The Boeing 747 Jet Versus the BAe-Aerospatiale Concorde Coursework

The Boeing 747 Jet Versus the BAe-Aerospatiale Concorde - Coursework Example Why build planes so big? The major reason is to carry more people for the same amount of money in the same amount of time, thus creating a profit which is the goal of every big business. The bottom dollar counts and so does the top dollar. But while some lines of big jumbo jets have been successful, other designs have not been so lucky and it is important to understand why one design worked and the other didn’t. For this paper, a study of two plane designs is reviewed: the Boeing 747, a continuously successful company design, now in several versions of the original, and the BAe-Aerospatiale Concorde, now defunct. At the heart of these two planes are the project structures of each and why one was a success and the other a failure. Every product and every service has a project plan that shows goals and how the project is to be managed along the way to the final goal. The truth is that sometimes everything can be well-thought out in a project management plan yet there can be a li ttle monkey wrench thrown into the mix that was never seen or envisioned, and a perfectly designed plan can go right down the drain in a flash (Noland 2012a). The Boeing 747 As commercial airlines began growing in business with more and more people taking to the skies in the 1950s and 1960s, Boeing moved to the forefront in the commercial airlines industry by providing the Boeing 707 in 1958. The 707 carried about 200 passengers and, with an eye towards profits, the concept for the 747 was roughed out which would carry 400 passengers. In fact, the design was initially based on one done for the Air Force’s C-5 military mega-lifter competition between airline designers to see who could build the most efficient heavy-load carrier for that time. While Boeing lost out to Lockheed in the military contest, Pan American Airline’s president Juan Trippe was already looking for a design in a plane that could carry 400 passengers. Boeing just happened to have the right design hand y that could be modified into a 400-passenger commercial plane. Pan Am subsequently ordered 25 747s for $550 million and the project was on (Noland 2012a). The New Boeing 747-8F in Flight Fig. 1(Boeing 2012) The 747 Project As sometimes happens in monumental decisions, the order was in and paid for, yet where to build it was another question that had to be solved quickly. With a plane this size, no current factory was large enough to contain it so one had to be built, and quickly. Time was money and Boeing began a massive building structure in Everett, Washington which would encompass 200 million cubic feet, twice the size of the Houston Astrodome, and would cost twice as much as the fee paid by Pan Am for the planes. Boeing invested $1 billion in constructing the building before even investing in materials to build the plane itself. Already operating at a loss, if the plane as a whole, failed, then so would Boeing (Noland 2012a). Yet the target was the market gain that could be mad e if the plane was successful. It was a huge investment for the future, albeit a somewhat risky one when considering how much in debt Boeing began with in terms of the project cost.