Boeing hints at mid-market aircraft elements

Boeing will leverage technology from the Boeing 777 and 787 when pulling together the design for its proposed middle of the market aircraft (MMA), Boeing VP and GM-airplane development Mike Delaney said at the Paris Air Show June 20.

The new aircraft, if it goes ahead, will use “proven technology to create crossover economics,” according to Delaney’s presentation. Boeing is under pressure from several airlines, especially the US majors, to develop a direct replacement for the 757 single-aisle aircraft.

Delaney was tantalizingly vague on many aspects of the new aircraft. A slide from his presentation, for example, made reference to a “hybrid cross-section”; pressed on whether this referred to a physical fuselage width somewhere between current single- and twin-aisle types, he fell back on the phrase “It’s a geometry that enables single-aisle economics with twin-aisle comfort,” without explaining further.

Several other factors that Boeing is looking at as part of its “baseline configuration study” for the MMA include:

• A fifth-generation wing;
• next-gen super-efficient propulsion;
• 2nd century digital architecture;
• extensive use of composites;
• 777/787 re-use; and
• design concurrent with future production system.

Delaney touched on several aspects of current models that apparently Boeing would like to emulate in the new design. He noted, for example, the 787’s point-to-point capability to open up or sustain longer, thinner sectors. “Over 150 new, nonstop markets have been connected with the 787 and five to 10 more city pairs are being created each month.”

Boeing, he said, would “put 787 technology into the MMA market space.”

The company had “learned an enormous amount” between the initial 787-8 and the advent of the larger -9, he said. It had then gone on to create the 777X wing, which had done much in “optimizing for flow.”

Work was already underway in building key parts for the MMA in the company’s computers, he added.