Boeing's new Dreamliner plant in South Carolina was found to be retaliation for union strikes by the National Labor Relations Board, an independent agency (
On Point radio show).
That's prompted Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) to launch an all-out
war on the NRLB according to Dahlia Lithwick.
(
Previously.)
posted by klangklangston
on Aug 19, 2011 -
78 comments
Boeing are currently testing the latest version of their venerable Jumbo Jet, the 747-8. Yesterday, in one of the last test flights prior to certification the new 747 flew for 17 hours, a distance of over 11,000 miles. The flight path can be seen
here.
[more inside]
posted by jontyjago
on Aug 3, 2011 -
27 comments
The biggest mistake people make when talking about the outsourcing of U.S. jobs by U.S. companies is to treat it as a moral issue. Sure, it's immoral to abandon your loyal American workers in search of cheap labor overseas. But the real problem with outsourcing, if you don't think it through, is that it can wreck your business and cost you a bundle.
Case in point:
Boeing Co. and its 787 Dreamliner.
Boeing can't say it wasn't warned. As early as 2001, L.J. Hart-Smith, a Boeing senior technical fellow, produced a
prescient analysis projecting that
excessive outsourcing would raise Boeing's costs and steer profits to its subcontractors.
[previously]
posted by ennui.bz
on Feb 18, 2011 -
58 comments
21st Century Jet: The Building of the 777 (part 1 of 5) In the early 90's, Boeing decided to build a new airplane, the 777. They also decided to allow KCTS Television and Channel Four London to film the design, construction, and testing of the new airliner. This 5-hour documentary, first aired in 1996, is no longer shown on TV, and out of print on VHS, but you can now watch it on Google Videos.
[more inside]
posted by FishBike
on Dec 18, 2009 -
20 comments
Bob Bogash's diatribe spells out the saga of a corporate trainwreck regarding the Boeing 787 widebody project, his
readers responding with a slew of theories.
Bob, incidentally, was a manager at Boeing's commercial group. The Boeing 787 rollout was celebrated in 2007 right here on
MeFi when the prototype was rolled out. Two years later the plane remains grounded with development costs approaching $10 billion, and Boeing announced further
setbacks in a conference call yesterday.
The
hobbyists and pros and the
press weigh in on the news. Bob's site not only addresses the 787 program but raises larger questions about oblique technical and management dichotomies in America's Fortune 500 board rooms.
posted by crapmatic
on Jul 23, 2009 -
44 comments
Hiding in "plane" sight. Images and details of the significant efforts made by the United States to prevent the Japanese from bombing our west coast aircraft factories. I wonder what this effort would take today to "fool" Google Maps/Earth.
[more inside]
posted by hrbrmstr
on Jun 8, 2009 -
15 comments
Today Boeing completed the
first test flight of a commercial jet-liner using a mix of conventional jet-fuel and a fuel created from algae and the african weed
jatropha. Boeing hopes that biofueled flights will be common in
just three years.
posted by Artw
on Jan 8, 2009 -
28 comments
An interesting project from the latest Vectors Journal.
"Legend has it that Paglen, who has been called the Fox Mulder of cultural geography, was personally instrumental in provoking the military to extend the perimeter around Area 51 by several miles in an attempt to thwart one of his counter-surveillance efforts" [via]
posted by tellurian
on Feb 16, 2007 -
5 comments
All things
737: aircraft
systems, pilots'
notes, deliveries and fleet
movements, production
methods, technical
photographs, blended
winglets, rudder
news, illustrated
history, accident
reports, Q's and
A's. Know it all? Take the
quiz.
posted by breezeway
on Apr 27, 2005 -
19 comments
Everything's bigger in Toulouse. The
world's biggest plane has started rolling off assembly lines and is expected to take its first flight in March 2005. The quarter-billion-dollar, twin-deck, four-aisle plane can carry 555 passengers. Thanks to its design's outsized wings, future versions of the
economical plane may carry as many as 800 passengers.
With the A380,
Airbus hopes to do to Boeing what Boeing did to its competitors over 30 years ago with the 747. Already, Airbus Industrie has
outsold and out-delivered Boeing for the last two years. But don't boycott just yet! It turns out the A380 is
51% American-made. Parts are so big they don't fit in this
whale-like record-size
transporter (though this
Russian monster may have a
claim); they are transported to Toulouse on a
barge.
More pics. Let's hope this latest high-tech aerospace gamble does better than
the last one.
Europe, of course (troll alert), already makes the world's
biggest truck, the
fastest trains, the
best cars (sorry Japan), and the
most successful rocket launchers.
On a darker topic,
10 years ago, French commandos boarded an Airbus and killed Islamic terrorists planning to fly it into the Eiffel Tower.
posted by Turtle
on Dec 26, 2004 -
63 comments
It has been four years since the dot-coms crashed, sweeping ideas like mylacky.com, pets.com and kozmo.com into the circular file. The remaining survivors have been remarkably successful.
Google owns the search space and has redefined web mail.
Orbitz and
Expedia take most of the pain out of travel planning and reservations.
Tenzing has spent close to half a decade pushing for
IFE certification for
Linux. Once properly certified, they built a system light enough, cheap enough, and reliable enough for installation aboard
aircraft. All this effort just so you can
read email the next time you travel by air. Aerospace giant
Boeing is hard at work on a
similar product but their demonstration is far more
limited than start-up Tenzing's. (no, not
that Tenzing)
posted by b1tr0t
on Oct 15, 2004 -
12 comments
On 1 July 2002 at 21:35:32 hrs a collision between a Tupolev TU154M, which was on a flight from
Moscow/Russia to Barcelona/ Spain, and a Boeing B757-200, on a flight from Bergamo/Italy to Brussels/
Belgium, occurred north of the city of Ueberlingen (Lake of Constance). Investigation Report as of May 2004, PDF. Very detailed, intelligibly written.
71 people were killed in one of Europe's worst peacetime air accidents. The report comes the the conclusion that human error was the main cause. The
TCAS system (PDF) which should have prevented the collision worked, but the Tupolew crew followed the ATC instructions.
It turned out that the air traffic controller missed a key warning on his radar screen in one of a chain of errors.
ATCs from nearby airports realized what was going on but weren't able to contact the responsible
Skyguide controller
because the telephone network did not work:
the main telephone line was switched off because of work being done on the telephone network, and the collision warning system was temporarily shut down for maintenance.
The ATC in charge was
stabbed to death in February 2004 by a Russian man
who lost his wife, son and daughter in the plane crash.
posted by tcp
on Jul 1, 2004 -
9 comments
I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't even play one on TV. But every once in a while, I run across the website of one of these individuals that, in its own way,
at least appears to make sense. Using photos from the US Army, the DOD and the US Marine Corps., this English translation of a French site asks, "Can
you find the Boeing 757 that 'crashed' into the Pentagon on 9/11/01?"
[Linked page scrolls to the right, not down as one might expect...]
posted by JollyWanker
on Oct 27, 2003 -
28 comments
Buy a Flight Manual, Get a Grand Jury Subpoena? A guy qualified to fly and instruct on the Boeing 737 buys a CD on Ebay that contains the ground course for the same plane. Then the FBI gets involved, and, courtesy of section 501 (d) of the "USA Patriot Act", he can no longer even discuss the issue. [more inside]
posted by Irontom
on Dec 23, 2002 -
24 comments
Remember the missing boeing? Well, the man behind that revelation has now come out with a book that will blow all previous conspiracy theories out of the water. (and by conspiracy theories i don't mean 9/11 - but also who shot JFK, etc). Interesting way to get rich.
posted by dabitch
on Mar 18, 2002 -
18 comments
Lockheed Martin beat out Boeing for a
$200 Billion contract to build the new
F-35 fighters jets earlier today. Missile defense, planes that can take off vertically, bombs that fry electronics...military technology is accelerating at a really frightening pace.
posted by catatonic
on Oct 26, 2001 -
36 comments
Boeing's Memo to bin Laden Here's a little PowerPoint presentation making its way around the defense industry. A memo (supposedly) from Boeing's CEO, to Osama bin Laden discussing bin Laden's interest in Boeing's 757 and 767 commercial airliners and Boeing's desire to do a demonstration of some of their non-commercial products for Mr. bin Laden. It's summed up pretty nicely, Don't bother making an appointment for the demo, we'll just drop in.
posted by billman
on Oct 18, 2001 -
13 comments
Boeing is upping the chance you'll be able to surf while you fly.. Question is: will more of these devices also mean a lower price?
posted by jackstark
on Jun 12, 2001 -
9 comments
Boeing chooses Chicago for new corporate headquarters. This, despite O'Hare's growing reputation for cancellations and delays, and the gridlocked
politics that prevent a near-term solution to the air transportation problems in Chicago.
posted by ktheory
on May 10, 2001 -
10 comments
Boeing's new boat will be able to fly 6,000 nautical to 10,000 nautical miles nonstop which means it could circle the earth having to only refuel twice. The linked page includes a nice rendering of what the plane will look like
(with concords permanently grounded, boeing might actually pull this off)
posted by Zebulun
on Apr 30, 2001 -
16 comments
