Airbus A380 completes first test flight

[wolf]

Jag, while you are a lovely, bright, young man, you're arguing with someone who works for a company that builds airplanes.

Big airplanes.

Big American airplanes.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by wolf

Jag, while you are a lovely, bright, young man, you're arguing with someone who works for a company that builds airplanes.

Big airplanes.

Big American airplanes.

Naw, I have nothing to do with airplanes.
The Boeing intranet news/announcement/notice website subscribes to a news service. It's called Lone Buffalo and I think it's owned by Dow Jones Reuters Business Interactive, or some such.
Anyway, Lone Buffalo posts any news story, no matter how big or small the publication, that has anything to do with the airplane business, commercial or military. Part of the deal is Boeing can't change or edit anything that LB posts.
So I've been following this story and some others pretty closely. Some of the best information, the things that are really telling, come from obscure trade publications. The little tid bits that put the major news stories in perspective and sometimes make the stories make sense.

When an airline says, "We'll buy 35 model 7xx planes," they have to chose which engines they'll use from Rolls Royce, General Electric or Pratt & Whitney. Each engine has plus and minus points the airline has to balance.

When he upcoming Boeing 787 was in the feasability planning stage, they went to the engine boys and said we need xxxthrust, yyy efficiency, with zzz reliability and no bleed. They came back with proposals(promises) and the rest of the plane was designed around those parameters. If the engine boys fail to deliver on their promises, Boeing is majorly screwed. That's why the slightest shortcoming of the engines carries major financial penalties.

Part of the 787 deal is Boeing chose one engine supplier only, rather than one or sometimes two from each supplier and let the airline decide the tradeoffs. I think the engine supplier is eating some of the development costs in return.

Damn, I've gotten long winded in my old age! Anyway, there's a lot of things that come into play when shooting for a desired(or promised) performance. With aircraft, weight is a major, major player. Engine performance is another biggie and usually the contracts with the plane's buyers have big penalties for missing efficiency marks.