No One's Buying the 787-10. Here's Why...

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Chapters:
Intro - 0:00
787-10 Sales Issues - 2:29
Problem #1 - 4:11
Problem #2 - 6:35
787-10ER? - 8:12
Boeing's Improvement Plan - 9:50
Outro - 13:15

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The Boeing 787 has been an absolute smash hit. With over 1,700 ordered to date, it’s rocketed up sales charts and become the best-selling widebody of all time. But take a closer look at the 787 family, and you’ll find that not all things are equal. Specifically, the 787-10 hasn’t pulled its weight - trailing its dreamliner brethren by a pretty healthy margin.

Now, on the surface, this doesn’t really make any sense. After all, Boeing claims the -10 has the best per-seat operating costs of the entire 787 family. Plus, planes of this size are in high demand. So, what’s going on here? What’s leading to the anemic sales of the 787-10? Let me explain…

#boeing #787 #dreamliner

[raffykock]

I think they are banking on the 777-8 to actually take longer ranges and larger capacity so that the dreamliner remains for relatively thin transpacific missions

[abdelkadermehiz]

787 was originally made for medium capacity long haul category, it's a replacement for 767, which comes mainly in a330 type of service, I know it's not enough to slightly change it, but not many airlines even need to fly ultra longer routes, even Qantas, Singapore Airlines and Air New Zealand already bet on the 787 and bought dozens of it, i see that -10 little upgrade gonna be a smash hit for average carriers who don't need to fly ultra long

[prysmatic]

old boeing: quality and long-term thinking
new boeing: money and short-term thinking

[adybsiddiquee]

The -10 is an excellent sub-12h jet (similar to the A330-300), and (as much of an Airbus fan I am), beats the A359 & matches the A35K on a per seat mile basis on an identical config setup for a 6-7 hour mission.

One big issue with the 78J is that on missions with decent pax & cargo, it refuses to trim the aircraft until the last 30T of fuel or so, thanks to its wing. So at high weights; it's constantly needing to decide to not trim, fly lower at higher airspeed, or fly at a high mach.

Airbus had foresight to play around with the chord of the wing structure without affecting commonality too much. This is shown in the A359 & A35K, and also between A330s & A340s (and trim tanks on them too). Boeing sunk 50 billion USD into a wing that has little accommodation for modification without decimating commonality and requiring a whole array of re-certification and $$$

Boeing needs to forget about getting a significant pricing premium of the 78J over the 789, and sell it how it's supposed to be sold; a medium haul jet for sub-5000nm flights right up against the A339 and A359R

[rais]

So let me see if I understand this. The 787-10 had the potential to be a powerful competitor to the A350 but penny-pinching bean counters wanted to save money so they denied it the ability to compete on an equal basis. Right? Because cutting corners to save money always works, right?

[mcpr]

Thats really cool that you scored an interview with a Boeing VP! Congratulations, love seeing independent journalists grow and displace the cable-tv bobbleheads.

[AA-ksbo]

i know this feedback will prolly go unheard, but you'd do well to include payload-range charts instead of just blanket range figures, it would paint a much fuller picture.

thoertically, an airline wants to carry 320 pax (110kg combined pax, luggage, and seat weight) + 5 tons of belly freight. if you are to consult the 787-10's payload-range chart, you'd realize it would only be able to fly about 9800km (5300nm) carrying that much, while an A350-900 NPS would carry the same payload 13000km (7000nm).

in other words, Boeing would have to do significantly more than small improvements to get the 787-10 on par with the A350-900.

[mwzshmb]

Boeing’s balance sheet won’t allow an ER version. They have 737 issues galore, latest quarter shows it captured only 33% of single aisle sales - A320 had most the rest, some were A220. Many of their defense programs are late and under water (767 tanker, moon capsule, T7 trainer). 737 needs big attention, and a new middle market clean sheet design (updated 757) must be pursued like a banshee for Boeing to regain market share. Throw out the accountants, beef up quality and engineering. Production line not bottom line. no dividends, no buybacks.

[beagle]

266 orders out of 1909. I would hardly call that a failure. With the current rate of orders coming in & the number of planes being delivered. I doubt whether Boeing are worried.

[greybuckleton]

I think you might have missed one of the main issues of a larger fuselage and same wing. The wing loading is increased above the ideal drag values, making the wing ultimately less efficient. The 777-300 has this same issue.

[xoquwdg]

They like the practice of cost cutting and PROFITS OVER SAFETY

[ecoRfan]

I’ve been on a 787-10 and it’s a solid and efficient people hauler. But limited range and long runway requirements are a minus. I wouldn’t call it a failure as it can still do a 12 hour flight. It probably won’t “take off” in sales until more 777-200/ER’s are retired.

[dinbee]

If the 787-10 is cheaper in development and operating cost but only lacks travel distance compared to the competition, that can actually be resolved easily as long as the operating cost is much lower than other aircrafts of the same passenger capacity by tweaking the system. I usually travel from MNL-LAX (also MLA-SFO alternatively) and back but I noticed on the return, we would usually take a short stop in Guam for refueling before continuing to MNL. (This was with the B-747 plane) The MNL-LAX route did not need refueling and so it was a direct flight but after some research I found out it was due to the help of the eastern jet stream phenomenon as it helped boost the flight from a strong tailwind, but not so on the reverse flight as planes fly against the stream. Only once did we have a direct flight from LAX-MNL and it was found to be due to the flight being only about half full or so, thereby lighter in weight. So the tweak here is just to incur more refueling stops (no need for passenger offloading).
However one issue which was not covered extensively of why sales of this model was not going well is probably due to Boeing's credibility which has faltered lately, in lieu of the many defects of their planes encountered and also crashes partly due to their erroneous design/poor computer programming, etc.

[victormendoza]

Unfortunately, Boeing is not anymore a respectable company. Airbus is doing much better at every single segment. Boeing needs a new culture asap.

[soccerguy]

9:14 its not about reinforcement of the struts and gear assembly. Its about tire area... distribution of that weight among more tires spread it out over a larger area.

The limit is tires. Not the gear.

[memfan]

Just wanna say that I absolutely love your videos! I'm not in the aviation industry at all, but I've always been an aviation fan, and you're videos really provides a great window. Thanks so much for making these videos!

[saschaganser]

It`s always funny if a non expert is talking about airplanes.
Issue is usually not fuel capacity but MTOW. It`s also not about range that much, but about payload - range and in field performance.
The Ten might be one of these planes that just got a little stretched too far, thus it has excellent economics.
Still, airlines find great use for it. SIA uses their Tens for inner Asia missions with great success, flying high demand missions with a large economy class.
United flys theirs across the Atlantic, great plane for these 6-8 hour missions if you don`t need to carry much cargo.
Qantas will use the Ten to fly their routes to Asia.
Etihad has great use for their plane, having multiple favorable missions to Europe that are ideal for the Ten, despite having hot & high issues.

The competition the Ten faces is underrated. Her smaller sibling is a strong competitor that can fly almost every thinkable route and is perfectly sized as the 250-280 Pax plane.
The A359 is the same size and delivers a stronger performance with more capabilities. It has sold 1000 units and is a fantastic plane. People underestimate how good A359 and B789 work for airlines.
And, a bit forgotten, if you need a WB for shorter routes, the A339 can come cheap and is available.

Also, don`t forget that many orders still can be changed. As air travel grows over time and airlines need more capacity, with many families orders shifted to the stretched versions.

Overall, i don`t think the Ten is doing bad. It`s a great airplane if you need to fly above 300 pax on 4-8h missions and there are plenty of routes out there. A little bit more wing, a little bit more thrust, a little bit more range, and you have made an already attractive airplane even better.

[Phat]

Boeing’s entire commercial aviation division is a failure. Instead of building great products, they became a bank and their product line will fade into the sunset

[Zafir]

The problem with Boeing is they’re more worried about quantity than quality and making their planes cheaper, and Airbus on the other hand makes sure they’re building top quality stuff, which is why they’re winning.

[ressljs]

Please don't encourage Boeing to slap together a quick fix design to compete with Airbus. We know how that story ends.