In the eye of the beholder

I should stress I’m not saying pilots are superficial and are overly swayed by how an aeroplane looks over how it performs and flies, but all else being equal looks and design do influence a buying decision (think about when you last bought a car).

Whereas if an aircraft acquisition is largely made by the company accountant the beauty will lie in the numbers – acquisition and financing costs, fuel burn, residual values, reliability and maintenance. Here an aeroplane’s beauty will be apparent on a spreadsheet and not through its physical form.

And airlines, largely, buy their aircraft by the numbers. Boeing’s 787 is a good case in point. Remember back a decade ago to the original 7E7/787 design with its sleek nose design and shark fin-like vertical tail? Both those elements were changed in the name of cost – the bullet train-like nose because of bracing required for the flightdeck windows, while the shark fin tail evolved into a much more conventional design after airlines told Boeing they didn’t want to cop the minor fuel burn penalty that the futuristic looking fin would have brought.

Even so, the 787 is still – this is entirely subjective of course – one of the best looking aircraft in service today. How good does it look in Air New Zealand or Etihad livery? And I have no doubt that is one reason why the aeroplane has so many advocates, both within and outside the industry.

Look at the debate over Qantas’s ongoing, ‘will it, won’t it’ deliberations over whether to buy the 787. “Oh bloody hell AJ, just place the damn order…. . PLEASE!!!!!” one reader implored in the comments section of a story on our website about the prospects of a 787 order.

Qantas under Alan Joyce has regularly deferred a decision on taking 787s into the mainline airline’s fleet until the numbers in the business case add up for it. For the Qantas boss, who trained as a mathematician, there’s no

On the right route the 787 will be a thing of beauty from an operating economics perspective.

doubt the beauty of the 787 will lie in its numbers.

Those numbers will start to look better now the airline is starting to enjoy healthy profits again, is able to pay down debt and its international division is back in the black – all preconditions Joyce has set down for any 787 order (beyond the 11 787-8s currently being delivered to subsidiary Jetstar).

And on the right route the 787 will be a thing of beauty from an operating economics perspective. I suspect if Qantas does indeed firm up orders for the 787-9 that the airline has just announced its first 787 route – Sydney-San Francisco which it will be resuming at the end of the year. It would be fascinating to see what the hard numbers are, but you would think a 300-seat Qantas 787-9 would have direct operating costs per seat something like 20 per cent lower than for a 364-seat 747-400. And with fewer seats the break even seat factor is going to be lower, important for a market like SFO with less onward connecting traffic potential.

Those – aircraft acquisition financing costs aside – promise to be a beautiful set of numbers.

The ‘beauty’ of the passenger proposition offered by the 787 is less easily measured. One the one hand are the benefits of the lower cabin pressure altitude and higher cabin humidity. But on the other there is the 17-inch wide economy class seats set at nine abreast in the economy cabin that allows airlines, such as Air New Zealand, to fit 300 seats into the 787-9 in three class configurations. (Don’t get Airbus chief salesman John Leahy started on the comparative advantage of the A350’s 18-inch wide economy class seats. ) Perhaps it is a case of never mind the width, feel the lower cabin pressure altitude. . .

Or the economy class passenger could take the advice of Treasurer Joe Hockey and “get a good job that pays good money” to start saving for that Falcon 5X to enjoy the luxurious cabin appointments that that would bring.

Because beauty, after all, is more than skin deep.