Author: Jon Ostrower

Movie Monday is kicking off a bit earlier than usual today (12:52 AM) because I am releasing a 787 update later this morning.

This week’s movie is part of a five hour long documentary entitled the 21st Century Jet (1996), which will be presented here over the next five weeks. Many have seen the famous clips from the documentary on YouTube showing the rejected takeoff and wing break testing, but few have seen the complete film which details every aspect of the development of the Boeing 777-200 from the early days as the 767X and the United Airlines launch order to entry into service in Spring 1995.

This is one of the single most valuable public historical tools for understanding Boeing, its recent history and its philosophy on innovation and risk. From a personal prospective, this documentary served as a model for my coverage of the 787 program that you see here. Embedded inside this movie are important lessons for the 787 program, as well as the context for understanding the global design and supply chain.

Episode I: To Design a Plane

Permit me this a brief detour from covering aircraft and allow me to introduce you to my friend Jake Brewer. Jake’s Dad work’s for GM in Tennessee. GM has been a part of his life for as long as he can remember, and now GM is staring down the spectre of a bankruptcy that has the potential to take an entire US state down with it. I, like Jake, am torn over what to do. What is the role of government? Can a business really be too big to fail? Or just too big? I’ll let Jake speak for himself and what GM has meant for his family and this country, I think you’ll appreciate Jake’s thoughts on innovation and technology in this tumultuous time.

Originally posted at huffingtonpost.com.

GM Goes Grassroots. A son is torn.
On November 12, Tom Brewer received an “URGENT call to action…”
along with all other General Motors employees in the United States from
GM North American President Troy Clarke. The return email address was
“grassroots@gm.com.” The urgent task at hand: Call your members of
Congress to request that the American auto industry receive a
government “loan” of at least $25 billion.

Employees were then directed to a website through which to take action:

www.gmfactsandfiction.com

As a grassroots clean energy advocate and strategic communications
professional, it’s a type of request I know intimately. I’ve written
and received countless emails just like it. Two this week. Tom,
however, has not.

Tom has been an employee of General Motors since he graduated from
Evansville University in 1974. At the time, for a Midwestern kid from
“stonecutter” Bedford, Indiana, it was kind of like going to work for
Google today.

As you can imagine, Tom’s seen a lot happen in the energy and auto
industries in the last 34 years, but before this year he never
considered that his retirement, his health care, and indeed his
professional future would be in such dramatic jeopardy. In fact,
without ever changing careers, he once worked for the largest and
arguably the most influential corporation in the world; now he’s
getting these emails. He never dreamed that he’d need to be calling his
congressmen to save the company to which he’s always been loyal, and
upon which he and his family’s livelihood has depended. I can speak
with such certainty about Tom’s past because I’ve known him for 27 of
the 34 years he’s been with General Motors, and we’re very close.

Tom is my dad.

Ford Motor Company has a market cap of $3.01 billion at 3:31 PM. A bit of afternoon blogger snark:

That means you could buy Ford for about 12 of the aircraft Alan Mullaly helped to invent.

For a point of comparison, that’s 20% of the 777s that Emirates operates. How’s that for irony?

Call me crazy, but I always felt Project Runway was a show that should’ve been about airports. So much for that plan. Beginning today, a hat trick of new runways opens up at three major airports across the US. Airport expansion is quite rare here in the US and seeing three huge new runways opening simultaneously is unheard of. Airports are more likely to be closed in the United States rather than opened.

My home airport, Washington-Dulles got its first new runway since it opened in 1962. Runway 1L /19R is 9,400 feet long and appears to be accessible only by Taxiway Tango currently. For this runway to be truly effective, this runway will need all its taxiways connected so it doesn’t snarl traffic on 12/30.

At Seattle-Tacoma, Ruwnay 16R/34L is officially operational after 15 years of debate and Chicago-O’Hare gets 9L/27R at the north end of the massive airport. Interestingly, it turns out that airlines are less than enthusiastic about the next phase of O’Hare expansion.

If you want more airport news, I highly recommend Terminal Q authored by my colleague, the always insightful Megan Kuhn. Terminal Q just migrated from its original home over at Blogger to Flightglobal.com, so stop by and wish her a warm welcome!

I went spelunking in the United States Patent and Trademark Office cave and came out with a gem of a find. Its title: AIRCRAFT. Clever, I know. This AIRCRAFT patent (filed by The Boeing Company) claims to depict “The ornamental design for an aircraft.” It does not disappoint. There’s not a whole lot of textual meat to the application, which is why the visuals are so important.

Patent D0580864 looks pretty radical. Two cabins with stadium style forward sloping seating with a two level lounge area separating the two cabins. It may kill cargo capacity, but it sure looks interesting. It would certainly rule out anyone from the economy cabin using the premiums lavs.

My colleague asked me, what aircraft it was modeled on and I thought for for a moment that it was arbitrary, but it struck me that it bore a striking resemblance to the Sonic Cruiser design from 2001-2002.

I dug a bit deeper into the 5-page patent and the cabin arrangement shows 214 seats in a two-class configuration; premium holds 35 and economy 179. The seat layout fits loosely into the same aircraft class as 787 and A330. What a wild design. I threw this graphic together (with the help of the Flight archives) to give you a sense of the comparison.

Right now in Everett, twin 787s are undergoing final assembly with
red painted rudders. Dreamliners Three and Four are destined for
Northwest. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing both at various states of
assembly in South Carolina, Kansas and Washington. Dreamliner Three will forever hold a special place in my heart, as it was the first 787 I stepped aboard back in May.

The now-approved merger of Delta and Northwest has provided this blogger with much Photoshop fodder over the past several months. Whether it was their respective fleets side by side when the merger was first announced or the first Delta 747-400 set to emerge from the paint shop next month, this merger has been easy on the eyes.

I went ahead and had some fun with Photoshop yesterday afternoon and painted up a rendering of what a Delta 787 should look like when it emerges from the paintshop. Make sure to click the image for a larger version.

Though, with things progressing sluggishly in Everett, will those two flight test 787s be painted first in Northwest or Delta colors? I would imagine that Delta doesn’t love the idea of having to pay for repainting of two new aircraft, so it certainly remains an open question if ZA003 and ZA004 will be born Delta instead of Northwest.

Boeing just released its third in an ongoing series of 787 milestone videos on its website. The latest chronicles the completion of destructive testing on the 787 test wingbox. The results of will be analyzed and applied to additional testing on the 787 static airframe (ZY997). The final validation of wing strength for FAA certification will be carried out on ZY997 when the wing is bent to apply 150% of maximum loads.

Boeing has not yet decided if it plans to break the wings of ZY997. One could speculate that the destruction of the test article helped in determining the extent of debris cleanup that might be required if the test was carried out on ZY997 inside the factory. In January 1995, the Boeing 777 was brought to 154% of maximum loads before it snapped in spectacular fashion.

Breaking the wing is not a requirement for certification, but would
help in understanding the overall strength of the wing. If the wing
survives well past 150% of maximum loads, it would provide a guide for
weight reduction because the wing would be carrying too much structure, as well as assisting in understanding the growth potential for future 787 models.

With last week’s announcement of the 747-8 delay, got me to thinking. Just how many 747-400s are left to be delivered? Boeing originally intended to build 747-400s and 747-8s side by side on the production line in Everett, but decided a year ago to close out the -400 line before launching -8 assembly.


The last passenger -400 was delivered to China Airlines back in April 2005, leaving nine 747-400 freighters left for delivery.

After poking around a bit and triangulating some data, the remaining nine will go to four cargo operators: UPS (1), Nippon Cargo Airlines (2), Cathay Pacific (4) and LoadAir Cargo (2) of Kuwait. UPS and NCA will receive -400Fs and CX and LoadAir will receive -400ERFs.

The final -400, an Extended Range Freighter, is destined for LoadAir and will be the 1419th 747 built since 1968.

Sluggish Deliveries Warning
This item went largely unnoticed last week from the EADS Airbus press conference:

Deliveries of Airbus A380 aircraft may be delayed: EADS
PARIS (AFP) –
Deliveries of some super-jumbo Airbus A380 airliners scheduled for next year may be delayed until 2010, the head of the European aerospace group EADS said on Friday.

“We had planned to deliver 12 A380s in 2008 and 21 in 2009. Some of the 21 for 2009 may be delivered in 2010,” EADS head Louis Gallois said in telephone press conference.

Airbus chief Thomas Enders had bet a magnum of champagne on delivering the 33 aircraft by the 2008 and 2009 time frame.

New customers Air France, Lufthansa and China Southern are among the airlines expected to get their first A380s in 2009.

Wave 2 did fly!
There was quite a bit of back and forth last week about whether or not the first Wave 2 A380 actually flew. MSN026 in fact did make its first flight as reported by Flight on November 12. Though, it raised a funny question: If a plane flies in Toulouse and no one is around to spot it, did it actually fly?

Well, the answer is yes. The aircraft left early in the morning and came back to TLS after a two hour flight rather than being ferried to XFW. No photographers were around to spot it at the time. The QANTAS A380 arrived in Hamburg earlier today with plenty of visual evidence to support that claim.

A380 No. 10 leaves the nest
Emirates got its 3rd (of 58) A380-800 (MSN016 A6-EDC) on November 15th, making it the tenth superjumbo to be delivered since the A380 entered service in 2007 with Singapore Airlines. The arrival of number three will launch service between Dubai and London on December 1. The commencement of that route will bring the total A380 city pairs to seven. QANTAS A380 no. 2 VH-OQB is next in line for delivery.

ACARS mode: 2 Aircraft reg: A6-EDC [ ]

Message label: Q0 Block id: 4 Msg no: S27A

Flight id: EK7380 [] [Emirates]

———————————————————-[
15/11/2008 09:17 ]-

QANTAS names its A380
Am I crazy or are there only 19 bullet points here? QANTAS ordered 20
A380s. Also, there are 21 names. I’m willing to bet that Keith and Ross
McPhearson Smith each get their own superjumbo and John and Reginald
Duigan get to share. Anyone care to clarify?

• Nancy-Bird Walton – the first woman to fly a commercial
  aviation service in Australia. First woman to fly a commercial service
  in Australia.
• Hudson Fysh – one of the founders of Qantas and
  the airline’s first Managing Director. A founder of Qantas and the
  first Managing Director.
• Paul McGinness – A Qantas founder.
• Fergus McMaster – A Qantas founder and the airlines first Chairman.
• Lawrence Hargrave – The inventor of the box kite and achieved a linking of four to fly sixteen feet in 1894.
• Charles
  Kingsford Smith – Achieved the first trans-Pacific flight that ran from
  the USA to Australia in 1928. He also formed Australian National
  Airways Limited.
• Charles Ulm – Charles Kingsford Smith’s
  Co-pilot when he flew the trans-pacific flight and was also a founder
  of Australian National Airways Limited.
• Reginald Ansett – The founder of Ansett Airways in Australia.
• David Warren – The inventor of the Black Box Flight Recorder still used in modern airliners.
• Bert Hinkler – Achieved the first solo flight from Britain to Australia in 1928.
• John and Reginald Duigan – Both men were the first to design and build a flying powered aircraft in 1910.
• Phyllis Arnot – The first Australian woman to achieve a commercial pilots licence.
• Keith
  McPhearson Smith and Ross McPhearson Smith – both were winners of the
  ‘air race’ that ran between London and Australia held in 1919.
• Lester
  Brain – One of the pilots working on the first Qantas routes in 1925.
  He was responsible for transporting the first Catalina Flying Boat that
  was delivered to Qantas in 1941. Mr Brain was also given the position
  of General Manager of Trans-Australia Airlines in 1946.
• Lores
  Bonney – The first woman to complete a solo flight around Australia in
  1932 and the first to fly solo from Australia to England in 1933.
• Norman
  Brearley – The founder of Western Australian Airways Limited. The
  airline were responsible for operating the first scheduled air service
  commencing on the 5th of December 1921.
• PG Taylor – Charles
  Kingford Smith and Charles Ulm’s navigator and co-pilot on several
  occasions on flight between Australia and the USA as well as between
  England and Australia. Awarded the Empire Gallantry Medial in 1937 for
  acts of bravery.
• John Flynn – The Royal Flying Doctor Service founder.
• Gaby Kennard – The first Australian female to complete a solo flight across the globe.

UPDATE – The one I missed:

• Scotty Allan – Co-pilot alongside Charles Ulm and P G Taylor on the 1933 record-breaking flight from England to Australia and later joined Qantas and flew DH86 aircraft on the Brisbane-Singapore route.

The National Geographic Channel has produced some great aviation documentaries over the years and this one is no exception. This five part show covers the development of the Airbus A380. I bid your productivity a fond farewell. Enjoy!