the E/E bay and cockpit, combined with an all new engine (at least in the case of the GE entry) are enough to give one cause for concern.
To my mind, the thing that was so extraordinary about the 777 was the flawless service entry. The very high reliability out of the gate was very impressive…..remember at the time some of her competitors were still poo-pooing ETOPS to the extent that some of them were still building tri and quad engined airplanes. Those airplanes have languished in recent years compared to their twin engined brethren.
So if Boeing can introduce revolutionary structures and systems on the 787 with the same level of reliability they attained with the 777, to achieve unparalled economy, then it really will be a new day in aviation. All those building aluminum airplanes will be left trying to catch up. I hope for their sake they have used the 2+ year delay to further improve the airplane.
Edit: Post proofread for silliness, and all such removed by author.
Ship 741The future began today……aviation has been reborn……everything is new.
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