How Boeing Spent $1 Billion Building a Single 787

airplanes are ridiculously complex machines they're comprised of millions of highly specialized components that all must work in harmony and they take years to design develop and test it's no surprise then that they end up being crazy expensive take the 787 dreamliner for instance if you want to own one you'll have to shell out anywhere from 250 to 350 million dollars while this sounds like a lot it actually pales in comparison to the ridiculously high cost of some of the first 787s that were ever built because while many know the 787 as the dreamliner today boeing made some critical mistakes in the program's infancy that turned it into an absolute nightmare let me explain right off the bat i want to share an astounding fact with you the first three 787s to roll off the assembly line cost a staggering three billion inflation adjusted dollars to build that amounts to one billion dollars per aircraft and to be clear this is just the cost to manufacture and assemble the airframes these figures don't include other program costs like research and development now it's really easy to lose sight of just how much money that actually is so let's do some comparison shopping to put that cost into perspective again the first three seven eight sevens ever produced cost three billion dollars in aggregate now we don't know how much it costs to build a 787 today but it remains pretty tight-lipped about its bill of materials but we do know that 787-8 retails for 248 million dollars that means that for the same amount of money you could purchase 12 brand new 787s at list and still have some cash left over maybe to buy some kobe explains merch more on that later alternatively if airbus were still producing them you'd have nearly enough money to buy seven brand new a380s a plane that's twice the size of the 787 so how exactly did boeing find themselves in this situation well it's actually not uncommon for prototype aircraft to cost more than their commercial counterparts as aircraft families mature economies of scale kicks in essentially production processes improve and grow cheaper over time as the order volume grows resulting in a lower cost of production for any given unit in comparison the first few planes off the line almost always suffer teething issues so it makes sense that they're more expensive to build however the cost to build these first few dreamliners far exceeded anyone's expectations and the heart of the problem can ultimately be tracked back to boeing's extremely aggressive delivery goals long before the 787 first flew boeing made a commitment that they'd roll out the first test plane to the public on july 8 2007. when you write this out in american date format you can understand why doing so would be good publicity the only problem was that the jet wasn't at all ready for its debut in the 787 boeing was introducing a number of moonshot technologies including widespread use of composites that were bound to lead to production delays and come july 2007 the plane was still far from ready to take flight and yet the plane still made its debut on that fateful day take a quick look at these pictures taken on the day of the rollout does anything look off to you probably not this plane sure looks like a regular 787 but in reality it was just an empty shell many of its internal components were just flat out missing and many of its external components were yet to undergo proper testing while rolling out this incomplete airframe seems innocuous enough it actually had major implications for the 787 program that's because by building it boeing was committing to start the 787 production line as we've recently seen with the 737 max stopping the line that's already running can be extremely costly since doing so leaves thousands of workers sitting idle and leaves many acres of factory space completely unutilized so boeing couldn't just build this first incomplete 787 as a one-off and then wait until the rest of the program caught up rather they had to start turning out a handful of incomplete 787s with the intention of going back and finishing them at a later date now if this sounds like a bad idea it's because it was about a year later just as the 787 was gearing up for its first flight its airframe failed a key ground test the plane's new composite wing box which helps carry the majority of load in flight suffered an unexpected failure during stress testing this was a massive setback for the program since engineers would have to completely redesign the component now in the year between initial rollout and this failure boeing had either built or started production on 17 dreamliners and it was now painfully obvious to boeing engineers that all of these airframes were defective the company had two options one they could either scrap these early models entirely and replaced them outright or two they could find a stop gap way to reinforce these flawed airframes boeing decided that the latter would be cheaper and more importantly helped to minimize delays to the 787 program while this option was technically cheaper it wasn't actually cheap the company had to specially design and manufacture titanium braces to reinforce the wing boxes on these flawed airframes then technicians had to essentially tear down and reassemble these jets from scratch during this process insufficient documentation led to repeated assembly errors driving up costs and lengthening delays some supply chain issues also played a key role in cost overruns but that's a topic i'll cover more in a future video when the dust finally settled three billion dollars were spent on these first three airframes alone and the program was delayed by two full years however boeing finally had a plane that was airworthy and in 2009 flight testing commenced but as i previously mentioned these defects weren't just present on the first three airframes they were present on the first 17. so what happened to the other four team well each of them underwent the same retrofitting process and that process got a bit cheaper as bowman got used to doing it but the braces added significant weight to these early 787s decreasing their m-toe in range and increasing their fuel burn for two of these 14 jets that didn't matter too much since they were designated to join the flight test campaign but most of the remaining planes were set to enter into service with launch customer a a who rightfully refused to take delivery without a taker these planes were moved to an unused runway at paynefield for long-term storage they quickly adopted the nickname the terrible teens referencing their approximate numbers off the production line and for years they sat there as a highly visible and painful reminder of the dreamliner's early missteps it took quite some time for boeing to find new takers for the teens but today they've all found homes the majority of them are now flying for ethiopian airlines who presumably receive them at a steep discount additionally a couple of the teens now fly for air austral which is a french carrier based on reunion island and at least one team has been configured for vip use in addition to having found homes for the teens boeing's finally found its footing with 787 production boeing successfully implemented a permanent fix for the wing box issue and by 2014 10 dreamliners were rolling off the production line per month a record for wide-body aircraft by 2019 that number had ballooned to 14 a month and would have stayed there if not for the global pandemic what's more despite its massive cost overruns the 787 program is now profitable and is on pace to become the best selling wide body of all time now i know that nowadays it's become trendy to bash boeing but that's really not what i'm trying to do here we need to put all of this into perspective again building a new airplane is a massively complex undertaking and setbacks aren't uncommon and let's not forget that the 787 was a groundbreaking aircraft whose production is much more complicated than anything that's come before it we should applaud boeing for taking such a big leap in building this airplane it's changed commercial aviation for the better but is no denying that the mistakes that led to the terrible teens must have hurt both boeing's wallet and the pride of those that built them now if you guys love the dreamliner boy do i have good news for you i am just now putting the finishing touches on a line of kobe explains merchandise and the 787 is featured prominently on a couple of my designs i'm actually wearing the 787 t-shirt right now you can't tell just look at the front you can only see my logo but on the back there's a design that i actually hand stenciled and i'm really proud with how it turned out i think you guys are gonna love it and i can't wait to show it to you guys really really soon thank you so much to my patrons for helping to make this video possible if you want to join the patreon community and help this channel grow go ahead and check out this link right here and as always if you learned something new today leave a like and subscribe to keep learning and until i see you again don't forget to look up

Channel: Coby Explanes

Views: 179,561

Keywords: 787, Boeing 787, 787 Dreamliner, Dreamliner, Terrible Teens, 787 Terrible Teens, Boeing, a350, a350 vs 787, Airbus, Airbus vs Boeing, ZA001

Id: GpcojBVq8zE

Length: 10min 42sec (642 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 14 2020