Boeing 787

New Boeing 787

The Boeing 787 is an all-new airplane and Boeing has incorporated lots of new technology in the design. The Rolls-Royce and General Electric turbofans will burn about 8 per cent less fuel than the engines of earlier widebody aircraft. About 50 per cent of the primary structure, including the fuselage and wing, will be made of composite materials, like carbon fibre reinforced plastics. For comparison: the Boeing 777 incorporates 12 per cent composites in the primary structure. The use of composites makes it possible to manufacture one-piece fuselage sections, which eliminate thousands of aluminum sheets and ten-thousands of fasteners.

Another feature of the 787 are 'health-monitoring systems', which monitor the technical condition of the airplane and report maintenance information to computer systems on the ground. This helps to reduce maintenance costs by 30 per cent compared to current airliners. Passengers will enjoy larger windows in the 787 than usual on today's airliners.

Boeing initially wants to build three versions of the Dreamliner. The 787-8 will carry 210 to 250 passengers over about 15,200 km (8,200 nm), while the stretched 787-9 will carry 250 to 290 passengers up to 15,750 km (8,500 nm). A third variant, the 787-3 with 290-330 seats, is optimized for shorter flights of 4,650 up to 5,650 (2,500 to 3,050 nm).