Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- Boeing’s 737 North Line and the Everett factory: in transition now June 9, 2025
- Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 25. June 6, 2025
- New RISE powerplant benefits from decades of GE research and development June 5, 2025
- Engine makers emphasizing durability, reliability June 4, 2025
- Boeing CEO: Lessons learned are key to certification of 737-7/10 and 777X June 2, 2025
Boeing 787-9 departs on first flight
The Boeing 787-9 left this morning on its first flight at 11:02 AM PDT. We discussed the implications of this first flight on Sept. 13.
We were at the first flight departure at Paine Field, Everett (WA), for what was essentially a photo-op (this isn’t a complaint); no Boeing officials were made available to talk with. The flight departed an hour later than schedule. As we write this, the flight is still airborne, due to land at Boeing Field at 4pm 3pm (back to original schedule) PDT. A press conference with the pilots follows, though we will miss this.
While waiting, a LAN 787-8 also prepared to depart on a test flight. Compared with the 787-9, the 788 is a stubby little airplane and the 789 much sleeker. We only imagine what the even longer 787-10 will look like next to its siblings.
Here are some videos we shot. We’ll start with the take-off, followed by other videos shot while waiting for first flight.
787-9 first flight today
The first flight of the Boeing 787-9 is scheduled for 10am PDT today. The Weather forecast is cloudy but no rain until this afternoon. Landing is about 3pm.
The first flight will be webcast here.
We’ll be on-site for the first flight, so we will be Tweeting @leehamnews but won’t be in a position to post here until later today.
USAF considers scrapping KC-10 in sequester
KC-10 scrapping: The US Air Force is considering scrapping the KC-10 aerial tanker fleet as a result of budget cutbacks in the sequester, The Army Times reports. This is stunning news, considering the seven year battle to recapitalize the Boeing KC-135 tanker fleet.
There are 59 KC-10s, based on the McDonnell Douglas DC-10. McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing in 1997.
Boeing one day hopes to develop a tanker based on the 777-200LRF to replace the KC-10 and we expect Airbus Military will offer the A330 MRTT or even a tanker based on the A350, but we certainly didn’t expect any prospect of retiring the KC-10 prematurely.
Implications for the 787-9’s first flight
The first flight of the next member of the Boeing 787 family, the -9, is coming soon and this has greater implications than usual for what would be called a minor model variant.
.
Boeing has been making “minor model variants” since the dawn of the jet age with the 707: the 707-120/320/420, the 727-100/200, the 737-100/200, the 300/400/500 family and so on right through today’s 787 variants.
.
The first flight of the 787-9 ordinarily would be a little consequence. But because of the painful birth of the lead variant, the 787-8, and its troubled early service life that included a 3 ½ month grounding, the 787-9 will have greater scrutiny to see if Boeing has the program troubles behind it.
.
Boeing made significant changes to the 787-9 based on lessons learned from the -8. Changes amount to a reported 30% of the design and include lessons learned from the design and production of the tail plane, the side-of-body wing join, elements of the wing’s internal structure, some electronics and, of course, the lithium ion batteries that led to the grounding of the 50 -8s in service.
.
Also the engines. The GEnx and Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines fell short of specification for the -8. It remains to be seen whether the -9 will meet the specs with the engine upgrades, or whether more work will need to be done.
.
Dispatch reliability remains a challenge for the -8, hovering around 98%; Boeing wants to see it closer to 99.7%, the standard set by the 737NG and the 777. This may not sound like much difference, but it means a lot to the airlines, and Boeing is quick to compare the 99.7% for the 737NG with the 99.4% for the rival Airbus A320. This fractional difference amounts to more than 60 flights a year Boeing claims as an advantage for the 737NG over the A320.
A nearly two point difference between today’s 787 and tomorrow’s is significant. The lessons learned, incorporated into the 787-9, will be watched as a path toward this reliability target.
.
Expectations are high for the -9. We hear that the first plane emerged from the factory pretty “clean,” that is, without the troubles that bedeviled the -8. Let’s hope the flight test program comes off without a hitch.
.
Nearly 40% of the more than 900 787 orders are for the -9. We expect the -9 and its larger sibling, the -10, to eventually account for more than 50% of the orders for the family.
.
This was originally sent to our email list on September 3.
Replacing Air Force One: will 747-8 production remain open, or can 777-300ER become AF One?
Bloomberg has this story about the prospect of replacing Air Force One “early in the next decade.” Aviation Week has this story as well. The Aviation Week story links to the Dayton Business Journal, and reports that the USAF wants a commercial derivative, four-engine airplane for delivery in 2021 or later. This description, of course, says “Boeing 747-8” without saying so.
The assumption is that Boeing will provide the 747-8I (Airbus already said it will not bid the A380), but the timing could make it problematic. At August 31, there was a backlog of just 53 8Is and 8Fs, or 30 months at the current production rate of 1.75 per month–to 2016. Boeing has had several dry spells for orders. The 8I isn’t selling well at all and the cargo market hasn’t recovered yet, suppressing sales for the 8F. How does Boeing keep the 747-8 production going until delivery of Air Force One replacements “early next decade”?
Boeing has a couple of 8I campaigns we’ve heard about, hoping for orders this year. These include British Airways and Lufthansa Airlines and a third airline we haven’t yet identified. Lufthansa is expected to announce a wide body order any day now. The publicly acknowledged competition has been between the Airbus A350 and a combination of the Boeing 787-10 and the yet-to-be-launched Boeing 777X. But the 787-10 entry-into-service is planned for 2018 and the 777-9X in around 2020, followed a year later by the 777-8X. Airbus is believed to have delivery slots earlier that either Boeing airplane.
So what would entice Lufthansa to buy Boeing with the later delivery slots? According to our market intelligence, Boeing has offered LH the 747-8I at steep discounts to serve as an interim airplane. This not only would keep LH in the Boeing camp but would help keep the 747-8 production line open. An order from the second of the three airlines would also be needed in this scenario to keep the line open. These orders would also enable Boeing to avoid another write-off for the 747-8 program, our market intelligence says.
But does Air Force One have to be a four-engine airplane? The Secret Service reportedly demanded such when seeking a replacement for the Boeing 707, but according to Wikipedia, the USAF specified a plane with at least three engines and 6,000 mile range. Air Force Ones (there are two of them). When the RFP for the new AF One was issued, in 1985, twin-engine, long haul airplanes with ETOPS were still early in their service, eliminating the prospect for the twin-engine Boeing 767. The Secret Service was said to want more than two engines for safety.
But today, twin-engine ETOPS airplanes and the engines are incredibly reliable. The Boeing 777-300ER has a dispatch reliability second to none as far as we can tell and the GE90 engines that power it are superb. Could the Secret Service and USAF accept a 777-300ER bid? (We doubt the Secret Service or the USAF would accept the new, unproven 9X as Air Force One.)
The 777 certainly doesn’t have the panache of the 747, but operationally there certainly is nothing wrong with the airplane and engines and there is no question about the line being open to 2020 or even somewhat beyond.
The Air Force also needs to replace the 747-200 that serves as the flying command post for the President and the top military brass. This is the white 747 that was spotted over Washington (DC) on 9/11/2001, the day America came under airborne attack by Al Qaeda. But the news articles don’t mention replacing this aircraft.
New life for old airliners
New life has been created for an airliner that wasn’t considered a particularly successful airliner. The British Aerospace 146/Avro family is being converted to an aerial firefighting tanker and also an aerial refueling tanker.
The 146 and follow-on Avro upgrades weren’t particularly successful in commercial airline service, although nearly 400 were produced over 19 years. A niche aircraft, a few remain in operation today. Its four engines were an oddity for regional aircraft service and the initial engines were temperamental. The narrow fuselage made the 3×3 seating very cramped and some operators reduced seating to a more comfortable 2×3 configuration, which ballooned per-seat costs on the 100-seat model by 15% with elimination of 15 seats.
We flew in a 146 last January from Paris to Dublin, surprised to find the model still in use. While apparently still reasonably common in Europe, the airplane has disappeared from service in the US as far as we can tell.
Conversion to fire fighting use has been underway for some time, though the quantity so far is small. A blog about fire fighting discusses the 146 tanker and Aviation Week wrote a short piece about the 146 tanker and the emerging development of the McDonnell Douglas MD-87 as a tanker, which is being development by Aero Air, an affiliate of the Erickson Air Group, which is a joint venture partner in the Boeing 757P2F Precision Conversion company.
The US faces a crisis in aerial fire fighting because the tankers are old and several have crashed due to wing failures. The tanker fleet at one point was grounded for inspection because of the crashes. The 146 is viewed by some as having the advantage of being able to operate from unimproved air strips and operating at a relatively slow speed. The MD-87, sporting the same engines and wing as the larger MD-88, was considered a special performance airplane with short-field capabilities.
Bombardier has an aerial tanker that can scoop water from a lake on the fly, literally, but it costs $20m-$30m and a lack of orders caused BBD to announce it will discontinue production. There is a need for about 200 tankers worldwide, but like freighters, conversions of old airplane is preferred for cost.