Airbus A350 first flight a success, will Boeing apply for Chapter 11?

Oh yeah! I flew international 1st on AA quite a few times, upgrade for platinum members if you had a business class ticket (in the good old days I usually did). International 1st is the real deal. Humongous seats that turn into a bed at night. Once the pilot greased it on and I did not even wake up.

Back then you had to adhere to a certain dress code. Absolutely no jeans, wear a nice shirt, and they appreciated if you also wore a tie. You meet interesting folks in international 1st, real corporate bigshots, rock stars and so on. I forgot what the regular price for a ticket was, something insane like $8k round trip.

Never had that problem. But I usually switched to beer later.

Dehydration. I managed to sip on water and save the day ;-) ...Jim Thompson

It looks fine to me - prettier than the 747 at any rate.

I've flown back and forth from Australia to Europe on an Emirates A380 and it was very comfortable - getting on an off and getting my baggage wasn't n oticeably different from my previous experiences (and I've flown that route quite a few times).

A recent flight to Australia got messed up by fog in London, and left me on a 747 for part of the flight, and I was surprised how old-fashioned it fel t. I can remember seeing a 747 for the first time at New York in 1970 so it has every right to feel old-fashioned.

Boeing gets it's own government subsidies - the original 707 was designed a nd built as a fuel tanker for the USAF but proved oddly easy to adapt for c ivil use.

I fly the US-Europe route a bit. What I really did not understand: On a Lufthansa 747 you got on-board WiFi while on their much more recent A380 they didn't offer it. I was planning to do some design work where Digikey web site access is kind of crucial, didn't ask before the flight, assuming that if the 747 has it then the new A380 would for sure ... wrong.

All wide bodies could be made comfortable if the airlines didn't try to cram as many seats in as possible. I guess they find it much harder to fill an A380 than a smaller plane, so they can afford a more spacious seating arrangement. But still, if one of those whales ever crashes, the scene would be horrible.

built as a fuel tanker for the USAF but proved oddly easy to adapt for civil use.

Boeing is well diversified which allows lessons learned in the military side to be used in the commercial side. After all, that's one of the reasons for diversification for all companies, isn't it? It's hardly the saame thing as a direct government launch loan at better than commercial rates and repayable only if the model turns a profit. That makes it virtually risk-free for Airbus to launch any program while Boeing would have to eat its losses.

Back in the '70s Being wanted to produce a supersonic plane, larger and better than the Concord, but it had to abandon it because it could not get any government support and the company did not want to take the risk alone. It was probably a good thing because the Concord never turned profitable, either. It was only a European prestige plane, just like the A380.

ed and built as a fuel tanker for the USAF but proved oddly easy to adapt f or civil use.

That's not the story on Wikipedia

" After winning a competition for a government-funded contract to build an American SST, Boeing began development at its facilities in Seattle, Washin gton. Rising costs and the lack of a clear market led to its cancellation i n 1971 before two prototypes had been completed."

IIRR more money was spent on the US project than on Concorde, despite the f act that the US project never got as far as a flying prototype.

The Concorde was more of a British bribe to Charles de Gaulle than any kind of European prestige plane. It didn't make a profit because the wide-body jets it was competing with turned out to offer cheaper travel than anybody had expected.

The A380 may contribute to European prestige, but the basic idea of the air craft was to exploit the properties of the Dutch-inveted "Glare" composite material, without which it would have been impractical.

On a sunny day (Sat, 15 Jun 2013 00:37:28 +0100) it happened Nobody wrote in :

Yes that is a smart strategy I always try to use myself too. But in these days fuel cost is the big issue. Airlines have a hard time to make some profit, oil is at a high again. So in case of choices of 'survival' the second source option may be dropped, at least for a while.

On a sunny day (Fri, 14 Jun 2013 20:06:34 -0700) it happened cameo wrote in :

built as a fuel tanker for the USAF but proved

Yep, they could not.

And there they have nothing on that end.

Face it, Americans, without Van Braun no moon shot, without Russia no astronuts to the ISS, the list is longer.....

There is an other problem on the horizon, China makes nice airplanes so I have heard, even stealth fighters, the Joint that is your Strike fighter is also a money sink that does not fly very well. With all those budgets cuts and China's influence growing, maybe the US military one day will get 3 Chinese fighters plus a free car for the money of one American made one.

National security issues may hold that back for a while, but politicians can be bought easily. Maybe the next US president will be a Chinese.

On a sunny day (Fri, 14 Jun 2013 17:52:07 -0700) it happened Joerg wrote in :

That is up to the airline to decide. In the A350 it is in the sales brochure.

efficient than the Boeing dreamliner.,

Naw; they may run to Congress for a Government Motors type bail-out tho..

ned and built as a fuel tanker for the USAF but proved

ronuts to the ISS,

have heard,

ney sink

ilitary one

ican made one.

China still haven't figured out how to build high performance jet engines they have to buy them from Russia

-Lasse

And that is currently the issue. A Boeing 787 can fly, right now. A sales brochure can hardly fly across an ocean with hundreds of passengers riding on it.

The Government Motors concept is over 50 years old:

On a sunny day (Sat, 15 Jun 2013 07:01:16 -0700) it happened Joerg wrote in :

Like a fire spiting dragon ;-) There is a hole for the fire next to the battery.

Depends on how big that paper airplane is. :-)

heard,

sink

military one

made one.

be bought easily.

China steals the secrets and then copies it. It's easy that way.

They will eventually reverse-engineer what they need. But by then the US and Russia will have something newer and better.

American SST,

costs and the

had been completed."

Yeap, that's why they needed government support (a launch aide, a la Airbas) that would have removed the risk from Boeing.

that the

That would have been just spending even more money on an unpromising project.

European

competing with

Just as Boeing figured it out before committing itself to full development.

aircraft was

without

Well, US used composites in stealthy military planes way before commercial use.

astronuts to the ISS,

Europe had Van Braun first, and the best you could do with the wunderkind was the V2 which was much worse than a Scud missle, so it took a lot more than him to build the American Aerospace industry.