Pretty good article about the 747-8. I'm impressed. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20031689-52.html The new interior is terrific. The old interior is one of the 747's worst feature, along with interior noise. The plane flies faster than any other commercial jetliner, fits with existing airport ramps, uses 11% less fuel than the A380, and is quiet enough to fly out of Heathrow 24 hours a day. Nice job Boeing! My guess is that it's cheaper than the A380 too. They already have orders for 33 of the (107 including freighters). Airbus has been a bit of a disappointment with only 238 so far. The only problem is that it will be 20 years before any US carrier takes one. They're all broke or stuck in long leases. Still, we can use the sales coming back in the USA.
Don't get suckered by the cool interior mockups Boeing creates. They make those, and then the airlines who actually buy the aircraft specify stuff from the lowest bidder... which is how you end up with what you see on 747s today. Most airlines (Emirates and a few other international carriers excepted) want the cheapest, lightest interiors which can squeeze the most passengers in.
AH! But here's what you don't know... My first job out of school was working on the interior design of the 747 in good ol' Everett Washington. So, I do know something! You are half correct. The seats and spaces are custom built for the airline as is the color scheme and entertainment systems. But, the overhead space, decks, ceilings, stairways, interior lighting systems, and general interior is pretty common. If you notice from the photos, all this is new (and pretty nicely done). So, I expect the interior of this to be pretty similar aside from the seats themselves as well as the galleys and the lavs.
When I worked at Boeing on new airplanes the never-ending effort to save airframe and equipment weight was usually negated by the airline customer when they put in their passenger " enticements" like, in one case, a 2200 pound in-flight entertainment system.
I worked on the Saudi 747 SP project. This was the plane with the operating room if you know that plane. I see it every once and a while parked on the far side of the field at LAX. In any event, having flown 2 million miles on the 747, I'm a big fan. I'm glad to see it get a second life, albeit overdue IMO.
They had larger 747s in fairly advanced planning, two that I recall offhand (500 and 600?, help from the Boeing guys), but could never get corporate permission to build them. I guess it took the A380 to finally get them to move on the project. Cost them a bit to come to the table late, but the good news is Airbus and the French lost their shirt on the A380 and Boeing will make money on the -8. Taz Terry Phillips
Boeing kept saying they doubted there was a big enough market for the A380. Maybe it was putting on a good face but at the same time, they could have also looked pretty foolish in the industry for saying it. They put their money on the Dreamliner. The A380 could not have been released at a worst time. Global recession and governments going broke. Airports with no budgets to build new terminals. Labor disputes, war, and terrorism. Pretty bad timing to release the world's biggest and most expensive plane, no matter how good it is. I've flown the A380 and it's wonderful. The old 747 seems like a model T in comparison. Boeing however is in a major screw up themselves. They've got some of the biggest jet pre-orders of all time on the books for the Dreamliner and can't get it to production.
Terry, I worked on both of those designs and they were damn good airplanes at the time. One European customer definitely wanted it and threw a fit when Boeing announced that it wouldn't be built. It would have been an A380 competitor if not an A380 killer BUT there was a strong Douglas influence from those who were sucked in from California and we kept getting the " it does not make a good business plan" and " we shouldn't be spending the money" thing. We had some damn good airplanes and they wouldn't go ahead with them. The -600 was only 5 feet shorter than a football field and had good economics as for pax and freight. The 747-8 is better due to composites, new engines, and aerodynamics. It has far better numbers as a freighter than the A380 will ever have due to cargo volume/ density and nose loading. It doesn't require beefed up runways, special loading equipment, reworked slots or service equipment, new training for crews, and it will still have the fastest block times in the business.
Bob- No guts, no glory, and they had no guts until the elephant hatched. bdelp- I would imagine it is a nice airliner, but I have no desire to fly on one. I nearly threw up the other day when they parked an A319 at our Delta gates in Albuquerque. Inherited a bunch of the bloody things from NorthWest. The French have some very clever engineers, sometimes too clever. Like both engines refusing to run up because they might hurt themselves and putting an aircraft in the Hudson. Taz Terry Phillips
Taz, - Airbus is not French, please. - Boeing already acknowledged that the 747-8i will never make a penny. - Airbus will sell more new A-380 in 2011 than Boeing has sold 747-8i to airlines (25) since the beginning of the program. - Airbus increased the 380 MSRP by > 8 % in 2011. It will take longer than anticipated, but the 380 will clearly be a money machine one day. - I love the 777 and I got a lifetime "elite" flying status flying it across the pond several times a year, but the Boeing of today is not the Boeing of back then. I wish them the best on the 787.
"Airbus is not French". You're correct. It is Europe and all the money in its treasury. And that money was was gathered up to buy their way into the jet transport industry with the self proclaimed aim to sink Boeing. It looks like Boeing beat them at their own game in the tanker competition by undercutting Airbus with a lower price for once. Don't kid yourself, Boeing isn't going to roll over dead because they have offered the tanker at a low price. They worked this proposal with the best guys in the business with an airplane that fits the bill. " 747-8 will never make money" Where did that come from, Airbus? This airplane is the best freighter that money can buy. It's a better freighter than the A380 could ever be and has made a slow start but so have other first offerings. Airplanes that don't make money are those with huge R&D costs on a new airframe that flops. The -8 isn't a new airframe and so far it hasn't flopped. Watch. The A380 will never make a dime. "I love the 777." I do too. I helped to design that bird and it is right now one of the best airplanes ever! Good freighter, good pax, and good period!
Wily- Show me the ownership shares and we can discuss who owns Airbus. The point on the engines was not what type they were, nothing runs well after sucking in geese, the point was the engines, both engines, were kept at idle by the Airbus software so they did not hurt themselves. So even if both were capable of providing enough power to get back to the take-off location, the aircraft did not give the aircrew that option. Who cares if the engine damages itself by running roughly? Filling them full of salt water did not do them or the airframe much good. Taz Terry Phillips
The bottom line is that Airbus assumes that their software is smarter than the pilots. While that may be true in some cases, it isn't in others, and if, as in the Hudson River situation, the pilots aren't allowed to override the aircraft's computers, than people are going to die needlessly. In other words, the Airbus aircraft are simply too automated. "If it ain't Boeing, I'm not going." I have flown some A319s and A320s (and one A300 a long time ago), but based on recent events, I will boycott their aircraft in the future. I hope Delta gets rid of the ones they inherited from Northwest and that United and US Airways come to their senses and get rid of the ones they have.
Airbus is defo not a "french company". It's best described as European with a few strategic investors (incl French state but something like < 9% but also daimler benz with around 4%). Shares are publicly listed and I am sure a few of the US asset managers and institutional investors own a far bit. As a side comment, I have ben lurking for years and particularly enjoy this section of F-chat, but I really fee a strong boeing bias in all discussions here. I cannot claim to be an aviation professional but think sometime this is a bit OTT. Not everything that is being produced Seattle is the best there is. C'mon.....
........... so we were starting take off in Qantas's A380 when suddenly the increase in engine speed stopped and back to only sufficient to taxi off the runway. The pilot addressed the passengers saying "As you can tell we won't be taking off quite yet ....... our computer can't decide whether the undercarriage is up or down". That is not good !
I wasn't aware of this aspect of the Hudson incident... This is yet another example of dangerous software engineering in the Airbus series of aircraft... I've been saying for more than a few months that the software design and system failure criteria for Airbus aircraft are not acceptable. How many aircraft will fall out of the sky because the computer told them to? These aircraft fly just fine every day, but when the computer is challenged by system failures that it hasn't anticipated the chances that things will go very wrong increases asymptotically. The term "bias" connotes an unfounded opinion or prejudice against something. I would counter that some of the folks posting on this particular forum are more informed, and they have specific aerospace industry experience and expertise, and that makes them more qualified to offer an opinion or insight into what's going on. Maybe it isn't a bias, maybe it's knowledge that is forming these opinions.
Ownership is public data. You will see that EADS owns 100% of Airbus. Taz, You are so off the mark... FAA fact Sheet: "The engine must be able to ingest a single large bird (4 lbs.) and be able to shut down safely. When a large bird is ingested, no continued operation is required." Note to Taz: The engine isn't certified by Airbus, but by the FAA upon request by GE/SAFRAN. Nah, this is just a figment of your imagination Thibaut. 1) Please show me where I ever wrote that? 2) "the 747-8i will never make a penny" comes from BOEING itself. Note to Bob: the 747-8i is not a 747-8F.
The 747-8I made its first flight today, a beautiful, graceful airplane. I worked on the original 43 years ago and like the pink bunny, it keeps going on and on. AND it just gets better and better. Stay tuned.
Wily- You miss the point completely again on the engines. What they must be able to absorb is not the point, the point is if there was usable thrust, the aircraft software was not going to allow it to be used. This has nothing to do with the engines, it has to do with the aircraft software. You can quote FAA requirements all you want, but they had nothing to do with the problem we were discussing and neither did engine type or who certifys what. Airbus software gets between a pilot and what he is trying to do, sometimes beneficially and sometimes not. That is the issue. Taz Terry Phillips
As a pilot, I have to agree with Taz. I remember the comment by a Thunderbird pilot to a young lady acquaintance who was to perform in an air show with us and he said that if she crashed in her Citabria they were going to check the wreckage to see if she had the afterburner on. In other words, she had better be doing everything she could as a pilot to keep the airplane airborne. I must admit that computers can read aerodynamic inputs that some pilots cannot perceive but in the end the pilot IS THE AIRCRAFT COMMANDER and not a box. Pilot's comments during the 777 design program. "I will not fly when I cannot see what my co-pilot is doing with the controls." Re side sticks and unseen computer inputs to the control surfaces. He made a good point.
As a side note, legal action has just been taken against Airbus for the accident on the flight from South America across the southern Atlantic. Even made the Albuquerque papers. Taz Terry Phillips
Terry is absolutely correct in that the software needs to be programmed so that if there is any possible way to avoid crashing the aircraft, the software must allow the pilot to maintain controlled flight. In the Hudson incident those people were very lucky that their pilot did what he did, with what he had, and there was a good outcome. It could have been a very bad thing if the ditching hadn't gone well and the aircraft broken up on landing. In one of our military programs, a helicopter had a gearbox torque limit. Now you could exceed the torque limit, but there were staged inspections, more torque, more inspections, and at some point you replaced the gearbox. Early in the program we had a hard torque limit. It was nice in the the pilot could yank on the collective and it wouldn't damage the system, but that could have been a safety issue. The question was, do you want to save the gearbox, but have the aircraft fly into the trees in an emergency where the pilot needed all the power he could get? What we came up with was a staged system. If the pilot pulled collective (demaned torque) it would sense if the demanded torque was causing the rotor to accelerate or decelerate. If the rotor was decelerating, we gave more torque, up to the next limit. If it was accelerating, he had enough torque and his demand had been met. This sounds simple, but it was like pulling teeth to get everybody on board and sign off on this kind of limiting system. The nice thing was that when we did it this way, the amount of over torque events dropped to nothing, but, if the pilot needed big torque in an emergency he had it. Bottom line is that the aircraft and engine are there to serve the pilot and it's better to have a ruined gearbox than a crashed aircraft. Same thing with engine vibration. Is it vibrating enough to shake the engines off, ok, then back it down, if not let em run. Make the pilot aware that he is on borrowed time, but the computer can't throw up its hands and simply say.. Ok, you're done!!! and shut things down.
To make a small point, maybe. The test pilot made a comment that during the first flight he gave the airplane full right rudder and let it fly sideways for a while, " With no problem."
