Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Boeing 777 summary







B777 aircraft at Bali Airport



B777

This is just a summary for the info i read about B777.


Boeing B777 is the long – ranged twin-engine commercial airliner which built by Boeing Company. Its maiden flight is on 12-6-1994. B777 is the first aircraft that designed entirely by using 3D CAD software system oar known as CATIA. By using this way to design, it actually helps the engineer to examine the interference and test the thousand part of the component whether properly fit together or not before costly physical prototype were manufactured. It is very easily to identify by looking at the rear of the aircraft. It has the tailcone notch. Other improvement for the B777 is that each set of the main undercarriage has 6 wheels with it. This makes it another way to recognized this aircraft.

B777 has few different variants of model.
B777-200
B777-200ER( extended range)
B777-200LR(long range) Worldliner
B777-300
B777-300ER
B777-300ERF

Singapore airlines is the largest operator for the B777’s family. It has 58 fleet that is currently in servicing. Where 15 of it is B777-200ER(Rolls Royce Trent 892) and 12 of it is B777-300(Rolls Royce Trent 892).31 fleet is B777-200(Rolls Royce Trent 884). Now with a firmed ordered of 19 B777-300ER(GE90-115B) and 13 more on option.

B777 is the first aircraft that has the ETOPS – 180 rating when it entry into service.ETOPS: It applies to twin engine aircraft where the twin engine aircraft has to fly within close range to an emergency airfield in case one of the engine has malfunctioned.

B777 has features a lot of advanced technology in it.
For instance,
1. They use the Honeywell LCD glass cockpit flight display,
2. fully digital fly by wire with emergency manual reversion.
3. Fully software configurable avionics.
4. Electronic flight beg computer.
5. fiber optic avionic network.
6. Large scale uses of composites( where 9% of weight)
7. Currently using the world most powerful turbofan engine in the world, produced by General Electric. It uses GE90-115B which can produce 115,300lbs of thrust force.

Singapore airlines B777-300ER had received their B777-300ER. This type of model is a upgrade version of -300, and it is a good alternative to a 747-400.

1. B777-300ER contains a lot of modifications,
1. such as GF90-115B
2. Long wings with raked wingtips.
3. 3.A new main landing Gear.
4. Extra Fuel tank which can carries additional 2,600 galloons. This enables the ER to fly roughly 34% further with just 6% increased in the fuel capacity.

Other than that, The main improvement of the aircraft is increasing in the maximum take-off weight(MTOW).The capacity of passenger in both variant are the same and the payload capacity almost the same as well, but the MTOW is different.
e.g:
B777-300 MTOW is 660,000lb
B777-300ER is 775,000lb

In aviation rules, the MTOW must subtracted by the payload weight and empty weight to determine the ZERO- FUEL WEIGHT or LANDING WEIGHT. The remaining weight gives the capacity for carrying fuel.

With its advanced technology in this aircraft.The Direct competitors are A330, A340 and A350.