787 Rolls from Final Assy to Paint Facility

[WKTaylor]

Folks...

Article on Roll-out of 787 from final assy to paint facility... and first photos of 787 "in-the-green"... are at the following website...

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/321458_dreamliner27ww.html

See “photo gallery” link in news article.

Regards, Wil Taylor

 

[tbuelna]

From a technical standpoint, the 787 is pretty impressive. But from a financial standpoint, the 787 is absolutely mind boggling.

Boeing claims that orders for over 600 787's have been placed. At current list prices that amounts to more than $100 billion in sales.

http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2007/06/27/215235/boeing-releases-2007-list-prices.html

Their development costs will probably be less than $15 billion, so this airplane will turn out to be a gold mine for them (and their shareholders).

And next they'll be applying the technology from the 787 to their single aisle product.

http://www.flightglobal.com/article...pects-to-deliver-737-replacement-by-2015.html

 

[EdStainless]

Just how good is the financial picture? Boeing raised base prices on their planes.

Airbus has admitted that the A380 'may' never recover development costs. The break even point is a lot more planes that are currently on order. And 350XWB is still 5-7 years away.

If Boeing can keep working, and not destroy their supply chain it could be a nice ride, 787, 747-8(E), new 737. It looks like a product pipeline that anyone would envy.

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Rust never sleeps
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[40818]

I believe that the reason for the re-dominance of Boeing, is partly having had their nose put out of joint by Airbus, which meant they went back and put a lot of money and effort into the 787, which has paid off well for them. Airbus, with all its good points was (and still is) riddled with the same political/bad management problems which affected the A380, which turned into a big white elephant. Not saying the A380 is a bad aircraft at all, just poor decisions with information between countries etc. They will sell lots of A380's once they start rolling out i would think though. Airbus having shelved the A380 Freighter really need that project to start up again, as there is no capacity left with the current pax wings, so to grow the aircraft it needs the freighter wings. And just to make you worry a bit about some of it, heres a couple of nuggets...

1) Forget the failing at less than 1.5 times limit, the local structure was already locally taken to ultimate previously.
2) Freighter wing carries only about 5% or so (i believe) extra weight, but there are bolts which have gone up 2 sizes
3) Some control surfaces were basically passed by test on the wing bend tests, which unfortunately do not have aerodynamic loads on it?!?!?!

As for the A350, well lets wait and see what happens, theres no money in the pot to pay for anything until they start selling aircraft again.

 

[KENAT]

What do you mean no money left in the pot. Are you telling me that the various governments wont buy them out of trouble?

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

 

[MechanicalChef]

"theres no money in the pot to pay for anything until they start selling aircraft again."
Airbus continues to sell planes, as evidenced by the comfortable backlog of 320's. It's just everything they do these days is overshadowed by the sucking black hole that is the A380.

 

[40818]

What i meant was that they need to recoup the 4 billion or so they have currently lost with the A380.
They have filled the gap with ramped up production of older aircraft and associated parts, to try to keep the money coming in.
Any yes Kenat, the governments (france and germany mainly) will probably give them a good bit of cash, though probably not until the WTO debacle is dealt with. This is one thing which i'm led to believe is holding the A350 up.

 

[KENAT]

I have faith that the French will find a way

KENAT, probably the least qualified checker you'll ever meet...

 

[tbuelna]

40818,

"What i meant was that they need to recoup the 4 billion or so they have currently lost with the A380."

The development costs for the A380 are more like 12 or 13 billion euros. They will need to sell something like 400 aircraft to just break even, and currently I believe they have firm orders for less than 200.

The A350 is way behind schedule because of the (multiple) redesigns it's gone through. Airbus made the same mistake with the A350 that McDonnell-Douglas made with the MD11. They tried to dress up old tech and sell it as state-of-the-art to save on development costs, and the airlines didn't buy into it, rightly or wrongly.

Boeing has been very shrewd with marketing their 787. The big selling point on the 787 is the low fuel consumption of the aircraft. And if you believe Boeing's marketing pitch, it's the 787's composite fuselage and super-advanced aerodynamic shape that produce those fuel efficiency gains. In reality, probably 80% of the fuel efficiency gains come from engine improvements. Airbus understood this and with the A350 they said, "we can match the 787 simply by putting the advanced engines on a conventional airframe." Obviously, Boeing's marketing strategy was more influential with the airlines than Airbus' pragmatism.

Airbus' next stumble with A350 came when they tried to propose a less expensive way of building a composite fuselage structure. While Boeing builds the 787 barrel section skins/stringers in one piece, Airbus proposed building each barrel section in multiple pieces. Once again, it's a less expensive method, and even though it's structurally sound, the airlines still perceived it as less reliable than Boeing's construction method and demanded another change.

One of these days, arrogant European companies like Airbus will learn what is common knowledge in American corporations: The customer is always right!

 

[ewh]

Another stumble was the CAD versioning problem. Oops!

 

[MechanicalChef]

"One of these days, arrogant European companies like Airbus will learn what is common knowledge in American corporations: The customer is always right!"

From what I've read, *part* of the wiring fiasco was linked to airlines asking for extensively customized interiors.

 

[EdStainless]

The huge order book at Airbus for narrow body planes in making their problems worse. The margin on NBs is very low. Wide Body is where the money is.

I agree that Boeing's recovery is largely drive by having AB kick their ass.

I see the divergence in development (787 vs A380) as a reflection of market analysis. The 380 assumes that that hub-and-spoke will rule. That moving large numbers of people between a small number of mega-airports will be the preferred routing.
The 787 will connect virtually any two commercial airports in the world, without new runways and terminals. And without having to modify security to handle 600 people at a time.

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Rust never sleeps
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