The Airplane - Jay Spenser [131]
All aerospace companies have farther to go on this front, some by quite a bit. The best major manufacturers are beginning to train their suppliers in the systems they have devised so that they too use the same metrics. In turn, many of these first-tier suppliers will do the same with the companies that they depend on, resulting in “same baseline” visibility up and down the supply chain. The ultimate goal is better decision making, further optimization, and greater success enabled by facts and data.
“I think I can build a better airplane.”2 So declared William E. Boeing after his first airplane ride in 1915. The experience had thrilled the wealthy Seattle businessman and set him thinking. To prove he was right, he founded an airplane company in 1916.
Boeing is redefining air travel with the 787 Dreamliner, whose passenger cabin is as advanced as the airplane itself.
Boeing
The Boeing Company is still striving to give the world better airplanes all these years later. The latest is the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, an ultraefficient airplane that represents a bold leap forward. This commercial transport uses 20 percent less fuel and costs 30 percent less to maintain than similar-size jetliners. In an industry where a difference of 1 percent can mean millions of dollars annually to an airline, these improvements are nothing short of revolutionary.
But lower operating costs are just part of what’s new with the 787. The rest is a literal reinvention of the experience of flying itself that will change expectations of what air travel should be. In fact, the Dreamliner’s passenger cabin is as much of a leap forward as the airplane itself.
While this 787 Dreamliner bears the famous Boeing brand, it is not solely a Boeing or even a U.S. creation, as the company itself is quick to point out. Instead it is the product of a vast global collaboration whose challenges were solved in the United States and dozens of other nations.
Talented engineers on many continents participated in designing this airliner. Large parts of it are being manufactured abroad. Arriving as built-up major assemblies, these components ultimately come together in Everett, Washington, where the 787 is assembled rather than built in the traditional sense.
Ironically, much of the technology embodied in this twenty-first-century airliner was actually developed for a different airplane envisioned by the company.
In March 2001, Boeing unveiled the Sonic Cruiser, an unusually configured jetliner whose state-of-the-art technology would let it cruise at very nearly the speed of sound, shaving hours off long-distance air travel. Then came the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which altered the economic landscape for airlines worldwide and hit U.S. carriers especially hard.
Responding to this changed situation, Boeing offered its current and potential airline customers a choice between the Sonic Cruiser and the 7E7, which was a parallel concept the company had pursued as a baseline to show what the transonic Boeing Sonic Cruiser’s technologies could do in a more traditional application. The subsonic 7E7 would cruise at regular jet speeds but consume less fuel, produce fewer emissions, and be less costly to operate.
Hands down the world’s airlines opted for the ultraefficient 7E7, which became the 787 well after program launch in April 2004. For the first time, Boeing also asked the public for help adding a name to this product’s numerical designation. People the world over cast a half million online votes and the 787 became the Dreamliner.
The 787’s enhanced fuel efficiency comes at a crucial time. Spurred by rising fuel costs and global environmental concerns, it has amassed the strongest early sales of any commercial airplane in history.
In a case of highly beneficial competition, Airbus is developing