From: Adam 

Don Hills wrote:

> In article ,
> George Sherwood  wrote:
>
>>Guess from your in depth study of the worldwide airline industry it has to
>>be politics and not that people want to buy the 787.
>
>
> That's a good summary, though I don't think you intended it to be.
>
> Airbus are betting that airlines have a use for the 380 on the high-volume
> long hauls with slot restrictions. What is a little surprising is the number
> of Middle Eastern airlines who have placed orders.
>

& Airbus have a design for a 787 competitor. What's more, that area is
extremely crowded right now as many smaller makers can "grow"
their aircraft into that size/niche. A good example is embraer & the
other overgrown biz jet makers (e.g. Gulfstream, Bombardier etc).

& then there are the existing designs for that seating size. The
differentiator seems to be the fuel burn/range & given the likely
direction of fuel prices I'd bet every manufacturer is looking to bring
fuel burn rates down.

> Boeing, on the other hand, are betting that airlines want more flexibility
> and lower costs on feeder routes and the ability to service small airfields.
>

They can do that right now. They have many choices of model & maker
which can offer that. I used to fly weekly between Manchester &
Stockholm & the emb-145 (SAS) did the job as did the md-11 (finnair)
& smetimes the 737 (KLM). i.e. most point2point is fairly short range
inter-US, inter-EU, inter-PRC etc routes.

Boeing tried the "sonic cruiser" & that failed to get any
bites & the 787 is basically a new build/design 737/767 long range.

I'm a bit surprized that it didn't form the basis for the boeing mpa us
navy bid as it's got nice long range.

Adam

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