The a350 and 787 are NOT Competitors!

i recently posted a video on why the 747-8 is a success despite slow sales in that video i briefly mentioned that the 787s competitor is the a330 neo and then i started to get a whole lot of comments like these people were insisting the 787's real competitor was the a350 it seems like this belief is widely held throughout the youtube aviation community a simple search of 787 verse a350 yields a whole lot of videos directly comparing the two but i'm here to set the record straight the 787 and a350 are not direct competitors let me explain to better understand this misconception we're gonna have to go back to the days when these planes were nothing more than concepts boeing launched the 787 program back in 2004 and promised a plane that would bring about radical change to commercial aviation it would feature moonshot technologies including the use of composite materials in its fuselage and wings ultimately this would result in an ultra efficient mid-sized jet the heavy use of composites was a massive risk but the resulting fuel savings were tantalizing japan's largest airline a a placed an order for 5787s on launch day at a list price of 6 billion up to that point this deal represented the largest launch day order in aviation history airbus of course felt pressure to respond soon thereafter the company launched the a350 a mid-sized jet meant to compete directly with the 787 but it turns out what they were offering wasn't nearly as impressive rather than being an all-new jet early a350 designs looked a lot more like a revamped a330 it took the a330s outdated fuselage and added new wings and engines while this made the jet a whole lot cheaper to design and build it also made it significantly less efficient than its rival over the course of the next two years airlines really didn't seem that receptive to this a350 concept in fact the jet had some pretty outspoken critics none more important than steve adverhazy as the ceo of one of the world's largest aircraft lessers he publicly lambasted the jet as a band-aid response to the 787 facing increasing levels of scrutiny airbus went back to the drawing board what came out of that redesign was a completely different airplane now marketed as the a350 xwb it featured a lot of the same cutting edge innovations that made the 787 special new engines larger windows an improved cabin interior and most importantly widespread use of carbon composites ultimately it is these technological similarities that have tricked people into thinking that the a350 and 787 are direct competitors both boeing and airbus have heavily marketed just how advanced these new widebodies are particularly when it comes to their use of composites considering no other planes have used composites to this extent it's created the perception that the a350 and 787 are one and the same however this conclusion neglects a major decision that airbus decided to make when redesigning the a350 they decided to make it bigger by the time airbus came to the realization that it needed to redesign the jet boeing had already racked up hundreds of orders for the 787 with substantial market share already lost airbus refocused the plane's purpose setting its sights on the larger boeing triple seven this was a smart move when you consider the new timeline for the a350s release airbus announced that the xwb's new entry into service date would be sometime in 2013. by that time the triple seven program would be nearly two decades old meaning many early units would be nearing retirement age as such airbus explicitly targeted triple seven customers promoting the a350 as an ideal replacement look no further than delta for validation of this approach a long time triple seven operator delta just recently retired their entire triple seven fleet and will be replacing them with a350s okay that's all great backstory but just how much bigger are a350s than 787s well it's not all that easy to tell by just looking at them since they're both wide body twin jets however when we build a chart detailing seating capacity the picture becomes a whole lot clearer for the most part we can see the a350 carries more passengers than the 787 the only potential for overlap is between the 787-2 and the a350 900 with only about a 25 seat gap separating the two it's true that these two variants do compete to some degree but the families as a whole don't to drive this point home let's build some weighted averages a weighted average will tell us what the capacity is for any given 787 or a350 when taking into account the relative popularity of each variant i'll spare you the details on the math but essentially what our calculation tells us is that any given a350 flying today carries on average 334 passengers this is 62 more than the average 787 which carries 272 passengers because of this size discrepancy we often see these two jets utilized on different types of long-haul routes let's take a look at qatar airways for instance an airline that operates both the 787 and a350 its 787 flies from its hub in doha to a lot of smaller airports including the likes of cardiff gothenburg hanoi colombo and kigali while their a350 is also featured on a few thin routes it mostly flies into larger airports including the likes of singapore boston tokyo sydney and zurich the point is that the 787 size is better optimized to profitably fly thin routes while the a350 is better suited to connect large cities in a highly efficient manner so hopefully now you have a better understanding of how the 787 and a350 actually stack up against each other when looking through the lens of innovation or customer experience sure the a350 and 787 compete but if you're an airline the difference in capacity means the a350 and 787 are not interchangeable as such these two planes are not direct competitors now i don't really want to start a firestorm in the comments but i'm going gonna ask the question anyway because i'm curious do you guys prefer the 787 or the a350 personally i'm going to reserve judgment because i have only flown on the 787 but i'm curious what your opinions are thank you so much to my patrons for helping to support this video 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: 376,694

Keywords: 787 vs a350, a350 vs 787, a350 v 787, 787 v a350, 787, a350, Boeing 787, Airbus a350, a330neo, 777x, a350 vs 777, a350 vs 777x, 787 vs a330, 787 vs a330neo, Boeing, Airbus

Id: 9Z65CDW0LVI

Length: 8min 17sec (497 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 07 2020