No One Is Buying the Boeing 777-8. Here's Why...

the Boeing 7-8 is a bit of an enigma when it takes to the skies later this year it'll become Boeing's newest commercial offering naturally it's chalk full of cuttingedge Innovations and occupies a market segment that's been RedHot in recent years but despite these favorable conditions the plane can't find any takers it's been a decade since the Last Passenger dash8 was sold and now analysts are pondering whether Boeing might just cancel the jet so what's going on here why won't anyone buy the 7-8 let me explain before hopping into it I want to tell you about

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use my link in the description ag1 will hook you up with a free one-ear supply of vitamin D3 K2 and five free travel packs with your first purchase so go check it out doing so helps my channel a ton and it can also help to support your health in order to understand why the tri 7-8 isn't selling we need to understand where it fits in the market the -8 is a member of thep 7x family the next evolution of the wildly popular Boeing 7 it features a number of improvements but the two most obvious are

its new engines and Wing It Sports the largest and most powerful turbo fan on Earth the g9x and its new composite Wing is the largest that boeings ever conceived it's so big in fact that it needs folding wing tips to fit into most airport Gates the tri 7x comes in two distinct flavors the aforementioned -8 and the -9 now these two aircraft are nearly identical the only difference being that the dash8 has a shrunken fuselage and with enough seating for 350 passengers the dash8 is poised to replace the older 7 300 ER now the 300

ER has been a huge hit in fact it's become the second bestselling widebody of all time because of this you'd also expect the das8 to sell well there's clearly a market for a plane of this size but that simply hasn't been the case just 40 of them have been sold to date accounting for just 10% of the tri 7x backlog to add insult to injury Boeing hasn't sold a single passenger unit since 2013 so what's the deal why can't Boeing sell the -8 well the jet suffers from two major flaws first let's cover the more

straightforward and less interesting of the two the plane is a victim of bad timing you see the very first 300 ER was delivered in 20 4 meaning the oldest units aren't even 20 years old yet and the average age of the global Fleet is far younger it's still doing a wonderful job of making Airlines money and as a result it simply doesn't need to be replaced all things told it'll take another 10 to 15 years until most airlines are ready to upgrade of course this has had a negative impact on das8 sales but it's only

had a minor effect on the 7-9 it has a higher capacity and is better suited to replace the 747400 in recent years carriers like British Airways Ana and Cafe Pacific have all phased out the jumbo which has created an explicit need for the dash9 so it's no wonder that it makes up the majority of the tri 7x order book so then it must be just a matter of time until the dash8 Finds Its footing once the 300 ER grows old airlines will flock to the Jet right well not so fast poor timing is just one

roadblock that the dash8 faces the other more complex hurdle stems from poor airframe optimization and this issue could affect Sals far into the foreseeable future remember those new wings and engines we talked about well we already established that they are quite big but it turns out they might actually be bigger than they need to be you see whenever Boeing or Airbus design a new plane they seek input from customers and in the case of the 7x Qatar in Emirates emerged as the Heavy Hitters they've ordered nearly 200 units combined and both were customers from day

one it was clear from the beginning that they would have tremendous influence over the plane's design and this left Boeing in a little bit of a pickle you see Qatar and Emirates face a unique operating constraint both are based in the Persian Gulf where summers are incredibly hot humidity is low and the air is thin these atmospheric conditions make it much harder for planes to generate lift and in the most extreme cases this can actually lead to grounded flights in order to avoid service disruptions both Airlines called on Boe to improve the plane's takeoff performance

during early development it was rumored they were pushing Boe to include a larger wing and more powerful engine than was necessary in order to generate more lift but at the same time it would make the plane heavier and less efficient Boeing was rightfully hesitant to make this tradeoff but as the old saying goes the customer is always right and they wielded so much influence that Boeing had to acques at the end of the day it would seem the tri 7x has sacrificed some efficiency in exchange for performance and this concession disproportionately impacts the -8 variant

remember the -8 uses the exact same engine and wings as the -9 but it has a much smaller fuselage these components just aren't optimized for the das8 and are way too big for its frame making the aircraft overweight as a result analysts predict that in a best case scenario it'll achieve a modest 133% fuel burn advantage over the 300 ER as a point of comparison the 737 Max achieved a 14% advantage over the 737 NG and it did so by only using new engines not new wings now to be fair 133% isn't nothing and in

a vacuum the jet might still be worth buying but the cold hard truth is that the das8 doesn't operate in a vacuum it faces stiff competition it squares up against the Airbus a350 1000 which is a clean sheet all composite design now we don't really know how the two compare in terms of efficiency Bo an Airbus each claimed that their jet is superior which muddies the waters but what we do know is that the a350 is much lighter if we assume that the dash8 weighs slightly more than the 300 ER on account of its bigger

engines and wings it'll be over 30,000 lb heavier than the a350 of course empty weight isn't the end all Beall of airplane economics but it gives pretty good direction on which plane will burn less fuel now the biggest bummer for Bowing is that it didn't have to be this way there was a way to make the jet lighter while also catering to Qatar and Emirates you see during early development there were rumors that Boeing might build its fuselage from an allnew material the material in question was aluminum lithium known as Ally for short the biggest

upside of using Ally is that it's around 10% lighter than traditional aluminum in addition it's more resilient to fatigue cracking which could extend the life of the aircraft had Boeing used this material it could have saved tens of thousands of pounds making the -8 and the -9 for that matter a more efficient aircraft however Boeing ended up forgoing this option at the time it had just finished developing the 787 Dreamliner which itself used novel materials and we all know how that turned out it led to years of delays and tens of billions in cost overruns

considering Boeing had never used Ally before it feared that adopting the material could steer the tri 7x down a similarly treacherous path on top of that they were concerned it would increase component and Manufacturing costs so at the end of the day they ended up just sticking with a more conventional aluminum fuselage of course hindsight is 2020 but at a glance it seems like Boeing should have taken the risk today Ally is proving to be both a mature and reliable material it's gotten much cheaper to manufacture and it's been successfully deployed on other commercial aircraft

most notably the a220 it's demonstrated so much potential in fact that it might Lea Frog composits as the go-to material for future aircraft so in passing up this opportunity it seems like Boeing not only missed out on being a pioneer of this new material but it also missed a golden opportunity to fix the issues with the -8 weight it should be clear by now that the tri 7-8 faces some serious ious headwinds but even so it's too early to write off the jet entirely it has at least one unique characteristic that sets it apart from

all other Boe products it's absolutely ludicrous range it can fly up to 8,800 nautical miles which is the most of any Boeing commercial aircraft and beats its predecessor by a pretty wide margin in recent years we've seen Airlines like Singapore and quantis launch and sustain Ultra Long Haul routes like like New York to Singapore and London to Perth and by all accounts these routes are profitable if these sorts of ultr log missions continue to gain in popularity the dash a will be well equipped to capture some of that market in addition the jet is proving

to be an appealing freighter Boeing launched a freighter version of the dash a just about a year ago and it's already outselling the passenger variant many cargo operators are still flying old MD 111s and 7472 200s while the dash8 has its flaws it burns much less fuel than those Legacy aircraft considering its momentum I wouldn't be shocked if Boeing changes course and actually builds the -8 freighter before it builds the regular das8 so this is good it seems like there are some Silver Linings here but the biggest Silver Lining of this whole situation actually has

nothing to do with the dash8 since the tri 7 x already has these oversized features it should be quite easy to stretch it further and create a 7-10 in fact Boeing's head of commercial aircraft said this would be a fairly straightforward exercise the plane would be the largest twinjet ever built and it would likely replace the 747-8 and A380 combined about 300 of these aircraft have been built and if the- 10 can sell even half that many units it'll be considered a win but at the end of the day there's no denying that the 7-8

suffers from a number number of issues sure it Sports the latest and greatest technology that Boeing has to offer but as we've learned that's not enough to guarantee program Success With Better timing and better airframe optimization the jet might have been a hit but for now it seems like the sales trout won't end anytime soon so what do you guys think should Boeing just cut their losses and cancel the tri 7-8 let me know your thoughts in the comment section below now now you've probably noticed that this is the second video I've made this year

about poor selling aircraft the last one being about the MBR E2 if you want me to turn this into a full-blown series let me know what plane I should cover next and if you haven't seen that E2 video yet I'll be sure to leave a link to it in the description it was one of my favorite videos I've ever made so I highly recommend you check it out thank you so much to my patrons for helping to make this video possible if you like what I do and want to help the channel grow go ahead

and check out the this link right here and as always if you learn something new today leave a like And subscribe to keep learning and until I see you again don't forget to look up