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Well, here it is! JetBlue A320 (N561JB) was unveiled this evening in Orlando with a new tail design called ‘Blueberries’ and larger titles on the side of the aircraft? What do you think?

It’s a sensational headline I know, but the juxtaposition of two news stories published within minutes of each other caught my attention. CEO of Qatar Airways, Akbar al-Baker said that all is well with Boeing and his company’s 787 order, while telling Bloomberg that in regards to an order for CSeries:

Discussions hinge on “a few figures” and Qatar Air won’t buy the plane unless its conditions are met, Chief Executive Officer Akbar al-Baker said today in an interview.
    Airbus SAS could effectively kill off the CSeries by offering a version of its own shorthaul family of aircraft with the same geared-fan technology, he said. Qatar Airways already operates a fleet of Airbus A320 narrowbodies.

Al-Baker’s very public negotiations on aircraft orders have worked before, and it sounds like the potential for the order has come out of the freezer to thaw.

New JetBlue Livery
Rumor has it that the airline is about to unveil a new livery for its fleet to celebrate its 10th birthday. I can’t believe the airline is 10 years old already! I’m sure I still have my copy of Airways Magazine lying around somewhere with their first A320 on the cover. How time flies!

Blog World Expo
The 30,000 mile quest continues, as I find my way to Sin City this
Wednesday for 2009 Blog World Expo. Nothing directly aviation related
there, but it’s a great chance to see some of the emerging technologies
that will help enhance Flightglobal’s industry coverage online. After finding
Apture last year, I’m a true believer.

From Vegas I’ll be flying directly to Orlando for…

NBAA
Perhaps no one subject in the aerospace industry has generated more world wide discussion more than business aviation over the last year of the global recession. Starting on Saturday, I’ll be in Orlando for the National Business Aviation Association conference. It will be packed full of BizAv events, interviews and plenty of news. A small band of rebels (AKA Flight journalists) will be covering the event top to bottom. It should make for an interesting opportunity to assess the state of US and global business aviation.

Kelly Johnson’s 14 Rules
A veteran aerospace engineer suggested I post Clarence ‘Kelly’ Johnson’s 14 Rules of aerospace project management. They were originally intended for SkunkWorks projects and were created in 1943 with the XP-80 program. They still hold true for aerospace today…even on the commercial side.

1. The Skunk Works manager must be delegated practically complete
   control of his program in all aspects. He should report to a division
   president or higher.
2. Strong but small project offices must be provided both by the military and industry.
3. The number of people having any connection with the project must be
   restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use a small number of good
   people (10% to 25% compared to the so-called normal systems).
4. A very simple drawing and drawing release system with great flexibility for making changes must be provided.
5. There must be a minimum number of reports required, but important work must be recorded thoroughly.
6. There must be a monthly cost review covering not only what has been
   spent and committed but also projected costs to the conclusion of the
   program. Don’t have the books 90 days late, and don’t surprise the
   customer with sudden overruns.
7. The contractor must be delegated and must assume more than normal
   responsibility to get good vendor bids for subcontract on the project.
   Commercial bid procedures are very often better than military ones.
8. The inspection system as currently used by the Skunk Works, which
   has been approved by both the Air Force and Navy, meets the intent of
   existing military requirements and should be used on new projects. Push
   more basic inspection responsibility back to subcontractors and
   vendors. Don’t duplicate so much inspection.
9. The contractor must be delegated the authority to test his final
   product in flight. He can and must test it in the initial stages. If he
   doesn’t, he rapidly loses his competency to design other vehicles.
10. The specifications applying to the hardware must be agreed to well
    in advance of contracting. The Skunk Works practice of having a
    specification section stating clearly which important military
    specification items will not knowingly be complied with and reasons
    therefore is highly recommended.
11. Funding a program must be timely so that the contractor doesn’t have to keep running to the bank to support government projects.
12. There must be mutual trust between the military project
    organization and the contractor with very close cooperation and liaison
    on a day-to-day basis. This cuts down misunderstanding and
    correspondence to an absolute minimum.
13. Access by outsiders to the project and its personnel must be strictly controlled by appropriate security measures.
14. Because only a few people will be used in engineering and most
    other areas, ways must be provided to reward good performance by pay
    not based on the number of personnel supervised.

One very large visitor to WAEA this week in Palm Springs was a model of a Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental. Like the A350 XWB model at Paris, Boeing built a cutaway miniature cabin mock-up of its jumbo jet.

The lower deck features a three-class configuration of first class suites, herringbone arranged business class lie-flat seats, and 10-abreast economy class.

The upperdeck features a lounge area with couches and additional business class seating. Now that you’ve seen the miniature version, take a look at the full size mock-up at Boeing’s Customer Experience Center.

The never ending battle between Boeing and Airbus to claim the title of worlds biggest aircraft maker got a little bit tighter this week.

Through the third quarter of 2009, Airbus says it had delivered 358 planes to Boeing’s 359. Each company says it plans to deliver between 480 and 485 aircraft this year.

While the rest of the civil market has taken a major production beating, especially on the business jet side, the commercial market has remained strong. There are more than a few people who are of the mind that 2009 deliveries are a significantly lagging indicator to the true state of the marketplace. Any pronouncement that Boeing and Airbus have weathered the storm of the global recession in production terms is a bit premature.

Suppliers to Boeing and Airbus are of the mind that production has to slow, with 737 and A320 rates likely to fall in 2010 or 2011.

Each company says that it has no plans to cut rate due to back-filling of orders to compensate for deferrals, but with the backlogs barely growing compared to previous years, back-filling is only viable for so long.

On the Boeing side, one needs only to look at history to see how the company works within the cycle. Without fail for the last half century, Boeing has announced a significant production cut on years ending in zero ±1 year. To quote Mark Twain: “History doesn’t repeat itself – at best it sometimes rhymes”

Yesterday’s announcement of a fresh delay to Boeing’s 747-8 Freighter program wasn’t triggered by a single large event but rather the accumulation of small issues that added up to an additional three month slip in first delivery to Cargolux to the fourth quarter of 2010.

“It is more akin to death by a thousand cuts,” says one program engineer of the latest delay.

At its heart, the delay was attributable to resource constraints driven by the engineering responsibilities diverted by the 787 program.

“Consequently”, the engineer says, “more engineering errors escaped than what could be considered normal.”

For example, the leading edge Krueger flaps had to be reworked because they weren’t fairing properly.

For those on the assembly floor, “workers are adjusting to building a new airplane. A lot of them have been moved around…so their work lacks continuity which leads to production errors,” says the engineer.

747 vice-president and general manager Mohammad ‘Mo’ Yahyavi said in May, “I have all the resources I need now for both the
freighter and the Intercontinental.”

Program executives addressed this central question about resource allocation for the 747-8 after the 787 was grounded in late June for the side-of-body fix:

“The 787 will identify the requirements they need to address their challenges, but that won’t have an impact on the 747,” Todd Zarfos, the vice president of engineering for the jumbo-jet program, said in an interview today. “Over the last two years we’ve aligned our engineering resource ability to make sure we meet all our commitments.”

Despite the planning that was put into effect to avoid such a repeat of previous resource starvation, the 747 again fell victim to the engineering demand of the 787.

747-8I launch customer Lufthansa, whose passenger variant entry into service remains unchanged, expected that a further program delay would result because of the 787 resource shift.

Lufthansa CFO Stephan Gemkow was quoted on June 25th as saying:

“I’m sure again the delay of the 787 will mean that they have to pull in more engineering resources, and that will have even further delays, as a consequence, for the 747-8. I would not be surprised to learn this some weeks or months in the future.”

Prior to yesterday’s announcement, RC501, was set to leave the 747 final assembly line for the paint hangar around October 11th, with first flight planned for December 9th.

Of the total number of tasks required to build a 747-8 from structural build up all the way to pre-flight activities, just over 50% had been fully completed at the time the delay was announced, according to company sources.

Of the balance of tasks or “jobs” that have yet to be completed or “sold” many remain “open” or partially completed, paced by engineering changes. As a result, the total level of completion was far above 50%, but the open and unfinished jobs created a critical path bottleneck that has to be overcome before moving forward.

CATIA and the IRON BIRD

Boeing decided against a full systems integration lab (SIL) for the 747-8 derivative aircraft, due to the influence of the legacy systems on the current design. However, because a SIL was unavailable, says a second 747-8 program engineer, many of the system level issues were encountered on the aircraft, rather than being caught in the lab.

In addition, without a universal computer model derived from Dassault Systemes CATIA v5 software, Boeing has found itself “trying to bridge the gap between 1969 and 2009,” says a veteran engineer based at one of Boeing’s 747-8 suppliers.

For example, the new wing design and enlarged empennage were designed through CATIA v5, while a portion of of the internal fuselage structure and other parts of the aircraft were built using legacy engineering drawings. 

Some parts and their associated engineering drawings, the engineer says, have not changed since the 747-100, which in some instances has led to a loss of tolerance control in some areas.

Any gaps in the structure are typically addressed with structural shims to align and help parts fit together. However, as the resources have been stretched so thin, the engineering for those shims has been slow to take hold, say the engineers.

“The scope of this delay doesn’t compare to what the 787 has been going through, but it is still disappointing,” says the first engineer. “Boeing and its employees so desperately need something to celebrate right now.”

Photo Credit Boeing (mid)

PALM SPRINGS — In-flight connectivity provider Row 44 announced a new tool for airlines to generate ancillary revenue by providing free access to a sponsored IFE portal to passengers with laptops and other devices.

The portal, known as a “walled-garden”, will provide access to a selected set of services like retail shopping, live television viewing, games, and information on the destination city, even allowing passenger to book ground-based service and events prior to landing.

Row 44 has created a coalition of partners along with SkyMall to offer in-flight catalog access, JiWire to offer advertising inside the portal, BeDynamic providing destination event booking and Pinger offering a premium for unlimited SMS messaging while in-flight.

Lastly, but perhaps most notably, the Home Shopping Network (HSN) has signed on as well. At first glace the channel selection may not seem that important, but through the Ku-band satellite link up Row 44 will offer a live streaming simulcast of the HSN channel with options to purchase items directly inside the free portal.

Whether your inclination towards HSN leans one way or another, try think about it this way: The demonstration of live streaming video through a walled portal to a laptop could pave the way for passengers to bring their own integrated IFE onboard. Bringing your iPhone, laptop, DVD player, etc already is BYOIFE, but imagine that the device you bring on board allows access to a portal designed to optimize your user experience, not to mention the potential for regulating potentially expensive bandwidth.

Row 44 says the new portal will be flying by the 1st of November. The company declined to say which airline would be the launch customer, however Southwest Airlines and Alaska Airlines are the only current operators for the service.

Which brings me to my next thought: Electronic Flight Bags. EFBs are purely a pilot tool and are divided into three classes. A Class 1 EFB is an external device that is brought aboard must be stowed at certain phases of flight. A Class 2 EFB is similar to a Class 1 except it can be used during all phases of flight. A Class 3 EFB is a fully integrated platform that offers two way systems communication and is permanently installed aboard an aircraft as an LRU.

So what does this have to do with IFE? I’m taking some creative liberties on classification, but if we follow these similar conventions then:

• Class 1 IFE is your unconnected laptop, iPod, iPhone, that is able to make a direct connection to the internet, but in an unguided way.
• Class 2 IFE is the device you bring on board that is able to interface with the walled garden or internet at-large to provide access to free and premium content by way of a connected environment.
• Class 3 IFE is your fully integrated seat-back unit.

What Row 44 has done here is give life to the Class 2 IFE, while at the same time relieving the burden of maintenance and installation of individual seat-back LRUs, while removing the cumbersome need to download new media to the aircraft. Pardon the pun, but could cloud computing be the answer to a new airline business model?

This newly announced delay, FlightBlogger has learned, comes as part of a comprehensive status review of Boeing’s commercial programs conducted by newly installed commercial airplanes chief, Jim Albaugh. In addition, program sources indicate the level of completion of tasks on the 747-8F required ahead of first flight stand at just 50%.

Boeing to Recognize Third-Quarter Charge for the 747 Program
CHICAGO, Oct. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — The Boeing Company (NYSE:
BA) today said it expects a pre-tax charge against third-quarter
results of approximately $1.0 billion due to increased production costs
and the difficult market conditions affecting its 747-8 program.

Approximately $640 million of the charge reflects
higher estimated costs to produce 747-8 airplanes at both Boeing and
supplier facilities. As the program assembled major components of
initial 747-8 Freighters during the third quarter, it became clear that
late maturity of engineering designs has caused greater than expected
re-work and disruption in manufacturing. This is resulting in
additional resources being applied on the program and higher supplier
expenses, which are the primary cost drivers.

The remaining $360 million of the charge relates to challenging
market conditions and the company’s decision to maintain the 747-8
production rate at 1.5 airplanes per month nearly two years longer than
previously planned, deferring an increase to 2 per month. Higher
allocation of fixed expenses and volume-based penalties to suppliers
are the main drivers of the additional costs.

Because the 747 program is in a loss position, costs
associated with the factors above will be immediately recorded in the
third quarter for future 747-8 deliveries.

The company now expects first flight of the 747-8
Freighter to occur by early next year with the flight test program
taking place in 2010. First delivery of the 747-8 Freighter is now
expected in the fourth quarter of 2010. First delivery of the
Intercontinental passenger variant remains scheduled for the fourth
quarter of 2011.

This is a breaking story and will be updated.

Late Monday afternoon, Mary Kirby and I were given an exclusive look at Panasonic’s new integrated IFE seat design called the Fusion. The change could represent a major shift in how airlines leverage IFE for economy class cabins.

The new slim seat design, which was covered with a blanket when Mary and I first arrived at Panasonic’s still under construction stand, was shown to us installed on the Weber 5751 economy class seat. Panasonic has gone to great lengths to create a new integrated interface between the IFE screen and the seatback, with new design that introduces a clearer new capacitive LCD screen.

The touchscreen LCD will come in seven or nine inch options, and a USB power port will be a standard feature. Panasonic envisions a fully connected IFE seat-back interface that accomodates in-flight access to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

While Panasonic says that they have yet to sign a customer for the new seat and IFE system, the company says it is working closely with airframers like Bombardier to offer the Fusion system as part of the CSeries cabin. Panasonic is already supplying the cabin mangement system for the CSeries.

“We look at CSeries as a great opportunity,” says Paul Margis, CEO of Panasonic Avionics.

Panasonic says that the Fusion system is designed for both narrowbody and widebody applications. Each system weighs about 1.5 lbs, compared to the current system which weighs about twice that.

The 50% weight cut could yield significant long-term fuel burn savings when spread across aircraft economy cabins like that of Qatar Airways 777-300ER which seats 293 or the Emirates A380 which seats 399.

Panasonic hopes to have the Fusion flying by November of 2010.

PALM SPRINGS — Continental Airlines is set to introduce its first newly configured Boeing 777-200ER with its BusinessFirst flat-bed seat by the end of October.

Brian Roland, engineering project manager for Continental
Airlines, says 777 Ship 13 (N78013), which is currently being modfied, will be the first to feature the new 50-seat business class cabin.

Each BusinessFirst seat will feature a Panasonic designed eXport jack, allowing passengers to play content stored on Apple iPods and iPhones on the seat back screen.

Panasonic announced today at the World Airline Entertainment Association Conference and Exposition that it is partnering with Apple accessory maker Griffin to offer the eXport in-flight video cable in retail stores. Previously, the Panasonic cable was only available to passengers as property of the airlines.

In addition to Continental, Panasonic has secured about a dozen customers for the eXport jack system, including Singapore Airlines, Avianca, Swiss International Airlines and United Airlines.

The seat, which is made by B/E Aerospace, features a full 180-degree,
6’6″ (198.1 cm) lie-flat seat, as well as Panasonic IFE system with
hand controller and US compatible power plug.

The airline also plans to feature introduce the flat-bed seat on its
Boeing 787 aircraft, along with its existing 767-400ER, 767-200 and
757-200 fleets.

The installation of the new seats on the 777-200ER fleet is expected to be completed by August 2011, with the existing fleet a year later.

Continental operates a fleet of 20 777s and holds orders for an additional eight.

Photo Credit Continental Airlines (top)