Looking at Boeing 787

Image Credit: Boeing Image Neg. #K63968
http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/gallery/images/commercial/787/k63370.html  

I recently acquired interest in and posted here on the economics of commercial passenger airlines. I was rather surprised that commercial airlines have been unable to raise the travel speed across destinations for more than three decades. And this is especially interesting because in that time, there have been substantial technology improvements that would make improvements in speed easily possible. To test this hypothesis, I have been looking out for specifications on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

Brett Snyder, writing at the CNN page takes readers through the new features that would improve passenger comfort. I noted that the article completely makes no reference to gains in speed across destinations. As the blog post argued, the barrier is not necessarily technology but the costs that would go with increased consumption of fuel at higher speeds. Commercial flight is an industry which faces hard constraints set by fuel costs.