7 ms·

Wired Test-Drives Boeing’s New 787 Dreamliner

56 points by spathak 14y ago

eroded 14y ago
Alas the 787's expectations are too high, as the aircraft is basically an update of the Boeing 767. As with all launches, there’s a lot of hype and Boeing has certainly made a big deal out of it, but it’s not a radically different experience for passengers. While aviation buffs will know better, I think most of the flying public are expecting an improvement on the 777 and unfortunately it’s not – at least from the passenger’s seat.
- th0ma5 14y ago
  What about the air pressure difference? As someone that works in a high rise, and has allergies, ear discomfort is a very daily thing, and sometimes downright upsetting when flying.
  - notJim 14y ago
    I suspect the higher cabin humidity and higher cabin pressure will make the airliner significantly more comfortable. These, combined with the larger windows could actually make a difference in terms of how air travel feels. It's hard to say whether they'll be too subtle to notice, though.
  - will_asouka 14y ago
    Yes, the 787 will have a max cabin altitude of 6000ft. Other airliners work to 8000ft. The upshot is denser, more refreshing, air which makes for a comfortable and less fatiguing journey.
    - excuse-me 14y ago
      The upshot is "potentially" denser more refreshing air - the airline still gets to decide how much fuel (=$$$) it's wants to 'waste' refreshing that air.
      - davidmr 14y ago
        This is (almost entirely) a myth. http://www.salon.com/2009/09/25/askthepilot335/ http://www.salon.com/2009/09/25/askthepilot335/
        excuse-me 14y ago
        It's a myth that the pilot can "turn up" the amount of oxygen. But the ratio of fresh air that the airline has selected depends on how much fuel that they want to waste heating the -50C fresh air to cabin temperature, and how much humidity they want to put on the airframes life.
- SubZero 14y ago
  It's actually a huge improvement from the passenger's seat as well. The new Sky interior gives the compartment a much nicer and cleaner feel, while opening things up and making the plane feel much larger. Normally I can't stand up straight in a plane; I'm too tall. I can stand in a sky interior plane. The overhead bins are much bigger, as well. They work on a different mechanism which will keep overstuffed bins from spilling their contents on poor souls beneath. The ride is also much quieter inside than previous models. Then, on top of that, you have the dimming windows, which are just plain cool. It's a huge improvement.
- draggnar 14y ago
  The plane is made primarily of composite materials, allowing it to be an efficient enough proposition for the airline for me here in Boston to go direct to Tokyo. No layover. I can feel that from the passenger seat. Ok so it isn't the successor to the Concorde, but 20% efficiency is not insignificant.
  - nollidge 14y ago
    Another important difference is that the 787's lower weight means it doesn't require runways to be as long, and so can land at smaller airports, opening up more flight plans and destinations. Source: guide talked about it when I went on the factory tour.
    - draggnar 14y ago
      It's not just composites either. One interesting innovation about lower weight comes from the way the wings are designed. Someone on Reddit explained: But the 787 wings are less stiff, proportionately to their size, than those of most other airliners. This is because there's a system that, during heavy loads, puts most of the load on the area of the wing that is closer to the fuselage, so the wing bending moment is alleviated, i.e. the wingtip never experiences loads as high as on other airplanes. So you can get away with less wing structure. http://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/wb764/these_composite_wings_give_me_an_aeroelastic/c5c013e http://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/wb764/these_compos...
geori 14y ago
I'm disappointed in the minimal amount of innovation we've seen in airplanes since the 70s. That's great that it is 20% more fuel efficient, but we're flying with basically the same tech that we did 40 years ago. Can Elon Musk please build us a hypersonic jet liner!?
- mitchty 14y ago
  Hypersonic? Innovation in airplanes has been rather high, just not in making them go faster. This is similar to complaining we don't have 10ghz processors. Yes this is true, but as it turns out thats a hard problem and we can work around it elsewhere. Hypersonic presents a completely different set of problems in things like materials, design, shockwave management, etc.... That and it likely isn't profitable. Better to design fuel efficient jets that fly closer to the speed of sound than another concorde.
  - mikeash 14y ago
    I think it's just a point of diminishing returns, really. Range keeps going up. Now you can fly a big airliner between pretty much any two large airports on the planet, if you can sell the tickets for that route. The trip takes a max of, what, 20 hours or so? Cutting that down to, say, 6 hours just doesn't win you that much. Sure, there are some people who would really benefit, but I'd wager that the vast majority of travelers either get almost as much benefit from the 20-hour trip as they would from the 6-hour trip, and the vast majority of people for whom the 20-hour trip is too long to be useful would also find the 6-hour trip to be too long to be useful. The world is only so big, and at some point, making the stuff go faster doesn't get you all that much. Personally, if I magically had the choice, I'd much rather fly on an airliner that traveled at current speeds but was more comfortable and didn't have security nonsense surrounding it than on a hypersonic airliner with the same ergonomics and security nonsense we have right now.
    - kreek 14y ago
      I agree that comfort is the issue. The airlines squeeze so many seats now into coach that for tall or larger passengers it's very uncomfortable for cross country flights. I'm 6'2" the space under the seat in front of me is always taken up by someone's carry on bag. Two hour flights are no problem, the five hours cross-country is ok, but any long haul in coach is pretty miserable.
barrkel 14y ago
"Simulated engine failures were performed in just about every conceivable situation, including take-off roll, before nose rotation, during rotation, after rotation, during the climb, during the landing and during both compensating and aggravating crosswinds. The result is an airplane that is as boring as possible to fly, even in emergencies." I wonder how the system reacts when it gets false information about an engine failure. I mean, it's great when the computer is able to react to actual failures; but I'm also worried about how it reacts to bad sensor data. Sure, it's good engineering practice to defend in depth and eliminate single points of failure, but reading about the Air France crash, cascading errors don't seem to be properly dealt with.
- 51Cards 14y ago
  I agree with the concern for cascading failures but I'm not sure I agree with the comment re: Air France. There was no error cascade there as far as I can see. The pitot tubes froze and the when the aircraft lost airspeed data it did what it was designed to do, turned off auto-pilot and gave control back to the pilot. The pilots were the ones who failed to understand and manage the situation from there on, relying on a computer that was unable to provide data. Perhaps (said with a little tongue in cheek) it wouldn't be a bad thing if the computers flashed up a big "I don't know!" on the screens so the humans would know to look elsewhere for their information. Just a thought. Then again the humans need to know how to get the data in other ways too. As my auto racing instructor used to say, "It was a failure of the squishy bit between the steering wheel and the seat".
  - epochwolf 14y ago
    There is a big "I don't know" warning. It's called alternate law. And there is another mode called direct law for when the computer really doesn't know.
  - barrkel 14y ago
    There were also inconsistent stall warnings. If the pitot tubes freeze over, I expect windspeed will be underreported, which will make it look like a stall. IIRC, the pitot tubes were only out of commission for a minute or two, but the co-pilots ignored the (now correct) stall warning all the way into the ocean (until the pilot woke up and came back, but then it was too late). I guess the real problem here is having only a single modality for detecting windspeed. It doesn't matter how many pitot tubes you have if they all have the same failure mode; quantitative redundancy isn't as good as qualitative.
will_asouka 14y ago
I guess the main concern here is the ease with which modern airliners can be flown under normal circumstances. As operation becomes easier, training can also become easier and, more importantly, cheaper. This results in less rigorously trained pilots. Also, fewer people will fail an easier training program, resulting in pilots with less natural talent making the flight deck. Modern aircraft are extremely reliable, but the AF447 incident (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AF447 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AF447) showed that when the automatic systems fail, in this case due to iced-up pitot probes, the humans in the loop failed to control the aircraft resulting in hull loss. The Wired article points out the differences between the Airbus side stick and Boeing yoke, additionally with Boeing the autothrottle physically moves the thrust levers. But pilots with thousands of hours flying benign routes are considered experienced, yet are also unable to recognise a stall, a fundamental hazard to safe flight taught very early on in flying training. The issue seems to be an incongruence as technology outpaces training. On AF447- "Pilots a generation ago would have done that and understood what was going on, but [the AF447 pilots] were so conditioned to rely on the automation that they were unable to do this. This is a problem not just limited to Air France or Airbus, it's a problem we're seeing around the world because pilots are being conditioned to treat automated processed data as truth, and not compare it with the raw information that lies underneath." William Voss, President, Flight Safety Foundation (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/05/air-france-crash-ruling-pilots http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/05/air-france-crash...) Great aircraft, lets hope the training keeps pace.
- ejdyksen 14y ago
  The AF447 crash was an example of exactly why the Airbus side stick model is flawed compared to the Boeing yoke. In AF447, one of the pilots had a nose up input held during a stall. Because the other pilots couldn't see his stick, they weren't aware of his inputs. Also, at certain times, the other pilot was giving contradictory (nose down) inputs to the aircraft. This input was averaged (read: canceled) with the other pilot's nose up input. The side stick has two problems: 1) Lack of awareness of what inputs are being given to the plane by other pilots in the flight deck. 2) The computer has to make decisions about how to resolve contradictory inputs.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
redwood 14y ago
In-cabin humidity will be a huge plus... less flight dehydration (one of the main reasons flying leaves us feeling like crap)

56 points by spathak 14y ago

Alas the 787's expectations are too high, as the aircraft is basically an update of the Boeing 767. As with all launches, there’s a lot of hype and Boeing has certainly made a big deal out of it, but it’s not a radically different experience for passengers. While aviation buffs will know better, I think most of the flying public are expecting an improvement on the 777 and unfortunately it’s not – at least from the passenger’s seat.

th0ma5 14y ago
What about the air pressure difference? As someone that works in a high rise, and has allergies, ear discomfort is a very daily thing, and sometimes downright upsetting when flying.
- notJim 14y ago
  I suspect the higher cabin humidity and higher cabin pressure will make the airliner significantly more comfortable. These, combined with the larger windows could actually make a difference in terms of how air travel feels. It's hard to say whether they'll be too subtle to notice, though.
- will_asouka 14y ago
  Yes, the 787 will have a max cabin altitude of 6000ft. Other airliners work to 8000ft. The upshot is denser, more refreshing, air which makes for a comfortable and less fatiguing journey.
  - excuse-me 14y ago
    The upshot is "potentially" denser more refreshing air - the airline still gets to decide how much fuel (=$$$) it's wants to 'waste' refreshing that air.
    - davidmr 14y ago
      This is (almost entirely) a myth. http://www.salon.com/2009/09/25/askthepilot335/ http://www.salon.com/2009/09/25/askthepilot335/
      - excuse-me 14y ago
        It's a myth that the pilot can "turn up" the amount of oxygen. But the ratio of fresh air that the airline has selected depends on how much fuel that they want to waste heating the -50C fresh air to cabin temperature, and how much humidity they want to put on the airframes life.
SubZero 14y ago
It's actually a huge improvement from the passenger's seat as well. The new Sky interior gives the compartment a much nicer and cleaner feel, while opening things up and making the plane feel much larger. Normally I can't stand up straight in a plane; I'm too tall. I can stand in a sky interior plane. The overhead bins are much bigger, as well. They work on a different mechanism which will keep overstuffed bins from spilling their contents on poor souls beneath. The ride is also much quieter inside than previous models. Then, on top of that, you have the dimming windows, which are just plain cool. It's a huge improvement.
draggnar 14y ago
The plane is made primarily of composite materials, allowing it to be an efficient enough proposition for the airline for me here in Boston to go direct to Tokyo. No layover. I can feel that from the passenger seat. Ok so it isn't the successor to the Concorde, but 20% efficiency is not insignificant.
- nollidge 14y ago
  Another important difference is that the 787's lower weight means it doesn't require runways to be as long, and so can land at smaller airports, opening up more flight plans and destinations. Source: guide talked about it when I went on the factory tour.
  - draggnar 14y ago
    It's not just composites either. One interesting innovation about lower weight comes from the way the wings are designed. Someone on Reddit explained: But the 787 wings are less stiff, proportionately to their size, than those of most other airliners. This is because there's a system that, during heavy loads, puts most of the load on the area of the wing that is closer to the fuselage, so the wing bending moment is alleviated, i.e. the wingtip never experiences loads as high as on other airplanes. So you can get away with less wing structure. http://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/wb764/these_composite_wings_give_me_an_aeroelastic/c5c013e http://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/wb764/these_compos...

geori 14y ago

I'm disappointed in the minimal amount of innovation we've seen in airplanes since the 70s. That's great that it is 20% more fuel efficient, but we're flying with basically the same tech that we did 40 years ago. Can Elon Musk please build us a hypersonic jet liner!?

mitchty 14y ago
Hypersonic? Innovation in airplanes has been rather high, just not in making them go faster. This is similar to complaining we don't have 10ghz processors. Yes this is true, but as it turns out thats a hard problem and we can work around it elsewhere. Hypersonic presents a completely different set of problems in things like materials, design, shockwave management, etc.... That and it likely isn't profitable. Better to design fuel efficient jets that fly closer to the speed of sound than another concorde.
- mikeash 14y ago
  I think it's just a point of diminishing returns, really. Range keeps going up. Now you can fly a big airliner between pretty much any two large airports on the planet, if you can sell the tickets for that route. The trip takes a max of, what, 20 hours or so? Cutting that down to, say, 6 hours just doesn't win you that much. Sure, there are some people who would really benefit, but I'd wager that the vast majority of travelers either get almost as much benefit from the 20-hour trip as they would from the 6-hour trip, and the vast majority of people for whom the 20-hour trip is too long to be useful would also find the 6-hour trip to be too long to be useful. The world is only so big, and at some point, making the stuff go faster doesn't get you all that much. Personally, if I magically had the choice, I'd much rather fly on an airliner that traveled at current speeds but was more comfortable and didn't have security nonsense surrounding it than on a hypersonic airliner with the same ergonomics and security nonsense we have right now.
  - kreek 14y ago
    I agree that comfort is the issue. The airlines squeeze so many seats now into coach that for tall or larger passengers it's very uncomfortable for cross country flights. I'm 6'2" the space under the seat in front of me is always taken up by someone's carry on bag. Two hour flights are no problem, the five hours cross-country is ok, but any long haul in coach is pretty miserable.

barrkel 14y ago

"Simulated engine failures were performed in just about every conceivable situation, including take-off roll, before nose rotation, during rotation, after rotation, during the climb, during the landing and during both compensating and aggravating crosswinds. The result is an airplane that is as boring as possible to fly, even in emergencies." I wonder how the system reacts when it gets false information about an engine failure. I mean, it's great when the computer is able to react to actual failures; but I'm also worried about how it reacts to bad sensor data. Sure, it's good engineering practice to defend in depth and eliminate single points of failure, but reading about the Air France crash, cascading errors don't seem to be properly dealt with.

51Cards 14y ago
I agree with the concern for cascading failures but I'm not sure I agree with the comment re: Air France. There was no error cascade there as far as I can see. The pitot tubes froze and the when the aircraft lost airspeed data it did what it was designed to do, turned off auto-pilot and gave control back to the pilot. The pilots were the ones who failed to understand and manage the situation from there on, relying on a computer that was unable to provide data. Perhaps (said with a little tongue in cheek) it wouldn't be a bad thing if the computers flashed up a big "I don't know!" on the screens so the humans would know to look elsewhere for their information. Just a thought. Then again the humans need to know how to get the data in other ways too. As my auto racing instructor used to say, "It was a failure of the squishy bit between the steering wheel and the seat".
- epochwolf 14y ago
  There is a big "I don't know" warning. It's called alternate law. And there is another mode called direct law for when the computer really doesn't know.
- barrkel 14y ago
  There were also inconsistent stall warnings. If the pitot tubes freeze over, I expect windspeed will be underreported, which will make it look like a stall. IIRC, the pitot tubes were only out of commission for a minute or two, but the co-pilots ignored the (now correct) stall warning all the way into the ocean (until the pilot woke up and came back, but then it was too late). I guess the real problem here is having only a single modality for detecting windspeed. It doesn't matter how many pitot tubes you have if they all have the same failure mode; quantitative redundancy isn't as good as qualitative.

will_asouka 14y ago

I guess the main concern here is the ease with which modern airliners can be flown under normal circumstances. As operation becomes easier, training can also become easier and, more importantly, cheaper. This results in less rigorously trained pilots. Also, fewer people will fail an easier training program, resulting in pilots with less natural talent making the flight deck. Modern aircraft are extremely reliable, but the AF447 incident (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AF447 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AF447) showed that when the automatic systems fail, in this case due to iced-up pitot probes, the humans in the loop failed to control the aircraft resulting in hull loss. The Wired article points out the differences between the Airbus side stick and Boeing yoke, additionally with Boeing the autothrottle physically moves the thrust levers. But pilots with thousands of hours flying benign routes are considered experienced, yet are also unable to recognise a stall, a fundamental hazard to safe flight taught very early on in flying training. The issue seems to be an incongruence as technology outpaces training. On AF447- "Pilots a generation ago would have done that and understood what was going on, but [the AF447 pilots] were so conditioned to rely on the automation that they were unable to do this. This is a problem not just limited to Air France or Airbus, it's a problem we're seeing around the world because pilots are being conditioned to treat automated processed data as truth, and not compare it with the raw information that lies underneath." William Voss, President, Flight Safety Foundation (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/05/air-france-crash-ruling-pilots http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/05/air-france-crash...) Great aircraft, lets hope the training keeps pace.

ejdyksen 14y ago
The AF447 crash was an example of exactly why the Airbus side stick model is flawed compared to the Boeing yoke. In AF447, one of the pilots had a nose up input held during a stall. Because the other pilots couldn't see his stick, they weren't aware of his inputs. Also, at certain times, the other pilot was giving contradictory (nose down) inputs to the aircraft. This input was averaged (read: canceled) with the other pilot's nose up input. The side stick has two problems: 1) Lack of awareness of what inputs are being given to the plane by other pilots in the flight deck. 2) The computer has to make decisions about how to resolve contradictory inputs.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

redwood 14y ago

In-cabin humidity will be a huge plus... less flight dehydration (one of the main reasons flying leaves us feeling like crap)