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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 Toky
by 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 agoAnother 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 agoIt'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...