Good News For Air Travelers, For A Change

The Boeing 787 will make out lives a little better:

Joe Sharkey, As Travel Industry Rebounds, Travel Costs Are Rising

There is some bright news for travelers in the form of the much-anticipated Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Continental Airlines, the first North American carrier that will fly it, showed it off on the exhibition floor on Monday. Well, not the whole airplane, but a full-size mockup of a cabin section.

Five years ago, I wrote about the first mockup of the 787 cabin at Boeing’s plant in Seattle. I’m happy to say that despite the delays in getting the plane to market, Boeing has lived up to its promise of a revolutionary interior in an airplane made mostly of lightweight carbon-fiber composites.

Boeing is marketing the plane as 20 percent more fuel-efficient than its 767s, which the 787 will replace on many longer routes. Its windows are bigger than ones on other planes; the cabin is more spacious and is engineered for higher humidity levels to combat in-flight dryness. The overhead bins are the industry’s largest.

Continental expects delivery next year of the first of the 25 Boeing 787s it has ordered, and plans to begin flying between Houston and Auckland, New Zealand, as well as Houston and Lagos, Nigeria, in November 2011.

Continental, which is merging with United, plans to fly its 787s with 36 seats in its premium BusinessFirst cabin and 192 in coach. For the first time in ages, the coach cabin will offer a degree of comfort instead of varying degrees of physical misery.

I have cut way back on air travel — for time and carbon footprint reasons — but it’s good to know that airplane manufacturers are taking some steps to increase efficiencies.

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