(upbeat electronic music)
- Exciting day at Dubai Airport.
I'm out here to catch the 777X.
It's coming in momentarily for the Dubai Air Show.
(aeroplane engine revving)
(dramatic music)
Perhaps one of the biggest debut at a show at this time,
it's the 777X.
Let's go inside, check it out.
Wow.
This huge inside.
One giant cabin seating all the way to the end.
(upbeat music)
So just got inside a 777X,
quite different to what I expect.
I expect deck out interior,
first class, business class,
but it's like one giant interior,
vast interior from the front to the back.
And I'm going to check out with some of the engineering
and ask him about how the testing goes so far.
(upbeat music)
Mate, what's the station called here,
I'm sitting in with you?
- We're at the instrumentation rack
and we monitor all the flight test equipment
on the aeroplane.
- You know,
I know all the new aeroplanes needed to be tested.
What kind of tests you perform
on 777X so far?
- We test stability and performance,
break testing, engine performance.
- What sort of stability tests, you mean?
- We do stall testing, a windup turn testing,
landing performance, a hydraulic system testing.
- Lots of work ahead of certification.
- Yes.
- I've got 12 water tanks in the back of the plane.
There's another 12 in the forward part of the cabin.
They're used for balancing the aircraft
during test conditions.
We can move water from fore to aft,
one barrel at a time or all groups
using this water pump
and the plumbing that you see
that runs through the aircraft.
It helps us stay in flight longer
and test the aircraft outside of it's normal flight envelope
for a longer period of time,
allowing us to collect more test conditions
and to expedite the test programme.
So you can see
that it helps outfit the rest of this aircraft
with a big test interior.
- This is our trailing cone,
and it'll deploy out the back of the aircraft
while we're flying
to help calculate or determine the air pressure,
which will help us determine altitude and airspeed.
It's a static source
and it seems to calculate altitude air speed.
- I guess this is the perspective I can show you,
just how wide the 777X
with no interior apart from testing station.
John, what's your first impression
when you get inside a 777X?
- It's huge.
It's just, the cabin is absolutely massive.
- And I thought it was the standard width,
as the standard 777, no?
- Well actually on the outside, it is.
But one of the things that Boeing did
was to make the seats just a little bit wider
and in economy,
they actually carved out the sidewalls.
So these,
these frames underneath the insulation blankets here
are actually wider and more shallow
than they were on the 777's.
They actually put more room in the cabin across
to add more seats.
- Ahh, so they reduced the room between the panels
to the window, to the frame.
So they gave it a bit more room
so they can fit a 10 of abreast seating.
- Exactly.
Okay. So airlines like Emirates have 10 abreast now,
but I think one of the big goals
is to really add those extra inches,
so you get kind of the same sort of,
kind of comfort standard
as what you have around nine abreast.
- Just really intrigued to see the winglets
from the window outside. The wing is huge.
(upbeat music)
That's pretty cool, right?
The floating wing tip,
It's been one of the biggest feature from outside
on a 777X.
- Slowly, we brought over a lot of the architecture
from the 787 to the 777-9 or 777X flight deck.
As you can see, we have the large displays.
We have the five large displays.
They can be used to present other information.
So it's very flexible
where we can use each half of these large displays.
So this is very much like the 787.
Another feature that's like the 787
is the heads-up displays.
On this aeroplane, they are optional.
So the customer would have to select them.
on the 787, they are part of the basic design,
but we wanted to provide the option of customers
to select the HUD's or not.
As far as the overhead goes,
this is very similar to-
commonality to both 777 and 787,
the systems are still 777 legacy.
So we have the same hydraulic system,
electrical system, air system,
just like we do on the 777.
We have again,
the same layout that we would have on the 777
and the overhead,
the down below on the lower panel here,
on the lower aisle stand, we have our TCP,
which is again a Tuning Control Panel.
Again, just like the 787.
So there's a lot of commonality here in the flight deck
of the 777X with the 787 aeroplane.
- [Sam] You flew 15 hours
from Seattle Boeing Field to Dubai.
How was the handling on that flight?
It was probably the longest flight you ever did, right?
- Absolutely. Yes.
Flying here from Boeing Field to Dubai direct
was the longest flight for the 777X programme to date.
The aeroplane handled very well.
It was very comfortable.
And I think that cruise flying this aeroplane
will find very little,
no difference really
between this aeroplane and the 787,
or even the 787,
very similar in the way that they feel
in their handling qualities.
- [Sam] What are the milestones so far you achieved
in terms of flight testing?
- Well, we've, we've completed some of our initial testing
of the flight control system,
the initial phase of testing for that.
We've got additional phases coming up,
but we've got that first testing done.
We've done a handful of other types of testing,
more than a handful of brakes testing
and a number of different other testing.
Right now, we're doing some testing in Florida
with the aeroplane as well.
So we're making good progress on the flight test programme.
- [Sam] The folding windshield,
where do you deploy the folding windshield,
only on the runway
or you can you deploy also in the air or not?
- No.
So the, the switch itself is right here.
It's in the fold position here
and you can see that it says folded,
when the aeroplane approaches the runway
and we have designated spots
for where the wingtips can be extended.
Then the crew would pull this knob
and push and rotate it into the extend position.
At that point,
when the wing tips are extended,
it'll show green and it'll say extended.
- So, mainly it's on the runway?
- Yes, just prior to the runway,
just prior to taking to the runway.
And we do have a checklist
that captures whether that's been completed or not
to make sure that we complete all of the checklist items
to include getting the folding wingtips extended.
- So I'm standing underneath the fuselage,
it's really, really long,
76.7 metres, or more than 250 feet.
So it makes it the longest 777.
And I think it's also the longest Boeing aeroplane
they have produced.
This is the 777X engine, GE9X.
What's interesting is
this engine is rated only up to 110,000 pounds,
which is 5,000 pounds less
than the predecessor of 777, 300ER GE90,
because they claim the engine is 10% more efficient.
So they don't need as much as process,
the old engine has.
(upbeat electronic music)
Everyone knows the 777X has some delay,
just want to find out,
when you think the aeroplane
can be delivered to an airline?
- Right now the plan is
we're going to deliver by the end of 2023,
and we're on schedule to hit that.
So we've got four flight test aircraft,
all of them have flown,
all of them are in testing.
And so we're moving along really well
on the developmental phase of the testing,
which is Boeing going through everything we can
on the aircraft
and ensuring it's as complete and ready as we can.
Then we proceed into certification.
And that finishes before the end of 2023.
- But you know,
COVID hit the wide body market really hard.
- It did.
- You know, what are your hopes now?
You're not going to make any more sales for a while,
I guess?
- So COVID depressed the entire aviation industry
up to 90% drop off in traffic at the worst of it.
And it disproportionately will hit long haul international
as long as for company.
So we've already seen domestics come back
pre 2019 levels in some cases,
regional will recover next.
And the long haul international business
is going to be the last to come back.
So that certainly has slowed down demand
for aircraft at this scale.
But what it does mean,
it's sort of a silver lining
to a very unfortunate situation is
we're in a position to start to deliver this aircraft
right at the time the market needs
new, large, efficient, wide body aircraft.
So among other things,
the pandemic's accelerated the retirement
of the 47 passenger aircraft at 380.
And it will start to bring out
some of the older 777 380R's.
777-9 will enter the market at exactly the right time
and position to help replace all those aircrafts.
- That was a quick tour of the 777X.
Certainly, it was the media's attention
at the air show here.
I can't wait to fly on it in 2023.