Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 223 posts

Re: Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets

#91

Post by mulmen »

Tiltowait-- wrote: post #26
sesuximo wrote: post #23

It’s a little sad that we’ve retired the 747, the Concorde, and (almost) the A380. And we haven’t introduced anything cool :(

The Concorde was done in by fuel prices, and because it was a small aircraft. I visited one in a museum and it was claustrophobic. Also nobody should be sorry that elites have to sit on long overseas flights just like we do. The A380 was a boondoggle from the beginning, an attempt to outdo Boeing by having TEH BIGGEREST aircraft on the market. Having to rebuild airports to accommodate it wasn't a good idea. The 747 i…

> Also nobody should be sorry that elites have to sit on long overseas flights just like we do.

Or we could all be flying supersonic because of the economies of scale.

Re: Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets

#92

Post by ravoori »

WJW wrote: post #56
Johnjonjoan wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the limiting fact to cargo capacity is weight or volume. If it's weight then perhaps the additional freight offsets those costs rather than saving fuel.

IIRC it really depends on the cargo. A very cool example I came across was iPhones being fairly heavy relative to their volume while roses were very light relative to their volume. The solution of the air freight company was to fill their aircraft 50/50 with roses and iPhones so that they were both at their weight limit and at their volume limit.

Ingenious on the part of freight company, but roses being transported halfway around the world is an indicator of what's wrong with modern commerce

Re: Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets

#93

Post by mlyle »

gsnedders wrote: post #89
nelaboras wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to see some numbers on this. As far as I understand they are used for freight because it's better than to let them sit empty (and pilots and ground staff have to be paid too), but it still is not profitable.

A _large_ proportion of worldwide freight is ordinarily carried in the belly of passenger aircraft. When most airlines stopped flying, the price of air freight _quickly_ rose (as the capacity pretty much fell overnight to just the dedicated freighter aircraft). This meant it became profitable (i.e., above the marginal costs of the flights) to fly passenger aircraft purely for the belly-hold freight. They certainly ar…

Not to mention that when we're talking about freighters, e.g. 747-8F-- they are not limited to belly hold freight. (And have much less cabin weight, fly slower / use less fuel, so the weight they can carry is better than repurposed passenger aircraft).

Re: Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets

#94

Post by gsnedders »

fsckboy wrote: post #22

the 747-8F freighter will continue, so the title is misleading. The era is not over, at a maximum closing the era of jumbo passenger jets. and as points of interest, the hump on the 747 keeps the cockpit out of the way allowing freight to be loaded more easily and completely, and freighters don't mind stopping to refuel (too expensive to carry all that fuel for the whole trip) and that's what makes the 747 continue t…

And it's worthwhile noting the 747-8I (the passenger variant) hasn't received any orders since 2013 as far as I'm aware (the VC-25Bs are being converted from unsold airframes which had originally been ordered in 2011) and the last rolled off the production line in 2017.

Re: Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets

#95

Post by fsckboy »

bobthepanda wrote: post #31
fsckboy wrote: post #22

the 747-8F freighter will continue, so the title is misleading. The era is not over, at a maximum closing the era of jumbo passenger jets. and as points of interest, the hump on the 747 keeps the cockpit out of the way allowing freight to be loaded more easily and completely, and freighters don't mind stopping to refuel (too expensive to carry all that fuel for the whole trip) and that's what makes the 747 continue t…

The A380 also had other issues, in that a freighter version was never developed, and also the dead weight of the plane was a lot heavier than the 747.

[I already answered you once but I thought of another way to think about it that is substantially different than my other comment so thought I'd write another one.]

The freight economics issue between the 747F and the A380F is related to the complex soup of fixed costs and variable costs that go into the carrier's choice of platform; in addition to the fuel, the carrier has to amortize the purchase price, and the A380F with newer technology is a much more expensive platform to the freight carriers.

Because the 747 is so old, most of the development costs are long since amortized. This gives Boeing more pricing flexibility if the two companies are competing head to head. The A380 otoh needed to earn back lot of money to get back to breakeven for Airbus, so Airbus did not have the same pricing flexibility as Boeing. It was in the interest of the freight carriers to be able to play the two companies off against one another on price, but it was in Boeing's interest to kill the A380F so they wouldn't need to compete with it.

And on Airbus's side, the A380F was also "competing" with the passenger A380 for slots on assembly line; since the passenger version paid a premium for the longer range capability that the freighter could not command (because freighters stop to refuel anyway) it didn't make sense in the short run for Airbus to compete in the freighter space. And as it turns out, there was no longer term for the platform as a whole, especially considering it didn't actually have cost advantages as a freighter anyway.

Re: Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets

#96

Post by mlyle »

fsckboy wrote: post #22

the 747-8F freighter will continue, so the title is misleading. The era is not over, at a maximum closing the era of jumbo passenger jets. and as points of interest, the hump on the 747 keeps the cockpit out of the way allowing freight to be loaded more easily and completely, and freighters don't mind stopping to refuel (too expensive to carry all that fuel for the whole trip) and that's what makes the 747 continue t…

This is the end of the 747-8F. There's 16 orders (all 747-8F) in the book, and the last one is rolling out of the factory in 2022 and the line is being decommissioned.

I presume if someone really wants to rush and order a few more the run would be continued slightly, but this is unlikely...

Re: Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets

#97

Post by pininja »

manigandham wrote: post #34
fsckboy wrote: post #22

the 747-8F freighter will continue, so the title is misleading. The era is not over, at a maximum closing the era of jumbo passenger jets. and as points of interest, the hump on the 747 keeps the cockpit out of the way allowing freight to be loaded more easily and completely, and freighters don't mind stopping to refuel (too expensive to carry all that fuel for the whole trip) and that's what makes the 747 continue t…

Don't takeoff/landing cycles on the engines and airframe counteract the fuel savings? EDIT: Specifically pressurization cycles and metal fatigue, since that's how aircraft lifespan is measured.

“[For a 737-400] takeoff, climb, and landing burns approximately one third of the total fuel” [0]. A 747 is a different aircraft, but I’m comfortable assuming this is a directionally correct estimate.

Regardless, fuel burn is certainly a factor to consider when looking at savings and there are interesting studies on it (See “Fuel burn implications“ for an idea of factors [1])

[0] http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2013/ph240/eller1/ [1] https://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/nextrans/assets/pdfs/08...

Re: Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets

#98

Post by madengr »

ponker wrote: post #5

The 747 is humanity's greatest achievement. Air travel is the confluence of engineering, policy and governance (the heyday of the FAA/NTSB and how we got to the point where air travel is this safe), and the systems engineering that get aircraft, people, and baggage to so many different places. What the Boeing 747, and only the Boeing 747, has is true artistic value, with a profile evoking Botticelli or Rubens.

Close, but IMHO it's the Apollo program.

Re: Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets

#99

Post by fsckboy »

mlyle wrote: post #96
fsckboy wrote: post #22

the 747-8F freighter will continue, so the title is misleading. The era is not over, at a maximum closing the era of jumbo passenger jets. and as points of interest, the hump on the 747 keeps the cockpit out of the way allowing freight to be loaded more easily and completely, and freighters don't mind stopping to refuel (too expensive to carry all that fuel for the whole trip) and that's what makes the 747 continue t…

This is the end of the 747-8F. There's 16 orders (all 747-8F) in the book, and the last one is rolling out of the factory in 2022 and the line is being decommissioned. I presume if someone really wants to rush and order a few more the run would be continued slightly, but this is unlikely...

fwiw, the article itself with the bad headline says the freighter will continue, which is why I called it a bad headline.

Re: Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets

#100

Post by gsnedders »

ksk wrote: post #86
x43b wrote: post #36

>>The Covid-19 pandemic threatens to leave their manufacturers scrounging to find buyers for the last jumbos built. This is imply not true. The last 747s built are freighters. Freight demand is at an all time high due to COVID and constraints on supply chians. Even passenger vehicles are being called into freight service (which is far less efficient yet still economical).

Are you saying Boeing is getting new orders, when they say they're not?

They've had one order from UPS this year (though also two cancellations).
Post reply on HN