787 and 747-8

Boeing had a problem some years ago when Airbus proposed their ungainly, ugly behemoth called the A380. Airbus's bet was that increased demand required a big jet to fly people around the world.

Boeing already had a big jet - the 747. In addition to being big, the 747 is a very beautiful jet. The design evokes images of power and strength. It's just a really big beautiful jet.

However Boeing bet that increased capacity was due to decreasing ticket prices. Combined with increasing fuel cost, the world needed a jet that would be cheap to fly, but could fly far and carry a lot. Hence the 787.

The 787 was not a competitive product to the A380, rather, Boeing's take on the same data that Airbus used when they decided to build the A380. In order to compete on par, Boeing announced the 747-8 Transcontinental, a jet that was essentially a 787 in fabric but a 747 in design.

Unfortunately, despite serious marketing, both projects are in a little trouble. The 787-3, which is the launch product, has issues with marrying the avionics and other instruments. While this is a setback in time, it also induces uncertainty in the minds of customers. This directly threatens the 747-8 as that jet isn't scheduled to launch until 2010.

For the sake of beautiful design, we can only hope that Boeing's woes won't be the undoing of stylish flight design. Capitalism has never been stylish, yet we've managed to make it stylish. In the rush for profits, we can only hope the world keeps it that way.

Upgrades update

The days of free upgrades may be coming to an end. It makes sense once you hear the reasons.

Having just received this information, it's fresh off the press. United is upgrading their business and first class product. Other airlines are doing the same. Even more others are buying new jets with beautiful new products.

In all this investment, there's no room for freebies. Typically, after about 5 years in service, the full fare passenger finds that the product has aged too much to pay full fare, at which time the airline tries to pull additional revenue by upgrading passengers.

For now, with the stiff competition in the airline marketplace, their best source of revenue is their business product. Even if the airline doesn't entirely do away with their upgrade policy, it would become increasingly difficult to upgrade if the plan works as the seats would have been sold out to full fare passengers.

CO 48 and CO 49

Continental Airlines has recently started their EWR - BOM flights. The flights are so new that their Bombay staff haven't yet been trained.

Judging from the number of passengers, Continental hasn't started promoting the flights in India as yet.

They appear to have two 777-200s on this route. The flight attendant told me these were 777-200LR jets, but I'm highly suspicious of that claim there wasn't any indication of such, as well as the fact that I've had the opportunity to closely examine both jets and this one looked like a 200, not a 200LR.

The jet on which I flew out was newer than on the return flight.

Continental doesn't do complimentary upgrades on their international routes. Their economy class seats had been tagged as regular and premium on their seating chart, but in reality, they were the same.

The seat back entertainment system was the best in the business, with over 300 movies, many hundred shows, thousands of songs, games and the option for INTERNET access for the future.

Each seat cluster had two US/Japan/Taiwan power socket, making it easy to charge your Bose headphones, which you may have to do on such a long flight.

777 jets are the smoothest and so the flight itself was wonderful. Seat pitch wasn't great, but it was far more than on most domestic flights.

Food on the outbound was above average, and far below average on the return. Also, the outbound flight was packed, whereas there were about 100 people on the return flight.

Both flights flew at around 33000 feet near the US but at the maximum cieling of 40000 feet over Afghanistan and Central Asia. This resulted in accelerated dehydration of the body, which most passengers don't realize during the flight.

Both crews hadn't been to India before. I felt pretty sorry for them. Anyone who's done the India tour from DXB, SIN or KUL will know that it's the worst bus ride you can take. However this set of passengers were only marginally rowdy and once everyone had tucked in for the night, all was quiet.

More on Bombay ticket counters after the break ...