Tag: Boeing

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Dreamliner jet becomes a canvas for Kung Fu Panda

Dreamliner color scheme
Illustrator Hannah R. Foss’ design won Hainan Airlines’ Dreamliner livery design contest. (Credit: Hainan Airlines / Boeing / DreamWorks)

It makes sense that a professional illustrator would win a contest to design a paint scheme for one of Hainan Airlines’ Boeing 787 Dreamliner jets.

But this isn’t just any paint scheme: The task at hand was to add some Kung Fu Panda razzle-dazzle, using characters from the animated movie series as well as graphic themes from the Chinese carrier.

Looks like Hannah R. Foss, a digital illustrator and CGI modeler at the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks aced it.

“We look forward to seeing your design on one of our Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners, and we can’t wait to have you onboard on your free business-class trip to China,” Hainan Airlines said today in a Facebook post announcing the winner.

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Boeing to convert nine 767 jets for Amazon Air

Amazon Prime Air jet
The first branded Amazon Prime Air jet, operated by Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings under a lease agreement, made its public debut in August. (GeekWire photo by Kevin Lisota)

Boeing says it will convert nine used 767 passenger jets into freighters for Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings, which will use them in its cargo transport operations for Amazon.

Amazon made a splash in August when it unveiled its first branded Prime Air jet and spilled the details about its air cargo ambitions.

New York-based Atlas Air as well as Ohio-based Air Transport Services Group have been flying packages for the online retailing giant for months. By the end of 2018, each of the companies expects to be operating 20 leased 767 jets for Amazon deliveries.

Atlas Air spokeswoman Bonnie Rodney told GeekWire via email that her company is currently using one aircraft – the branded 767 that made its public debut at Seattle’s Seafair festival. But she added that “we have acquired the vast majority of the aircraft that we will need for Amazon … and we have secured all of the conversion slots” for Amazon Prime Air’s jets.

That includes the nine slots announced today.

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Qatar signs on for up to 100 Boeing jets

Qatar Boeing jets
Qatar Airways has put in orders for 40 wide-body Boeing jets and is voicing its intent to order up to 60 737 MAX jets. (Credit: Boeing)

Qatar Airways today sent a strong message to the Boeing Co. – and to Airbus, its European rival – by putting in an order for 40 wide-body Boeing jets and leaving the door open for up to 60 more 737 MAX jets.

The orders for 30 of Boeing’s 787-9 Dreamliners and 10 of the 777-300ERs would be valued at $11.7 billion at list price, Boeing said. The 60 single-aisle 737 MAX jets, covered by a letter of intent, would go for $6.9 billion at list price.

That adds up to $18.6 billion retail, but The Seattle Times’ Dominic Gates cites an estimate from Avitas, an aircraft valuation firm, that sets the value at $8.8 billion after standard industry discounts.

The order provides a huge boost for Boeing’s 777 and 787 programs, and for the company’s operations in Everett, Wash., where the planes are assembled. Qatar Airways currently flies 54 of the 777s and 30 of the 787s, with six 777F freighters and 60 of the next-generation 777X passenger jets on order.

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U.S. and Boeing hail WTO ruling against Airbus

Airbus A350 XWB
In today’s report, a compliance panel of the World Trade Organization found that Airbus’ A350 XWB superjumbo jet benefited from European subsidies. (Credit: Airbus)

The World Trade Organization turned up the heat on Europe’s aerospace industry today by ruling that Airbus was continuing to benefit from what’s now estimated at $22 billion in subsidies from the European Union and its member countries.

U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman hailed the decision as a “sweeping victory” in a dispute that has been simmering for more than a decade, with the Boeing Co. cast as the principal victim of Airbus’ subsidies.

“This long-awaited decision is a victory for fair trade worldwide, and for U.S. aerospace workers in particular,” Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing’s chairman, president and CEO, said in a statement.

Both of Washington state’s U.S. senators and several House members praised the development as well.

The WTO’s latest action marks one more step toward imposing retaliatory trade sanctions that could amount to as much as $10 billion a year.

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Boeing awards $6M in grants for STEM education

UW Spring Break program
University of Washington junior Kat Schaffer works with sixth-graders at Brewster Elementary School through UW’s Alternative Spring Break program, one of the beneficiaries of newly announced Boeing grants. (Credit: Dennis Wise / UW)

Three universities and scores of other educational programs stand to benefit from $6 million in grants from the Boeing Co. – a bonanza that’s designed to boost the company’s future workforce in Washington state.

Grants totaling $1 million are going to the University of Washington, Washington State University and Seattle University. The other $5 million will be divvied up among about 50 nonprofit groups and educational institutions across the state.

Boeing said some of the largest grants will support Thrive Washington, which focuses on early learning; Washington STEM and its K-12 learning initiative; and SkillUp Washington, which partners with community and technical colleges on training for manufacturing jobs.

The grants focus on STEM education – science, technology, engineering and math – as well as workforce training, particularly for student populations who tend to be underrepresented when it comes to STEM.

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Contest could make your Dreamliner come true

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Hainan Airlines is letting contestants design livery for one of its Boeing 787 Dreamliner jets with a Kung Fu Panda theme. (Credit: Hainan Airlines / Dreamworks Animation)

How can you top a Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet painted to look like Star Wars’ R2-D2 robot? How about a Kung Fu Panda Dreamliner? Hainan Airlines is teaming up with the Boeing Co. and DreamWorks Animation to make it so, and give away some sweet trips to China in the process.

The contest, which runs through Sept. 30, makes it easy to design the livery for Hainan’s jet: All you have to do is go to Hainan’s website, arrange a set of online stamps, symbols and paint patterns to fill out the livery on a 3-D plane template. Click a button to submit your design, and you could be a winner.

The design elements have to include the usual corporate branding, but you can also choose from the characters in DreamWorks’ Kung Fu Panda movies, including roly-poly Po (the panda, of course) plus Tigress, Ox, Rhino, Wolf and so on.

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R.I.P.: Boeing’s Joe Sutter, ‘Father of the 747’

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Boeing engineer Joe Sutter, the “Father of the 747,” takes a turn in the pilot’s seat. (Credit: Boeing file)

Boeing engineer Joe Sutter, who led the engineering team for the 747 jet in the mid-1960s and played a role in the investigation of the Challenger shuttle disaster in 1986, died this morning at the age of 95.

His passing was announced online by Ray Conner, president and chief executive officer of Boeing Commercial Airplanes. The cause of death was not mentioned.

Sutter’s role in creating Boeing’s biggest passenger jet earned him the title of “Father of the 747.” His 4,500-member team came to be known as “the Incredibles” for putting the plane into production 29 months after it was conceived.

“It remains a staggering achievement and a testament to Joe’s ‘incredible’ determination,” Conner wrote.

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777X tool sets record for 3-D-printed objects

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Guinness World Records’ judge, Michael Empric, measures the trim tool (Credit: ORNL)

A trim-and-drill tool that will be tested during construction of the Boeing Co.’s next-generation 777X jet has already produced something notable: recognition from Guinness World Records as the world’s largest solid 3-D-printed object.

The trim tool, developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, was made in only 30 hours using carbon fiber and ABS thermoplastic composite materials. It’s 17.5 feet long, 5.5 feet wide and 1.5 feet tall, and weighs about 1,650 pounds.

After Oak Ridge completes verification testing, the tool will get its tryout at a Boeing production facility in St. Louis, Mo. It’ll be used to secure the jet’s composite wing for drilling and machining before assembly.

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Boeing bans Pokémon Go at work

Image: Pokemon Jets
You can catch Pokemon characters on Boeing jets, as shown in this lineup for All Nippon Airways, but don’t try catching them at Boeing facilities. (Credit: ANA / Nintendo via Japan Info)

Mark off the Boeing Co. as one more place where you shouldn’t be playing Pokémon Go, the monster-catching game that’s been taking smartphones by storm.

It’s not that Boeing has anything against Charmander or those other cute virtual critters: It’s just that the game sucks up bandwidth as well as work time – and also poses potential safety risks.

9to5Mac reported last week that the game was being installed on more than 100 work phones at a large aerospace company, and that one employee almost got hurt due to gameplay distraction. Tweets and follow-ups made clear that the company was Boeing, and that Pokémon Go was added to a software blacklist that bans carrier bloatware apps.

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Boeing centennial blends the old and the new

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Boeing employees Teresa Felix and Laurie Staples check out the windows at an exhibit at Seattle’s Museum of Flight during the company’s centennial festivities. (GeekWire photo by Alan Boyle)

The Boeing Company pulled out all the stops today to celebrate its 100th birthday – from the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, to the “Boeing 100” flag flying atop Seattle’s space needle, to the old and new Boeing airplanes lined up at the Museum of Flight.

But it was the old and new people in the company’s extended family who provided some of the most touching highlights at today’s kickoff for the centennial weekend.

June Boeing, the 90-year-old widow of William Boeing Jr. and the daughter-in-law of company founder William Boeing, reminisced about her husband after receiving a gift of the company’s original incorporation papers, filed in Seattle on July 15, 1916.

“I always thought I was his first love. And soon after we were married, I found out I wasn’t,” she said. “The Boeing Company was his first love.”

Another moment came when Mawut Mayen, one of the “lost boys of Sudan” who grew up to become a manager with the 777 program, recounted how Boeing helped him find a happy ending to his refugee story. “I have a great future ahead of me,” he said.

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