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 7

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...