JAL orders 31 A350's
 

BBC News - Airbus and Japan Airlines agree landmark $9.5bn deal

Mistake
 

JAL's biggest mistake was buying the 787 what a Lemon of an aircraft, light weight, cant carry much and not that more fuel efficient than a 767-300. The A350 will see the end of the 787, Boeing poor support for the disastrous introduction, the band aid fix on an dangerous electrical system and the lack of line support...Good on JAL for seeing the light!

One wonders when (hopefully rather than if) Boeing will now realise that you can't design and develop a new aircraft with the PR department in the lead .......

http://thumbsnap.com/s/n4sYpqia.gif

faster than a Boeing share offer!

:E

Airbus wins big in Japan...
 

JAL decided to defect over to Airbus from Boeing in the purchase of new aircrafts.

Also reported in that article, ANA may also switch over to Airbus for their replacement of their B777.

Boeing?s Dreamliner nightmare continues as Japan Airlines defects to Airbus ? Quartz

Hardly surprising. Once bitten twice shy as they say.
I guess it's a sign that developers such as Boeing should take note on.

Airlines ultimately aren't interested about teething problems now in this commercially pressured environment. When a delay costs hundreds if not thousands of pounds a minute airlines just won't tolerate having their fleets grounded, the bad press and the what seems to be long string of problems let alone the delivery delays. If it were a car you were buying you'd be unlikely to buy another so Boeing can't be shocked.

We as aviation folk know the importance of safety and the difficulties of introducing a new technology but the hard truth I think is that the CEO cares very little about it. If you aren't seeing money from it, it's a liability and you can't afford that in this day and age.

Radical change is a gamble and Boeing lost unfortunately.

Safe flying
Tech_log

All the articles I've read have JAL bigwigs making it very clear that this is not a response to the B787 issues. What they have said is that having a single-supplier fleet is now an anomaly in the civil aviation market, and JAL are simply following suit.

That said, it's a very positive story for Airbus, and it can't be denied that so far the A350XWB project has been an exemplary tale when it comes to learning from past mistakes and applying the lessons learned. Of course, it's still very early days - and even Airbus themselves are advising caution alongside confidence.

Also worth mentioning is that we've seen the A320 programme overcome considerable adverse PR in the early days to become one of the most successful short-haul types in the world, and the A380's much-publicised teething problems also seem to have been largely consigned to the past. Not to mention that the 747 project almost sank Boeing in its first years and as such, it would be inadvisable to count Boeing out just yet,

You would be correct about the senior exec's statements, but do bear in mind the extreme politeness of Japanese professionals. What they moved on to say, however, in the same presentation, was that they apologised to their customers (in particular) and others for the dislocation causes by the 787 situation. Now quite why such a seemingly unconnected comment was made at a press conference called to announce the A350 order you may care to consider .........

The bit about single-supplier is of course not correct. Probably the largest purchaser of airframes in Asia in recent years has been Air Asia - and they have bought exclusively Airbus. Ryanair and Southwest are exclusively Boeing. So not an anomaly at all.

WHBM - perhaps I should have said "something of an anomaly".

Comments were based on this article:
JAL Chairman: 100% Reliance on Boeing 'Abnormal'

Following that logic Boeing's big mistake was to rely solely on Yuasa for the big batteries.

It leaves a somewhat shallow taste about Japanese economical ethics. First provide a flawed product to a bigger project, then abandon it for its competitor because of teething problems.

There were a lot more issues with the B787 programme than just the battery problems. Stories have been coming out of the woodwork detailing significant failures in management of the project (and others) at all levels. However, given that Airbus had similar issues - most recently during the A380 project - and learned from them to apparently make the A350XWB project run much more smoothly, I'm sure it's within Boeing's ability to turn things round in a similar fashion - as long as management are honest with themselves about where the problems lie.

I don't want this to get into an A vs B argument, but I believe a difference between the two was that when Airbus discovered the A380 wiring harnesses had been mis-manufactured, and did not fit, it was treated as an engineering problem, with engineers coming up with a solution. Problems in the plant at Boeing, ever since the corporate office was moved from on the property to 2,000 miles away, are treated with a brush-under-the carpet, watch the next quarterly earnings, glossing it over with Wall Street is all that matters, management attitude.

I'm not interested in an A v. B urinating contest either - and while there is truth in what you're saying, solving the wiring issue at an engineering level was only part of the solution as a whole. What needed to (and apparently did) happen was a wholesale no-blame review of the management processes around specification, design and manufacture to prevent a recurrence of the problem on the next project.

Airbus have a distinct advantage in this regard, because they've been using a multinational and multi-lingual supply chain since the inception of the original consortium - or earlier, if you include the experience with Concorde - and so will tend to be better prepared for this kind of process overhaul (though Boeing have been sourcing heavy engineering from Japan since the late '70s). Boeing will hopefully overcome the issues they've been having as long as management are prepared to open all the potential cans of worms. It should, however, be noted that most of the manufacturing issues brought to light seem to stem from Boeing's suppliers within the US.

Bit rich suggesting that JAL should stick with Boeing just becuase a Japanese company supplied the dodgy batteries.

Anyway, JAL's A350 order does not exclude the 777X - they will almost certainly order 777-9X in due course.

In a system supplied by the French company Thales - I wouldn't be surprised if some will therefore insist there must have been a dastardly plot between the French and Japanese to hobble the B787 at some point. Of course, both Thales and Yuasa were providing a battery system designed and built to Boeing's specifications - and usually in engineering projects you will find that problems can be traced back to incomplete or incorrect specification.

Well, quite. :)

Boeing neglected to specify that they shouldn't burst into flames instantaneously ? :*

Nice one Dave!

Admittedly, that did make me chuckle.

But in all seriousness it seems that the operating environment specified was too narrow - after all, if the units hadn't passed Boeing's and the FAA's requirements and testing then they wouldn't have been fitted to the aircraft. Conditions faced on the line seem to have been outside the boundaries of the original spec.

The point being that no matter which company was contracted to develop and build the battery systems, if the spec was the same then they'd have still had the same problems vis. battery fires.