Snohomish County Business Journal


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Published July 2003

Global team behind
7E7’s efficient design

SCBJ Staff

More than any other Boeing airliner, the proposed 7E7 — newly dubbed the Dreamliner through Boeing’s online balloting competition — will be a global aircraft, both in its design and its service with airlines.

Boeing is planning a highly efficient aircraft, developing it with an international team of aerospace companies led by Boeing staff at its Everett facility.

The 7E7 will carry 200 to 250 passengers on routes between 7,200 and 8,000 nautical miles, using 15 to 20 percent less fuel for comparable missions than any other wide-body aircraft and traveling at speeds similar to today’s fastest wide-bodied planes, about Mach 0.85, approaching the speed of sound.

More efficient jet engines will mean exceptional environmental performance, Boeing executives predict.

Passengers will find many improvements in the flight environment, including higher humidity and lower-altitude pressurization in the cabin, both of which will provide a more comfortable flight with fewer aftereffects from long flights.

The key to the plane’s exceptional performance lies in the new technologies being assembled by Boeing and the international development team, such as new composite and aluminum materials that provide greatly improved durability, cost and weight. Major decisions on selecting materials are expected before the end of 2003.

Operating systems in the aircraft will be more simplified than today’s airliners, but they will incorporate more functions. For example, the team wants to incorporate health-monitoring systems that will allow the plane to continuously check out its own operations and even report maintenance requirements to ground-based computer systems.

Engine development is under way with General Electric, Pratt & Whitney and Rolls Royce. Advances in engine design and technology are expected to contribute as much as 8 percent of the increased efficiency in the new plane, representing a nearly two-generation leap in technology.

More efficiencies will come from the way the airplane is designed and built, with new technologies and processes being developed to achieve unprecedented levels of performance. Current assembly periods of 21 days per aircraft will be whittled down to around three days because more pre-assembly construction will be completed in other plants before the sections come together at the assembly site.

By late 2003, Boeing’s board of directors is expected to approve production, followed by the first firm offers to airlines early in 2004. Production would begin in 2005, with the first flight in 2007. Flight certification, delivery to the first customer and entry into service would occur in 2008.

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