Some say the B787 is 25% more efficient than an equivalent ?
How much better would a Boeing B787 be on a route, for instance: Manchester to Dubai, Abhu Dhabi or Bahrain?
Compared to an Airbus A330-200HGW ?
Would the aircraft cost(assuming the Airbus was either second hand or bought/leased at a preferential rate) Be part of the equation ? What about operating costs ?
Some charter airlines believe it will revolutionise point-to-point destinations. Think of Gatwick or Manchester to some exotic destination. Which, would have not been, flown, with any other type.
It is always difficult to get through the sales blurb and hyperbole.
It is a better airplane but not what Boeing Sales say at the moment. I'm sure once fixes & upgrades come on-line it will be a winner, isn't that the case with most new technology airplanes?
I remember Bob Crandall of American Airlines complaining bitterly about the real performance of his MD-11's. They didn't match the sales talk. Although I have always enjoyed being a passenger in one.
Once I was chatting to an Airbus rep in 1994. He said that Virgin's old B747-100 used 85 tonnes of fuel Gatwick to Newark. Virgin's new A340-300 used 35 tonnes on the same route. Or so he said.
The Boeing B787 had to be beefed-up a bit when there were problems in the wing box area. Adding weight. Apparently it is more expensive to make carbon fibre than use alluminium?
If I were an airline chief and I got a good deal on some A330-200HGW's. I wonder if my competitor with his new Boeing B787s would be smiling?
Some say the B787 is 25% more efficient than an equivalent ?
How much better would a Boeing B787 be on a route, for instance: Manchester to Dubai, Abhu Dhabi or Bahrain?
Compared to an Airbus A330-200HGW ?
That depends entirely how you define "efficient".
One measure might be fuel burn per seat-mile (or fuel burn per aircraft mile, for a similarly sized aircraft).
Nobody, least of all Boeing, would claim that the 787 is 25% more efficient in that respect, compared to the competition.
Quote:
Would the aircraft cost (assuming the Airbus was either second hand or bought/leased at a preferential rate) Be part of the equation ? What about operating costs ?
Obviously acquisition cost would form part of an potential operator's overall comparison exercise. But comparing a new-build 787 with a used A330 would be a fairly pointless exercise.
Its not just about efficiency. Ultimately if you can charge £150 a seat more than someone using a competitor airframe, your costs are only £50 more per seat, assumming similar load factors and passenger numbers then you will be laughing.
Sadly too many CEOs focus on a single part without realising there are many others.
In my youthful days I wrote off 2 carbon fibre/kevlar racing canoes in 1 week, wrapped them round rocks and they could not be repaired unlike normal glass fibre.
My point being, what happens when a catering truck bounces off the fuselage, can modern carbon kevlar be repaired ??
Another issue is the 'Emergency Cut Here' marks on the fuselage. An axe bounces off !
Here is an interesting letter to the Aerospace magazine:-
Composites - shades of the Comet ?
"Reading Bill Read's article in the February issue. On the maintenance aspects of aircraft containing an ever increasing proportion of composite materials in their structure, has awakeneed a long felt concern that I have about these materials. Fuelled by the huge benefits that are there to be exploited in terms of higher structural efficiency over their metal equivalent, especially in these times of austerity and the need for ever lower seat mile costs, industry, driven by its customers, has embraced this new relatively unknown material and forged ahead to integrate it into the very heart of airframe manufacture. In this latest breed of airliners, tried and tested metals that are know completetly understood through the hard lessons from generations gone by, are increasingly becoming the exception rather than the norm.
We understand composites as manufactured and we are perfecting processes to manufacture ever more complex components and assemblies out of this new and challenging material. But it is not tolerant of damage, it is not easy to spot(the extent of) damage, it is not esy to repair, it is not easy to guarantee a repair. Consequently, the long term integrity of such repairs has to be questionable. We understand the science but I fear we don't understand its durability in a damage risk environment. Back in the post war days, we thought we understood metals. The Comet was a frightening illustration of how little we did know. Speed, distance and comfort were then the driving forces. Chasing the current-day holy grail of minimal seat-mile costs could be a frightening analogy."
- John H Mangan CEng MRAeS
Location: In some hotel downroute or in some hotel doing union negotiations.
Posts: 2,367
Boeing claims that the 787 burns around 20% less fuel than any other same sized aircraft. Thing is, airbus for example doesn't offer any aircraft in that size bracket (210-250 seats for the -8). It can be roughly compared to a 767-300, but no completely, especially if range comes into the equation. The 787 is a pretty small wide body airplane with a pretty long range in the non-overweight configuration.
The first around 60 aircraft are overweight, the first 20 of those by a huge amount. One of the results is the low number of seats that are used by the first two customers on international long haul routes, 158 in the ANA version and 186 in the JAL one.
Total cost will depend of course, the first 300 airplanes were sold at steep discounts for prices as low as 64 million $ per airplane which is considerably below the list price for a 737.
Sensible folk don't care about the beancounters and their penny/cent pinching ways of costs per mile/kilometre ... Give us sensible folk 3 or 4 engines per aircraft for oceanic travel and we're happy to pay that little bit more to rest peacefully in our seats.
Location: In some hotel downroute or in some hotel doing union negotiations.
Posts: 2,367
Hmm, only two of those are still in production, the self disintegrating ugly mass of A380 and the new 747-8 which doesn't really sell well in the passenger world.
Boeing B787 - How much better ?
Composites - shades of the Coment
