In the previous episodes,
we talked about how Boeing became one of the leading airplane manufacturers in the world.
In the final episode,
we’ll feature the most advanced and latest Boeing airplanes.
This is the Evolution of Boeing Part 3!
In 1982, Boeing introduced its first wide-body twinjet, the Boeing 767.
Engineers used computer-aided design for over 1/3 of the 767’s design drawings.
With a length of 159 ft or 48.5 meters, it was a large airplane.
It was much larger than the Boeing 737,
though it wasn’t as big as the Boeing 747.
The 767 has a supercritical wing for reduced drag and is Boeing’s first airliner to have a two-crew glass cockpit.
During development, over 26,000 hours of wind tunnel tests were done.
Total development costs were around $4 billion, which would be a whopping $11.7 billion today!
Models of the 767 include the 767-200,
the -200ER for Extended Range, which was introduced in 1984,
and the -300 in 1986,
followed by the most popular -300ER in 1988
and the latest model being the -400ER.
The original model had seats for 216 passengers and a range of over 4,488 miles.
While the 767-300ER could go much further with a range of 6,881 miles.
There are also some special versions, including the E-767,
the KC-767, and the KC-46, which are military derivatives of the 767.
The former is used for surveillance, while the KCs are aerial tankers.
Boeing also got some competition from Airbus.
Airbus made several competing airplanes, including the A330-200.
Boeing has been, and still is, making the Boeing 767.
In total 1,346 units have been built.
Looking to buy one yourself?
Then you’ll have to pay around $220 million for a new one.
The 767 has been involved in 60 aviation occurrences,
including a hijacking of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961,
which resulted in a crash landing in the Indian Ocean after running out of fuel, killing 125 out of the 175 persons on board.
The 767's first incident was Air Canada Flight 143, a 767-200, on July 23, 1983.
The plane ran out of fuel in-flight and had to glide for almost 49 miles to an emergency landing at Gimli, Manitoba, Canada.
There were only minor injuries and no fatalities.
The aircraft was nicknamed "Gimli Glider" after its landing site.
It continued flying for Air Canada until its retirement in January 2008.
Two 767s were involved in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.
American Airlines Flight 11, a 767-200ER, crashed into the North Tower,
killing all 92 people on board,
and United Airlines Flight 175, a 767-200, crashed into the South Tower,
with the deaths of all 65 on board.
In addition, more than 2,600 people were killed in the towers or on the ground.
Fun Fact
Interestingly, Boeing also had plans to create a partial double-decker Boeing 767.
However, airlines weren’t that interested,
so Boeing developed the 777, which will be discussed later in this video.
The 757 was introduced in 1983.
It was a twin engine, narrow-body airline.
It was 80% more fuel-efficient than the trijet 727 it was designed to replace.
It also had more power and a lower weight,
allowing it to take off from shorter runways and serve airports in hot and higher-altitude conditions with thinner air.
The 757 was designed concurrently with the 767,
so they share many of the same technological advances, including a glass cockpit.
Since the 767 and the 757 have a common flight deck, pilots trained on one plane could also fly the other.
The 757 was produced in two lengths:
The most popular, the -200 model, of which 913 units were built, is 155 ft long,
typically seating 200 passengers with a range of 4,505 miles.
The stretched -300 is 178 ft long, seats 243 passengers, and has a range of 3,913 miles.
The -300 is the longest single-aisle twinjet ever built.
The 757 also had some VIP transport,
among others the presidents of Argentina and Mexico,
the Sultan of Brunei,
the royal family of Saudi Arabia,
and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
In 2011, the latter sold his private 757 to Donald Trump,
and it became known as the “Trump Force One” during his 2016 US presidential campaign.
Production of the 757 ended in 2005.
In total, 1,050 757s were made.
Fun Fact
Boeing and Airbus are the two largest aircraft manufacturers in the world.
In 2019, Airbus took the throne as the largest aerospace company
in terms of revenue due to the 737 MAX groundings,
which we talked about in the previous episode.
In addition to Boeing’s commercial aircraft,
The Boeing Company is also one of the world’s largest defense contractors and a major service provider to NASA.
Introduced in 1995, the Triple Seven or Boeing 777
is a long-range wide-body airliner, the world's largest twinjet.
It bridges the gap between Boeing's other two wide-body airplanes,
the 767, which has two,
and the 747, which has 4 engines.
The Triple Seven was the first aircraft to be designed with substantial input from customers.
In fact, eight major airlines were involved in the development.
The eight airlines became known within Boeing as the "Working Together" group.
The 777 was also the first 100% digitally designed jetliner using 3D computer graphics,
eliminating the need for a costly full-scale mock-up.
240 design teams, with up to 40 members each,
dealt with almost 1,500 design issues with individual aircraft components.
The program cost was $5 billion.
The 777 typically has a 3-class capacity of 301 to 386 passengers,
and it can cover up to 9,845 miles.
The interior is known as the Boeing Signature Interior
and features curved panels, larger overhead bins, and indirect lighting.
The Triple Seven can be recognized by its two large-diameter turbofans,
six wheels on each main landing gear,
fully circular fuselage cross-section, and a blade-shaped tail cone.
It is the first Boeing that has fly-by-wire controls.
Its main competitors were the Airbus A340 and the McDonnell Douglas MD-11,
and as of 2021, the Airbus A350 and A330-900.
The 777 had the largest windows of any current commercial airliner until the 787.
The windows measure 15-inch by 10-inch in size.
The original 777 came in two lengths.
There was the initial -200, and there was the longer 777-300 introduced in 1998.
Both also have Extended Range versions, with the -300ER having an impressive range of 8,481 miles.
But even more impressive was the ultra-long-range 777-200LR released in 2006.
The -200LR was the world’s longest-range commercial airplane with a range of 9,845 miles!
The 777 is the most successful wide-body airliner, even more so than the 747.
Over 60 customers had ordered 2,095 of these aircraft, of which 1,678 have already been delivered.
Among its variants, the 777-300ER is the most popular, with 844 aircraft ordered.
It was also the most expensive, with a price of $375.5 million.
The 777 has been involved in 31 accidents and incidents.
There were 8 hull losses, of which 5 while in flight and 3 on the ground, and 541 fatalities.
Despite these incidents, the 777 is considered one of the safest airplanes in aviation history.
On 17 July 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, also known as MH17,
flew over eastern Ukraine and was suddenly shot down by a Russian Buk anti-aircraft missile.
It was a mistake, as the pro-Russian rebels thought it was a fighter plane.
Sadly, all 283 passengers and 15 crew members died in the deadliest airliner shootdown incident to date.
Fun Fact
In 1997, the Boeing 777-200ER, dubbed the Super Ranger,
became the record-holder of the world’s longest non-commercial non-stop flight.
It flew 21 hours straight from Seattle all the way to Kuala Lumpur.
The 717 was originally marketed by McDonnell Douglas as the MD-95,
a derivative of the DC-9 family,
but since McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing in 1997,
the airliner entered service in 1999 as the Boeing 717.
It is a twin-engine, single-aisle jet for the 100-seat market.
It has two Rolls-Royce BR715 turbofans at the rear of the body of the plane
and a range of 2,370 miles.
The 717 has a two-crew glass cockpit,
six interchangeable liquid-crystal-display units,
and advanced Honeywell VIA 2000 computer monitors.
The 717 and 737-600 were similar in overall size,
but the latter was better suited to long-distance travel,
while the 717 was lighter and preferred for shorter, regional routes.
Production of the 717 ceased in 2006.
In total, 156 of these aircraft were built.
Not to be confused with the Boeing Dreamlifter, a large cargo freighter,
the 787 Dreamliner is a wide-body twin jet airliner that took off in 2011.
It became the fastest-selling wide-body airplane in history by breaking the 1,000th order 8 years faster than the popular 777.
It can be recognized, among others, by its four-window cockpit and raked wingtips.
The 787 has a "fly-by-wire" control system similar to the Boeing 777, with multi-function LCDs.
The Dreamliner was designed for the 200-300 passenger market.
The 186 ft airplane has a range of 8,406 miles.
The 787 is approximately 20 percent more fuel-efficient than the 767,
in part due to its electrical architecture with an on-board electrical power of 1.45 megawatts,
which is five times the power available on conventional airliners.
The 787 was built, more than previous planes, with prefabricated parts from other firms.
In particular, the Japanese government supported development with an estimated $2 billion in loans.
To speed up deliveries, Boeing modified four used 747-400s into 747 Dreamlifters to transport wings,
fuselage sections, and other smaller parts for the Boeing 787.
There are three Dreamliner models.
The first is the shortest model, the 787-8, which has seats for up to 248 passengers.
The original price of the aircraft was $157 million, which is less than half of the price of the 777-300ER.
The second model, the 787-9 was introduced in 2014.
It is a bit longer, 206 ft, and can fly 8,706 miles carrying 296 passengers.
To give you an idea of how incredibly far that range is,
it can fly between Perth and Heathrow without stops at a cruising speed of 954 kilometers per hour.
In 2014, the airplane could be leased for $1.05 million per month or bought for $189 million.
The aircraft has a design life of 44,000 flight cycles.
As of 2018, the longest model was released, the 787-10.
It is 224 ft long, has 336 seats, and covers 7,284 miles.
This model aims to replace the 767-400ER.
Over the years, the price of the Dreamliners has increased significantly.
In 2019, the 787-8 was $248.5 million,
$292.5 million for a 787-9, while the 787-10 has a price of $338.4 million.
Early operations suffered from delayed deliveries.
In 2011, 3 years later than originally planned,
tickets for the 787’s 1st flight, from Tokyo to Hongkong, were sold in an online auction;
the highest bidder had paid $34,000 for a seat.
The 787 Dreamliner program has reportedly cost Boeing $32 billion.
First deliveries cost Boeing many millions more than what it earned from selling 787s.
The 787 also suffered from quality control issues,
for example fires on board due to problems with its lithium-ion batteries.
As a result, the US FAA grounded all 787s in January 2013
until it approved the revised battery design in April of that year.
It was the first time that the FAA had grounded an airliner type since 1979.
So far, the 787 has seen no fatalities or hull losses.
The 787's cabin windows are larger than any other civil air transport,
allowing passengers to maintain a view of the horizon.
The 787 also better accommodates persons with disabilities,
and passenger comfort is further improved.
An 800-passenger survey on 787 flights from Tokyo to Frankfurt showed that
showed that expectations were surpassed for 90% of passengers;
25% said they would go out of their way to again fly on the 787.
With a dispatch reliability of over 99%,
the 787 has relatively few delays due to technical issues.
Compared to the Airbus A330, it has a 6% lower operating cost per seat.
As of March 2020, 1,510 Dreamliners have been ordered,
but Boeing must sell between 1,300 and 2,000 aircraft
as the company has spent $32 billion on the development program.
Fun Fact
In 2011, a 787 flew a record-breaking distance for an airplane in its weight class,
covering an 11,894 miles flight from Seattle to Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Following refueling, the crew continued eastbound and
returned to Seattle 42 hours, 26 minutes after their initial departure,
completing the fastest around-the-world trip for the same weight class at 541 mph or 871 kph.
It was the first around-the-world speed record for this weight class.
Scheduled for 2024 is the Boeing 777X.
It is the latest series of long-range, wide-body, twin-engine jetliners in the Boeing 777 family.
It has new GE9X engines, new composite wings with folding wingtips,
greater cabin width, and seating capacity.
The new engines of the Boeing 777-9 should improve fuel consumption by 10%.
It builds on technologies from the 787.
The 777X is to come in two models: the 777-8 and the 777-9.
The -8 can carry 384 passengers and has a very impressive range of 10,046 miles,
while the -9 has 426 seats and can cover more than 8,383 miles.
In total, 320 have been ordered.
The first flight of the 777-9 was in January 2020,
but deliveries are not expected before 2024.
It truly is unbelievable how much Boeing has evolved its aircraft
since its founding in 1916.
More than a century later, the company is building some of the largest,
most advanced aircrafts in the world.
I hope you enjoyed this series.
Please leave a like if you did.
Thank you!
Subtitles done by Emir Kahvecioglu