( Sequel ) The competition between Boeing, America, and Europe keeps on going. Boeing has always outsmarted Europe: De Havilland Comet vs 707, Hawker Siddeley Trident vs 727 and Concorde vs 747.
But now the band in Toulouse, Airbus, is about to hurt boeing: the airbus A380.
As we know the Airbus is in competition with Boeing: 737 vs a318-a319-a320-a321, 757-767-777 vs A330-a340. But in 2003 Airbus Overtook the boys in Seattle and became the leading Jet producer in the world.
Now back to the A380: this will be the biggest civilian aircraft in the world, it is the only full length double decker passenger jet. In detail just to tell you how big it is, it’s 14 inches wider than the 747-400. You might think that with a full length double decker you will want to put more passengers as possible, in part your wrong: the designers have decided that with all of that space, you can fit beds, bars and hole other bunch of stuff and they only plan to put 35% more passenger than the 747-400.
It’s wings are 80 meters wide and are the length of two tennis courts. And of course it will need the biggest engines ever built: the Trent 900, it’s bigger than the fuselage of a 757 and has the biggest front fan in the world, it’s bypass ratio is of 9 to 1. Saving weight is another objective to reach, so Airbus decided to use Carbon Fiber Composites.
But what’s Boeing going to do as a response to airbus? I’ll tell you what: the Boeing 747-8 and the 787 ( 7E7 ). What we’re interested in though is the 787.
As said before Airbus is using CFC like i like to call it ( Carbon Fiber Composites ), but Boeing has decided to out do them: the 7E7 will be the first to comprise more than 50% composites, the first to have composite wings and fuselage, besides increasing fuel efficiency, composites are allowing cabin designer Klaus Brauer to design a revolutionary cabin design.
So which will prevail? Only time will tell…
Thanks for have read and hope I sort of was of help!
Thanks again!
( sequel ) The Americans seemed unbeatable, they had beaten the English in every ” battle ” : English Built De Havilland comet, but then defeat by Boeing with their 707; the English built the Hawker Siddeley Trident, but then just like with the De Havilland Comet… the Boeing Corporation built their 727.
The English government , tired of all these defeats , made an agreement with their neighbors : the French Government: this agreement would be known as the Concorde Agreement.
But Boeing had their own ideas, their mentality was this: The English and French government had got everything wrong, they said that airliners didn’t want aircrafts that could fly at a supersonic speed with less passengers, but what they wanted was an aircraft that could take twice ( even more ) people.
So here is the battle field in small words: twice as big vs twice as fast.
But the Boeing’s theory nearly led them to total bankruptcy. The future aircraft was named: Boeing 747, and during it’s development, they went nearly 460 milion of dollars in debt, it was a huge gamble for everyone in Boeing.
But 5500 Km away, in Europe with the unlimited amount of money at the disposal of the developers, cash wasn’t obviously a problem, but to figure out a way to make their supersonic aircraft, Concorde, fly was: even if you have very powerful engines, what kept an aircraft in the air was a problem for them: the wings!.
To find a solution, the developers turned to the military: they already flew at supersonic speed, and in the end the finders found out that the military’s aircraft used streamlined wafer thin wings; but could this solution suit a civilian supersonic aircraft?
In part no, but in part yes:
Pros: this wing performed beautifully at mach 2.0 speeds
Cons: it had lousy lift characteristics at slow speeds.
So how did they figure it out? The answer was in the wind tunnel: after 5000 hours of testing, developers crafted a carefully curved and drooping wing, which caused the air to rapidly spiral across the top of the wing; these vortices caused the magical reduction of pressure on the top of the wing, at slow speeds an at high angle of attack, this reduction was needed to bring Concorde up in the air.
Now that one problem was solved, around the corner lied another one: the power plants to power up the aircraft. But in order to receive supersonic thrust out the back, the engine wanted a sub-sonic airflow. Unfortunately if the engine receives air which cannot support, supersonic airflows, it will have the equivalent of engine indigestion: it’s called surge and it can destroy an engine in seconds!
To solve the problem, aerodynamicists came up with a so-called supersonic cap-flap: when the aircraft started to go supersonic and received quantities of air it couldn’t cope with, down came the cap, better said as a ramp, so down came the ramp; this ramp also did part of the engines’ job: when the air bashed in to the ramp it became compressed air, so they managed to extract more efficiency out of an already efficient engine.
After 14 years of planning, in 1969 the Concorde’s first flight was a landmark: France and Britain achieved the unachievable: they had actually brought a supersonic aircraft in civil aviation!
While the Europeans were enjoying their Supersonic ” puppy ” ( 
) over in Seattle, Boeing decided that it was time to build the monstrous 747. This was going to be the worlds’ biggest aircraft, and in order to build it, they needed the biggest building in the world!
The Boeing’s 747 would’ve needed nearly 55000 workers, over 75000 engineering and over six million individual parts; it was a logistical nightmare! And ironically Boeing expected to have it flying in only 3 years!
At the unveiling people expected big, but that was a complete colossus! It weighed nearly 200 tons, without counting fuel and passengers. Seen the weight du-mongers thought pilots couldn’t keep the aircraft in the air. The first pilot to fly the 747 was Jack Waddell, and the first to discover if Joe Sutter and his team had got his sums right. In February 1969 just two months behind schedule, Jack Waddell was the first to fly the 747.
The Jumbo carries the world record for the most people ever carried on one flight : 1200, on the flight from Addis-Ababa to Tel-Aviv.
When pressurized the jumbo carries nearly one ton of air in it, and you could fit nearly five Concorde Fuselages inside the 747’s fuselage!
By the time Concorde was ready to fly though, the world had changed: increases in oil prices meant that the only profitable way to run an airline was by getting more passengers…here is were the 747 had a big advantage. In 1973, more than 50 orders of the aircraft from 16 airlines were cancelled: the plane created by politicians would only fly for the state owned airlines of the two nations: Air France and British Airways. But tickets would sell at First Class prices plus another 20% on top and became the exclusive airplane for the rich and famous.
For 34 years Concorde was the fastest plane ever, but in 2003 economics bashed it to death:it would consume 30 tons per hour at take-off thrust and let’s not forget that there where four of them!
Score 2-1 for Boeing… no one had made it till then but… in part five will see that the colossus from Seattle can and will be beaten!
( Sequel )…Boeing was ahead, but it’s 707 had a problem… it didn’t like short runways, it was perfect for airports that had long runways like KLAX or KJFK…so it would’ve caused problems when landing on a 1500 ft runway like San Diego…
What aviation needed was a plane that could land on short runways… something better than the old and mighty 707. Once again the British had a solution: the Hawker Siddeley Trident. It’s shape was revolutionary: it had a T shaped tail and it had three motors on the tail( plus one for take-off ).
But the government owned British Airways said that they wanted small engines because they operated on long runways…
But by the time it was completed with all it’s changes it was too late, aviation had moved on.
Boeing of course wasn’t just going to be dictated by any government owned company… they understood that many of the worlds’ runways where 5000 ft of length and if they could build and airplane that could get in and out of them with full passenger load and full fuel they would double the market for jet transport airplanes overnight: they came up with the 727… quite similar to the Hawker Siddeley Trident.
But the 727 was much more powerful than it’s predecessor, it had more power, it could go at lower speeds and could go further than the Hawker Siddeley Trident.
The 727 was aviation’s missing link, and the customers loved it, to prove it Boeing sold a leaping 500 within the first 5 years. It carried as many people as the 707 could carry but could also reach destinations that no other plane could reach!
Boeing got it so right that when productions finished they sold 2000 of them…!?!? Incredible isn’t it? They had broken all the records and quite a bit of them are still flying today!
Stay tuned for part 4: just when Boeing seemed unbeatable, Europe played their Supersonic card…
… ( Sequel ) In England, 27th of July 1949 the world is introduced with the: De Havilland Comet.
A marvelous piece of engineering that could fly higher and faster than the DC-3. The passengers loved it, when they’d fly it they didn’t have to endure the awful sound of the DC-3’s 14 turboprops’’s noise.
This Plane was a complete success even because , obviously , the range of the De Havilland Comet was bigger than the range of the DC-3.
But over in America People didn’t take much notice of this invention, including the Douglas Corporation, and decided not to change ( like said in previous post ) their winning formula: bigger piston engine with always more props.
But there was a company that thought that the other american companies had missed the boat by a mile; they decided it was time to change.
This company was called: Boeing.
They decided that they were going to make their own Jet powered engine plane: this was the majestic boeing 707. One of the first customers was Pan Am, and said that they were going to be the first to do a transatlantic flight service. But only 3 weeks before the big day the English bet them to it: the De Havilland Comet was the first Jet powered aircraft to perform a transatlantic flight.
But the competition with Boeing wasn’t going to last forever: when flying in higher altitudes it suffered unsuspected metal fatigue.
Over 500 people lost their lives in De Havilland Comet accidents.
This was enough to seal the fate of the De Havilland Comet, after many flights it was put out of production and practically out of the competition with Boeing…
Stay tuned for part 3…
Hi!
Have you ever heard of a so-called ” Jet Race ” ?
Well Let me tell you a little story.
Aviation in the early 20th century was based on the DC-3… It was very versatile, it could be cargo, it could be military and of course civilian.
In just three years this aircraft carried at least 90% of airline traffic. It was of moderate comfort, good for those times, this aircraft carried 21 passengers per flight.
This was the best aircraft of the times. But what the Douglas Corporations wasn’t expecting was this:
Frank Whittle, after many years he had designed the very first jet engine, in 1938, this british invention was a success but Frank Whittle didn’t know that what he had just designed would’ve changed the life of practically everyone…
The DC-3 decided that their formula, DC-3, was winning a formula and saw no reason to chance it… but this was one of the worst decisions in aviation….
On a small island off the coast of Europe, England of course, came new aircraft…
Stay tuned For part two!
