Just saw my first B787 Deamliner.

[paulw]

Landed at Auckland , NZ at 10.am a direct flite from Seattle to Auckland of about 15 hours.. First landing in the southern hemisphere. Very impressive and very quite. The Boeing paint job makes it look allot more stylized than it is. I was quite surprized how small it is compared to a B777 that it was parked beside when I got to have a close up look at it. Looks like a replacement for the aging B767 airplane.. There were thousands lined up along the glide path using every vantage point. I've never seen so many people lined up for a plane arrival here..

Boeing has brought an evaluation unit for Air New Zealand to look at from a technical service point of view. It's here until Tuesday when it Flies to Sydney for Qantas to do the same thing. Air NZ has the stretched version on order but its not due until about 2014. The first commercial flites here are Continental Air who will use them on their Houston - Auckland service starting 2012

[Dr Mordrid]

That's a seriously sweet plane I can't wait to fly in.

It is indeed a replacement for the 767 but only as a second choice.

The story goes that original plan was to build the much faster Sonic Cruiser, but 9/11 happened and with it came the decline of US airline budgets. The new business case and increased fuel prices resulted in a need for economy over speed and the 787 (then 7E7) was born.

Sonic Cruiser

[paulw]

You think that the Sonic Cruiser will ever get off the drawing boards these days?? It looks nice..

[Dr Mordrid]

A lot of Sonic Cruiser is in the 787 - the cockpit, composite structure etc.

As to the future - Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin are working with NASA Langley & NASA Ames on the Fundamental Aeronautics Program, and Boeing's entry is the Blended Wing Body passenger/cargo design. BWB would be able to use either turboprops (3) or jets (2), and a lot of the subscale flight work has already been done under the X-48 program. The idea is to design commercial aircraft for the 2025-2030 timeframe.

Each design has to fly Mach 0.85, have a range of 7,000 miles and carry between 50,000 and 100,000 lbs of payload - either passengers or cargo.

[Evildead666]

Looks like the blended wing body would be much quieter than the current crop with the intakes over the top of the body.
At least you wouldn't be able to hear it decelerate when it comes in for a landing.

One came over the house this morning, very high up, i'm 30/60km from the landing strips, but the whine from the descent was perfectly audible indoors (with no other noise, I was in bed).