FLUG REVUE June 2004: Boeing launches 7E7 Dreamliner

BOEING 7E7 LAUNCHED WITH ANA ORDER

By Sebastian Steinke

Boeing's bombshell took everyone by surprise: on the morning of 26 April, Japanese local time (early evening in Europe), a brief press release from All Nippon Airways (ANA) announced that the airline was ordering 50 7E7's, making it the launch customer for the new aircraft. ANA President and CEO Yoji Ohashi said, “ANA's selection of the Boeing 7E7 is consistent with our stated goal of operating the safest, most modern, efficient and comfortable fleet of aircraft in the world. With today's order we have taken a major step towards achieving another goal, of reducing the number of aircraft types we operate to just three.” Thanks to the higher capacity and lower operating costs of the 7E7, compared with ANA's present fleet comprising 52 Boeing 767-300's, two Boeing 767-200's and seven Airbus A321's, the airline calculates that it will save at least $90 million per year. It intends to deploy the 7E7 from mid-2008 on a significantly expanded flying programme from the city airport of Tokyo Haneda.

Boeing 7E7

With a value worth $6 billion, going by the list price, this order is one of the biggest ever to have been placed by an airline. But even more important for Boeing is the fact that it is now launching its first new passenger aircraft programme since October 1990. After several unsuccessful ideas for stretched versions of the 747 that would compete with the A380 and the hapless Sonic Cruiser, the 7E7 has every prospect of becoming the American manufacturer's new bread-and-butter revenue earner, as a complete family of aircraft for the middle of the market. Of course this depends on the US domestic airlines placing further orders one day.

Only recently Boeing was visibly hesitating on investing heavily in large civil projects, causing its long-term commitment to the airline business to be questioned, while its arch rival Airbus in the meantime overtook it on deliveries. But since the recent certification of the advanced and very promising 777-300ER, Boeing President and CEO Harry Stonecipher has made clear the company's commitment over the next few decades with the launch of the revolutionary 7E7 family of aircraft, avowing that Boeing intends to stay at the lead and fight Airbus with groundbreaking high-technology.

7E7 program manager, Mike Bair shares this new spirit of optimism: “The 7E7 will change the landscape in commercial aviation. The latest order is our biggest single launch order. It confirms our market assessment, and we have a lot of other potential customers. I expect further orders from Asia, the USA, Europe and the Middle East. We are talking to around 50 airlines, and serious discussions are under way with about half of them.” In particular, the size of the 7E7 is ideal for China. Bair estimates the global market segment in which the 7E7 is positioned at 3,500 aircraft or $400 billion over the next 20 years. He intends to secure over half of this for Boeing with the new twin-engined program.

In addition to traditional aircraft sales, as in the case of ANA, Boeing is also planning to offer the 7E7 in a services package based on usage. In accordance with the catchword, “power by the hour”, the aircraft manufacturer would like to take over all the maintenance of the 7E7 fleet and bill aircraft usage at an hourly rate or by the number of flight cycles. As Bair explains, “We plan to customise these packages to suit individual customers' requirements. According to our calculations, it is a lot more economic to perform maintenance work on a large-scale than to work individually for every airline.”

According to Mike Bair, 60 to 70 percent of the order value of a new Boeing aircraft comes from external suppliers. In the case of the 7E7, Boeing's Japanese partners of many years account for 35 percent of the structure, which altogether makes up one half of the aircraft's value. “We hope that these historically key suppliers will remain our key partners in the long-term as well.” So far no revenue sharing has been agreed, but in principle this is also conceivable, according to Bair. To adhere to the ambitious programme plan, Bair believes there is not a moment to lose. “We need to start work right now to ensure that we are ready for the next milestone of “firm configuration”, at which the design will finally be frozen, by mid-2005.”

Already on 6 April Boeing had surmounted a major hurdle in appointing General Electric and Rolls-Royce as its two exclusive engine suppliers for the 7E7. In so doing, the manufacturer rejected the powerplant offered by Pratt & Whitney, which would have had to be developed from scratch and therefore carried a higher development risk (see also separate article on the 7E7 engine, also in the English digest of this month's FLUG REVUE). It was with this recent engine decision that Boeing was finally able to convince the airlines that the promised low fuel consumption figures for the 7E7 were credible. Certificated production aircraft of this new model, on which Boeing is pinning its hopes, should roll out of the factory as early as 2008.

With three years to go before the maiden flight of the 7E7, naturally the global marketing campaign for the “Ecojet” is in full swing. Boeing is hoping that the aircraft's low fuel consumption and impressive environmental data will turn it into a best-seller. “The 7E7 will consume about 20 percent less kerosene than its predecessors, the 767-200 and 757-300,” said Billy M. Glover, Director Environmental Performance Strategy at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, in an interview with FLUG REVUE. The leading engineer and environmental strategist even draws comparisons with the fuel consumption of motor cars. “With a typical utilisation of 70 percent, the 7E7 will require only 2.4 litres of kerosene per 100 passenger kilometres. A mid-sized car consumes 6.4 litres over the same distance, and a typical American van as much as 10.7 litres.”

As far as Glover is concerned, the subject of “environment” does not stop at kerosene consumption. “On the 7E7, environmental protection also means low emissions, a pleasant and healthy cabin environment for passengers and crew and non-harmful manufacturing processes in the plant. With conventionally milled aluminium components, around 85 percent of the material is wasted. With our composite materials, wastage is between only 10 and 15 percent. The composite fuselage will last twice as long as today's metal designs, with their 30 to 40 year service life, and will weigh 13 percent less than an A330.” According to Glover, the 7E7 design process has included attention not only to environmentally sound production methods but also to the eventual disposal of components. Detailed design work will start in one year's time.

Because a fuselage made of composite materials is stronger, the pressure cabin can withstand a higher differential pressure. Instead of today's standard 8,000 feet, the 7E7 cabin will be pressurised during the cruise to a more comfortable altitude of 6,000 feet. As Bill Glover comments, “No doubt in the future determination of the structural age of an aircraft will entail counting the pressure cycles, but even with the higher loading, service life will still be double the normal life. Increasing internal pressure above the 7E7's level would be too costly and not make sense.”

Hand-in-hand with the new materials, cabin humidity will be higher. From today's level of less than 5 percent, i.e. significantly drier than desert air and much too dry for human mucous membranes, the relative humidity can be raised to 15 to 20 percent, significantly increasing passenger comfort on long-distance journeys.

But an even more powerful sales argument is the issue of noise. As Glover points out, “During the take-off and climb on a medium-distance flight, a 7E7's noise footprint will be a mere 60 percent of that of an A330. We shall be within the most stringent take-off noise limits, even satisfying the future QC2 standard in London.” Chevron nozzles, i.e. nozzles with jagged trailing edges, will ensure a particularly low-noise mixture of fast flowing, hot engine exhaust gases and quiet, cold ambient air.

The new 7E7 engines also appear to be suitable for a possible update of the jumbo jet, the 747 Advanced. “We are currently analysing two 747 Advanced variants,” says Glover. “The first is a particularly low-cost version which, however, would only make use of half of the benefits of 7E7, and the second is a maximal variant, which utilises virtually all the possibilities. Though of course we will have to bear in mind the associated costs.”

At this point Klaus Brauer joins the discussion. As Director Passenger Satisfaction and Revenue, he is not only Boeing's chief cabin designer, but also responsible for reconciling the purely aesthetic functional design aspects with extensive business background studies and market research. “We could make things quite simple for ourselves,” he says, “and fill the planes with the most beautiful First Class seats, but the passengers must be prepared to pay for their comfort.” For every square centimetre of cabin space, Brauer suggests to the airlines the optimal cabin split and seating arrangements from the revenue point of view. Here he is only too conscious that pure lengthwise dimensions are not the only factors that affect subjective comfort.

“For example, from the passenger point of view a 15 to 30 minute delay translates into the feeling that your seat has shrunk by five centimetres,” Brauer explains. “Low-cost airlines like Southwest and Ryanair use very tight seating arrangements, but their flights are very punctual. As a result, their passengers still rate them highly on comfort.”

Because passengers will only accept being squashed up next to the person next-door without protest if the adjacent seats are occupied by members of their own party, Klaus Brauer is currently designing two different Economy Class sections for the 5.74m wide 7E7 cabin. The first variant, “Family Class”, is particularly attractive to charter airlines. Here, as in the Boeing 767, nine passengers will be accommodated in each row. Then there will also be a “Solo Traveller” section, targeted at business travellers. Here there will only be eight seats per row, and passengers will have more room than in the Boeing 777. Brauer calculates that already 40 percent of Economy Class passengers are on business trips. On the basis of various 7E7 cabin layouts and seating variants, Brauer calculates that often a somewhat more comfortable seating arrangement with fewer seats would be worth it to the airlines because it would attract higher demand, higher average utilisation and higher ticket prices compared with configurations where the maximum possible number of seats are squeezed in.

On the other hand, the chief designer views First Class as increasingly unprofitable. If one analyses First Class by sales per square centimetre, he argues, it is the least productive class today. Often the lavishly furnished sections achieve a utilisation of only 40 percent. By contrast, a high-quality Business Class is significantly more lucrative. For the 7E7, for example, Brauer proposes a cabin configuration in Business Class with nine seats per row and a seat pitch of 89cm, compared with an 83 to 86cm seat pitch for the nine-seat rows in Economy Class.

Brauer has observed that the airlines are increasingly using seat pitch as a sales argument, whereas seat width only seldom plays a role. The trend is therefore towards greater seat pitch, in keeping with the sales arguments, and narrower seats. Whereas most tourists do not notice this change so much, apparently business travellers have recently taken to paying more attention to the seat width.

To allow the cabin crew a rest break on the extremely long non-stop 7E7 routes, Brauer is planning to create crew rests in the roof area, similar to those on the 777. By forward door 1 there will be an upper crew rest for the pilots, while the flight attendants will be able to rest under the roof at the level of door 4. On the other hand, Brauer does not believe that it would pay to install fixed passenger beds above the cabin.

The new, extremely strong materials in use on the 7E7 are making another innovation possible in the main deck: the cabin windows will be enlarged to an impressive 48cm x 28cm. “We plan to install these large windows in all future types from now on,” says Klaus Brauer. Passengers are looking first of all for a flying experience, but at the same time they want to be able to see the horizon in order to feel at ease. The same applies to the middle seats.” To ensure that the large windows do not allow too much light into the cabin, making it difficult to look at computer monitors and entertainment system screens, the amount of light that they let through can be electronically controlled. Klaus Brauer: “As with sunglasses, we can continuously adjust the transmittance of the windows down to five percent. Even so, a certain amount of transparency is still retained.”

Other candidates for a possible 7E7 purchase currently include Singapore Airlines, Japan Air Lines, the Chinese airlines and Emirates. Production of the prototype will get under way as early as next year, with the maiden flight in 2007. Production deliveries to ANA will then commence shortly after type certification in 2008. The list price of a 7E7 is to be no higher than a conventional 767-300ER, which, depending on configuration, carries a price tag of between $115.5 million and $127.5 million.

From page 28 of FLUG REVUE 6/2004

Last updated 7 May 2004

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