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An American in Paris Edition

This long overdue update covers the last two months of A380 production. The update covers a lot of ground including two deliveries, many new first flights and several new convoys of structural sections in Toulouse. As always, these updates depend on input and information from you. If I’ve missed anything here or anything incorrect here please let me know.

The A380 production has a large question mark hanging over it currently as the delivery schedule for 2009 is being reviewed by Airbus. Once this new schedule is announced, it will provide a good guide for watching the production process unfold.

The A380 production updates have been more infrequent with the quickening pace of production, as well as the large volume of information to manage. Between updates, which should be monthly now (or close to), the wikipedia user generated production list is a good interim resource, though should never be taken as 100% fact, just a good framework to work from.

Image Credit David Barrie

DELIVERIES

MSN006 – Singapore Airlines – 9V-SKC
9V-SKC was delivered to SIA on March 11, 2008. The 3rd A380 delivered allowed Singapore AIrlines to begin its second service from Singapore to London.

MSN008 – Singapore Airlines – 9V-SKD
Airbus delivered its 4th A380 on April 26, 2008. 9V-SKD will be used between Tokyo and Singapore later this month.

FLIGHT TESTING

MSN011 – Emirates – D-AXAA – A6-EDA
Emirates first A380 was unveiled in full colors on April 3, 2008. The registration was changed from French F-WWSH to German D-AXAA while in Hamburg for interior fitting. The aircraft will be delivered with 489 seats on board.

MSN012 – Singapore Airlines – F-WWSI – 9V-SKF
SIA’s 6th A380 flew for the first time on February 20, 2008. It departed TLS for XFW on February 22, 2008.

MSN013 – Emirates – F-WWSJ – A6-EDB
F-WWSJ, the 2nd A380 for Emirates, conducted its first taxi tests on March 31, 2008, followed by its first flight April 2 and ferry flight to XFW on April 4. Spotters remarked that it was the first time an A380 had completed its first engine run, rejected take off test, first flight and ferry flight all in a Monday-Friday span.

MSN014 – QANTAS – F-WWSK – VH-OQA
The first QANTAS A380 has completed cabin outfitting and will be moved to the paint shop to receive full the airlines new colors later this month in Hamburg.

PRODUCTION UPDATE CONTINUED BELOW

One programming note from your friendly local FlightBlogger.

I’ll be travelling for the next two weeks to spend some quality time with the world’s biggest aircraft manufacturers.

Week one will be spent in Paris/Toulouse at Airbus for a technical briefing on A350, et al.

Week two will take me to Seattle/Everett at Boeing. Should be a great chance to get an up-close look at the goings on inside 40-26.

Much more to come.

Point of irony: I’m flying a 777 to Airbus and an A320 to Boeing.

Off to Dulles!

FlightBlogger Feature Part IV of IV. All images are copyright of FlightBlogger unless otherwise specified.

Read Part I – Ground School
Read Part II – To The Sky
Read Part III – Go-Arounds and Wildfires

I returned to the flight deck about ten minutes after our final go around at Roanoke and I climbed into the jump seat behind Horne and Weight. We had reached our cruising altitude of 21000 feet and 300 knots and were heading direct to intersection FINKS, which is part of the SHNON TWO arrival into Dulles.

Because of the short duration of the flight home, we had already begun planning our arrival. Horne and Weight received the ATIS (Automated Terminal Information Service) which details the current status of the airport including active runways, weather conditions and any other notable information.

Flightglobal.com reported this morning that new renderings of the Airbus A350 illustrate the new look of the nose with 6 windows similar to that of the A380.

A closer look at the images also reveals several major changes to the wing design. The new wings show the winglets with an increased upward bend. In addition, the almost bare wing that marked the original XWB design now has three large flap fairings. The wing dimensions have appeared to change as well. The new wing looks as though it features slightly less sweep.

Judge for yourself:

Original Wing

Revised Wing

Images Courtesy Airbus and Emirates

I authored this week’s cover story for Flight International to look back on the turbulent last year of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner program. Boeing is about to cross the one year mark since the beginning of final assembly operations for Dreamliner One and the story is one of successes and struggles. It is a comprehensive look at what went wrong, and right, for the 787 Dreamliner program.

One year on: the story of the 787

Sidebar Stories
Rude awakening for dream factories
787 centre wing box redesign buckles schedule

Excerpt from One year on: the story of the 787:

The globalised world in which the 787 was to be born was flat. However, Boeing has found that the edges of that globe are still quite rough. The same forces that enabled the 787 to be built on a global scale, seamless telecommunications and advanced computer- aided design, could not replace oversight and on-the-ground experience.

What fundamentally set the Dreamliner apart even before it made its public debut in Seattle, was that it was instrumental in the cultural transformation of one of the USA’s corporate standard-bearers for innovation on two distinct levels.

The first defines the challenges of designing and manufacturing new commercial aircraft in the 21st century economy. At the core of this challenge is what it means to be an aircraft manufacturer. With ever-rising labour costs driven by increasing healthcare and pension obligations, Boeing looked towards foreign and domestic supplier partners from around the world to share the burden of risk and cost to bring the 787 to fruition.

The balance between using expensive yet seasoned in-house staff or less-expensive labour at well-established suppliers and newly established “greenfield” sites is, in essence, the new existential equation of the global economy that must be balanced in the development of new commercial aircraft.

On the one hand, an airframer cannot neglect its native experience built through years of developing aircraft, and on the other, the cost of developing the aircraft cannot become so prohibitively high that the break-even point for a commercial aircraft programme does not justify its undertaking.

Boeing believed the solution to this equation lay in the most complex global supply chain in the history of manufacturing. Dozens of suppliers and a small fleet of modified 747-400s support a massive global logistical operation.

In its first year of building 787s, Boeing has found that balance tilted away from it. The company has been bitterly disappointed by the performance of its supply chain. Now it is seeking to rebalance that equation, regaining oversight and control as it works to assemble flight-test aircraft.

The second change was more subtle. Boeing’s commercial aircraft division at its heart was a business-to-business operation, providing a product to the airlines that, in turn, serves the travelling public. The approach Boeing took for the 787 was, for the first time, to market the Dreamliner as a consumer’s aircraft with unique features such as mood lighting, higher cabin pressurisation and a host of passenger experience-enhancing options for airlines to select. The experience of flying was just as important a marketing tool to the airlines as the economics of flying.

See The Complete Article

Within the last week, airlines and other media reports have begun to discuss further delivery delays for customers of the Boeing 787 and Airbus A380.

German publication Die Welt (German, English) reported that airlines are expecting delays of 27 months in deliveries for Boeing’s 787. The report cited Air Europe, Gulf Air, Vietnam Airlines and British Airways as the impacted airlines who are expected to take delivery around 2012.

Boeing has denied any change to the delivery schedule.

“There has been no change since our announcement in April,” said spokeswoman Yvonne Leach.

Monarch, Royal Jordanian and LAN ordered 787s in August 2006, December 2006 an November 2007 respectively. All have voiced concern that deliveries would be delayed between 24 to 30 months. Monarch and Royal Jordanian were expected to received their first Dreamliners in 2010 and LAN in 2011.

The first delivery of the 787-9, which LAN has ordered, has already been delayed to 2012 following Boeing’s most recent schedule revision on April 9.

It is likely that the 17 month delay for initial deliveries to 787 launch customers like ANA, QANTAS, Chinese carriers, Northwest, Ethiopian, Air Canada and Air India plus a scaled back production ramp up has resulted in a further stretch of the delivery schedule. The original delivery scheduled had 109 787s being delivered by the close of 2009, Boeing now forecasts just 25.

For Airbus, a German magazine WirtschaftsWoche has reported that the European airframer would be delay A380 deliveries scheduled for 2009 and that customers have been informed of the change.

Airbus’ largest A380 customer, Dubai based Emirates Airlines, has said any additional delay would cause an “acute problem” for near term expansion plans.

The existing production plan calls for 13 A380 deliveries for 2008, followed by 25 in 2009. Output is expected to peak from 2010 on at a rate of 45 per year.

Earlier this week, Airbus Chief Executive Tom Enders was reported to have said he is “conducting a major review” of this delivery plan. Airbus has delivered three A380-800 superjumbo aircraft to launch customer Singapore Airlines this year, for a total of four delivered.

Image Credits Boeing, Airbus

Every once in a while, I like to go wading in the “Radical New Aircraft Design” bin that is the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Occasionally I come out with something written in patent speak that only a rocket scientist can decipher and I just stare blankly at, however, this time I came out with a real gem.

I give you Patent Number 20080099633, which was published yesterday, called Aircraft airframe architectures, a wholly innocuous title. An engineer at Pratt & Whitney came up with a radical new design to improve the fuel efficiency of a shorthaul aircraft. Rather than have two engines, the design calls for a “single gas generator core including a forward compressor driven by a rearward turbine about a core axis and configured to remotely drive multiple bladed propulsion elements.”

Now in English. What the designer describes here is one main gas core mounted in the tail of the aircraft that drives two fans or turboprops which are mounted to the sides of the aft fuselage.

The benefits :
-Improves fuel efficiency by adding a gearbox to the core which optimizes the speed of the core and fans.
-Improves fuel efficiency further by providing a significantly higher bypass ratio. That is to say the ratio of air that passes through the fans is significantly greater than the air that goes through the engine’s core. Having two fans and a single core the thrust generated from the fans improves fuel burn.
-Reduces noise by evening the gases exiting the rear nozzle.
-There is also additional fuel and weight savings by only having a “single gas generator core” that drives the fans.

I put together a rendering of how the engines are mounted on the rear fuselage of an aircraft, based off of the diagrams enclosed in the patent application.

Boeing began final assembly on Dreamliner Three (ZA003), the fifth 787 and the 3rd for flight test program. The aircraft, when painted, will wear the colors of Northwest Airlines. The rudder, which has been mated to the vertical tail, has already been painted red. Images of assembly are available on Randy Tinseth’s blog and if you look closely at the first image you can spot the red rudder.

Here’s a visual update on the 787 assembly line.

Original Image Courtesy of Boeing
Created by FlightBlogger to reflect current status

See previous assembly status from April 9, 2009

Boeing underscored the significant improvement in the condition of ZA003:

“We are receiving assemblies that are much more complete,” said Jack Jones, vice president of 787 Final Assembly and Change Incorporation. Jones replaces Steve Westby, who retired from Boeing yesterday after a 31-year career. “The second flight-test airplane had a 50 percent reduction in the amount of incomplete work as compared to the first airplane. ‘Traveled work’ on this airplane is 65 percent less than on the first.

Program sources familiar with the status of assembly tell FlightBlogger that the level of completion has enabled assembly to progress as the fastest pace yet. Major systems, including the ram air turbine, arrived already installed in the center fuselage. In addition, the wings have already received their outboard flaps, most spoilers panels and both ailerons. All of which were installed within just days of their arrival from Japan.

Image Credit Boeing

It feels like just yesterday she was powered on for the first time. They grow up so quickly.

March 10, 2008 – Power On

Image Credit Jon Ostrower

April 12, 2008 – Roll Out

April 29, 2008 – First Flight

Post 302!

Part One (seven photos)
Part Two (six photos)

Photos are all courtesy of, and a very special thanks to, Charles Conklin

MANY MORE BELOW THE FOLD