Boeing has unveiled more design details of what it thinks the perfect long-range airliner will look like
Max Kingsley-Jones / Paris
Alan Mulally, president of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, could hardly disguise his excitement when he unveiled a 2m (6ft)- long model of the sonic cruiser at the Paris air show in front of an audience of suppliers, customers and media.
This was the highlight of Boeing's week at the show, as the manufacturer did not play along with Airbus in the traditional order numbers game. Instead, Mulally was on a mission to convince his audience that the sonic cruiser, with its 15-20% higher cruise speed compared to conventional aircraft, is going to change the world. "It will help us take air travel and bring people together to a new level," he said.
"This is the airplane our customers have asked us to focus on. It will change the way the world flies as dramatically as did the introduction of the jet age," added Mulally.
The effort Boeing went to at Paris to promote its new design was even more surprising given the revelation by Boeing vice chairman Harry Stonecipher earlier in the week that a "leak" had forced Boeing's hand to talk about the aircraft much earlier than it wanted to. "We didn't plan to talk about the aircraft here, or even in Singapore [next February], but details on the project were leaked in March and so we had to go public," he said.
Not everyone shared Boeing's enthusiasm for its vision of the future. Airbus president Noel Forgeard expressed surprise at the level of interest in a design "that promises a 20% increase in fuel consumption for a marginal increase in speed".
Airbus calculations forecast that, in a 225-seat configuration, the sonic cruiser will have a cost per seat some 20-25% greater than a conventional 300-seater such as the Boeing 777 or its own A340. "Seat-mile costs will be 50% higher than the [555-seat] A380," says the European manufacturer.
While Airbus is adamant that the drive for efficiency is what airlines want, Boeing is clearly confident that customers will tolerate an operating cost increase to achieve product differentiation in the increasingly competitive premium market. Some have compared the Boeing strategy to that of the regional jet revolution instigated by Canadair a decade ago. Many of the then- dominant turboprop manufacturers dismissed the idea of a 50-seat jet as a niche gimmick, but those same companies have now either joined the regional jet brigade or been marginalised by jet producers.
New battle lines
Some key differences are obvious when comparing the jet versus turboprop battle to that of the sonic versus conventional jets. In the former's case, the jet offered much more than just speed and image: it also gave a step change in ride comfort.
Market reaction to the sonic cruiser so far has made Boeing confident that the concept will be a major winner. "One customer said it would take the first 300 aircraft we build," said Mulally. "We think demand could total several thousand, maybe more."
So confident is the US manufacturer in its concept, that it may be considering charging customers a premium to reserve early delivery slots. This would directly contrast with the conventional approach of discounting launch orders, highlighted by the recent A380 campaign in which Airbus is believed to have offered price concessions of up to 40%.
Mulally has also signalled that the concept could actually be designed for supersonic cruise, as many observers have suspected. "The design has two 'sweet spots', one just a little bit beyond Mach 1," he said.
Sound barrier breaking
If the aircraft is designed to cruise just below Mach 1 as currently proposed, margin will obviously have to be built in to allow the aircraft to be flown beyond the speed of sound, says John Roundhill, Boeing's vice president-marketing, new airplane programme. "We do not anticipate that this will result in a sonic boom being heard at sea level," he says.
Roundhill is confident that emerging technologies will enable the sonic cruiser to enter service no more than seven years from now with comparable operating costs to current similar-sized aircraft. Boeing concedes, however, that those same technologies could make a conventional airliner 20% more efficient than today's aircraft in the same timeframe.
This fact has not been missed by the environmentally conscious Europeans. Already frustrated by the USA's rejection of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol climate change accord, the region has greeted with concern the news of a new airliner concept from the other side of the Atlantic that does not put efficiency at the top of its priorities.
In an open letter to Harry Stonecipher, Margot Wallstrom, European commissioner for the environment, makes clear her concerns: "The question is whether a one-hour time saving on a transatlantic flight is worth a significant increase in CO2 emissions contributing to climate change. In my view this environmental price is not worth paying...Instead of building even faster planes, your industry should work towards improved environmental performance, dramatically improving the efficiency of aircraft and developing aircraft powered by alternatives to fossil fuel."
Seeing green
Thirty years ago, there was furious debate about the effect that the high-flying, supersonic Aerospatiale/British Aerospace Concorde would have on the environment. If Boeing really intends to sell as many sonic cruisers as it says, then it must ensure as soon as possible that its environmental argument is watertight.
Source: Flight International
