Unflown planes
 

Boeing 787 was rolled out on 8th of July, 2007. It was supposed to fly on 27th of August, 2007.

It has not flown.

Boeing 787 is supposed to be delayed by half a year. Once upon a time, Airbus 380 was supposed to be delayed by half a year, too. Then it was delayed again, by a year that time... but eventually A380 did enter service.

Dornier 728 was rolled out on 21st of March, 2002. It had 150 or so orders from respectable airlines like Lufthansa, and was supposed to fly and enter service.

It has not flown.

When would Boeing 787 fly? And would Boeing 787 fly, ever?

The circumstances surrounding the 728 though were different to what the A380 has and what the 787 is currently facing.

Airbus and Boeing are both in a strong position as they persevere with their respective technical problems, whereas Fairchild Dornier were having problems long before the 728 was supposed to fly and it was the companies instability and subsequent collapse that brought the program to an end, not any problem with the aircraft itself. When FD initially filed for insolvency the two biggest customers, GECAS and Lufthansa cancelled their orders pretty sharpish, so when the company started work again with support from Chinese backers it didn't have much going for it on the sales front, they then collapsed for a second time when China refused to give it more credit.

I dont think theres any question that the 787 will fly... at some point... the big question is when, the current schedule puts it towards the end of Q1 2008 so March/April.

Boeing 2707 never flew. Was it delayed? And could the 787 first flight to be delayed again, till it is never?

Boeing 2707 (733-390) was never built, 787 has been.
2707 was cancelled (US Congress stopped funding).
787 will fly. Bank on it.

With 700+ orders it WILL fly. I only hope they do not cut too many corners in the process.

Perhaps a little over confidence in their production capabilities after the successful 777 launch.

Two 2707 prototypes were at least partly built. True, they were never rolled out, and something called 787 prototype has indeed been rolled out. But seeing that the 787 "prototype" is unable to take flight for such a long time after roll-out, one wonders how much of a plane it was in the first place.

The only 2707 'prototypes' that I recall built were left half only wooden and paper fabrications in a large hangar, simply created for photographic purposes! I also recall a lot of publicity that that program cost more than the eventual cost of developing Concorde....which did fly, and highly successfully scientifically, if commercially dealt a death blow by the recession and fuel crisis of the 70s.

Boeing did show those mockups. But I have heard that Boeing also started building 2 metal airframes which were supposed to fly when complete. How far did those get?

Construction numbers were allocated for the 2 prototypes 20001/2
but how far along the trail it went , was any metal cut I don`t know


Ian

Absolutely nowhere. All that money spent and no progress on solving the many severe problems of unre-heated supersonic flight. Of the list of aeroplanes that did solve that one, I believe the list starts and ends with Concorde. It took Concorde 6 years of development flying to achieve service entry. That intake geometry alone is a nightmare. Technically successful, commercially a failure, it was a plane out of its time. I believe like the Apollo moon landings, it was a science out of its time- hugely successful, but mankind just couldn't take it. They shouldn't have worked, but they did, through sweat and faith. But ultimately they both failed because they were just too big jumps in technology. The 2707 cost more than the whole Concorde program, and produced nothing. It would have failed hugely, as they knew. They got absolutely nowhere building any parts for it, so we must understand it wasn't waiting to come on the scene!

And Concorde came out of friendly Anglo-French co-operation! How? Didn't they do well?

You can pick up on the robust construction (and planned flight programme) for the 787 if you start around post #53 here

A colleague has a bit of insight on the Fairchild Dornier 728 debacle. He says configuration control was out of control, and the plane that rolled out was uncertifiable because no one knew (down at the detail level) what was in it. :eek: The central database was a shambles.

Bloody shame - they tried to sell this fine-looking ship to the Chinese, or maybe Russia, but it was just too big a risk for any sane venturemonger to take on.