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Looks like the 787-10 will only be assembled in S.Carolina.

>>> Article <<<

-Gregg

That's a big pickup for Charleston. They are still having some growing pains but getting all the -10 work is a good vote of confidence from Boeing.

On another note, Airbus is struggling with the A380 program.

http://www.businessinsider.com/airbus-cancel-skymark-airlines-a380-2014-7

No orders from new customers in over two years and Skymark just cancelled their existing order.

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Let me rephrase - I don't "hate" CRJ's, I just hate riding in them. I'm sure they are very safe and well built aircraft. And I should also qualify that most of my anger is directed at the CRJ200. The later versions are a bit better. I had the misfortune to have to fly on the CRJ200 on multiple flights between Atlanta and Providence, RI. Flight time was ~ 3 hrs and that was way too long for me. No idea why Delta was using those jets on that route, all the other times, they had 737's.

From what I have read, the CRJ's and ER145's are being retired at a very rapid pace here in the US. Seems like the airlines are not happy with the economics of these smaller aircraft and are going with larger airframes.

Last note - as Sebastijan observed, any aircraft can be uncomfortable. All depends on how many seats the airlines want to squeeze into the aircraft.

Three hours in a CRJ is cruel and inhuman punishment! The plane must have been mostly empty to carry enough fuel to go that far. I think even after all of the years they've been in service, the airlines don't really know how to use the small regional jets. The CRJ was originally built to replace turboprops like the Dash-8, SAAB 340, and ATR because passengers associated props with "old" and/or unreliable. It seemed like the airlines took them and tried to make them work everywhere.

Ben

Edited by Ben Brown
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That's a big pickup for Charleston. They are still having some growing pains but getting all the -10 work is a good vote of confidence from Boeing.

On another note, Airbus is struggling with the A380 program.

http://www.businessinsider.com/airbus-cancel-skymark-airlines-a380-2014-7

No orders from new customers in over two years and Skymark just cancelled their existing order.

Actually, just to be clear (I know, semantics but important), Airbus cancelled the Skymark order, not Skymark.

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Actually, just to be clear (I know, semantics but important), Airbus cancelled the Skymark order, not Skymark.

Good point. Which brings up another - I do have to wonder how many of these orders on both Boeing and Airbus's books were placed by struggling airlines and will end up being cancelled? I reading some articles that are voicing concern that some of these mega-orders (50-100+ airframes) may never happen.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Boeing is struggling (again) with 787 production issues.

http://thepeninsulaqatar.com/business/international-business/295066/boeing-787-output-hiccups-re-emerge-at-assembly-sites

Workers are doing mandatory 10 hr shifts plus weekends. I have to wonder if forcing workers to suck up 60+ hrs per week, week after week, might also contribute to assembly errors?

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Not a big surprise. No airplane in history has been built the way the 787 is built, so cranking up production rates is bound to cause hiccups. The fact that they basically can't keep up with orders is a good sign as far as I'm concerned :)

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"But critics like Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst at the Teal Group, an aviation consulting firm in Fairfax, Va., say the main problem is more fundamental: Airbus made the wrong prediction about travel preferences. People would rather take direct flights on smaller airplanes, he said, than get on big airplanes — no matter their feats of engineering — that make connections through huge hubs."

Funny, that's pretty much exactly what I said when Airbus launched the A380 back in 2000... I'll be surprised if Airbus breaks even on the airplane.

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No doubt the A380 is an impressive airplane to see in person and is for certain a great achievement in aircraft design and engineering. Personally, I am awe inspired seeing one land and take off. But I have often thought that it came into existence 20 or even 30 years too late. The original design for the Boeing 747 way back in the late 1960's looked very close to the A380. Back then Pan Am wanted an impressive statement maker in a double deck aircraft to replace its 707 fleet. Sutter and his team came up with the 747 double deck design (again something the A380 is reminiscent to) but couldn't come up with a way to make it work in a cost effective manner both in production terms and later for airlines to actually make a profit operating the aircraft. They eventually came up with and sold to Pan Am the classic 747 design we still see today. My point being, for the most part since the 747 became operational, civilian aircraft design has moved more towards two engines doing the work that three or four holers used to do. It makes since from an operational standpoint. Two engines to buy rather then four, two engines to service rather then four, two engines burning fuel rather then four etc etc. Yes there have been exceptions, but by and large airliners shed the need for three and for engines long before the A380 came into being. Look at all of Boeings current designs. So, while Airbus put a truck load of financial resources into designing a four engined behemoth in the A380 to unseat Boeings 747...the four engined mammoth airliner era was already over. I agree with Jennings, I predict Airbus taking a bath on the A380. No knock against either the A380 or Airbus. Its just a nice aircraft in the wrong era.

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It's a truism that the A380 can only meet an extremely narrow set of operational requirements. And if for whatever reason, the price of fuel were to quintuple (not an impossibility in the grand scheme of things), the A380 would be a huge white elephant. One 777-9X can very nearly do the job of an A380 (especially an A380 that's not 100% full), and do it on half as many engines and a lot less gas. There will always be some market for super-jumbos, but I think Airbus's eyes got far bigger than their bellies (so to speak) when they designed it. Boeing made the decision that a super jumbo just wasn't worth the effort and expense, and have put their eggs into a different basket. I think that will turn out to be the wiser move over the long run.

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Yeah, I have no clue who's behind that web page, but I sent them a letter about the utter ridiculousness of their article. Not only the graphic (which is an A380), but the content of the piece as well. Very amateurish.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Another mega-order, this time it's a win for Boeing. Ryan will be purchasing 100 of the 737Max versions. May be a win for BA, not sure it's a win for the passengers. These will be the high density version of the MAX, with more rows of seating shoe-horned in. This is done primarily by reducing (again) seat pitch.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-05/boeing-poised-to-win-11-billion-ryanair-sale-for-737-max.html

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The 737-8MAX 200 is one case where even if it is Boeing, I'm not going. I'll swim before I fly Ryanair, no matter how cheap it is. And getting on a 737-8xx with 199 other slobs just ain't in the cards.

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Last passenger flight of an MD-11 just occurred. I know that the DC-10/MD-11 had a checkered past but I still think they were some of the most graceful airliners ever made.

http://www.ibtimes.com/last-md-11-passenger-flight-another-aviation-icon-goes-away-1713278

Given the MD-11's "challenging" landing characteristics, I'd guess that there may be some relieved KLM pilots today.

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More proof the superiority of Boeing's 777. They can now nearly go supersonic:

http://rt.com/news/221559-boeing-supersonic-heathrow-airplane/

Short history on one of Airbus's least successful programs, the A340.

http://airwaysnews.com/blog/2015/01/09/flashback-friday-a-history-of-the-airbus-a340-program/

Like the MD11, it was pretty much obsolete the day it was rolled out. A victim of the 777 and Airbus's own A330. Despite the lame "4 Engines 4 Long Haul" campaign designed to convince passengers that twin engine planes were unsafe when flying over-ocean routes, the A340 was a sales flop.

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More proof the superiority of Boeing's 777. They can now nearly go supersonic:

What a ridiculous article:

The Boeing 777-200 commercial airliner made commercial flight history, reaching a ground speed of 745mph as it got caught up in winds of more than 200mph. To break the sound barrier, a plane must travel at a speed of 761mph.

The speed of sound has nothing to do with ground speed - they were most likely flying somewhere around the typical cruise speed of 0.84 Mach, not even close to being supersonic.

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