FlightBlogger

Archive 2007-2012

  • First 747-8 Intercontinental set for Tuesday delivery (Update4)

    SEATTLE — While no official confirmation exists beyond a very telling Qatari registration, the Government of Qatar Amiri Flight will take delivery of the first Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental today. 
    The aircraft, registered A7-HHE, the prefix denoting a Qatar registered aircraft, will depart Paine Field in Everett, Washington around noon pacific time enroute to a business jet completion facility.
    Currently, Jet Aviation’s Basel, Switzerland facility is the most likely candidate to host RC002 for the 24-month completion process, as it was the first completion center selected by an undisclosed Middle East in December 2010. 
    Sources point to all of the first three 747-8 VIP transports as intended for Middle Eastern customers. RC001, Boeing’s Sunrise-liveried jumbo flight test aircraft, destined for the Government of Qatar, while RC003, wearing an A6-PFA United Arab Emirates registration, will fly with the Abu Dhabi Amiri Flight.
    Lufthansa Technik has signed up customers for completion of a further two 747-8 aircraft. It’s first is speculated to be the Kuwaiti VIP transport and the second for the UAE.
    Boeing holds orders for a total of nine VIP configured 747-8s.
    I’ll be up in Everett for the pre-flyaway press conference with program leaders starting at 11 AM PT, and will be posting photos and updates by way of Flickr and Twitter.
    UPDATE 11:14 AM PT: Boeing has officially delivered the first 747-8 Intercontinental to an officially undisclosed VIP customer. RC002 will fly to Vancouver for export then to McConnell Air Force Base at Boeing’s Global Transport & Executive Systems for Greenpoint Technologies’ outfitting of the Aeroloft. Then later to Hamburg, Germany for full completion at Lufthansa Technik. The date of first 747-8 delivery to Lufthansa has not yet been officially set, but it rapidly approaching.
    UPDATE 11:17 AM PT: Boeing will deliver eight 747-8 VIP aircraft in 2012 and its production system is advancing to two 747-8s per month in the middle of this year. 747 vice president and general manager Elizabeth Lund says the back end of the factory (wing and structures) has already “broken rate” accelerating to two per month and the forward part of the factory for final body join will join soon.
    UPDATE 11:27 AM PT: Boeing’s 747-8 performance improvement package (engine and airframe) will fly on the aircraft on 2013 and will bring the aircraft within 1% of the originally planned specification, says Bruce Dickinson, 747-8 chief project engineer. Boeing is continuing its analysis of the flutter condition found on the 747-8’s tail fuel tanks, and aims to have the system reactivated in 2013.
    UPDATE 11:41 AM PT: The 747-8Fs since service entry have served 55 airports to date, roughly twice as many as the A380. Operators have found performance to be about 1% better than first though despite the initial shortfall. Boeing is also “on track” to roll out updates to the 747-8’s avionics in 2012. To get within 1% of final specification, the airframe weight will be reduced by about 5,000lbs, paired with aerodynamic and General Electric GEnx-2B engine updates.

    Video Courtesy Matt Cawby

    This post was originally published to the internet between 2007 and 2012. Links, images, and embedded media from that era may no longer function as intended.

    This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.

  • Movie Monday – February 27 – Cold and Dark to Ready to Taxi

    This week’s Movie Monday takes us to Lithuania, home to Baltic Aviation Academy. BAA’s social media presence is significantly larger than the overwhelming majority of pilot training centers and they’ve provided a look into two of the most prolific narrowbody aircraft on the planet. With our guide Pranas Drulis, an ATP student, BAA takes us through the initial procedures to take the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 Classic family from “cold and dark” after first receiving the jet all the way through to the point just before the simulated aircraft are ready for taxi. Movie Monday doesn’t quite get more in the weeds than this, but it’s the most detailed look at the side-by-side similarities and differences of the systems and procedures for these two types. The two videos run a total of 34min. Enjoy!

    UPDATE 9:59 PM ET: There were a few questions about why a Classic not Next Generation 737 was used as comparison. While BAA does operate a 737-800 simulator at its Vilnius campus, the video they chose to produce is for Boeing’s second generation narrowbody workhorse.

    This post was originally published to the internet between 2007 and 2012. Links, images, and embedded media from that era may no longer function as intended.

    This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.

  • Boeing’s leadership swap begins to chart 777 and 787’s future

    Qatar Airways Boeing 777-200LR A7-BBI

    The replacement of any high-profile program leader tends to elicit questions of confidence, though the trading of positions between current 777 vice president and general manager Larry Loftis and his 787 counterpart, Scott Fancher, represents two important changes for the heart of Boeing’s widebody products and the future of both programs.
    The move plays to the strength of each leader, their respective divergent styles, and what is required for future of each program.
    Fancher’s departure, and his newfound role on 777X development, is the clearest reflection of where the widebody twin is headed. The move is not negative reflection on Fancher’s handling of the 787 program up to now, but rather a signal about how to fine tune a supply chain that can deliver to Everett what is likely to become the world’s largest composite wing.
    Jim Albaugh, Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO addressed this indirectly, saying Fancher’s relocation will allow “him to align the 777 production system with the next generation 777.”
    The comment is near-confirmation of Boeing’s future path on the 777, which once included study of an all-new aircraft, is now coalescing around a future stretched 407 and 353-seat 777-9X and -8X, meeting or exceeding a 20% per seat fuel burn and 15% seat costs improvement, say those directly familiar with the 777X conceptual studies.
    Fancher has spent more than three years in the trenches of supplier warfare to bring the 787 to a state of steadily decreasing travelled work, through flight test and into service, though his move to the 777 may just signal a coming redrawing of the supplier lines ahead, similarly mirroring that of the Dreamliner.
     
    For Loftis, himself a lieutenant of former Airplane Production vice president and 737 chief Carolyn Corvi who ushered in the Renton moving line, will bring a different culture to the 787. Loftis shepherded the 777’s transition to a moving line at a time when it was viewed as unscalable at the widebody level. Loftis and his teams proved the naysayers wrong, turning the 777 into the company’s cashcow.
     
    Loftis who, with the leadership of now 747 and 767 program chiefs, Elizabeth Lund and Kim Pastega, introduced the 777 freighter onto a moving line without hardly a notice, is tasked with doing the same for 787 with the larger 270-seat 787-9 and the conceptual 323-seat 787-10X. 
    Yet, those big changes to the 777 line, now operating in a horseshoe arrangement, fundamentally are the sum of a countless number of small improvements incorporated over the past 1,000 aircraft assembled. 
    “We’ve seen some tremendous results in streamlining the production system” said Loftis in an August 2011 interview, “We’re seeing it in significant improvements in the amount of time it takes to build the airplane, and the amount of resources required to assemble the airplane. We’re seeing ever improving quality rolling out of the factory, and the result is really an airplane that we deliver on time to meet all of our commitments.”
    In short, that is Loftis’s task for the 787. 
    With its steep learning curve and production rate requirements ahead to achieve profitability, Pat Shanahan, head of airplane programs, speaking of the cost improvements on the 787 said Thursday at Barclays Industrial Select Conference in Miami:
    “And it’s not going to come at the negotiating table. It’s going to come on the factory floor and it’s going to come in the supply chain. We’ve got a lot of experience, they’ve got a lot of insight, and when we put our heads together there is value that gets created and we come to an agreement and we can share in that.”
    It is here where Loftis has shown his strength in building and supporting teams to get the cost out of the 777, but the 787’s history has pointed to a “negotiating table” approach, with suppliers feeling increasingly squeezed as the delays and halting starts and stops of final assembly made it hard to plan production and incorporate design changes under intense schedule pressures.
    As Fancher and Loftis relocate factory mezzanine offices, can a leader whose experience is steeped in the 737 and 777’s incremental improvement make lasting change for a program that’s own experience and culture has been rooted in big change? And can a leader whose own experience has been forged in the 787’s siege-like environment maintain the culture as Boeing looks to its next 1,000 777 deliveries?

    This post was originally published to the internet between 2007 and 2012. Links, images, and embedded media from that era may no longer function as intended.

    This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.

  • Boeing’s 787 and 777 chiefs to swap roles

    Boeing has appointed 787 vice president and general manager Scott Fancher to run the 777 program, shifting roles with current 777 chief Larry Loftis. 

     Loftis, a veteran of the 737 and 777’s transition to a moving final assembly line, will guide the 787’s move toward production maturity and lean manufacturing advancement. 

    Fancher, who has served as vice president of the 787 program since December 2008, will run the 777 program and assist in development of the next generation 777X.

    This post was originally published to the internet between 2007 and 2012. Links, images, and embedded media from that era may no longer function as intended.

    This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.

  • On A320’s 25th birthday, where does automation go next? (Update1)

    A320 [F-WWBA]

    February 22, 2012 marks the 25th anniversary of the first flight of the Airbus A320-100, an aircraft type that has surpassed 5,000 deliveries since its 1987 first flight from the European airframer’s Toulouse, France base.

    In addition to firmly establishing Airbus in the commercial marketplace, the single biggest contribution of the A320 to commercial aerospace is its digital fly-by-wire flight control system. The Airbus and Boeing philosophies for pilot control have been the centerpiece of a technology debate that has raged for a quarter century now. While the philisophical debate has diverged among airframers, the value of digital fly-by-wire implementation is settled law.
    At today’s Aeronautics and Space Engineering board meeting at The National Academy of Sciences, in Washington, DC, Dale Klapmeier, founder of Cirrus Aircraft, spoke of the flat safety record for general aviation which has matched the growth in the industry. In short, general aviation, unlike commercial aviation, has not gotten any safer as technology has evolved.
    Cirrus was at the forefront of increasing the automation in its single-engine general aviation aircraft with the introduction of the Avidyne Entegra in 2003 aboard its four-seat SR22 aircraft. The airframer, based in Duluth, Minnesota, and now owned by the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), has evolved its glass avionics to include its Garmin G1000 based Cirrus Perspective system, which features expansive “highway in the sky” synthetic vision and enhanced vision systems, as well as a “LVL” or level button to return the aircraft to straight and level flight, assuming the aircraft’s bank does not exceed 75° and the pitch does not exceed 50°.
    Similar avionics systems are also implemented on Beechcraft, Cessna, Diamond, Mooney, Piper, and Quest aircraft as well. 
    With the technology developed by Cirrus and other general aviation airframers, Klapmeier says that a Cirrus pilot will hand fly for roughly 45 seconds, just after takeoff and just before landing.  
    “There is very little airmanship left in aviation,” he says.
    That figure nearly mirrors that of a commercial airline pilot, though an SR22 pilot has access to virtually the same, if not more advanced avionics than those available in the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350, but the difference in pilot training and experience are stark.
    Klapmeier is of the opinion that training regimes that have always emphasized aviate, navigate, communicate as the tenets of flying need to add “automate” as one of its characteristics to safely bring the technology to bear to enhance the other three priorities.
    On the flipside, there is a ‘self-driving car’ model for safety; just remove the pilot from the loop. Klapmeier suggested on Tuesday: “If you want to design an aircraft tomorrow that prevents today’s accidents, put the pilot’s seat backwards.”
    With the ubiquity of fly-by-wire on new clean sheet commercial and large business aircraft, both segments of the industry that continue to improve their respective safety records, is there a place in general aviation for hard envelope protections provided by fly-by-wire?
    Photo Credit Jonathan Grondin

    This post was originally published to the internet between 2007 and 2012. Links, images, and embedded media from that era may no longer function as intended.

    This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.

  • Southwest’s first 737-800 goes from green to Canyon Blue

    SWA-737-800-Renton_1000.jpg

    A first for Southwest

    After its 11 day trip down the 737’s moving final assembly, Southwest Airlines’ first 737-800, the company’s first new 737 variant since 1997, is out in the open on the flight line at Renton Municipal Airport wearing the airline’s signature Canyon Blue colors. 

    This aircraft, wearing registration N8301J and extended operations (ETOPS) tags, left the paint hangar about four days ago and will be the first of 33 delivered to the largest 737 customer in 2012. MORE PHOTOS
    Along with the Boeing Sky Interior, the aircraft will also feature the airline’s new Evolve interior. For an airline known for its incremental DNA, the name Southwest has given to its new interior is quite fitting. 
    APEX magazine editor-in-chief Mary Kirby explains the biggest small change:

    However, the most profound changes have been reserved for Southwest’s seats. The carrier is retaining the B/E Aerospace-manufactured ‘Innovator II’ seat frames on its Southwest 737-700s, but will add fixed wing head rests; new, thinner, more durable foam fill; and lightweight E-Leather synthetic leather seat covers. It is also removing the under-seat floatation device  – and instead adding life vest pouches – to create a lower profile seat, which in turn creates weight savings of nearly six pounds per seat.

    While the change will also accompany a 1in reduction in seat pitch from 32in to 31in, Southwest says it preserves the same amount of body space for each seat. More importantly, that single-inch change allows for an extra six seats per 737-700.
    Because each seat is made lighter by nearly six pounds, Southwest shaves 635 pounds per aircraft (even with the extra row) and is expected to result in more than $10 million in ongoing annual cost savings. 
    It is estimated that for every 500lbs of empty weight removed from a 100 to 200 seat aircraft equates to a roughly a 1% improvement in fuel burn. In this case, the 635lb savings in empty weight is traded by making room for six more 200lb paying passengers.
    As near-term delivery slots are scarce with the added worldwide demand for narrowbody aircraft set to reach 84 deliveries per month split between Boeing and Airbus in 2013, Southwest is focusing its attention over the next two years to building its 737-800 fleet.
    All of Southwest’s 2012 and 2013 deliveries from Boeing are for the larger 175-seat -800, a total of 74, though by the end of 2013, the airline will add the equivalent of 16 new 143-seat 737-700s during this same period without a single new -700 joining its fleet. Same 737-700 fleet, 2,300 more seats to sell.
    The price tag for these 16 737-700s? A $60 million up front investment in Evolve, approximately the cost of two 737s (after discounts*).
    Photo Credit Drew Ramsey

    *According to Southwest’s most recent SEC 10K filing, the $2.14 billion investment in 74 737-800s delivered in 2012 and 2013 will cost the airline an average of $28.9 million each.

    This post was originally published to the internet between 2007 and 2012. Links, images, and embedded media from that era may no longer function as intended.

    This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.

  • A350’s Trent XWB engine makes maiden flight aboard A380

    On Saturday, Airbus’s A380 flying test bed made its maiden flight with the Rolls-Royce Trent XWB flying in the number two position under the superjumbo’s wing. The milestone flight for the A350 XWB’s powerplant also marked a first for the A380, which flew for the first time with different engine types.
    The contrast between the A380’s Trent 900 and A350’s Trent XWB isn’t nearly as stark as the Trent 900 under the wing of the A340-300 that served as test bed for the superjumbo’s first powerplant back in June 2004.  The comparatively oversized higher-bypass Trent 900, one of two engine options on the A380 along with the Engine Alliance GP7200, dwarfed the CFM56-5C engines. 
    The A380’s Trent 900 first flight on the A340 came approximately ten months before the A380 first flew in April 2005. As a point of comparison, the A350-900 is expected to fly in early 2013, per Airbus’s revised November 2011 schedule that pushed the type’s service entry to the first half of 2014.
    There’s a great deal of speculation as to whether the higher-thrust 84,000lb Trent XWB could ever serve as a possible successor for the Trent 900 to power the larger 1000-seat A380-900 should it ever come to be. The possible groundwork may potentially be laid during this flight test program, as Airbus has already developed a prototype pylon that has a natural A380 wing interface and an A350 Trent XWB engine mounting.
    Airbus flight engineering Pascal Verneau, who was interviewed last November in Toulouse demonstrating the Trent XWB flight deck interface, is shown in the video above and was part of the A380’s flight this past weekend. Verneau joined pilots Terry Lutz and Frank Chapman, experimental test flight engineer and flight test engineers Emanuele Costanzo and Tuan Do for the 5h flight.

    My complete set of photos of the A380 test bed and the Trent XWB are below the fold and include and up-close look under the engine’s nacelle and flight test instrumentation.

    This post was originally published to the internet between 2007 and 2012. Links, images, and embedded media from that era may no longer function as intended.

    This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.

  • President Obama visits Boeing’s 787 final assembly line

    This post was originally published to the internet between 2007 and 2012. Links, images, and embedded media from that era may no longer function as intended.

    This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.

  • Kangaroo-buster 777-8LX concept being studied by Boeing

    Boeing 777F N5020K

    Anyone that has ever flown between the United Kingdom and Australia knows about the kangaroo bounce.
    The “bounce”, the stop in Asia, often Singapore, is part of the famous Kangaroo Route used to transit between the two nations separated by three continents and 9,188nm. Even with today’s ultra long-range jetliners in service, the Airbus A340-500 and Boeing 777-200LR, the fierce headwinds on the westbound route robs airlines of carrying enough passengers and cargo to make money.
    Connecting the London and Sydney has long been seen as a Holy Grail of aviation. As part of its next generation 777X studies, Boeing is exploring an ultra long-range 777-8LX, with nearly 9,500nm range. FULL STORY

    Likely to be the last of three members of a conceptual 777X family, the -8LX could potentially have a service entry in the 2020s, providing a mission range of 17,550km (9,480nm), industry sources tell Flightglobal, which is 85nm longer than the 17,395km (9,395nm) offered by the 777-200LR.

    The 777-8LX’s fuselage would match that of a proposed -8X, now seen as a three-class 353-seat 4.46m (14ft 7in) stretch of the 777-200ER.

    With common structural elements, the -8LX and the larger -9X would share a 344t (760,000lb) maximum takeoff weight (MTOW), allowing the smaller jet to carry additional fuel for the extended missions, with a common fuel tank capacity across the conceptual family.

    Both the 777-8X and -9X concepts currently aim for an 14,800km (8,000nm) design range.

    With a common engine to the 777-9X, the -8LX is conceptually powered by the General Electric GE9X with a 99,500lb thrust rating, while the -8X is understood to be significantly derated off the engine’s baseline design with its lower MTOW.

    Boeing cautions no decisions have been made and that the company continues to explore a myriad of different options with respect to the future of the 777 family, ranging from a composite wing all the way up to a full clean-sheet replacement of the type, which first entered service in 1995.
    The conceptual 777-8LX joins the 777-9X, 2.13m (7ft) longer than the 777-300ER, which would lead the conceptual family late in the decade, and 777-8X, which are both understood to have a baseline composite wing of 233ft 5in (71.1m).
    The 233ft wing design, which features an 11ft raked tip, is being explored along with 213 ft 3in (65m) and 225ft (68.6m) spans wings with blended winglets. The massive 233ft 5in wing also is being studied with a folding 11ft outer tip, reviving a design originally envisaged for the 777-200.
    The design of the conceptual 407-seat 777-9X in particular is expected to create significant improvements in per seat fuel burn, with internal estimates of the company’s conceptual designs now pointing toward an approximately 20% improvement over today’s 777-300ER, achieved through incremental technology updates to the 777 platform.

    This post was originally published to the internet between 2007 and 2012. Links, images, and embedded media from that era may no longer function as intended.

    This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.

  • Movie Monday – February 13 – Harrier, A Love Story

    With tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day holiday, I felt it important to find an aircraft we could all fawn over. Today’s Movie Monday takes you inside the development of the vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) Harrier, from its earliest concept as the Hawker Siddeley P.1127 to the Harrier GR.1 and US Marine Corps AV-8A, the type’s engagement in the Falklands War in 1982 and evolution to the McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II.

    The documentary, which runs a little over 53min, is British, incredibly dry and absolutely fantastic. It’s lack of music is made up for with ample jet noise, which the Harrier supplies in spades. Enjoy.

    This post was originally published to the internet between 2007 and 2012. Links, images, and embedded media from that era may no longer function as intended.

    This post originally appeared at Flightglobal.com from 2007 to 2012.