Boeing 787 Dreamliner - Mark Wagner [20]
Facing the inevitable, Boeing’s board sanctioned the Super Efficient at its next meeting early in December 2002. The decision also officially terminated the Sonic Cruiser, although the company line was that product development studies would continue at a lower level. Yet the board’s move, although precipitated by market forces, was not necessarily an easy one to make. Airlines around the world were in crisis, and the looming threat of a new war in the Middle East added more uncertainty to what was already an increasingly bleak economic outlook.
Speaking just before the holiday break on December 20, 2002, Alan Mulally spoke frankly about the parlous state of the industry into which the Super Efficient was being born. “These are unprecedented times. I’ve never seen the combination of economic cycle and terrorist ‘overhang’ having such an impact on our industry.” Describing the airlines’ 2001 losses of $10 billion and 2002 losses of $7 billion as “staggering numbers,” the normally ebullient Mulally relayed sobering details of a 20 percent drop in revenues for U.S. airlines alone versus figures for 2000.
Boeing itself had taken drastic action after 9/11 to trim capacity to meet demand, reducing production by more than 50 percent by the end of 2002. “Every aircraft we put out that’s not needed just hurts the airlines and the bottom line. But we’ve done the right thing, and it will help us recover more quickly,” Mulally added. Boeing hoped the timing of the Super Efficient, which Mulally said would be launched “early in 2004 at the latest,” would fit well with the timing of the next economic recovery.
But faced with heavy restructuring costs and reduced demand, was the timing right for Boeing? “Can we do it now?” asked Mulally rhetorically. “Absolutely yes. With an ’08 delivery, we don’t start spending the big bucks for two to three years.” Furthermore, Mulally was convinced that the shift from speed to efficiency virtually guaranteed massive success in the prized midsize market and the burgeoning long-range point-to-point networks. “I feel more comfortable than ever over the last three or four years that this is the new aircraft Boeing ought to go ahead and make.”
Over the winter of 2002–2003, the Project Yellowstone reference model swiftly morphed into “Super Efficient” before emerging as the 7E7. This initial model, dubbed the 7E7-400X, was a traditional fallout of the baseline version called the 7E7-300X, and therefore carried at least forty more passengers but had a shorter range of seven thousand nautical miles, some eight hundred nautical miles less than the shorter version. For the 787, Boeing would significantly shrink the range gap between these two versions.
The new aircraft itself “will look more like a 777. The family will end up looking a lot like today’s aircraft, but it will be super, super efficient, and that’s why the airlines will love it,” said Mulally. The aircraft “could be” designated “787” if launched, and he acknowledged that “eight is a lucky number.”
However, as 2003 began, Boeing changed the Super Efficient designation to the 7E7, a reference to the magic word “efficiency” and a continuation of previous pre-numeric designations such as the 7N7/7X7 for the 757/767, and the abandoned Boeing-Japanese 7J7 project. Design definition work was meanwhile kicking into high gear, with major targets including finalization of the all-important fuselage cross section, engine thrust requirements, and whether or not, and how much composites to use in the primary structure of the wing and the fuselage.
At this early stage, two initial versions of the 7E7 formed the focus for discussions, both of which traced their heritage to the finalists of the Sonic Cruiser studies. These included a 210-seater and a 250-seater in three-class configurations, with a range of about 7,000 to 8,000 nautical miles and a cruise speed of Mach