Plane Nation

Boeing reached 90 percent design for the passenger version of its 747-8 this week, Randy Tinseth, vice president of marketing for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, wrote Thursday.

“One of the great stories here is that we reached this important point a week and a half ahead of the plan we laid out a year ago for the program,” Tinseth wrote. “What that says is that we’re learning some good lessons on the 747-8 Freighter. We’ve been able to change the way we approached the design of the Intercontinental.”

Boeing on the evening of 17 November moved the first 747-8F from the paint hanger in Everett, Washington with a special “light” livery.

Boeing says the aircraft is painted with blue accents, an oversized “8” on the background of the tail and “747-8” featured on the belly.
The airframer explains the light livery saves time and expense compared with the full Boeing livery, and will remain on the aircraft until the flight test program is completed. After the testing the aircraft will be refurbished and delivered to a customer, says Boeing.
First flight of the 747-8F is scheduled for early 2010, and Cargolux is scheduled to take first delivery during the fourth quarter of next year.

Boeing broke ground in North Charleston, South Carolina for the second 787 final assembly line today, marking the first all-new commercial jetliner assembly plant in the US since then-Lockheed built its L-1011 final assembly line in Palmdale, California in 1968.

The groundbreaking at the North Charleston site comes just weeks after Boeing announced on 28 October that it had selected the city for the second 787 line.

The estimated $750 million investment in the North Charleston facility also includes the capability to support the testing and delivery of aircraft.

Airbus announced on Sunday at the Dubai Airshow that it would offer winglets for its A320 family aircraft starting with an order from Air New Zealand in 2012 that would improve fuel burn by 3.5%.

Boeing first introduced winglets on its Boeing Business Jet in 1998 and commercially in 2001.

Airbus claims that its new “sharklet” A320 winglets will best Boeing’s 737-800 in relative fuel burn by about 9%.

The Airbus A330-200F has touched down in Toulouse after completing its maiden flight, marking the start of a 180h, four-month flight-test program.

Taking off from Toulouse-Blagnac Airport’s Runway 32 at just after 10:00 a.m. local time, the A330-200F performed a 4-hour maiden airborne evaluation that was completed with its return to the southwestern France facility for a flyby, followed by a touch-and-go maneuver and the final landing.

On the flightdeck of the Pratt & Whitney PW4000-powered freighter (MSN 1004) for the 3h 50min flight were Airbus test pilots Philippe Perrin and Martin Scheuermann, accompanied by test-flight engineers Wolfgang Brueggemann, Stephane Vaux and Pascal Verneau.

The 64t payload freighter variant, which is also offered with Rolls-Royce Trent 700 engines, is due for simultaneous European Aviation Safety Agency and US Federal Aviation Administration certification in March. The first customer aircraft (MSN 1032) – a Trent-powered version – is currently in build and is due to be delivered to launch customer Etihad Crystal Cargo, in August.

Airbus holds orders for 67 aircraft from nine customers.

The A330-200F is based on Airbus’ popular A330-200 passenger jetliner, and is produced on the same Toulouse final assembly line as the A330/A340 aircraft.

Randy Tinseth, Boeing’s VP of Marketing, reported in his blog that Boeing Charleston’s Final Assembly Facility should be ready by July 2011 and the first 787 to be delivered from that facility should be handed over by the 1st quarter of 2012.

The second line for the Dreamliner in Charleston SC.

This time scale give Boeing roughly 20 months to build and outfit the facility and then get production rolling over the following 9 months.

Boeing, fed up with over twenty years of labor strife has decided to locate the second line for the 787 in North Charleton, SC right next to its existing facility that produces the rear fuselage for the 787 and the Global Aeronautica facility that integrates fuselage sections from Japan and Italy to form the main fuselage of the 787.

Air France takes delivery of its first Airbus A380 double-decker jet fitted with a lounge bar and on-demand video, luxuries that have complicated assembly of the plane already plagued by production delays.

Letting airlines take travel comfort to the next level with showers, enclosed suites or bar lounges has made the A380 a hit on routes in Asia where the super-jumbo operates. For Airbus, the gizmos have spawned engineering woes that haunt a program reeling from cost overruns, sluggish demand and order deferrals.

“They customized the plane to death, and that’s preventing them from reaching the production levels they’d talked about,” said Rupinder Vig, an analyst at Morgan Stanley in London. “The other issue is that customers clearly don’t want the plane now as much as they wanted it a year or two ago.”   

For now it seems like Airbus just wants to do some complaining, and the company is not really offering any solutions. If you’ve got the cash they’ll gladly equip your jumbo jet with anything you want; however, you’ll have to get in line since the planes are on backorder. They just didn’t realize that if in-flight showers were an option that everyone would definitely want one in their plane.

Airbus will invest more than €400 million (£358.9 million) in the UK in the next 12 months as it prepares to start production on its latest aircraft, the A350XWB.

Airbus has started work on constructing a 46,000 sq m factory at its site in Broughton, North Wales, and is recruiting suppliers to the project. The new facility will build the A350’s wings and help to secure 10,500 jobs in Britain for the next decade.

The Broughton factory will begin its assembly of the first wing this time next year.

Boeing today announced that it has chosen its North Charleston, S.C., facility as the location for a second final assembly site for the 787 Dreamliner program. Boeing evaluated criteria that were designed to find the final assembly location within the company that would best support the 787 business plan as the program increases production rates. In addition to serving as a location for final assembly of 787 Dreamliners, the facility also will have the capability to support the testing and delivery of the airplanes.