viz.

The other day I flew from New York to Houston on a new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. This was just a few days before the aircraft was deemed unsafe for travel. Now I count myself among the lucky few who’ve had a chance to experience the vehicle. What’s all the hype about? The plane is Seattle-based Boeing’s newest in 20 years, and clearly represents their bid to remain one of the world’s top airline manufactures. (Europe’s Airbus A380 has presumably pressured Boeing to innovate.) Before last week’s grounding of all Dreamliners around the world, Boeing was struggling to meet demand. Before last week’s grounding there were roughly 100 of these planes in the global skies, and roughly five times that amount on order. Carriers include All Nippon Airways, Japan Airlines, and Air India. The only American airline company that flies them as of this writing is United Airlines. They own six Dreamliners, and I was lucky enough to be flying on their first, which has been in operation since early November. The Dreamliner’s issues had been in the news prior to my flight, but I did not learn about them until I was leisurely reading The New York Times midflight. Problems I read about included cracking windshields, wings leaking fuel, and batteries catching on fire. All this made for one of the more notable flights of my relatively short life.

(Image credit: airlinereporter.com)

The plane featured plenty of upgrades to the 737 that I’m used to. Instead of window shades, Boeing’s new 787 features window tinting. By merely pressing a button you can shade your window with increasing hues of blue. No matter how dark you decide to shade your window, you can still see out of it, which is a nice touch. Oddly, none of the shades are allowed in use during takeoff or landing, which, given that you could more or less see out of them while maximally shaded, doesn’t make sense. (What’s more, given that so much of the Dreamliner is given over to electronic innovation, and given that the shades are entirely electronic, it doesn’t make sense that they don’t automatically clear when need be.) There’s much more overhead space on the Dreamliner than anything you’re used to (except if you’ve flown on an Airbus A380), surely to the delight of passengers with certain phobias. Each seat has a USB input, presumably for charging various devices. I didn’t plug in my iPad, but it’s conceivable that one could play personal device content through that seat’s personal entertainment screen (although I’m not sure why someone would want to do this – the plane’s entertainment probably isn’t as good as and iPad or whatever else consumers have these days). Apparently, the shell of the 787 Dreamliner is made out of carbon fiber, making the plane lighter and thus more efficient. They really tout this last feature. United Airlines had a promotional video (at the top of this post) that they play at the beginning of all their flights (even if you’re stuck on one of the cigar-sized “regional” planes), and the main thing they emphasize in the clip is the Dreamliner’s increased efficiency. I couldn’t help but ask each time I saw the advertisement: What does efficiency matter? It took United three flights to get me from my origin to my destination. That’s three polluting take offs when one would have sufficed. And to think that such excesses are going on all day, 365 days a year. If these planes are more efficient, American consumers will probably think of the savings and reason that it means they can fly more for the same old price.

For my money, I’d rather take an “old” mechanical plane. Well not quite – for my money I’d rather take a train. But I guess what I mean is that, when I’m up at 40,000 feet, I’d rather be indebted to gears and bolts and combustion – not batteries and fancy new electronics.