Boeing developing 800-seat superjumbo
 

Boeing developing 800-seat superjumbo

Boeing engineers are working on an 800-seat airliner with wings that blend smoothly into the fuselage instead of protruding from its sides.
Anyone having more information on this?
Pls ref hyperlink below

http://www.ananova.com/business/stor...823.html?menu=

Surely this must be a different Boeing to the one that reacted to Airbus' launch of the A380 with such scepticism and announced that according to their figures there was no foreseeable market for such large passanger carrying craft.

What is more likely is that their R&D dept. have been knocking round a few ideas and someone has seen some of them and assumed they are being developed. In fact some of Boeing's blended wing-body ideas have been in the public domain for some time.
Until this article there was no sign of these ideas actually being developed. See thread in Tech Log: http://www.pprune.org/ubb/NonCGI/For...ML/001650.html


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JJC

Personally I think it is too late for Boeing to catch up, Airbus (The A380) already has many orders for the Super Jumbo and it may be time that Boeing re-thank their situation.

Murph

The concept of the super jumbo blended wing was a development of McDonnell Douglas. They commissioned Stanford University to construct a scale model to determine the low speed handling qualities of the full sized aircraft. Boeing inherited the design and only now are they giving any consideration to building one which would cost billions and would not fly for another ten years. In the mean time they can have an upgrade to the 747 and it could be flying in two years. Don’t count Boeing out and in the meantime, watch for problems in introducing the A380 into service.

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The Cat

Murph ATC,

Historically your thinking has little merit, for ex, I think its too late for Boeing to develope the 737, Douglas has the DC-9 already and ditto for the Caravelle, another, Airbus has the A-300, so Boeing shouldn't have developed the 767..this blended wing will be the real breakthrough that Boeing needs to surpass the A-380, and change the way jets are built. The a-380 has a few sales is still a paper plane and if they keep selling them for the rumored $140 million they'll lose money till the 22nd century, this is what competitions all about good luck to both,

Here's a more in-depth article about it, from today's LA Times:

http://www.latimes.com/business/upda...eing010209.htm

Well, hopefully this is true and they are about to try and get somecompetition in for Airbus. The great advantage Boeing has with their modified 747 compared with the A380 is that it takes a relatively short time to build and not too expensive. Whereas Airbus is having to punp $8billion into developing it and then they will probably have problems which Boeing may not have because of their experience of the 747.

It should be very interesting, though, if the American majors start getting involved to buy some of these new 747s.....which I'm sure they will! Even if just the America's do, it will give Boeing at least 50 aircraft orders over, for example, American, United and Delta, not to mention Northwest etc.

Cheers

Interesting thread, but surely the next big innovation isn't aerodynamic, but should be propulsion - when is someone going to produce something that doen't burn Jet A1 (I await the 'someone already has!)

FL390

The problem with your premise is that right now neither American or Delta fly the 747 nor have any plans to in the future, and it looks like United and NW arent rushing to get new orders in. It seems like the 777 is the plane of choice which is what Boeings long range forecasts predicted. So then, one may ask, why is Boeing embarking on this 800 seater? it may be a huge gamble but in one fell swoop it would make the a-380 much less competitive now and much more so in the future! interesting times these are!

So, how long would the aerobridge be? Where's all the pretty tail designs going to go? Guess who'll end up in the middle seat!!!!


There's a new jet engine being developed in Oz (and elsewhere I believe) thats similar in concept to a Ram jet,(I think), that's going to be tested at Woomera soon. Speeds being trumpeted were about Mach 6!!!! Now, I can't find any reference on the net, if someone else has heard about it....please let us know.

[This message has been edited by Buster Hyman (edited 10 February 2001).]

Boeing is performing it's usual trick of floating a pipe dream to see if anyone will respond.

Over recent years Boeing has been relying on its reputation and its market domination to produce and sell a series of mediocre products (alongside its excellent products) which it assumed airlines would be forced to buy. This policy left gaps in its product line which Airbus was only to pleased to fill.

Boeing derided the A380 and now that it may become a reality, however ill advised, they are beginning to panic. First we see the Super400 and now we have the flying wing concept, which as another poster pointed out, is just knocking the dust of an old McD. idea.

I love Boeing products for there reliability and solidity. They do a great job in BUILDING an aeroplane. Unfortunately, they are now suffering from the same beancounter mentality as other industries. What! take a risk, push the envelope? Wouldn't it be cheaper and safer just to put winglets on the old aeroplane and change its model number? Then we can sell it as a new product.

What we are seeing with this "new" proposal is an attempt to generate response, which if great enough, could justify SERIOUSLY looking at the idea. Secondly, Boeing calculates that any move it implies into the big aircaft market will cause potential buyers to think twice about buying Airbus.

The illogicality of this idea is demonstrated in one aspect. The big criticism of the 380 was that it would not fit "old" airfield facilities, taxiways and gates etc. Imagine the problems in these areas a flying wing design would generate!

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If the passengers are going to be sitting facing a tv screen instead of looking out the window, how about the idea of facing the seats backwards to protect against rapid deceleration? The US military had done that for decades and it appears to work.

Leave the job to Airbus. They're gonna kick some mighty butt with the A380.

CRASH & BURN BOEING!!

Funny how things go.

A few years ago I was down at Boeing when we were working on 744 implementation into the company. At one briefing session I asked if they were thinking of extending the upper deck further back to make a true double-decker.

The question seemed to be a bit of a surprise to the Boeing rep and the quick answer I got was that it was not aerodynamically possible.

Buster, was this the thingummy you were after?
http://www.asri.org.au/research/SCRAMJet/

In fact as a pilot I like Boeing and especially MD`s. Unfortunately Boeing missed the chance to develop a cost effective airplane family which covers the whole range of airplane sizes.
In the future airline managers of large carriers will run for Airbus even more.

[This message has been edited by Frozen Falcon (edited 11 February 2001).]