Boeing’s future flagship, the 777X, arrived in Doha Wednesday as part of a scheduled visit to its customer airline, Qatar Airways. The 777X is Boeing’s latest and largest airline jet ordered by ANA, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Emirates, Etihad, Lufthansa, Qatar Airways and Singapore Airlines.
The 777X family includes the 777-8X and the 777-9X. The 777-9, the aircraft type visiting Doha this week, has a stretched fuselage as a derivative of the present Boeing 777-300ER. It has more than 400 passenger seats and its cruising range is 14,075 kilometres (7,600 nautical miles). Its wing structure is made of composite materials instead of the conventional aluminium alloy to improve aerodynamic performance.
The most unique part of the 777X? Its wingtips. The aircraft has incredible 3.5 metre folding wingtips allowing the jet to stay within the size category of the current 777 when it’s on the ground, meaning it’s able to use existing taxiways, gates and airport stands without needing the extra space. The wingtips fold down and lock into place prior to take-off. For landing, the wingtips automatically retract when the aircraft has landed and slowed down to 50 knots prior to entering the taxiway. Folding wingtips are a first for commercial aviation. As existing regulations do not cover the folding wingtips, the FAA issued special conditions, including proving their load-carrying limits, demonstrating their handling qualities in a crosswind when raised, alerting the crew when they are not correctly positioned while the mechanism and controls will be further inspected.
The 777X is powered by General Electric's new engines and its fuel efficiency 20% better than the present model. Its maximum take-off weight is targeted for 775,000lb (351.5t) like the 777-300ER but Boeing hopes to have at least a 10,000lb (4.5t) margin at introduction.
The Gulf region, with orders from Qatar Airways and Abu Dhabi's Etihad carrier, accounts for two-thirds of the 320 orders placed since the aircraft's unveiling in 2013. Qatar Airways expects to receive its first delivery of Boeing 777X aircraft in 2023, its Chief Executive HE Akbar al-Baker said on Wednesday on the sidelines of a Boeing presentation. The airline is also considering an imminent purchase of a freighter aircraft and is mulling an “attractive proposition from Boeing”, al-Baker added.
Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways could cancel billions of dollars of aircraft orders placed with Airbus and Boeing, its chief executive said on Wednesday, citing uncertainty over delivery dates and the industry's recovery from the pandemic.
"The manufactures can't confirm when they are going to be delivered and you have a market that you don't know when it’s going to recover," Tony Douglas told media about the Airbus A320neo and Boeing 777X aircraft the airline ordered nearly a decade ago.
Etihad would continue to take deliveries of Airbus A350-1000 and Boeing 787 Dreamliner liner jets, which Douglas said would become the backbone of the fleet that will trim to 65 aircraft.
But the 777X is delayed, and while airlines were supposed to start receiving the jet in mid-2020, its entry into service has been pushed back until late-2023. Boeing announced in July that it had spotted additional problems near the nose of the plane and was working to fix them. A delay for the first deliveries of its new wide body 777X plane is costing the company $6.5bn. "Boeing has shifted the certification to July 2023 and we had a contracted delivery position for June 2020," Emirates' president Tim Clark told reporters at the five-day event.
"It's anybody's guess as to whether or not they will achieve that." The delay has cost Emirates millions of dollars as they upgrade old aircraft to retain them longer.
"To restore our network, we need all our aircraft, and we cannot allow manufacturers to slow us down," Clark said. Boeing this week had sought to reassure its main customer on the aircraft's progress to obtain the certification for commercial use.
"We're sitting at about 600 flight tests or 1,700 hours, its performance is coming out very well," Boeing's senior vice president of commercial sales and marketing, Ihssane Mounir, said last week before the air show.
The aircraft's entry into the market at the end of 2023 would come at a time when the industry is expected to have overcome its Covid-induced slowdown.
"We tend to see a three-stage recovery, with the wide-body demand being the last to come back, returning in approximately 2024," said Boeing's director of product marketing, Tom Sanderson, during a virtual briefing before the air show.
"We're starting to get into what we sometimes refer in industry as a replacement wave, a lot of large wide-body aircraft are going to begin to retire, and we'll continue to see growth in the number of retirements well into the 2030s."
Global air traffic has started to bounce back from the worst of its pandemic decline, though in October it was still around half the level before the global health crisis idled aircraft.
But according to the International Air Transport Association, global traffic is expected to double by 2050 from its pre-pandemic levels, with Boeing saying they expect approximately 7,700 new wide-body aircraft will be needed by 2040.
Boeing expect this variant of the 777X, the 777-9, to be around 12% more fuel efficient and 11% more cost effective than the competition: the Airbus A350-1000.
The 777X family includes the 777-8X and the 777-9X. The 777-9, the aircraft type visiting Doha this week, has a stretched fuselage as a derivative of the present Boeing 777-300ER. It has more than 400 passenger seats and its cruising range is 14,075 kilometres (7,600 nautical miles). Its wing structure is made of composite materials instead of the conventional aluminium alloy to improve aerodynamic performance.
The most unique part of the 777X? Its wingtips. The aircraft has incredible 3.5 metre folding wingtips allowing the jet to stay within the size category of the current 777 when it’s on the ground, meaning it’s able to use existing taxiways, gates and airport stands without needing the extra space. The wingtips fold down and lock into place prior to take-off. For landing, the wingtips automatically retract when the aircraft has landed and slowed down to 50 knots prior to entering the taxiway. Folding wingtips are a first for commercial aviation. As existing regulations do not cover the folding wingtips, the FAA issued special conditions, including proving their load-carrying limits, demonstrating their handling qualities in a crosswind when raised, alerting the crew when they are not correctly positioned while the mechanism and controls will be further inspected.
The 777X is powered by General Electric's new engines and its fuel efficiency 20% better than the present model. Its maximum take-off weight is targeted for 775,000lb (351.5t) like the 777-300ER but Boeing hopes to have at least a 10,000lb (4.5t) margin at introduction.
The Gulf region, with orders from Qatar Airways and Abu Dhabi's Etihad carrier, accounts for two-thirds of the 320 orders placed since the aircraft's unveiling in 2013. Qatar Airways expects to receive its first delivery of Boeing 777X aircraft in 2023, its Chief Executive HE Akbar al-Baker said on Wednesday on the sidelines of a Boeing presentation. The airline is also considering an imminent purchase of a freighter aircraft and is mulling an “attractive proposition from Boeing”, al-Baker added.
Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways could cancel billions of dollars of aircraft orders placed with Airbus and Boeing, its chief executive said on Wednesday, citing uncertainty over delivery dates and the industry's recovery from the pandemic.
"The manufactures can't confirm when they are going to be delivered and you have a market that you don't know when it’s going to recover," Tony Douglas told media about the Airbus A320neo and Boeing 777X aircraft the airline ordered nearly a decade ago.
Etihad would continue to take deliveries of Airbus A350-1000 and Boeing 787 Dreamliner liner jets, which Douglas said would become the backbone of the fleet that will trim to 65 aircraft.
But the 777X is delayed, and while airlines were supposed to start receiving the jet in mid-2020, its entry into service has been pushed back until late-2023. Boeing announced in July that it had spotted additional problems near the nose of the plane and was working to fix them. A delay for the first deliveries of its new wide body 777X plane is costing the company $6.5bn. "Boeing has shifted the certification to July 2023 and we had a contracted delivery position for June 2020," Emirates' president Tim Clark told reporters at the five-day event.
"It's anybody's guess as to whether or not they will achieve that." The delay has cost Emirates millions of dollars as they upgrade old aircraft to retain them longer.
"To restore our network, we need all our aircraft, and we cannot allow manufacturers to slow us down," Clark said. Boeing this week had sought to reassure its main customer on the aircraft's progress to obtain the certification for commercial use.
"We're sitting at about 600 flight tests or 1,700 hours, its performance is coming out very well," Boeing's senior vice president of commercial sales and marketing, Ihssane Mounir, said last week before the air show.
The aircraft's entry into the market at the end of 2023 would come at a time when the industry is expected to have overcome its Covid-induced slowdown.
"We tend to see a three-stage recovery, with the wide-body demand being the last to come back, returning in approximately 2024," said Boeing's director of product marketing, Tom Sanderson, during a virtual briefing before the air show.
"We're starting to get into what we sometimes refer in industry as a replacement wave, a lot of large wide-body aircraft are going to begin to retire, and we'll continue to see growth in the number of retirements well into the 2030s."
Global air traffic has started to bounce back from the worst of its pandemic decline, though in October it was still around half the level before the global health crisis idled aircraft.
But according to the International Air Transport Association, global traffic is expected to double by 2050 from its pre-pandemic levels, with Boeing saying they expect approximately 7,700 new wide-body aircraft will be needed by 2040.
Boeing expect this variant of the 777X, the 777-9, to be around 12% more fuel efficient and 11% more cost effective than the competition: the Airbus A350-1000.
*The author is an aviation analyst. Twitter handle: @AlexInAir