***(Start Quote)***

Boeing admits new plane will guzzle fuel

BY BEN WEBSTER, TRANSPORT CORRESPONDENT

BOEING has agreed that its new high-speed plane would use more fuel than
existing airliners but said there was “plenty of fossil fuel still around”.
The Sonic Cruiser will burn up to 35 per cent more fuel than other planes in
order to accelerate to just below the speed of sound (760mph).

The American aviation company accepted that the extra fuel would increase
carbon emissions but said the environmental price was worth paying to save time
for busy executives. The new delta-wing jet, which Boeing expects will enter
service between 2006 and 2008, is likely to be filled with business
executives prepared to pay a premium to shave an hour off transatlantic flights
and
five hours off the London-Sydney journey.

The aviation industry has accepted an estimate by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change that commercial jets are responsible for 3.5 per cent of
man-made climate change. With air travel likely to double by 2015, aviation’s
contribution to global warming is set to rise significantly.

Harry Stonecipher, Boeing’s vice-chairman, said the environment was “darned
important” and admitted that his company’s plans to burn more fuel on Sonic
Cruisers did not sit comfortably with the global energy shortage.

He added: “There is plenty of fossil fuel still around.” He suggested that
Airbus, Boeing’s European competitor, was jumping on a bandwagon by repeatedly
referring to environmental concerns in its presentation at the Paris Air
Show.

Asked why he had made no mention of the environment in his speech at the
show, Mr Stonecipher said: “If I didn’t jump on the environmental bandwagon as
fast as I should have, then I apologise.”

Airbus said its own new plane, the A380 superjumbo which will carry at least
555 passengers, would use 35 per cent less fuel per passenger than the Sonic
Cruiser, which may seat as few as 100 people.

Boeing did not challenge Airbus’s estimate, but said that in comparison with
the average passenger jet, the Sonic Crusier would use 15 to 20 per cent
more fuel.

Noël Forgeard, the chief executive of Airbus, criticised Boeing for
accepting the increase in fuel consumption “so lightly”. “I am surprised
because more
fuel burn means more pollution,” he said. “Environmental considerations are
a major driving force in the design of our aircraft. It comes second only to
safety and economics.”

M Forgeard said Airbus believed that the environment was a higher priority
than speed. Boeing insists that the Sonic Crusier does have some environmental
benefits, with the location of the engines on the delta wing designed to
deflect noise upwards. Mr Stonecipher said the new jet would be “quieter than
any plane flying today”.

Alan Mulally, chief executive of Boeing’s commercial aircraft division,
said: “People are worried about the one little question about fuel burn, but if
you can offer speed and range, then the Sonic Crusier is a clear winner.”

British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have expressed strong interest in buying
Sonic Cruisers. The greater speed means the airlines may be able to squeeze
one extra transatlantic flight a day out of one plane, with huge efficiency
gains.


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Given the current oil price, given that oil producers are in no hurry to reduce oil prices, given that more and more oil exploration is in areas of great difficulty to exploit and given that an emissions tax on air travel is very widely supported in some areas I think Boeing sound a bit complacent on this issue.

Is it anti-social to care about the environment and want to have more efficient energy utilisation? Whether people like it or not, the world is not capable of sustaining current energy wastage and pollution levels. This is not an Airbus-Boeing thing, it's about trying to at least salvage something of the planet we live on, air travel should take this seriously and get it's act together before countries just impose a huge emissions tax on them.

The existing emissions requirements are still pretty generous and need to be reduced. The important figures are not absolutes consumption figures but the specific consumption for the package, and here it would appear the Sonic Cruiser is not that great. Industrial combined cycle gas turbine packages are massively more efficient than aero engines and even they're pretty scary when you calculate their emissions.

Hi Craig, I hope so!! This is a fascinating subject, unfortunately most media comment is pretty ill informed, some are far too much biased against any technology and would have us living in the stone age, while some media pundits almost seem to consider burning gas a great thing!! My job is an operations engineer supporting offshore oil and gas exploration and production and is primarily working on power generating equipment and power management systems with both gas turbines and diesel engines, so it's something close to my heart! Take care,

Justin

One of the problems is that many aspects are contradictory. For instance, some gaseous emissions can only be reduced by cooling the combustion temperature, whereas others basically need exhaust re-heat to stop them. Add into that that mechanical reliability and size have their own set of problems that often act against efficiency and it gets more complex still. Then there is a paradox that the best design for reducing certain emissions is not neccessarily the best for low fuel consumption, it's a balancing act. There are a lot of existing technologies, unfortunately the cost and weight penalties which tends to kill them off. The industry can do more, and must do more, but it's sadly true that customers usually wait until forced into action by legislation.

Well if those darn enviromenalists and democrats would let us dig around in our own backyard we'd have enough oil to keep us going for quite awhile.

I don't know if you guys are trying to pull my leg or not, but if you actually lok at the words in teh article, you'll realize that its bogus. No one in the business world talks that way to reporters

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Hele li'i palaunu manu! Loa noho huinakolu mokulele lawelawe!

Whatever the article above, it's true that since the Sonic cruiser was anounced the fuel consumption has been the biggest question mark, and it's true that air transport is one of the industries being singled out as needing to do more to reduce pollution.

About oil reserves, there are more estimates for remaining reserves than you can shake a stick at ranging from real harbingers of doom to people claiming there's no problem at all. The problem with most estimates when expressed in years remaining is that it is impossible to account for the surge in demand in emergent economies like China and India. Particularly in China and India, per capita energy consumption is tiny compared to Europe and America and Japan etc. but is is rising as their economies grow, and as the worlds resources will not support the consumption of fossil fuels at existing levels forever, if the rest of the world increases their demand to similar levels it will trigger a disaster. Also it is not just depleting resources but rather the effect of the pollution caused by burning these fuels and the damage caused in extracting them that is causing so much damage.

Looks like Airbus fans are getting anti social again.

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Hele li'i palaunu manu! Loa noho huinakolu mokulele lawelawe!

Guess Airbus cares more about the environment then the safety of airline passengers.

Bogus? Here's a link to the article...
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,2-2001210095,00.html

Originally posted by niels:
***(Start Quote)***
Boeing admits new plane will guzzle fuel

BY BEN WEBSTER, TRANSPORT CORRESPONDENT

BOEING has agreed that its new high-speed plane would use more fuel.... ......squeeze
one extra transatlantic flight a day out of one plane, with huge efficiency
gains.
***(end quote)***

This sounds like it came straight from Greenpeace or some other environmental wacko group publication......

Todd

EARTH FIRST! We'll log and mine the other planets later....

Has anyone done any calculations relative to the time in the air vs. the amount of emissions? The kind of comparison cited in the story are useless unless they make both factors equal. Yes, the proposed new plane will burn more fuel. But it will also be airborne for less amount of time. It will save FIVE hours on a LA to Sydney route? That's five more hours of emissions a current (slower) plane is spewing out. You have to consider all the variables when making assertions such as these.

Hi Tony, I agree, that's why I think the specific consumption fo the package is important. The important relative figure is the grams of fuel per kilogram kilometer, specific figures are the usual benchmark for fuel consumption comparisons.

niels,

I hearby stand corrected, and apologize for my 2nd comment on this thread. I didn't know that Alabama rednecks had gotten into the Boeing hiearchey.

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Hele li'i palaunu manu! Loa noho huinakolu mokulele lawelawe!

BEN WEBSTER
the famous Tenor Sax player

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FLY OUR NEW MODERN RADAR-EQUIPPED PROP-JET ELECTRA!

I'm not surprised Boeing isn't going to challenge any criticisms regarding the fule consumption of the Sonic Cruiser. How do you do that when the engines and the airframe haven't even been built yet? Yeah, sure they're talking about using possibly a derivative of the Trent, but whatever variant of the Trent (or GE or PW's) engine ends up powering the Sonic Cruiser will be a much different engine that today's models.

And let's keep in mind Boeing has devoted significant design energies to this project- "Yellowstone" was the name used if I remember correctly to describe the project not looking at the Sonic Cruiser, but the technologies applicable to the Sonic Cruiser.

Powerplant in only one part of the equation- what about drag reduction and advanced aerodynamics? I sure wouldn't be surprised to see some sort of active laminar flow on this bird- this was tried on the X-21 in the 60s and would have worked to reduce drag and increase efficiency, but the maintenance and production of the necessary components proved beyond the technology avaliable then. Jay Miller's book X Planes talked about the complexities of the manufacturing process in drilling all the small holes for the X-21's wings. And then there was the nightmare of keeping all those small holes clear of debris.

Engine technology as well as manufacturing/aerodynamic technology has made incredible strides in the last several years and it only makes sense that even better advances are in R&D now for near-term applications.

Naturally Airbus is gonna poo-poo Boeing. Their corporate and design energies are consumed by bigger airplanes- the A380 and the A340-500/600. They absolutely have no working capital to direct towards a response to the Sonic Cruiser. Not unless they want to tax the European citizens for more Euros.

Boeing's current projects are more evolutionary in terms of getting more performance from existing, proven and well-selling products. That's a less capital intensive approach that frees up more resources for developing the Sonic Cruiser.

Admit limitations now, if you can overcome them in testing/production, then you look absolutely brilliant. Look at the beating McDD took on the MD-11's range performance when it entered service.

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The Sentinel Chicken
(Stand-Up Philosopher)
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Ozark! Southwest! Texas International!Convair 880s and 990s! ASAP!

[This message has been edited by Sentinel Chicken (edited 21 June 2001).]

I agree it's true that aerodynamics and engine technology have made huge progress in recent years, but it doesn't alter the fact that to go faster still requires more power and that to generate more power still require a larger fuel burn. This is not the super revolutionary design per se that Boeing are claiming as the delta wing with foreplane configuration has been popular in military aircraft for a long time, even with refinements and new features the configuration is not revolutionary and it's hard to imagine they've solved the problem of going higher and faster without burning more fuel.

Another point is that the aviation industry needs to do more to reduce emissions, this is not just a question of fuel but also a question of what gets blown out of the back of an engine exhaust. A lot of the protests are based more on objections to cost, this is not just tree hugging hippies but mainstream opinion in Europe is pretty environmentally aware now and growing more so.

[This message has been edited by justin (edited 21 June 2001).]

Russ,
Well, maybe Stonecipher is getting close to his `use by: ' date. He made some other inappropriate comments earlier in the week re: GE and Honeywell merging.
He's was going to retire next year anyway.

Originally posted by tradeway-collectibles:
Well if those darn enviromenalists and democrats would let us dig around in our own backyard we'd have enough oil to keep us going for quite awhile.

The entire Alaskan potential is estimated to supply us with 6 months of oil (if this were the only source of oil for the US). I can hardly see this lasting us a long time. The fact is, other countries can produce oil cheaper and better than the United States, even with cartel behavior. The reason that oil exploration has not occured in many private lands in the US is not because of regulation but because it is not profitable.

Who cares how much fuel the sonic cruiser burns!do people cares how much fuel the concorde or even the space shutle burns?NO! is about time people quit talking about useless information.how about the A-380? hello!that flying salami will burn lot of fuel too.

I knew someting about the first article didn'tseem right.


Boeing Executive Says Sonic Cruiser Will Be A 'Good Neighbor' Airplane
LONDON, July 10, 2001 - Boeing's potential new "sonic cruiser" airplane will have fuel effeciency similiar to today's long-range jets, and will offer several other environmentally-friendly advantages, said John Roundhill, Boeing Commercial Airplanes vice president of Marketing for the new airplane program.

Speaking to members of the Royal Aeronautical Society in honor of the historical contributions to aviation of Sir Thomas Sopwith, Roundhill addressed the environmental requirements of the proposed new airplane.

"The sonic cruiser's fuel efficiency will be similar to the newest, similarly-sized airplanes being delivered today," he said.

Boeing also projects the proposed airplane will have lower nitrogen oxide emissions than today's airplanes, Roundhill said. Local air quality near airports also should be improved because the airplane's unique configuration and improved climb performance will mean less time spent in airport holding patterns.

Envisioned as a long-range airplane linking more pairs of cities directly, the sonic cruiser will allow more direct flights. This, in turn, will mean fewer takeoff and landing cycles, greater fuel efficiency and a reduction in the associated emissions.

It also will reduce airport community noise, making it a "good neighbor" for those living near airports, Roundhill said. It will be quieter than upcoming Chapter 4 noise standards and current airport-specific requirements.

The proposed airplane will fly at speeds of up to Mach .98 (approximately 98 percent of the speed of sound) or about 15 to 20 percent faster than current commercial jet airplanes. Higher cruising altitudes -- in the mid-40,000-foot range - will offer a smoother, more comfortable ride. This should allow the airplane to fly over slower air traffic, transporting travelers sooner to their destinations all over the world.

Paraphrasing the words of the fictional General Jack D. Ripper from Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb - just replace the word 'communist' with 'environmentalist' and 'bodily fluids' with 'fossil fuels':

"I can no longer sit back and allow... environmentalist infiltration... environmentalist indoctrination... environmentalist subversion... and the interrnational environmentalist conspiracy... to sap and impurify... all of our precious fossil fuels!" ;)

More great wisdom from Gen. Ripper:

"....Women sense my power, and they seek my essence. I don't deny myself to women, Mandrake, but I do deny them my essence."