Boeing 787 Dreamliner First Flight Delayed!

[Gym_Class_Hero]

http://www.flightglobal.com/article...delay-to-787-first-flight-and-deliveries.html

http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/flightblogger/

This is pretty serious. With the game of chicken between Airbus and Boeing, they may loose orders to the A330.:bangpan:

At least it's good news for the 767 fans, though. Who knows how long it will be until they end up in 2nd tier and cargo carriers.

 

[mach7]

I'm not really surprised. The 787 such a paradigm shift in airliners that problems are bound to come up. Boeing took a huge gamble with the Dreamliner, not only did they change the whole supplier philosophy, Everything about the aircraft is truly revolutionary. If Boeing can pull this off all other airliners will be obsolete overnight.

 

[JAllen]

Anyone read Joe Sutter's Book 747? Joe Sutter was the chief design engineer for the Boeing 747. They had all kind of trouble with the 747, too. Then, it was such a large gamble that if it failed, Boeing would have gone under. History tells us what happened.

If Boeing pulls this off, they will have revolutionized the industry twice. First by introducing the first widebody and second with the first mostly composite commercial airline. I just hope they can pull it off like they did with the 747.

 

[jorpet]

Well, as a Seattlite I have been around Boeing my entire life. I am a Boeing brat as are most of the kids I went to school with in Bellevue. My dad worked for Boeing from the early 60's until he retired in the late 90's. My mom worked as a drafter on the 737-x which became the 737-800.

Heck, I remember the sign that said "Will the last person to leave Seattle please turn out the lights". That came after the bust of the Boeing SST.

All that said, the amount of hubris displayed by Boeing on the 787 is amazing. They had internal people telling them that they could build an all new breed of jet with a supply chain full of untested partners spread all around the world and that they could do it in 18 months. When I first heard that I thought they would be off by a factor of 2-3 times, but what does an external observer know? I kept thinking that they must have some information that would prove them correct and the doubters wrong. Well guess what? This jet is following a normal new jet production curve and those who didn't think Boeing could pull it off have been proven right in spades.

A sad day for Boeing and a proud heritage.

 

[hardinlw]

Actually, this is the third time Boeing bet the company on a new airplane. The first was the 707 which was originally envisioned as a tanker for the Air Force who refused it and insisted on prop-driven tankers. They later relented and bought it as the KC-135. Boeing was not getting many orders because the common perception was that jets were not very maneuverable and the pilots didn't want it until Tex Johnson rolled the prototype to show them it was maneuverable.

http://www.aviationexplorer.com/707_roll_video.htm

 

[Pantherjon]

I think one of the other reasons the Air Force originally balked was the slow engine response time..Time it took to spool up for power and to slow down..I may be wrong but I recall hearing something along those lines for when jet engines were still in their infancy..

 

[mach7]

Oh yah, the first at least 2 generations of jets had terrible spool up times!

I think the J-69 on the T-37 had a 20-30 sec spool up time from idle power. It was so bad the put "thrust attenuators" on the back of the engines. They were little speed breaks that would fold out into the exhaust to kill some of the thrust when you were on approach. This caused the engine to run at a higher RPM. If a go-around was needed, advancing the throttle would stow them, giving the pilot power faster.

Even my beloved MD-80 had an approach idle setting, when the gear was down the flight idle was bumped up a bit for go-arounds. The high bypass fans on the 737's don't seem to have the problem.

But the Air Force would have been very aware of the problem, they were flying around a bunch of jets!