Aviation News, Boeing, Airbus

Emirates, an airline that did not even exist two decades ago, is now the fastest-growing international airline in the world. Few other carriers would have both the nerve and the cash to spend pounds 12bn on dozens of Airbus and Boeing planes. Buying while no one much else is, as has been mentioned here before, can be a rewarding business. Playing one manufacturer off against the other helps to force the price down even further and, in turn, feeds through to lower costs, cheaper tickets and fuller planes.

The airline has built up a substantial fleet of Airbus A330s and Boeing 777s. From a distance, they are hard to tell apart: each is a wide-bodied, twin-engined jet. Plane-spotters will point out the dinky little winglets sprouting from the Airbus’s wings. As a business-class passenger there is little to choose between them. Turn left as you enter either aircraft, and you enter a cabin with seven comfortable seats in each row.

Turn right into economy, though, and the experience is very different. The Airbus has eight seats abreast, making the wide- bodied aircraft feel about as spacious as any of us have the right to expect in the cheap seats these days.

The internal diameter of the Boeing’s cabin is 19 inches wider than the Airbus, the breadth of an economy-class seat. Yet Emirates squeezes in not one but two extra passengers in each row. While every other scheduled airline that I know of with Boeing 777s has installed nine economy seats abreast, the Dubai-based airline reaches double figures.

The extra seat in each row has not unduly affected Emirates’ ability to win awards; it regularly figures among the top three long- haul carriers, along with Singapore Airlines and Virgin Atlantic. But informed economy travellers heading from Heathrow to Dubai have, until this month, opted for the 10.30pm departure: the only one of the three daily flights to be operated by an Airbus. Or so it was. Emirates announced last week that, to meet extra demand, the A330 has been replaced by a 777. If you yearn for the wide-open spaces of an Airbus, head instead for Birmingham or Manchester for that flight to Dubai. Your girth will be less constrained - and you are 25 per cent more likely to get a window seat.

AIRLINE SPONSORSHIP of football teams is a risky investment, especially when relegation looms. Headlines like “West Brom for the drop” or “Sunderland going down” do not sit comfortably in proximity to an airline’s name. Even so, over four seasons Emirates is ploughing about a Boeing’s worth of cash into Chelsea FC; if you are one of those lucky enough to get a window seat, you can often see the Stamford Bridge ground on the approach to Heathrow.

[ST. LOUIS] The food is gourmet quality and the service four-star, making a one-or two-week stay at Boeing’s Leadership Center a refreshing change of pace from the day-to-day pressures of ordinary work responsibilities. But for the more than 7,000 Boeing executives and up-and-coming managers who will attend a training session here this year, the experience is not intended to be all relaxation.

* “The one word everyone used in describing their experience before I went was ‘intense’ and now that I’ve been, I’m finding myself using the same word,” said Tom Young, director of advertising for the company’s military aircraft and missile division, and a former fighter pilot familiar with “intense” experiences. “It was intense, but it was one of the most useful intense experiences I’ve ever had.”

* Added Larry Milligan, a facilities manager at the company’s Anaheim, California, location, “Before I went, I heard it referred to as the ‘velvet prison,’ because once you get there you’re stuck. You can’t leave because you have no car. But the truth is once you are there you don’t need to leave and you don’t want to leave. You are learning too much.”

* On the 286-acre campus snuggled against a hillside that overlooks the confluence of the Missouri, Illinois, and Mississippi Rivers in northwest suburban St. Louis, the three lodge buildings that make up Boeing’s Leadership Center provide just the right mix of a secluded, well-appointed, and well-equipped location for the task at hand.

And that task is part academic and part social, providing a central location to help everyone from the company’s chief executive down to newly minted managers hone their work and leadership skills within a custom-designed curriculum.

Complaints about passenger and crew discomfort on board the 777 aircraft have prompted Boeing Co, the US aircraft manufacturer, to look into operational changes for the aircraft.

British Airways has apparently reported problems with temperature and motion sickness, while United Airlines, a US carrier, has also reported similar problems since the aircraft were introduced in 1990.

A spokesperson for Boeing has indicated that the company is looking at changes to the 777 operating software that would even out temperatures throughout the cabin and soften some sharp autopilot turns that are being experienced, Reuters reported.

Boeing Co. is looking to develop a shorter version of its smallest aircraft, the 106-seat Boeing 717, in order to broaden the aircraft’s appeal to regional airlines.

Marketing director Rolf Sellge said at a conference that the US manufacturer was currently running wind tunnel tests on a shorter 86-seat version and 70 to 75-seat version of the Boeing 717. According to Reuters, Boeing Co. is still unsure about the profitability of the project as price expectations on the part of airlines would not be in line with the cost of such an aircraft as a smaller Boeing 717.

The Boeing Company today announced it will sell Boeing Information Services ( Boeing IS) to Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).

Boeing IS, a subsidiary which provides the federal government with information and systems integration services, employs approximately 1,200 people throughout the U.S. and overseas. It is headquartered in Vienna, Va.

The transaction is a stock sale in which SAIC will purchase all of the stock of the corporation known as Boeing Information Services which includes its contracts, workforce, real estate and facilities. The acquisition is expected to close in approximately one month at which time Boeing IS will become a sector of SAIC managed by its current president, William J. Delany.