FlightBlogger

Archive 2007-2012

  • Is this Boeing’s re-engined 737?

    737-windtunnel-RE.jpg

    DUBAI — Until now, Boeing has allowed artist to interpret the look off a re-engined 737, taking artistic liberties about what a major update to the narrowbody would look like. 
    A publicly available Boeing presentation hosted on the website of the Federal Aviation Administration on technologies to improve the environmental footprint of commercial jetliners, may provide an unintentional first-look at one of the potential configurations for a re-engined 737.
    The presentation details the airframers plans for the Continuous Lower Energy, Emissions and Noise (CLEEN) program designed to use 737s and 787s are demonstrators for new technologies. Slide eight of 25 presents the timeline for the testing, which is set to last through 2014. 
    On the slide is a series of generic images, including one of a 737 undergoing wind tunnel testing at a Qinetiq facility, which on closer inspection features a landing gear nose blister and significantly larger engines. Could this be one of the 737 re-engining concepts Boeing was wind tunnel testing earlier this year?

    According to a engineer close to the development of the 737, Boeing and CFM were wind tunnel testing the airframe and engine changes as recently as April of this year, while another  engineer says some of those tests included a nose blister. 
    Most notable is the addition of a nose blister, which resembles that employed on the Airbus A330-200F, to accommodate the lengthened nose landing gear, which need to grow 8in to raise the larger nacelles to achieve appropriate ground clearance.
    John Hamilton, 737 chief engineer, said in an Airshow China interview in Zhuhai last month the design must maintain 17in clearance from the ground to avoid contact with taxiway lighting.
    Boeing has toyed with the idea of shifting some of the components in the forward electronics bay to the aft bay to make room for the longer landing gear. 
    The larger engines, which are almost certainly designed to accommodate the CFM Leap-X, appear to have an elongated nacelle sitting nearly on the same plane as the pylon, shrinking it significantly, allowing the engine to ride higher on the wing.

    Boeing Business Jet president Steve Taylor said today a re-engined 737 could boost the range of the VIP configured jetliner as much as 10% over today’s 6,200nm, opening a significant number of new city pairs, such as New York to Shanghai/Mumbai/Cape Town, Dubai to Sao Paulo/Miami/Sydney or Los Angeles to Tel Aviv/Sydney/Hong Kong.
    Boeing has moved away from this concept in recent months, opting to focus on a series of smaller incremental improvements to the narrowbody, including the new Sky Interior, aerodynamic refinements and updated CFM56-7BE engine.
    However, the model provides some insight into the amount of modification required to add the new engine to the wing of the 737. The airframer has promised a decision in 2011 that may give a green light to re-engining, an all new jetliner or another set of incremental improvements to the venerable narrowbody.
    Naturally, Flightglobal technical artist Tim Bicheno-Brown took a crack at an artistic interpretation of the wind tunnel model:

    737-RE-TBB.jpg

    Photo Credit Flightglobal/Tim Bicheno-Brown

    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.

  • Breaking: Boeing halts 787 part deliveries for another three weeks

    Boeing is in the midst of a three-week halt in structural deliveries from its 787 suppliers, the fourth such stoppage this year, the company confirms.

    The airframer says the delivery hold began “late last month” when it “initiated a roughly 16-[manufacturing] day adjustment to the loading of new airplanes into final-body join.”
    Boeing works on a five manufacturing day week, with approximately 22 manufacturing days in each calendar month.
    Structural sections for Airplane 30, an aircraft for Air India, have been loaded into position one for final body join inside the 787 final assembly line. Program sources say all sections for Airplane 31, a 787 for All Nippon Airways, have arrived company’s Everett, Washington facility, except the North Charleston, South Carolina integrated center fuselage.

    Boeing initiated its first hold in April to allow design changes to take effect on later airframes, followed by a second in September, and a third in October to eliminate horizontal stabilizer workmanship issues from traveling to final assembly from Alenia Aeronautica in Italy.
    The company attributes the latest hold to ensuring “the entire production system flows as design and to minimize adverse impacts to final assembly.” 
    Boeing did not offer any additional details about what it needed to halt in order to avoid the “adverse impacts” to its final assembly process.
    While flight test operations remain halted as the company determines a new master schedule for first delivery to ANA and develops software and hardware fixes to the 787’s power distribution system.
    Boeing was forced to halt all flight test operations following fire aboard test aircraft ZA002 while it was on approach to Laredo, Texas on November 9. 
    The company emphasizes: “We are not asking partners to slow or stop production.”
    However, while Boeing has not finalized its latest production schedule, forward fuselage, pylon and wing fixed leading edge supplier, Wichita, Kansas-based Spirit AeroSystems, has moved most of its 787 staff to other programs, seeking manage its own pace of production against the rate of deliveries to final assembly.
    The shift may provide an important barometer for the pace the supplier has completed its shipsets, but also may indicate the implementation of a slower production ramp up is in the offing. 
    Continental Airlines, now merged with United Airlines, has postponed plans to initiate its Houston to Auckland, New Zealand 787 service from October 2011 to sometime in 2012 pending a new delivery schedule from Boeing. 

    The company currently aims to build ten 787s per month by the end of 2013.
    Boeing has 24 787s in various stages of assembly inside its factory and on the flight line, some in extended storage.
    A new schedule is expected in “several weeks”, says Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Jim Albaugh.
    Today’s plan calls for first handover to ANA in mid-first quarter 2011, a date that is estimated to slip anywhere from three to six months, say industry analysts.

    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.

  • Airbus: If A318 gets a neo, ACJ will be the driver

    Comlux Airbus A318 Elite 9H-AFL

    DUBAI — Airbus has yet to decide if the smallest member of the A320 family, the A318, will receive the company’s new engine option (neo), though if it does happen, the airframer’s corporate jetliner business will drive the decision.

    “Clearly the case for the A318 is on the corporate jet side.” says Francois Chazelle, vice president Airbus corporate and private aviation.

    As a commercial platform, the 110-seat A318, powered with CFM International CFM56-5B or Pratt & Whitney PW6000 engines, has fallen flat in the marketplace, as has its 737-600 competitor, having sold just 60 for airlines.

    An additional 23 A318s have been sold as the Elite model of the Airbus Corporate Jetliner family, which now represent all the outstanding orders for the type.

    The A318 also competes in the same market as the 110 to 125-seat CS100,
    the smaller of two CSeries models being developed by Bombardier, which
    will enter service in 2013.

    The A318 remains in a commercial niche today, operating, for example, as an 32-seat all business class operation for British Airways out of London City Airport to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York with a westbound fuel and customs stop in Shannon, Ireland.

    With rough technical specifications for an A318neo undefined, it remains unclear whether or not the combination of sharklets and a new engine would be able to fly the westbound mission without the stop.

    Bombardier has said it is able to fly the British Airways trans-atlantic mission non-stop with the CS100, fitted with its Pratt & Whitney PW1524G engines.

    Airbus announced December 1 it had selected the PW1100G and Leap-X
    starting with the A320neo in 2016, later extending to the A321 and A319.

    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.

  • Photo of Note: Sunset over Dubai

    DUBAI — We’re now all set up here at MEBA and we had a partial working day here. While the show doesn’t officially begin until Tuesday, business aviation news will begin flowing on Monday in earnest. Interestingly enough, this brilliant sunset is the last of my 27th year and I’ll be celebrating another successful trip around the Sun on Tuesday. Thanks everyone for making it a wonderful and incredibly memorable year. Onward, indeed.

    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.

  • Travel Night and Day: IAD-DXB

    FlightBlogger image

    Travel Night and Day: IAD-DXB, originally uploaded by flightblogger.

    Back in the sky again for my last trip of 2010. This final swing will take me to Dubai for the Middle Eastern Business Aviation (MEBA) show for the next week. I’ve got 13h and 3min to try United’s new 777 economy with Panasonic AVOD and in-seat power on a direct flight from Dulles on UA976. (reg anyone?) This 777 is one of the first seven newly in the fleet with the new interior. The new layout switches from the original 1995 2-5-2 economy layout to 3-3-3. The tail end of the roughly two-week trip will have an IFE and interiors component to it and I’ll have more on that later. For now, it’s time to fly. Catch you on the other side.

    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.

  • Analysis: Shadowboxing no more, CSeries gets a challenger

    A320neoP&W_560.jpg
    Wednesday, December 1, 2010. The day the duopoly died.

    Make no mistake about it, the Bombardier has been successful on at least one indisputable point. Airbus and Boeing have been forced to respond to the CSeries.

    Today’s launch of the A320neo is the direct result of the CSeries which now shares a common engine in the PW1000G, and marks the end Boeing and Airbus’s war of inches, alternating 52-48% shares of the marketplace.
    If you’re looking for an appropriate historical comparison, you need only look to November 17, 1993, when Boeing gave the greenlight to the 737-700 with an order from Southwest, setting up the battle between Boeing’s Next Generation 737 and the Airbus A320 that has stretched nearly two decades.
    A comfortable duopoly was content to increase narrowbody production rates to feed demand, looking across the Atlantic watching its chief competitor uncomfortable and unwilling to undertake the significant investment required to deliver double digit improvements in fuel burn that airlines were loudly clamoring for. That changed today.
    John Leahy says triumphantly the A320neo kills the business case for the CSeries, though there’s a real risk for Airbus that they not only failed to kill the upstart narrowbody, but may have confirmed Bombardier’s business model. 
    Of the A320 family, The A321neo will undoubtedly benefit the most from a 15% improvement in fuel burn, boosting the range into 757-200 territory and for the first time providing a near-replacement to the aging workhorse of US airlines. Though the A321 doesn’t compete with the CSeries, nor does the 150-seat A320, which will have CFM Leap-X or PW1100G engines available in spring 2016. 
    There’s an important gap between the larger CS300, which first delivers in 2014, and the A319neo, which has an estimated entry into service in Spring 2017. The A318, the direct competitor to the CS100 may eventually get a new engine, but that is far from certain. 

    Airlines and lessors who played ‘wait and see‘ on what Airbus and Boeing would do before making a decision on CSeries now have two airframes to compare side-by-side. Yes, one is much farther along in its development, though the CS100, CS300 and A319neo all have the confirmed institutional backing of their respective manufacturers.

    Bombardier, Airbus and Boeing will soon find out if the 110 to 149 seat market is as quiet as it is because there’s no market in that segment or because no airframe could perform the mission in an optimal way. Though according to US Department of Transportation Form 41 data, recent load factors of 84% and 83% on Airtran’s 717s and Delta’s MD-88s, respectively, may give some indication of the viability of an airframe in this segment.
    Bombardier has a hill to climb to meet its performance and weight targets on the CS100, while simultaneously convincing new customers it will be on time, goals Boeing and Airbus missed on the 787 and A380, spooking the same operators the Canadian airframer is hoping to convince.
    As Airbus wags its finger at the new entrant pushing into its market space, the European airframer is on the opposite side of a familiar equation, having once been the outsider, it’s now one of two twin Goliaths playing defense.
    While the 90 orders accumulated to date represent a modest foundation for the CSeries, the A320neo effectively sets the scoreboard back to zero. The marketplace now has some decisions to make.
    The real race begins today and 2011 is the battleground.
    Photo Credit Airbus

    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.

  • Confirmed: A320 NEO to launch Wednesday, EIS targets 2016

    Airbus will launch a re-engined version of its A320 family aircraft Wednesday, for entry into service in 2016, say industry sources.

    The A320 NEO (new engine option) will be launched with variants of Pratt & Whitney’s PW1000G and CFM Leap-X engines.
    The 150-seat A320, the original member of the European airframer’s narrowbody family, will be the first model offered with the new engine option.

    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.

  • Repairs complete in Laredo, ZA002 to return home to Seattle (Update1)

    Just out from Boeing:

    Boeing has readied ZA002, the 787 flight test airplane that experienced an electrical fire on Nov. 9, to be flown from Laredo, Texas, to Seattle. Maintenance technicians replaced the damaged P100 power distribution panel, repaired damage to interior composite structure and installed new insulation material.

    The team in Laredo, Texas, has completed a series of ground test operations and inspections to validate the repairs. The flight, which is expected to occur soon, will not include test operations.

    Boeing says ZA002 will ferry to Boeing Field, joining ZA001, ZA003, ZA005 and ZA006. ZA004 flew to Everett for maintenance operations on November 21. ZA002 is scheduled to depart Laredo at 2 PM local time for a return to Boeing Field at 4:24 PM PST, though departure, enroute and arrival times tend to vary greatly.

    In other 787 production news, JA822J, the third aircraft for JAL was fitted with its twin General Electric GEnx-1B engines. This will make it the first production 787 with GE engines.

    The fitting provides a good indication of the potential delivery order for the early aircraft, with program sources saying Airplane 23 will likely be the third or fourth production aircraft to fly in with the pack of Airplanes Seven, Eight and Nine for ANA. The aircraft’s destination: Lackland Air Force Base for activation of Boeing’s 787 change incorporation and refurbishment operation in San Antonio, Texas.

    Though, production flights are farther down a short but non-negotiable to-do list for Boeing, which first has to establish a new schedule for the program while designing, validating and implementing its electrical system software and hardware changes, while satisfying the FAA that the 787 test fleet can return to flight operations.

    “We have another several weeks of work to do to get the fix in place,” Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Jim Albaugh told Reuters today. “Once we understand the fix, we’ll be able to tell you what the impact on the schedule.”

    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.

  • Back in the saddle: 787 ire, A350 production, Qantas, CSeries engines, ARJ21 and a Dassault mystery jet

    First day back at my desk in DC since November 12 following China and Thanksgiving, and I’m a bit slow getting back up to speed today, but wanted to share some Monday news items to chew on:

    ANA says 787 delays are “a great disappointment” and the carrier is “pushing” Boeing to “present the detailed cause of the irregularities” resulting from the November 9, ZA002 fire, while China Eastern is considering canceling its order for 15 787s over the delays, which are estimated to stretch another six months.

    Meanwhile, A350 supplier Aerolia plans to begin production of the composite nose panels and shells for MSN001 on Tuesday after Spirit AeroSystems made its first 64ft 6in Section 15 crown panel in North Carolina last week. Delivery of the first production aircraft is now slated for the second half of 2013. Meanwhile in Sydney, the Qantas A380 fleet is returning to service again, gradually.

    On the engine front, CSeries’ PW1524G powerplant has passed 80h of testing, and Pratt & Whitney says: “We have not uncovered anything that tells us we need a major design or architecture change.” Though Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker has cooled again to CSeries, just as SAS says it’s the leading contender for a 55-aircraft order.

    On the business jet side of things heading for the Middle Eastern Business Aviation show in Dubai next week, it looks like landing gear supplier Heroux-Devtek has won a contract for a Dassault business jet that Dassault whose existence the airframer has not yet announced.

    Over on the new content side of things, here’s an up close look at the ARJ21 from Zhuhai:

    ▶ Video originally embedded here

    www.flickr.com
    This Flash-based video is no longer available.

    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.

  • Breaking: Electrical redesign to push 787 first delivery (Update3)

    Boeing says its first 787 delivery will slide due to software and minor hardware changes to the electrical system, an assessment the company says will be completed within “the next few weeks.”

    The airframer needs to implement changes to the software that manages and protect power distribution on the aircraft, as well as a minor hardware change to the P100 distribution panel to prevent foreign object debris (FOD) ingestion.

    “We have successfully simulated key aspects of the on-board event in
    our laboratory and are moving forward with developing design fixes,”
    says 787 vice president and general manager Scott Fancher

    Boeing says foreign debris “most likely” caused the November 9 fire aboard ZA002 that has halted 787 certification operations.

    The company adds that “engineers have determined the fault began as either a short circuit or an electrical arc in the P100 power distribution panel” which sits against the left wall of the 787’s aft electronic equipment bay and manages power generated by the aircraft’s left engine.

    Randy Tinseth, Boeing vice president of marketing, says: “Whatever this foreign debris was, it wasn’t something big – such as a tool – it was probably something small. We’re taking the right steps to ensure the power distribution panels are better protected against foreign debris.”

    Boeing says it remains unsure how the FOD got into the P100 panel in the first place, and could have been in the panel for sometime, though the company concedes it won’t know how it got there.

    As for the six grounded flight test aircraft, Boeing has not yet determined whether or not the design changes would have to be implemented before resuming certification activities, saying only: “Boeing is developing a plan to enable a return to 787 flight test activities and will present it to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as soon as it is complete.”

    In the interim, Boeing will continue ground testing the fleet and may ferry ZA003 from Everett to Boeing Field in the near future.

    Boeing says it is now “assessing the time required to complete the design changes and software updates that are being developed.”

    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.