lsquare

For sure! I'll take the A350 over the B787 any day of the week!

Hindsight is 20/20. Nobody could have realistically forecast how the pandemic would conclude in 2020. Nobody even knew when a vaccine would come to market.

lorcancoyle

They’ll need something to keep the engineers occupied / entertained

(only half-joking, isn’t loss of institutional knowledge and accumulated expertise a regular problem on large new programmes)

dougzz

Can you explain this. I like the B787, and the A350, the A330 not so much. Don’t the first two have better cabin pressure and humidity? I think the A350 is quieter, but that maybe just the seats I’ve had.

Swanhunter

787 has ridiculous windows and is remarkably noisy due to poor AC design. Later series A330 in particular are notably quieter. The A350 sits at the top of the tree in terms of overall plane design.

The pressure and humidity thing I really don’t notice.

Of course this leaves aside Boeing’s ability to actual build planes safely and reliably. 😕

13901

There definitely was a lot of uncertainty: a new virus, little prior knowledge of how a pandemic triggered by a highly-transmissable pathogen worked in a modern society, and above all the fact that government were totally flapping. It's hard to underestimate the damage that policies like Grant Shapps' decreeing by Twitter had on the industry. Let's not forget that, for instance, Nigeria went from no restrictions to hotel prison at your own cost to back to no restrictions in about 3 weeks!

Where I think everyone in the industry failed - but perhaps for that old fox of Michael O'Leary, who's often the smartest man in the room - was in figuring out how the recovery would look like. They thought of a U-shaped recovery, with a long plateau, because that was what happened in '08 (fun fact: LHR never quite recovered the % of business travellers it had back before Lehman went tits up!). The thing is, though, Covid wasn't an economic shock. This wasn't about bankers giving mortgages to people who couldn't afford them and then the whole economy crashing down; this was something external - a virus! - causing a blockade. Remove the virus, demand returned with a vengeance and the recovery was a very steep V-shaped one. If Asia opened up tomorrow, I think 2023 would be in line with 2019, for Europe already is at that level. That's what BA/HAL/US3 many more failed to grasp; they went for their staff, especially legacy ones, and now they're paying the price.

greg5

I think the problem today with "Boeing" is that they need more Boeing. The "Boeing" of today is more McDonnell and Vought than Boeing, especially with the 787-10.

SamYeager

I can understand the dire predictions where business travel is concerned given the swift and widespread adoption of Zoom and eventually Teams by businesses. Making the same predictions about leisure travel, especially after the disrupted summers of 2020 and 2021, was just ridiculous and that's what I thought at the time. Business travel has picked up faster than expected by many, including me, but anyone looking at the amount who wanted to fly for summer holidays in 2020, even with all the restrictions, should have been in no doubt that there would be a large surge this year.

stefan_nl

And even then, incremental updates are pushed through the entire production run even before there is a complete update. The first A380 is much heavier than the last one to come of the line and still its officially the same A380-800.

lsquare

They're still building new planes and fulfilling orders so no loss of anything. Even the new engines on the 777x aren't going to be night and day better than what we have today,. The B787 and A350 are still cutting-edge airplanes and have opened up routes that wouldn't have been economically feasible before their introduction. Just look at Boeing and Airbus' history of updating their planes for guidance on how the plans will be updated. For sure there will be engine upgrades in the future not just to lower fuel burn, but to minimize CO2 emissions.

Based on what I read, business travel hasn't completely recovered, but there's no doubt in my mind that the aviation and tourism sector is heading for total recovery within the next year or two. The odds of further lockdowns or the pandemic worsening is unlikely. With better vaccines about to be introduced in the US and around the world, I think we can all look forward rather than backward. The desire to travel hasn't waned. It's always been and will always be there. Zoom doesn't replace that.

13901

Not entirely true. Once a design project concludes - and the bulk of the activity on the 787, 350 and their engines undoubtedly has - there is a loss of knowledge. People move on, teams are disbanded, this sort of thing. And from what I hear Boeing has quite a habit to close down teams. One of my previous (and best, sorely miss him) bosses worked at Boeing on the design of the 747-400. He and his team were disbanded soon after EIS and indeed were fired! In his career at Boeing he had to reapply for a job quite a few times.

lsquare

The B787 has been in the news over the years over safety concerns. It's hard to imagine how Boeing can investigate and solve problems without the talent from their program.

PeterK

The 787 has always been a bleedless airplane. That configuration (and the efficiencies associated with it) is an aircraft systems one, independent of the engines.

Ghoulish

What a load of nonsense.

Boeing is nearly a decade ahead of Airbus in truly game changing technology, like advanced composite material and first of its kind technologies like bleedless deicing.

The large windows are a boon, not even possible on Airbus designs without compromising structural integrity thanks to their last generation construction methods, and a benefit to pax, at least for the subset with eyes.

When compared on a flight time basis, there is nearly no difference between the two manufacturers, but, strangely, both having worse records than the minors like Embrair.

USA_flyer

If that were true, the A350 would've been a commercial flop instead of the success it is. As a passenger, they're both great planes and I'm happy to fly on either.

lsquare

I absolutely love the A350. I hate flying the 787 when I'm sitting on the sun-facing side.