Word: planes
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...worldwide to do the heavy lifting and take exposure for the $10 billion project onto their books. Boeing has taken risks with new materials and technologies and fashioned the Dreamliner into something that beleaguered airlines and their passengers might actually enjoy. Analysts say the 787 might be the first plane that passengers actually choose to fly because of new interior amenities, such as more pressurization, more humidity, bigger windows, more room as well as a lower carbon footprint per seat. That hits a sweet spot with airlines when coupled with savings in operations and maintenance costs...
Airbus' counterstroke to the Dreamliner is a bigger (average 314 seats), more technologically advanced, fuel-efficient A350, an "Xtra Wide-Body" plane planned for rollout in 2013. The goal is to compete with the Dreamliner for new business while rendering the economics of Boeing's transoceanic 777 obsolete. Boeing is already headed for a larger plane, the 787-10, a potential 320-seater, primarily because of demand from airlines like Dubai-based Emirates and Australia's Qantas Airways...
Analyst Aboulafia offers this blunt assessment: "It's probably the single biggest mistake in aviation history. Even if the development program weren't technically botched, you still have the problem that it's just the wrong plane." Boeing expects to deliver its revamped 747-8 in 2010, costing about $4 billion to develop and probably priced at about $292 million, vs. about $319 million for the competing A380...
Bombardier and ATR figured out how to quiet the beast, although the Q400's 15-second drone on takeoff caused a recent flyer to initially doubt the improved 76-seater. Once the plane is cruising, though, Bombardier's noise-and-vibration-reduction system (cousin to technology used in submarines) monitors sound levels through microphones inside the plane walls. A computer initiates vibrations through special absorbers to counter those from the propellers, reducing the resonance of the airframe and hushing the cabin about 4 db quieter than many jets. ATR upgraded its four-blade propeller to a six-blade fiber-composite...
...there was the general, traveling secretly by special plane to Abu Dhabi to meet Bhutto in late July at one of the royal palaces and talk about sharing power--a meeting that both continue to deny. It was an act of desperation by a man the U.S. has long regarded as an irreplaceable ally in the war on terrorism. Opinion polls show that the majority of Pakistanis want Musharraf out, and his crude attempts to control the judiciary have backfired and created new foes. Taken together, these factors could undermine his bid to extend his rule beyond his current tenure...