By Jeremy Dwyer-Lindgren / Published June 27, 2014 / Photos by author
Boeing’s iconic 747 jumbo jet will celebrate a major milestone as the 1,500th airplane is delivered to Lufthansa on Saturday. It is the first wide-body aircraft ever to hit the fifteen-hundred mark, forty-five years after it first took flight in 1969.
The aircraft is a 747-8 Intercontinental, representing the latest iteration of the queen of the skies. First flown in 2011, the new -8 features a substantial redesign of its wings, fresh cabin features, and brand new engines. The intention, when the program was launched back in November 2005, was to breathe new life into an already successful program, allowing customers to replace aging 747-400s with something bigger and better, while providing a viable alternative to Airbus’ ultra-huge A380. Given the incredible success of the 747 program to date, it seemed like the 747-8 would be a surefire way of seeing the program go onto even greater feats.
Yet Saturday’s achievement is widely believed to be the last major production mile-marker the jet will pass. Orders have slowed to a trickle, and production has been reset to match, with the factory pumping out a mere one and a half jets per month. The current order backlog, combined with current production rates, would extend the line through late in the decade, when it is rumored the last jets off the line could become the new Air Force One fleet, replacing earlier generation 747-200s built in 1990.
Thus conversation surrounding the 1,500th airplane feels more like a celebration of a life well lived, rather than the latest jewel in a fast-growing crown. In short, despite the airplane set to fly away tomorrow being brand new inside and out, it somehow feels old.
Not your mother’s 747…
Eric Lindblad, however, doesn’t want to hear it.
“I have to be honest, I get a little tired of the rhetoric around the 747-8 being an old aircraft,” he says. “[People discredit] the capability of this aircraft without really taking time to understand what the aircraft is capable of doing.”
If anyone knows what the airplane is capable of, it would be Lindblad. He’s been the Vice President and General Manager of the 747 Program since he took the reins in March of 2013. During the previous 27 years with Boeing, he’s also been the director of the airplane’s wing engineering, and later of manufacturing. In short, he knows his way around the queen of the skies.
“This is not your mother’s 747,” says Lindblad, perhaps a reference to the relatively young age of the handful of us journalists inside the glass-enclosed conference room overlooking the 747 factory floor. He later adds “If you take time to look under the hood and take time to understand this aircraft, the fact that it’s 16% better [than the -400]; that’s a huge number. You don’t get an improvement of 16% without doing something substantially different.”
So what exactly is new under the hood? For one, the airplane has a new wing. In case you thought otherwise, new wings are a big deal; this isn’t something a couple of guys accomplish over a few breakfast sessions at Denny’s. New airfoil tech, raked wingtips, and advanced aluminum alloys reduce weight and optimize efficiency. Since its introduction, Lindblad says additional aerodynamic clean-ups have taken place, and the company continues to look for opportunities to suction away more weight. The changes are so expansive that the wing has more in common with Boeing’s ultra-high-tech 787 Dreamliner than it does with its predecessor, the 747-400.
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The high tech design of the jet, that it has more similarities to the 787 than to the previous 747 iteration, is a theme Lindblad hits hard. The other major change? New engines. Gone are the -400ER engines that airlines presently love to hate. They’ve been replaced by General Electrics’ GEnx-2B. Says Lindblad: “Everyone refers to the 787 GE-GENX engine as being the most fuel efficient, state of the art engine out there, but the reality is the 747 uses the same engine, and one iteration newer than that.” A recent upgrade to the engine package produced a further 1.8% in fuel efficiency, which translates into $1 million in additional annual fuel savings, Lindblad said.
The flight deck faces a similar situation. Upgraded flight management systems and better displays, again more similar to the 787, continue to improve upon performance and reliability (Lindblad is quick to note the airplane has a 98.9% dispatch reliability, better, he says, than the A380). The interior has taken a decided bent in the direction of the company’s popular Sky Interior, found on the 737 and 787 programs, with mood lighting and more passenger friendly overhead bins.
Perhaps most importantly at this stage in the game, Boeing has continued to take opportunities to improve on the airframe. The company reports that airplanes coming off the line today, such as the 747-8i and 747-8 freighter resting below us, are 9,000 pounds lighter than when it entered service. The weight, Lindblad says, was gleaned off additional margin that could be removed from basic structures. The airplane is also 3.5% more fuel efficient, says Boeing. Much of that change came from a combination of aerodynamic improvements and engine upgrades.
Further changes could include clean-up opportunities on the engine chevrons, and tail fairings that can be optimized. Lindblad also said it was studying a new package that could enable the airplane to extend its range to 8,200 miles from any airport on any day of the year, citing Dubai-Los Angeles as an example (don’t read too much into it, Lindblad says “we don’t have anything specific with any of the Middle Eastern customers that we can talk about)”.
“So, as I mentioned,” says Lindblad, “I get a little tired about the rhetoric about this being the old 747…it’s a much, much improved aircraft.”
And yet…
You’d think that an airplane that is so much better, compared not only to its extremely popular predecessor but also, supposedly, to its competitors, would be a hot sell. But that hasn’t been the case. Instead, the 747-8 order book has remained nearly frozen for the past few years, growing at a glacial pace with a handful of single-digit aircraft commitments. The most recent order came in February 2014, from freight-carrier Cargolux, for a single jet. Last year the airplane clocked only 17 orders total, compared to a few hundred for Boeing’s 787. The year before that, zero.
A number of items have conspired to work against the airplane since it was announced in 2006. First: the economy. The airplane launched not long before the global economic crisis, and took flight during the post-recession recovery. Those years, between 2007 and 2011, were hardly friendly to global aviation industry. With airlines slashing jobs, purging older airplanes, forgoing ordering new ones, and in some cases folding altogether, the industry was looking for ways to shed costs – and fast.
That has, in part, resulted in airlines ditching four-engined long-haul jets in favor of airplanes with only two. While the -8 may be 16% more fuel-efficient than its increasingly unpopular older sibling, it still has four engines. As simple math would tell you, four engines, even state-of-the-art ones, burn more fuel than two. And in today’s market there’s more high performance, high capacity twin-engine wide-body jets for the 747-8 to compete with than ever before: the Boeing 777X and 787; Airbus’ A350 and potentially an A330neo are all out there. It hasn’t helped that the only other four-engine passenger jet available today—Airbus’ A380—had a five-year head start on the refreshed passenger jumbo jet market, giving it a virtual lock, though it has not sold especially well either.
It is true that most of the aforementioned twin-jets don’t necessarily compete directly. But with travelers still preferring more flight options between cities rather than less (thus spreading the pool of daily traffic per plane thinner), airlines have found the slightly smaller twin-jets more cost effective. As range capabilities of two engine jets are catching up to, and in some cases already exceed, that of four engine jets, the lock the former once had on ultra-long haul flying becomes weaker by the month.
Worse, twins continue to erode the one jewel the 747 has left: the ability to carry a ton of people. Case in point: Boeing’s own 777X. The new twin-jet is set to overlap with the -8 in seating capacity, thus providing a similar people-moving capability for a far more cost-effective price. And it would appear airlines buy into that logic: The 777X, still years away from production, has already sold nearly twice what the 747-8 has.
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Thus the 777X is seen by many in the industry as being the final nail in the 747’s coffin. Lindblad doesn’t necessarily agree that it’s that simple, though he concedes there are “more choices on the lower end of the passenger count of the 747[than there used to be].” While he admits some cannibalization is possible, he argues that the two airplanes still fill uniquely different roles. As he explains it, it comes down to density: while the two might overlap, the shared space would represent the upper capacity limit for a 777X, probably close to an all-coach layout. The 747-8, Linbald says, would be at the lower end of its capacity and thus likely be loaded with high-paying first and business-class passengers.
And therein lies one of the current key marketing factors for the -8i going forward. Says Lindblad, “[it’s a] revenue generator with premium routes. It’s not entirely about seat count, you have to […] take into account [the nose], and the upper deck. You can really configure the airplane to make that your first class, your high-end business class, and improve your overall yields.”
Lindbald says the premium cabin factor draws a lot of interest from customers, adding that “the 747 is an iconic aircraft, and [the airlines] like the idea of keeping it as a flagship.” So far, though, only four passenger airlines have taken the bait: Air China, Korean Air, Lufthansa, and Transaero. Some of the deals, such as a deal with Cathay Pacific cargo, involved buy-backs of older -400s. Others, such as Air China, were part of bigger packages that included other new Boeing jets.
Of the four, only Lufthansa operates the jet. That will change this year, however, as Air China and Korean are both expected to take their first deliveries.
Still, what looks to be a litany of long odds doesn’t appear to bother Lindblad, who says he remains “optimistic” about the airplane’s future sales. “We have a number of campaigns that are in work right now,” he says; talks that the company is working “very diligently to close.”
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Whether or not his team can close one of those deals in time to make a splash at the 2014 Farnborough Airshow, now only a few weeks away, is unclear. Lindblad wouldn’t rule out any announcements at the show, which typically sees airlines book billions in orders, but was cautious about expecting any magic. “Whether […] we’ve got a firm agreement that we can announce, we’ll see at the airshow.”
Predictably, Lindblad would not disclose who the company is having talks with, saying only that they “try every customer we can possibly think of to interest them in a 747-8.” That includes the US Airforce, which is expected to soon begin soliciting bids for new Air Force One jets, to which Lindbald says he “just can’t imagine not seeing a US president flying around in a 747-8”.
Either way, the majority of future sales are likely to be for the cargo version of the jet. Boeing predicts global cargo demand to rise out of its several-year-long slump in 2016 (though it has been forecasting a just-around-the-bend recovery for several years now). Should such a bounce back to sustained growth materialize, Lindblad says “the freighter has a distinct advantage” over competitors with its hinged nose door, allowing for large and uniquely sized cargo other airplanes just can’t carry. That leaves the plane in a class all its own, he says. And exempting the elusive Antonov 124 heavy-lift jets, he’s right; the 747-8 freighter has no direct competitor.
For now, though, the airplane that made long-haul air travel what it is today remains teetering on the brink of retirement, unsure if it still has a place in today’s world. As for Lindbald, his confidence doesn’t waver: “Our sales team has been really, really aggressive with sharing what the 747 is capable of doing, and I expect it to pay dividends,” he says. “We expect to be building 747-8s for quite a bit longer.”
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Contact the author at Jeremy.Lindgren@Airchive.com
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