special feature
With Flying Colors
Boeing’s revolutionary new jet is airborne at last.
January 05, 2012
The Boeing final assembly factories near Seattle, Wash. — two of the world’s largest structures by volume — are as remarkable as the aircrafts that come out of them.
I had the chance to visit one in September, just weeks before Boeing’s highly anticipated (and overdue) Boeing 787 Dreamliner took its first commercial flight. As we toured the sprawling factory floor, it was easy to see how the plane — a wide-body, twin-engine aircraft consisting of tens of thousands of parts made by more than 17 companies in 10 countries — could come in behind schedule. Superjets, it turns out, are fairly sophisticated.
The Dreamliner, the first-ever commercial jet made largely of lightweight composite material, is no ordinary aircraft. It is, in so many ways, a superlative piece of work, a feat of engineering and design that, despite the repeated delays and 60-plus canceled orders, remains the most sought-after passenger plane in aviation history.
Even before that momentous maiden voyage — All Nippon Airways Flight 7871 from Tokyo to Hong Kong — the Dreamliner had already registered a record 821 orders (worth roughly $150 billion) from airlines around the world, including 55 from ANA, 50 each from United Airlines and Qantas and another 37 from Air Canada, its four largest customers. Boeing is now racing to fill those as fast as it can.
“It’s going to be well worth the wait,” Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce told reporters at the Dreamliner’s Australian debut in mid-November, calling the aircraft a “game changer.” Executives the world over would surely agree. For while the Dreamliner’s composite construction certainly slowed the production process, it’s also key to the aircraft’s biggest selling points: a 20 percent improvement in fuel efficiency over a similarly sized aluminum airplane and, as a result, extended flying ranges that allow airlines to phase out aging, less efficient jets.
In an age of ever-rising gas prices and increasingly fierce competition, that’s a boon to the bottom line no major carrier can afford to pass up. It’s also the kind of environmental performance airlines know they’ll need if the industry is to honor pledges made at the 2009 United Nations Forum on Climate Change: to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 1.5 percent per year over the next decade and by 50 percent of 2005 levels by 2050 — and to make all industry growth carbon-neutral by 2020.
Composites aren’t just good for fuel efficiency, though. In addition to being both lighter and stronger than aluminum, they’re also far more malleable, come with lower maintenance costs (30 percent less than aluminum) and, perhaps the most palpable plus for passengers, are much more resilient, allowing for flight at lower altitudes. That, in turn, allows for cabin air pressure levels that more closely resemble conditions on the ground.
Add to that an air purification system that can recycle air much more frequently than is possible in aluminum airframes, a climate control system to reduce the dryness that causes headaches, an extra dose of oxygen (about 8 percent more) for easier breathing and LED lights with soothing hues that change to reflect the time of day, and you have, at a list price of roughly $193 million, the most expensive sleeping aid ever invented.
Of course, you also have what is arguably the greatest advance in aviation since the dawn of the passenger jet age in the early 1950s — a technological marvel so full of new features inside and out, visible and invisible, that the mere sight of its Italian-made shark-fin tail or its fantastically flexible wings with their 17-foot tips or the serrated edges of its noise-reducing engine covers is enough to make an aviation enthusiast freeze mid-sentence, mouth agape, until the moment passes.
When the aviation expert and blogger David Parker Brown boarded the Dreamliner at Tokyo’s Narita International Airport for a short excursion flight last October, he’d hardly slept the night before — and not because of jet lag. “I was up at 4 a.m., like a kid on Christmas,” he wrote on his blog Air line Reporter.com, which has tracked the Dreamliner’s development since 2008.
Looking out the plane’s oversized windows — another perk made possible by its majority composite fuselage — Brown marveled at the magnificently bowed wings and the “glorious sound” of the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines as they spooled up for takeoff. Those next-generation turbofans, the single biggest contributor to overall fuel-efficiency improvements, are also the principal reason for the airplane’s far smaller noise footprint — as much as 60 percent smaller than today’s airplanes of comparable size and capability.
Indeed, while those engines produce some 70,000 pounds of thrust, they do it with the jetliner equivalent of a whisper, thanks in part to new engine inlets and nozzles and a very high bypass ratio which allows more air to pass through the engine while the blade spins more slowly and, thus, more quietly. They also rely more heavily on electricity — and less on compressed air — than conventional aircraft engines, forming the core of the Dreamliner’s “more electric architecture.”
The latter encompasses more than a dozen major systems, many of which incorporate technologies exclusive to the new aircraft — things like the wing-ice protection system, which uses electro-thermal blankets to heat the wing’s leading edge and is far more energy-efficient than the traditional pneumatic ice protection system; the active gust alleviation system, which uses wireless sensors to detect turbulence at the nose and instantly adjusts wing flaps to counter it; and the airplane health-monitoring systems, which allow the Dreamliner to monitor itself, flag systems maintenance needs and relay those requirements to ground-based computer systems.
The result: a safe and very smooth ride for passengers and operators alike.
Of course, as Brown and other bloggers observe, many of the aircraft’s best features are likely to go unnoticed by the majority of their beneficiaries — people who don’t hyperventilate over a rare livery. After all, when we don’t feel turbulence or see smoke, we don’t ask why. And when it comes to something as seemingly insignificant as the gray paint on the 787’s engine inlet — the specific thickness of which has been standardized in an effort to reduce the viscous drag that can interrupt laminar flow and contribute to higher fuel burn — well, who could be faulted for not noticing?
“When airlines moved from props to jets, that was quite obvious,” writes Brown. But the move from aluminum to composites, he says, not so much.
Still, a number of features are impossible to miss. Take, for example, the Dreamliner’s in-flight entertainment system with its Google Android servers and screens. Airlines can choose from a variety of screen sizes ranging from 7 to 17 inches, all of which feature wider viewing angles and are less reflective of ambient light than today’s screens. However, only economy-class seats are outfitted with touchscreens; in business and first class, screens can’t be touched because they’re too far away. Instead, passengers can use Kinect-style gestures to browse the movie selection or play solitaire.
Other passenger pleasers include laptop sockets and USB ports in economy-class seats; stand-alone cup holders separate from the pull-down tray; larger overhead bins; more head space; seats that slide forward instead of reclining; and big, dimmable windows. By “big,” Boeing means 11 by 19 inches, a full 65 percent larger than the industry standard. And in place of those pull-down plastic shades is an electrified gel enclosed in two thin sheets of glass. As the electric current is increased, the gel darkens, and vice versa.
But the Dreamliner’s pièce de résistance? “From the majority composite structure and dimmable electro-chromatic windows to the ‘more-electric architecture’ and next-generation fuel-sipping engines, no revolution will be felt more than the hands-free toilet seat and flusher in the lavatory,” writes Flightglobal’s Jon Ostrower. “This is the way of the future.”
At the start of the ’60s, Boeing’s future was bright. The company best known for its bombers had recently unveiled the 707-120, the four-engine, narrow-body jet generally credited with ushering in the Jet Age. In 2003, after more than four decades atop the airliner market, Boeing ceded that dominance to rival Airbus. A string of scandals and canceled projects soon followed, further damaging the company’s image. Profits plummeted. Executives were forced out. Boeing hit bottom.
And then began the comeback. With the super fuel-efficient Dreamliner — formerly the 7E7 — Boeing had hit on a winning formula. Orders flowed in, the company’s stock soared to more than $80 a share, and Airbus didn’t have an answer. And while the lengthy delay caused many to wonder if it would ever get off the ground — one aviation expert compared waiting for that day to “leaving the light on for Jimmy Hoffa” — those doubts have been put to rest.
If the experts are right — if the Dreamliner is indeed the future of flight — well, the future begins now.
