Bully for Boeing
Interesting piece in yesterday's New York Times business section about the Boeing 747. It's making a big comeback -- including as a cargo plane -- while Airbus stumbles badly with its mega-jet, the A380. How quickly times change.
| Posted at 6:14 AM | Permalink |
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Comments (5)
Jack
Popular science beat the NYT to that story by about one month...and did a better job with it. the old gray lady is showing her age.
Lars
Posted by lars | December 8, 2006 7:45 AM
I seem to recall that Del Smith down at Evergreen in McMinnville was trying to retrofit 747's for fire retardent dropping. I never heard what became of that. Anybody know?
Posted by Dave Lister | December 8, 2006 8:50 AM
Info on the Evergreen "Supertanker" can be found here (along with several pictures).
These planes are huge, but able to fly surprisingly slow (in landing configuration with full flaps, etc.), so they seem like a good platform for this sort of thing. Of course, they're expensive as hell to operate too, so I wonder about the cost efficiency.
Still, every drop pass you make is dangerous, so it might be worth the extra cost to be able to make one pass instead of 4 or 5 (or more) with a smaller, cheaper aircraft.
Posted by David Wright | December 8, 2006 9:04 AM
The 747 changed everything.
Posted by Allan L. | December 8, 2006 10:00 AM
the old gray lady is showing her age.
Are you referring to the Republican Party? I agree.
Posted by Jack Bog | December 9, 2006 3:29 AM