United Continental to spend $550 million on upgrades – Cleveland Plain Dealer
More talk about United’s product enhancement plans.

Qantas A380: Rolls-Royce Eats Crow, May Replace Dozens of Engines – BNET Headwinds
The problems with Rolls Royce engines on the A380 continue to get worse. It now looks like a lot of engines are going to need to be replaced.

In the Trenches: Dealing with an Unhappy Client – Intuit Small Business Blog
There’s nothing worse than an unhappy client . . . unless it’s actually your fault. Then the key becomes figuring out how to fix the problem.

Boeing 787 Fire Likely to Delay Deliveries — Again – BNET Headwinds
The 787 inflight fire has proven to be a nightmare for Boeing. The test program is grounded and delays up to another year are possible.

Airline Capacity Jumped in October, but It’s Not Sparking a Fare War — Yet – BNET Headwinds
October capacity was up, but that doesn’t mean we can expect fares to go down.

Why Airlines and Online Travel Agents Fight – BNET Headwinds
American and Orbitz are fighting – here’s a little background on why airlines and online travel agents fight.

American and Orbitz Fight to the Death – BNET Headwinds
Now it’s time to talk about the actual fight between American and Orbitz.

Way back in 2005, Northwest ordered 18 787-8 airplanes for delivery during 2008-2010. As we all know, the 787 has suffered through 3,483,048 different delays. The Northwest order should have been mostly delivered by now, but Boeing hasn’t delivered a single 787 airplane to anyone yet. That delay combined with Northwest’s merger with Delta put the order in limbo.

There was only speculation until Delta released in its most recent 10-Q that it would defer delivery until the 2020-2022 timeframe. Seriously? I’ve seen deferrals, but that looks more like a cancellation to me. “Let’s just push this thing out and maybe Boeing will forget about it,” right?

So why bother deferring that far and not just cancelling? We don’t know the details of the contract, but Delta might not have had the option to cancel. Of course, with the constant delays, that makes any cancellation easier. But my guess is that Delta is positioning itself to switch to another variant when it becomes available.

The 787-8 is the smaller of the two long haul versions of the 787 (forget about the short-haul 787-3 designed for the Japanese market). It is expected to seat about 225 people in a three-class configuration while the 787-9 would seat 280. What many airlines are interested in is the often-discussed 787-10 which would seat over 300. This version hasn’t been launched primarily because Boeing wants to protect the 777-200 from cannibalization. That’s not showing to be the best plan.

Airbus has the A350-1000 which will seat upwards of 350. That’s easy for Airbus to do since there is no real existing offering to compete with the 777. But by delaying the 787-10, Boeing runs the risk of losing orders to Airbus (as it did with United when it opted for the 787 and A350 to fit its needs). Besides, it’s not like anyone is really ordering the 777-200 anymore. Most of the growth is in the 777-300.

So my guess here is that Delta is holding out hope that the 787-10 gets launched at some point in the next decade. Then it can switch its orders to the larger airplane and still be in a prime spot for delivery when it’s ready for the airplanes. This is all speculation of course, but it seems the most likely scenario.

If you’re like me, you look to Jon Ostrower for all things Boeing (and Airbus, for that matter). So when he put out a link to an article entitled “How will 787′s new materials fare in a crash landing?” and called it a must-read, I listened.

In the article Dominic Gates explains a a huge problem that Boeing found in computer simulations back in 2005. In effect, an accident that might be survivable in a 777 would likely kill everyone on board the 787, as designed at the time.

There’s no question that composite materials act differently than metal. Instead of bending, they shatter. So while a 777 performing its best imitation of a belly flop would see its fuselage crumple, the passenger floor would stay intact. In addition, passengers would face 15g’s at the peak of the deceleration. Up to 20g’s is survivable.

The 787 as designed in 2005, however, would shatter and the floor would cave-in. In addition, people would face a deadly 25g’s of force. That ain’t good.

Of course, this is all just in a computer simulation, but the threat was real. Boeing has changed the design and addressed the issue to the point where they say it should be just as safe in the 787 as it is in the 777, but what else do we not know?

They’re obviously not going to go crashing a few airplanes to find out everything that could go wrong. That’s way to expensive, even if you could do it without people onboard. So they’ll keep doing computer simulations and hope that can accurately depict how composites will behave.

Sure, composites have been in use for a long time as fuselage, but primarily only in military aircraft which face much fewer cycles and different types of usage. It’s a different animal.

Maybe I’m just paranoid. You can call it “Comet-itis.” Back in the early days of pressurized travel, the de Havilland Comet came to the forefront as the first commercially viable jet. Unfortunately, soon after it went into service, planes started falling out of the sky. It took them awhile before they realized that the square windows were creating stress cracks in the skin, and each accident was caused by explosive depressurization and instant death.

Eventually, they switched to oval windows and strengthened the skin, but this all came about because they didn’t fully understand how the metal would react under constant pressurizing and unpressurizing.

There’s no question that the testing is more extensive for the 787 and the use of computers will help tremendously, but I always find myself wondering what we don’t know that we’ll only find out when the airplane goes into service. I’m not afraid, but I am keeping my fingers crossed.

[Original photos via Boeing and RushAS]

Flying from Houston to Auckland is not something you’d expect to see from an airline. I mean, Continental’s marriage partner United dropped LA to Auckland years ago, so Houston – Auckland? Sounds insane.

But is it really? Houston is a huge operation for Continental and it provides one stop service to Auckland for many places around the midwest and south that can’t get there today. In addition, as a Star Alliance member, Continental can feed people into the Air New Zealand network in Auckland, so there are good opportunities on both sides.

So if it sounds so good, why wasn’t it flown before? It wasn’t really an option. Sure, you could have slapped a 747 on the route, but that’s a huge airplane and it would have bled badly.

A 767 might be the right size, but you’ll inconveniently run out of gas somewhere over the vast Pacific. That’s probably not a sound business strategy.

Enter the 787. This bad boy gives you 747 range in a 767 body. So routes like Houston to Auckland become possible when they really weren’t an option before.

Now why the heck is Continental announcing this so early? It probably is looking to drum up merger support. After all, it does say in the release:

On May 3, Continental announced that it has agreed to merge with United Airlines in a merger of equals to create the world’s leading airline. The success of the Houston-Auckland route will be enhanced by the additional traffic flows through Houston that are expected to result from the merger.

So I suppose there’s no guarantee that this will ever start, but I’d like to think it will. Hopefully this will be a good example of what we can look forward to when more 787s start flying. Smaller cities will be able to have nonstop flights to cities that previously wouldn’t have been considered or even possible. That’s a great thing.

[Original photo via Flickr user geoftheref]

Southwest Fail: Technical Delays Frustrate WestJet’s New Boss – BNET
WestJet is not happy that it’s taken Southwest so long to get its act together regarding the announced codeshare. Looks like their eyes are straying toward Delta.

Bend Not Break: Boeing 787 Passes Wing Load Test – BNET
It wasn’t as dramatic as the 777 wing snap, but the 787 passed the wing load test with flying colors.

American Airlines Seeks Air Supremacy in New York (With JetBlue’s Help) – BNET
This is my take on what American is up to in New York – a complementary piece to my JetBlue-focus here on Cranky.

United’s new Boeing 777 to have video-on-demand – Chicago Tribune
The Trib picked up on my United 777 story, and I had a couple comments to add.

Airline Baggage Fees: The Perils of Making Air Travel Suck More – BNET
Airlines that charge bag fees like to crow about the revenue bump, but they don’t talk much about the hidden costs of the policy. Oh yeah, and that whole customer dissatisfaction thing.

Airline Capacity Cuts Slow in December, Some Carriers See Growth – BNET
December traffic numbers show some interesting trends.

United Pushes International Presence with Muddled Marketing Message in Denver Fight – BNET
United is heading back to its Independence Air playbook in its fight in Denver.

Boeing’s Loss of 787-3 Orders is Good News – BNET
When is a canceled order a good thing? When it allows Boeing to walk away from the 787-3.

Sean Menke Leaves Frontier Airlines, This Can’t Be Good – BNET
Sean Menke is leaving Frontier and Republic, and that doesn’t bode well for the airline.

Take a look at that wing flex. Pretty crazy, huh? The 787 doesn’t look nearly as mean as it did in its initial renderings, but it’s still a very nice-looking airplane. Those massive Rolls Royce engines do seem disproportional to the body though. (GE ones begin testing soon.) Then again, they need those bad boys to save gas and fly further.

Fortunately, it didn’t just take to the air, but it also came back down and landed safely. The flight lasted only about 3 hours; it was cut short due to weather. This is just the beginning of a long road ahead. First deliveries to launch customer ANA are still probably a year away.

If you didn’t see the live webcast from Boeing or the countless images from the media, take a look at this video of the flight from David at AirlineReporter.com.

If you really want to follow the details, you have to follow FlightBlogger. He has plenty of videos and info over there.

Congratulations to all those who have worked on this airplane around the globe. It must be an incredible feeling to see your work take flight.