Cosmic Log
This week’s Paris Air Show started off with a zoom, in the form of Boeing’s launch of the 737 MAX 10 jet — the longest version of its fuel-efficient single-aisle airplane family.
Today’s kickoff of the sales campaign was totally unsurprising, but the more than 240 orders announced at launch made for a “surprisingly strong showing” on its face, Leeham News and Comment’s Scott Hamilton reported.
He added that “the 240 orders were more than had been expected — and less than advertised.”
If you like airplanes, you’ll love Boeing’s teaser video for the Paris Air Show, which puts a 787-10 Dreamliner and a 737 MAX 9 jet through a series of moves worthy of a ballet.
The video preview has become a tradition for Boeing’s presence at the big show, which plays out next week. In the video, the planes take off at dizzyingly steep angles and fly in close formation with Pacific Northwest peaks serving as a backdrop.
Don’t expect those kinds of aerobatics in Paris – but do expect the 737 MAX 9, which made its first flight in April, to participate in a flying display. (Lockheed Martin’s controversial F-35 fighter jet will also take to the air.)
More than 5 million guests have toured Boeing’s airplane factory in Everett, Wash., which ranks as one of the Puget Sound region’s top attractions – but far fewer tourists have been inside the area’s other Boeing assembly plant, south of Seattle in Renton.
A new multimedia presentation is aimed at evening the score, at least virtually: “Incredible: The Story of the Boeing Renton Site” combines mouse-controlled 360-degree views, videos and photo galleries to show how Boeing builds the world’s best-selling commercial jetliner, the 737.
The tour starts with a 360-degree video shot outside the assembly building. As trucks drive by and workers stroll past, a narrator explains what you’re seeing – and invites you to look inside.
EVERETT, Wash. – Some manufacturing workers may worry that robots will be stealing their jobs, but not Boeing’s Jordan Northrup.
He’s glad to work with Robot 1 and Robot 2, the industrial-strength machines that drill holes and hook up fasteners in the metal panels of a Boeing 777 jet’s fuselage.
“Instead of blowing my shoulder out, shooting 300 fasteners a day or countersinking 300 holes a day, I get to learn a new skill. … I get to run a robot,” said Northrup, structures team lead for midbody at the Fuselage Automated Upright Build facility in Boeing’s Everett plant.
The facility, known as the FAUB, is just one of the places where Boeing is upping the ante for automation in the airplane industry. Boeing showed off the FAUB and other robotic hot spots at its Everett plant as a preview for this month’s Paris Air Show.
As Boeing gears up to start building 777X airplanes, the company is building on its experience with robot-assisted assembly for the widebody 787 Dreamliner and single-aisle 737 MAX.
RENTON, Wash. – Six and a half months into his tenure as Boeing Commercial Airplanes’ president and CEO, Kevin McAllister is mindful of the challenges that lie ahead for one of America’s top manufacturers – and draws upon a cautionary tale from his childhood in America’s industrial heartland.
McAllister grew up in Bethlehem, Pa., and remembers well what happened to Bethlehem Steel. The company was once America’s second-largest steel producer, but it went bankrupt in 2001 and faded away, along with much of the nation’s steel industry.
Today, the site of Bethlehem’s shut-down plant is a city park. But in his office, McAllister keeps a painting of the mill as it looked in its heyday.
“It’s kind of corny,” McAllister admitted last week at Boeing’s offices in Longacres Industrial Park, during his first extended “meet the press” session as a Boeing executive. “It’s just a reminder that as a company we’ve got to reinvent ourselves every day.”
The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency says it has selected the Boeing Co. to develop and test its XS-1 hypersonic space plane, using a design now known as the Phantom Express.
Boeing won out over Northrop Grumman and Masten Space Systems to take the long-running XS-1 project beyond Phase 1 into Phase 2/3, culminating with test flights in 2020.
The reusable space plane would be designed to carry and deploy a small, expendable upper stage, then return to Earth for a runway landing. The upper stage would be capable of putting satellites weighing up to 3,000 pounds in low Earth orbit.
Now anybody can fly like a VIP: All you have to do to take Deer Jet’s super-elegant 787 Dreamliner for a ride is fork over $70,000 an hour.
Just don’t call it luxury travel.
“This plane is not ‘luxurious,’ The philosophy for the design is natural. … It’s to make you feel very comfortable, so you can save your energy and you can do your job better,” Frank Fang, vice president of China-based Deer Jet, told GeekWire during a tour of the plane, which was sitting in front of Seattle’s Museum of Flight.
“It’s just a little bit expensive,” Fang added with a smile.
Boeing today marked the first delivery of a new-generation 737 MAX jet with an official handover to Malaysia-based Malindo Air at the Seattle Delivery Center.
The delivery came after Boeing sent about 30 of the engines for its 737 MAX planes back to their manufacturer due to concerns about potentially defective turbine disks.
Those concerns cropped up last week. and forced Boeing to ground its MAX fleet for several days. Inspectors found that the plane Malindo received was unaffected by the flaw, and Boeing says it’s now gotten the go-ahead from the Federal Aviation Administration to resume all flight activities.
Malindo, which is changing its name to Batik Air Malaysia later this year, will be the first airline to fly the 737 MAX 8 commercially.
The Boeing Co. and the U.S. Air Force say they’ve shown that a new type of communication pod for F-15 fighter jets, known as Talon HATE, can link together different types of aircraft and ground stations for secure communications.
The Boeing-developed system is designed to knit together the communication systems aboard F-15 jets and other traditional weapons systems, plus the F-22 stealth fighters built for the Air Force by Lockheed Martin. The F-22 uses a special type of networking system that’s optimized for stealthiness but poses a challenge for communication with non-stealth airplanes, as explained in this report from Foxtrot Alpha.
During a flight demonstration conducted out of Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, Talon HATE pods on two F-15C aircraft enabled test pilots to share information through a variety of channels, including the Wideband Global Satcom system, Boeing said in today’s news release.
More than two dozen passengers on an Aeroflot Boeing 777 jet reportedly sought medical treatment after a scary run-in with sudden air turbulence during a flight from Moscow to Bangkok, documented on smartphone videos. Citing reports from Thailand, Russian-based Aeroflot said 27 people suffered injuries, including broken bones. However, reports of spinal fractures were unconfirmed.