Boeing's Answer To The The Airbus A380 - Sonic Cruiser

this video is sponsored by blinkist [Music] this commercial aircraft is unlike anything you have ever seen it's made from the same materials as the sr-71 and it goes fast without creating a sonic boom back in the early 2000s boeing needed a new ace in the hole to take on their rising european competitor airbus an aircraft so futuristic and outside the box thinking that they would never be challenged again but getting there would be nearly impossible limited by both the aviation industry and the laws of physics this was to be boeing's secret weapon to destroy the airbus a380 but the project was cancelled just over a year and a half after its reveal to celebrate 300 000 subscribers let's re-explore the incredible boeing sonic cruiser flying higher than a commercial aircraft at 40 000 feet this futuristic aircraft was made for a totally new world of aviation a visionary fantasy of lunch in one country and dinner in another facilitated by boeing's new aircraft the first biggest advantage of this aircraft and its namesake was its speed the boeing sonic cruiser was designed to be a subsonic or transonic aircraft flying just under the speed of sound around 10 to 20 percent faster than a normal jet aircraft we have today for those people who love maths this would be around mach 0.95 to 0.98 which is 650 miles per hour or just over a thousand kilometers per hour because it's below the sound barrier there would be no sonic boom and no boom means no problems i'll point out that the concorde could fly faster than this but was heavily restricted due to those very same sonic booms building a new category of an aircraft is hard and it's even harder to explain how it's different from a supersonic one that's why boeing should have used blinkist a fantastic app that helps you learn powerful ideas in only 15 minutes that's right blinkist is today's video sponsor i don't have time to sit down to learn from the best so blinkist has been instrumental in me increasing my productivity 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sonic cruiser the flight only took just over 11 hours but its main target market was the transatlantic london to new york route typically flights here last around 7 hours and 55 minutes but for boeing's secret weapon it would been able to do it in 6 hours and 10 minutes ignoring any slowing down for landings or take off whilst not a huge improvement over the concord who doesn't want to get somewhere faster if they can going fast would also mean that the boeing sonic cruiser would have to fly at a higher altitude than other aircraft over 40 000 feet for better flight conditions and avoiding those snail pace airliners like the airbus a380 and this is the beauty of the aircraft design it was future proof boeing saw that the way things were going it knew that passengers were more interested in going point to point as quickly as possible rather than through airline hubs why travel to boston via new york when a direct flight on a smaller faster plane could get you there quicker it's just common sense people want to go where they want to go when they want to go and how they want to go boeing's answer to the demand for faster flights more direct flights and increased comfort is the boeing sonic cruiser this was the exact opposite of the airbus a380 which was made for hub to hub travel and as we know now looking back in the last 20 years boeing was right about point-to-point travel but the travelling point of the sonic cruiser wasn't right for boeing but i'll get to that little nugget in a minute but first i want to show you what it would have been like to be on board the boeing sonic cruiser the faster than an airbus sonic cruiser would be 250 feet long and would have a wingspan of 164.9 feet it would use a delta wing arrangement and would use canards in place of a tail the wingspan would be similar to a boeing 767 but the wing area would be nearly twice as large meaning a much shorter takeoff distance both engines would be buried in the wing so no pylons would be necessary the exhaust nozzle would be located behind the trailing edge of the wing to eliminate jet interference the engines themselves were not noted but expected to be super cruise ones derived from and then military engines boeing assumed that the time that the sonic cruiser would be ready for market civil versions of the military super cruise engines would be ready in fact it was that point that boeing really wanted to emphasis at the paris air show in 2001 when they brought the aircraft to the world the sonic cruiser is a brand new class of flying machine everything else has just been a refinement of the boeing 707 and that had logic to it if you're going to make a plane faster then you need to change the wing if you change the wing then you need to change the tail and if you change the tail well by the end you have something radically different so on board it would be able to carry 200 to 250 passengers in a range between 6 000 to 10 000 nautical miles the plan was to offer different models depending on the requirements of the airline much like they do today with the boeing 787 and the boeing triple 7x one with larger capacity for shorter routes and a long-haul one that could do the distance on board there would have been a business class cabin with a 2-2 configuration and an economy cabin with a 2-3-2 configuration but you know it was optimistic as if united wouldn't give you as much space for the legroom and crank it well beyond 250 passengers at airports it would be boarded through the middle of the plane behind the front canards with the main entrance and exit separating a first-class and business-class cabins to achieve this design the sonic cruiser would have been built with an advanced composite of titanium and ceramics similar to some of the development of the sr-71 although that link is tentative at the time most aircraft were using full metal bodies and were quite heavy especially when you look at boeing's rival the airbus a380 this composite structure would have been able to reduce the airframe weight by around 70 percent this made the aircraft one of the most fuel efficient in the world at the time something it definitely needed as the fuel burn would be extreme at mach 0.98 which is a hint for what's coming next boeing announced the sonic cruiser just after the airbus a380 at the paris air show to try and upstage their competitor and got some early interest from american airlines and virgin atlantic for use across the atlantic ocean i truly believe this airplane will change the way the world flies we expect to order between three and six aircraft alan moley boeing's commercial airplane's boss said at the reveal can it be done absolutely can we do it economically absolutely and is it the right thing to do for the travelers of the world absolutely but as you'll see in a moment this faster sonic fantasy was just that a fantasy [Music] the boeing sonic cruiser project only lasted 18 months it was initially pitched to airlines leading up to the paris air show in 2001 as a radical alternative to the stable of current jet offerings as well as to draw away attention from airbus but unlike the airbus a380 project which was a fully realized plan with schematics in a decade of research which you can watch actually right now on how it evolved on my channel and the boeing sonic cruiser could fit completely on a napkin which it probably did at one of the boeing executive luncheons later it became apparent that boeing had boasted all sorts of stats about the sonic cruiser but hadn't actually undertaken any research on the airline market for one the sonic cruiser wasn't a new idea at all obviously there had been the concorde the 2144 as well as various other supersonic test platforms and they all agreed you either go supersonic or not at all even convair had tried themselves with the convair 990 too much failure consistent experience of supersonic flight was that you didn't want to cruise at mach 0.98 cruising at a faster speed would actually reduce drag and be far more fuel efficient the sonic cruiser would burn far more fuel to not really go that much faster at all and that was a cost that couldn't be written off oh and who pays for it nobody you write it off who writes it off i don't know the gov the write-off people what why are we having this conversation boeing assumed that people would be willing to pay a premium to get somewhere a little bit faster but remember at the time the concorde was still flying and struggling with capacity thus this was a very big if so if the business case didn't really make much sense what about the plane itself there was some doubt about the capacity of the aircraft to fly further than 6 000 nautical miles while the maths checks out for trips under that it starts to fall apart and a flight to 10 000 nautical miles at the speed and fuel burn doesn't make physical sense i'll link to the research below if you want to see the numbers for yourself and let's also talk about that thing that was on all the banners that 20 faster flight time a 20 decrease would take a 3 000 nautical flight mile journey from 6.3 hours to 5.3 hours impressive on paper but that only works if the flight themselves can maintain speed throughout takeoff and landings including the extra long descent from 40 000 feet thus these 20 gains would be wiped out if the plane has to fit in with other commercial traffic even if it can cruise at top pace and across the atlantic that would be an issue unless the sonic cruiser was first to cross the first oceanic waypoint it would be trapped flying the same speed as the slowest aircraft in front of it back then in the early 2000s the north atlantic track system did not allow much flexibility and insult to injury that speed was also a double-edged sword initial modeling showed with no traffic ahead that the sonic cruiser would arrive over the atlantic before the airports even opened in america richard branson summed it up perfectly unless more runways are built the sonic cruiser is going to struggle because airlines will not have the slots to use the aircraft after all these numbers it's either the same as a commercial passenger jet we have today or you go faster with a supersonic jet a jack of all trades is a master of none lastly the timing was terrible in 2001 the aviation industry took a big hit following the 9 11 attacks and demand for new aircraft especially unproven aircraft fell but believe it or not that was not the end of the project despite the plane not looking great on paper the research itself had proved very fruitful during development they hit a snag with the delta wing design it made accessing the rear of the aircraft difficult for service trucks and unloading passengers and thus boeing designed a version of the sonic cruiser that had a more typical wing like we see today but taking away the wing of the sonic cruiser doesn't make it very sonic at all and when the project was cancelled boeing fell back to this earlier design to revise it further they labeled it project yellowstone or the 7e7 with an e for efficiency it would no longer have the sonic speed but it would burn 20 percent less fuel than any other aircraft in the market at least compared to the boeing 767 and shift the aviation model away from hud to hub to point to point the boeing 7e7 would be further refined into the boeing 787 that we know and love today 20 years on we can see which was more successful the airbus a380 has been shut down with little to no secondhand market and the boeing 787 is still going strong with over a thousand built and 1490 ordered a final footnote is that boeing actually updated the sonic cruiser patent in 2012. it was based off research done in part with nasa on a future high-speed civil transport concept made to carry a hundred passengers close to the speed of sound to 6 000 nautical miles sound familiar it was called the boeing 765 and not to be a tease but that's a video for another day so let me know if you want to see it by clicking that subscribe button and i'll see you in the next video thanks for watching and thanks to my patrons

Channel: Found And Explained

Views: 831,707

Keywords: airbus a380, double decker, future aircraft, boeing 747, aircraft design, russian a380, lockheed martin, double decker plane, sonic cruiser, mcdonnell douglas, jumbo jet, aviation news, airbus a380 documentary, a380 cancelled, emirates a380, plane design, paris air show, future plane, never built, boeing sonic cruiser, boeing 787

Id: dAESlOu9WNs

Length: 16min 49sec (1009 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 13 2022