Abdullah Alshahrani

The Fall of B777 and the Rise of Dreamliner B787

الاثنين - 25 نوفمبر 2019

Mon - 25 Nov 2019

Other generation, other manners... of planes, cars, watches.. and lately mobile phones, with different models and products, competing among themselves so some rise, and some fall.

Even among human beings, a generation comes and another passes away. In aviation, we still remember, and see less of such succession of generations, until now, the ‘Queen of Sky’ Boeing B747 which shone by the end of 1960s and went down lately after the strong rise of its young sibling Boeing B777.

The U.S. corporate, Boeing, didn’t mean to produce a brand new product to replace another strong one, but this is what really happened for the B747 and B777. And here Boeing goes again by not learning the lesson quite well, and the fall of a great star in front of the rise of a greater one, without intention definitely, I mean here what happened to B777 and B787 Dreamliners.




To be frank, we will compare between the new Dreamliners, B787 and B777x. First of all the price, the most expensive type of Dreamliners is B787-10 (with an average of 330 seats) which costs $326 million, on the other hand, the cheapest price of one plane of the type B777x (with an average of 365 seats) will cost around $395 million. The difference reaches $69 million in contrast with 35 additional seats, which means you will pay $2 million for every additional seat!




Commercially, it is very well known that under the fierce competition in the aviation business, it is difficult during “off seasons” to sell a good amount of seats, especially for those big planes among B777. So it is not economically viable to keep planes that make profits only in seasons.




Financially, the Dreamliner B787 excels in size and weight for not only flying long distances, but also for using less fuel with a very big difference comparing to the current type of B777 and with a good difference for the new model B777x, where B787 operated commercial flights for 17 hours and 20 minutes by the plane B787-9. Furthermore, it is really that B777 can fly longer distances, but I don’t think that commercial airlines need flights more than 18 hours with higher operation expenses.




Finally, we will see a dramatic farewell for the plane B777 soon or later, as well as what happened to its older sibling B747. In my viewpoint, the beautiful B747 left and its alternate was not at its level of beauty, in contrast of the Dreamliner which exceeds the B777 inside and outside.




Other times, other markets and planes.




Dreamliner B787






  • Price varies $239 – 326 million.



  • Flies more than 17 continual hours.



  • High efficiency and fuel saver.



  • Beautiful exterior and luxurious interior.



  • Maximum load 359 – 440 passengers.



  • Crosses distances from 12000 km to 14000 km.






An article by Mr. Abdullah Alshahrani




Tranlated by Khalid Alshehri (Twitter: @EnglishSnapp)