[Subjectivist]

Looks like Boeing may survive the next contraction of the Airline ndustry but the A380 and 747 are headed for the ash heap of history just like the Concorde. Just too expensive to operate in a high fuel cost environment.

[Tanada]

Boeing cuts 787 Dreamliner production, delivery target after new flaw found
Boeing has already paused delivery of its 787 Dreamliners as the FAA evaluates how the company inspects the planes.
Further delivery delays would deprive Boeing of cash since most of an aircraft’s price is paid when they’re handed over to customers.
The FAA said the issue “poses no immediate threat to flight safety.”

Boeing cut its delivery target for its undelivered 787 Dreamliner planes and said it will temporarily lower production rates after a new defect was detected on some of the wide-body jets.

Boeing said Tuesday it will deliver fewer than half of the Dreamliners it has already produced but has not yet delivered to customers.

CEO Dave Calhoun said at an investor conference last month that the company would deliver the “lion’s share” of the roughly 100 Dreamliners in its inventory this year.

Boeing halted deliveries of the wide-body planes in May for the second time in less than a year as the Federal Aviation Administration reviewed the manufacturer’s method for evaluating the aircraft. Last year, Boeing first disclosed incorrect spacing in some parts of certain 787 aircraft, including the fuselage, halting deliveries for five months.

The FAA said Monday the latest issue was related to that and was detected “near the nose” of certain 787 Dreamliners that Boeing has manufactured but not delivered.

Because most of an aircraft’s price is paid when the plane is handed over to customers, further delivery delays would mean more financial strain for Boeing. Sales of 787 Dreamliners and wide-body aircraft in general have been weak during the Covid-19 pandemic as long-haul international travel demand plunged.

The new issue comes as Boeing is trying to regain its footing from the pandemic and two fatal crashes that grounded its bestselling 737 Max.

Boeing shares fell more than 4% to end Tuesday at $228.20, leading the Dow Jones Industrial Average lower. Parts supplier Spirit AeroSystems fell more than 3% to $44.31.

“This issue was discovered as part of the ongoing system-wide inspection of Boeing’s 787 shimming processes required by the FAA,” the agency said. “Although the issue poses no immediate threat to flight safety, Boeing has committed to fix these airplanes before resuming deliveries.”

Boeing said it would reduce production to fewer than the current rate of five planes a month for a few weeks but declined to say by how much. The company will reassign staff on the production line to inspect planes and make any necessary repairs.

“The math on the 787 inventory liquidation was appearing to be very challenged, so the lower inventory reduction is not a surprise,” Canaccord Genuity aerospace analyst Ken Herbert wrote in a note after Boeing’s announcement. ”However, this will contribute to what could be another quarter of accounting adjustments for Boeing, compounded further by the CFO transition.”

Boeing CFO Greg Smith retired this month after a decade in the role. The company in June named former General Electric executive Brian West as its next finance chief.

The FAA said it is weighing whether modifications are needed on 787s that are already in service.

Boeing also said Tuesday it delivered 45 planes last month, 33 of them 737 Maxes. In the first half of the year the company handed over 156 planes, one fewer than its total for all of 2020, when the coronavirus devastated the industry.

Net orders in June totaled 146 planes, while gross orders of 219 were the highest in two years.

Those included an order for 200 Maxes to United Airlines, which the carrier announced last month along with an order for 70 Airbus narrow-body planes.

LINK

[Tanada]

Looks like Boeing may survive the next contraction of the Airline ndustry but the A380 and 747 are headed for the ash heap of history just like the Concorde. Just too expensive to operate in a high fuel cost environment.

Looks like you were right.

The Boeing 747 flies into history with end to production announced, brought down by coronavirus and demand for fuel economy


Designed in the 1960s, the original jumbo jet democratised air travel. After 50 years’ passenger service, it has been overtaken by more fuel-efficient airliners
Its days were already numbered before the Covid-19 pandemic decimated air travel, and production will end in 2022

The Boeing 747 revolutionised air travel and tourism, allowing affordable flights for millions of people eager to see the world. But the fuel-guzzling, four-engine plane’s days are numbered. Boeing confirmed this week it will stop production of the jumbo jet in 2022. The 747 simply cannot compete with today’s more efficient, twin-engined planes.

First flown commercially in 1969, in the same era as the supersonic Concorde
, the 747 was an unprecedented success: a total of 1,571 were ordered and all but 15 have been delivered.

More than anything, the plane democratised air travel by letting holidaymakers take cheaper flights, often in chartered 747s fitted with economy class seats – legroom be damned. For 35 years, the 747 ruled the skies – until Boeing’s European rival Airbus came out with the super jumbo A380.

The 747 owes its existence to Juan Trippe, the visionary founder of the now defunct Pan American World Airways. As far back as the early 1960s, Trippe was convinced that air travel, in particular transoceanic flight, was due for a huge boom. As the story goes, during a fishing trip in Alaska, Trippe persuaded his friend Bill Allen, who then ran Boeing, to build a plane twice as big as the Boeing 707.

Trippe allegedly said that, if Allen had the guts to build such an aircraft, Pan Am would buy it. A few years later, the first 747 took to the skies, with Pan Am as the launch customer.

Hong Kong got its first glimpse of the new jumbo on April 11, 1970, when a Pan Am 747 touched down from Tokyo carrying 189 passengers and 25 crew. “Dwarfing other aircraft on the apron, the super-jet, with a 231-foot fuselage and a tail as high as six-storey building, taxied to the [newly built] ‘747 Pier’ where its passengers alighted onto the first air-bridge in Asia,” reported the South China Morning Post, under the headline “The Big Bird Arrives in HK”.

Thousands of spectators converged on Kai Tak to witness the arrival and a lion dance and local actresses laden with souvenirs welcomed the passengers. “Pan Am’s guest of honour for this event, 86-year-old ‘Sampan Annie’, presented a Chinese scroll to the skipper of the flight, Captain William Saulsberry,” the SCMP report continued. “Sampan Annie – whose real name is Mrs Wong Luk – was the sampan girl who tied the bowline of the first PAA Clipper flying boat, in Hongkong in 1937.”

Cathay Pacific would not buy its own 747s
until August 1979. The airline’s 747s would continue ferrying passengers to and from Hong Kong until October 2016.

Recognisable for its cockpit hump at the front of the fuselage, some configurations of the 747 could hold up to 600 passengers. It is a double decker – the upstairs being for first-class travellers – and has four engines, a flaw now in terms of fuel cost and the environment.

“Given the current market dynamics and outlook, we will stop production of the iconic 747 in 2022
,” general manager David Calhoun said on Wednesday, in a message to Boeing employees.

“Fifty years and eight versions. That is a beautiful record,” says Michel Merluzeau, an aviation expert at Air Insight Research. “But its days were numbered, even before the Covid-19 crisis.”

It faced competition from the Airbus A350 and even within Boeing, the 747 had to vie with the longer range 777-300ER and the 777X, both of which were much more fuel efficient than the ageing jumbo.

In recent years the 747 became a plane “from another era, with production methods that would not work, looking to the future”, says Merluzeau.

Like the A380 – production of which will halt in 2021 – it became a victim of global money woes stemming from the 2008 financial crisis. Airlines started to prefer the Boeing 787 or Airbus A350. These twin-engined planes burn less fuel and can fly further thanks to evolved technology, and require half as much maintenance as a four-engine aircraft.

The decline of the 747 deepened with the coronavirus pandemic, which led to a stunning fall in air travel and prompted some airlines to announce they will retire the 747 from their fleets. The final Qantas 747 passenger flight departed from Sydney on July 22, outlining the airline’s iconic kangaroo logo with its flight path before heading one last time for the United States.

Boeing will keep building 747s until 2022, but just for cargo and military transport purposes. The 747 can also count on support from the White House and the presidential plane Air Force One. The US government is awaiting delivery of two 747-8s, which are bigger, more modern, faster and less fuel-consuming than the current 747-200s that carry the president and his entourage.

747