Randy's Journal: Archives
28 July 2006
Heading into August
Before we enter into the traditional August lull in the aviation world, I wanted to share a few additional thoughts and items coming out of Farnborough - including some great news coverage at the show.
At the DreamSpace exhibit, Aviation Week conducted a walk-through of the 787 mockup. Av Week's Jim Mathews talked with Ken Price, BCA's marketing director of fleet revenue management - an expert on the 787 cabin interior.
The 787 mockup in the Boeing DreamSpace at Farnborough drew quite a crowd each day. Until entry into service in 2008, it's the next-best thing to flying on the Dreamliner.
As I think back to last week, I'm still intrigued with the latest A350 offering. Particularly with the fact that they seem to be recognizing the value to airlines of more point-to-point and higher frequency airplanes in the widebody sector. In the proposal made at Farnborough, they appear to be recognizing the value of a wider, more comfortable cabin, with lower cabin altitude, higher humidity, bigger windows, better lighting, and the rest. Sound familiar?
Yet the A350 still seems to fall short. One might question whether they can do all those things and also produce an efficient airplane, given that they have not incorporated all the breakthrough technologies of the 787 Dreamliner.
At Farnborough, the emphasis was all about a cabin that would be slightly wider than the 787. But it's kind of curious because with all this focus on the wider cabin, two out of the three models in the A350 family are competing directly with the very successful 777 - which is 10 inches or more wider.
It seems interesting to me that you would draw attention to measuring cabin widths when you fall significantly short of your main product competitor.
Southwest Airlines took delivery of Boeing's 2,000th Next-Generation 737 this week - about nine years after the very first delivery of this model, which was also to Southwest.
And finally, we've had some news coming out of Seattle post-Farnborough. This week the 737 program made history again. A milestone delivery of a 737-700 to Southwest Airlines marked the 2,000th Next-Generation 737. This delivery comes nearly seven years sooner than any other commercial jet airplane model has ever reached the 2000th delivery milestone.
This is a versatile, reliable, fuel efficient and economical airplane. Which is probably why the Next-Generation 737 family is Boeing's best-selling airplane model. So far this year alone we've sold about 400 of them. And while we're on the subject, a recent piece in Flight International focuses on Lion Air's new fleet of 737-900ERs.
It's been quite a month, starting with the run-up to the air show and the release of the 2006 Current Market Outlook, all the way through a frenetic and sweltering week at Farnborough.
So I'll be taking some time off to recharge the batteries, as I'm sure many of you are doing as well. But check back later next month, when we'll talk more about the progress on the 787 Dreamliner program, as well as feature a conversation with Joe Sutter, the "father" of the 747.