20% Fuel Savings From this “Dream” Aircraft

by BWK ~ January 25, 2008

So Boeing is losing sleep. The giant aerospace firm is delaying first flight of the 787 Dreamliner. This aircraft certainly is one of the most complex new technology developments in aviation history.

And it illustrates the point of how hard it is to pull off long-term, technically complex, expensive, trans-national programs. Tens of thousands of people are involved, with facilities and data exchange spanning several continents. Hundreds of thousands of components — from small fasteners to entire wing-box sections — are being shipped to a final assembly location from inter-continental distances. In the end, it’s really hard to put it all together — even for as well managed a company as Boeing.

I hope people remember this when they breezily dream of new energy developments rapidly coming on line to replace the oil output that is rapidly declining in essentially all of the world’s major hydrocarbon provinces. And at 20% fuel savings per aircraft, we cannot see enough of those Dreamliners roll off the assembly line.

http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2008/q1/080116a_nr.html