Boeing made a ‘major mistake’ 12 years ago that left its customers in the lurch

The 757 was always a bit of an odd duck for Boeing.

It’s a twin-engine narrow-body airliner that’s larger than the run-of-the-mill 737, but smaller than wide-body jets like the 787 Dreamliner.

It’s a true tweener in Boeing’s lineup.

Though the Renton, Washington-based plane maker booked more than 1,000 orders for the jets over its two decades in production, it was never a hot seller.

By the early 2000s, sales of the 757 had all but dried up, and Boeing put the plane out to pasture in 2004.

But a decade later, airlines have come to understand that the 757’s odd-ball tweener nature has translated into incredible flexibility. It generates profits both in short-range domestic flights and on long-haul trans-Atlantic ones.

“It is the most effective and best single-aisle airplane around,” La Compagnie founder and CEO Frantz Yvelin told Business Insider. “In the business, we used to call it the workhorse.”

The startup boutique French airline operates a pair of the planes, each decked out with 74 business-class seats.

However, as the 757s grow older, airlines are looking for an effective way to replace them, and right now they don’t seem to have any they like.

Boeing ‘made a mistake’

Last year at the Paris Air Show, rumors of a 757 replacement known as a “middle of market” jet became one of the big stories to emerge from the show. Boeing, though, doesn’t have concrete plans yet for a new middle-of-market jet. Despite the apparent need from airlines, the carrier says the economic case doesn’t exist yet.

In statement to Business Insider, the company said:

The Rolls-Royce and Airbus A350 jet engine up close for the first time

Fuel efficiency is good for the environment, but it also saves airlines money. That doesn’t mean the price of travel is falling. But it does mean a lot energy goes into advancing jet engine technology.

The British car and engine maker, Rolls-Royce, is proud of its new Trent XWB jet engine. They say it’s the most fuel efficient engine in the world. It was designed specifically for the Airbus A350 passenger plane and uses light materials to reduce weight and increase fuel efficiency.

Engineers describe it with four words, saying it “sucks, squeezes, bangs, and blows.”

The Trent XWB sucks in about 1.3 tonnes of air per second. The air is compressed, or “squeezed,” and then in the combustion chamber, it is heated to about half the surface temperature of the sun. Finally, “bang” – and the engine blows the air back out, creating a thrust of 97,000lbs.

It was on show for the first time at the 2016 Hanover Fair.

When Aircraft Crash And Pilot Mistakes

One of the most disturbing statistics about general aviation accidents is that more than 75% of them are made because of pilot error. Considering that it’s unlikely that pilots are going away anytime soon, the solution comes in the form of prevention. Saying this is easy, but actually making progress toward this goal is rather problematic. The first step toward eliminating pilot error is to examine the enemy. Just what types of errors are pilots committing and why? Then, armed with this information, pilots can make a concerted effort to avoid such mistakes through a fusion of training, planning and keen attention.

1 Weather. The more a pilot knows about it, the better. While thunderstorms, icing and winds claim their share of airplanes, the real weather gadfly are those serene, innocent-looking clouds and their cousin, fog. Clouds and fog aren’t inherently dangerous; it’s just that when pilots fly into them, they don’t know how to fly on instruments. They fly into a cloud, lose control and crash. Accident gurus call this flying “VFR into IFR.” Well over 80% of such accidents are fatal.

Even though these accidents are referred to as “inadvertent flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC),” only 24% of them are inadvertent. The remaining cases show pilots who continue into poor weather. Why is this? Overconfidence is one. Some believe that they don’t need to stay current or that their hour under the hood is good enough. Social pressure also plays a role. Passengers want to get there and pressure the pilot to continue. Last, there’s “get-there-itis.” Pilots are mission-oriented, sometimes too much so.

2 CFIT. Another common pilot error that often involves weather is controlled flight into terrain (CFIT). A simplified definition of CFIT is “flying a perfectly good airplane into the ground.” If a pilot is in a cloud or in fog, he or she can’t see the ground. If the pilot isn’t doing a good job of keeping up with the terrain, an unpleasant meeting with the ground is more likely. Another time when CFIT can be a factor independent of weather is at night. Pilots seem to have a knack of flying into trees and hills after the sun goes down. Again, if pilots allow themselves to be lulled into neglecting to constantly compare their present altitude to that of surrounding terrain, the outcome is likely to be nasty. If you can’t see the terrain, you must be able to point to your position on a sectional, en route chart, approach plate, etc., or you shouldn’t be flying.

A serving airline captain reveals what’s REALLY happening in the cockpit as a plane hurtles down the runway for take-off and comes in for landing

If you were a fly on the wall in the cockpit of your holiday flight to the sun as it hurtles down the runway and takes to the air, these are the words you’d hear from the pilots.

If you’re a nervous flier, hearing ‘V1’ is when your heart would probably leap because, as Captain Richard Brown, CEO of Atlantic Star Airlines, explains, this is ‘take-off decision speed’. Beyond this velocity, the aircraft cannot be safely stopped on the ground and must become airborne.

Captain Brown, a pilot with 20 years’ aviation experience with Boeing 777s, 787s and 747s, came to MailOnline Travel’s headquarters to reveal exactly what happens behind the flight deck door for a series of insider video guides.

In this, the first, he talks about the two most crucial phases of a flight – take-off and landing.

We gave him two flight deck videos to comment on and as they played he provided fascinating insight into exactly what the pilots are doing and thinking and what it feels like to be in the driving seat.