Quantas Goes With 115 787's

Mind explaining what the options bit means? Is it the option to buy those 50 additional planes at a certain negotiated price or is there something more?

 

Quantas will have the option to purchase 50 more 787's in a specified future point so they have positions in the production line and at the price that is right for them from the current negotiations. First up gets the choice , I guess.

 

Boeing big airplane company does it again. Whats good for Boeing is good for the country. Way to go Quantas. Job security for DJ & crew.

 

Sure Boeing gets its share of benefit from Uncle Sam contracts, but the fact is that Boeing competes in the global marketplace against a world of government subsidized companies and still does a great job. Hats off to the Boeing people who still have some of that good 'ol American work ethic that is the basis for part of our competitive advantage that still remains.

Other countries may be able to copy us better than we can copy ourselves, but we still have the spark of ingenuity that comes from being a young country.

 

I spent something like 42 years as a Boeing employee plus a double stint as a contratct employee in my old group, Preliminary Design, and I can speak with a modicum of experience that Boeing produces the best that an airline can buy. Those with whom I worked ( and with whom I still keep in touch ) are the finest of the finest and they think in terms of what is the best and the finest way to do the job. The company was plagued with some of the worst of the worst CEO's and directors but they have been replaced with some very competent people who have got the company back on track and are slugging it it out with a consortium of COUNTRIES who are sucking at the collective breast of EUROPE that give any amount of funding for the admitted purpose of sinking Boeing. Take a look at the configuration of the jet transports that Airbus throws at the industry. They are slightly massaged versions of the original design that Boeing presented in 1954 with the 367-80, a configuration that heasn't seen a basic change since then by anybody including Boeing. We got it right the first time and we continue to improve it. The 787 and 747-8 are two programs that cannot be defeated by the political and monetary smokescreens that Airbus is throwing up. Their airplanes are good enough when coupled with sales gimmicks like offering the A380 for less than the best price for a current 747 but they are not the best in every case. I have been told that an older A320 is a throw away airplane because repairing the electronics in it exceeds the value of the airplane. THAT from a United Airlines maintenace employee.
It is an impressive statement when 5 countries have to gang up their national budgetary forces to try to beat a single private company. It is doubly impressive when that private company prevails by it's excellence in private enterprise.

 

Yeah, and mouthy too.

 

I had read that the 787 was going to be a .92 mach plane. Am I wrong? I thought the idea was that it would be substantially faster than the competition. What am I missing?

Art

 

.92 Mach IS faster than the competition. The fastest commercial transport airplane right now is the 747, believe it or not. All others are .78 to .83 or so. I'm not up on the exact Mach cruise of all of them but .92 is damn fast to cruise at. All have dash capability of low .9's but none can cruise all day at that. The old 707 and 720 were capable of cruising at .89 and .90 but fuel burn killed the profitabilty. The 767 and A330 cruise is way under .90. The 720B with the first fan engines was capable of reaching critical Mach when fuel had burned off and could self destruct if not throttled back. The 787 is making a big jump in shortening block times.