Customer Reviews

Boeing 787 Dreamliner

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I had an amazing time reading this book (front to back in a day!) The pictures were great and I learned so much about the 787.
I agree with the previous reviewer, Guy Norris must work hard to ensure his books are as informative and entertaining as possible, and it shows!

Waited for more than a year for this book to arrive. It did not disappoint me. It is a Guy Norris book which means it is well written and well researched. I read it in few hours and loved it. The only reason I did not give it five stars is because I would have like more tech stuff. But bravo, learned a load.

This book featuring the 787 is well detailed, I was fired up when this book came out and a fun book to browse. Plentiful pictures, and some descriptions of its awesome capabilities. If you'd really like to know what it is to appreciate this fine piece of technological marvel, see the other books on A380 and 747. Comparitively, I did not find it as indepth as another available Guy Norris books. Being aerospace buff who is employed at Lockheed I have enjoyed all books by Norris and this one is a must read.

Dong Chul Shin Texas

This is a nice book with glossy pages and beautiful pictures. It is well written by a reputed aerospace journalist. When I started reading it I was quite thrilled and it looked like it was going to be a terrific read.

But my initial enthusiasm quickly vanished. I soon realized that it was nothing more than a Boeing sponsored "authorized biography" of the B787. In other words it avoids being critical to Boeing despite the numerous opportunities offered by the circumstances surrounding the development of this audacious endeavour. The 787 is an aircraft that had already made History by the time the book was published. Instead what we have here is just an idealized story.

Yet the book is still quite technical in it's jargon and therefore will appeal mainly to an airplane buff or the more educated readers. Actually, the numerous technical descriptions that one can find throughout this book are quite boring to read and sometimes superfluous. I often had the impression I was reading directly from the Boeing 787 Operating Manual or Maintenance Manual. At times it appeared like an unimaginative "copy & paste" job. But I managed to learn a few things here and there in spite of the fact that I had followed the story closely in Aviation Week since the very beginning. And this might explain why I was expecting more from this book than what was actually delivered.

Having followed the story in details from the start I had always known that the project was very risky and that the management at Boeing was dreaming at the time, so to speak. And in fact when the silt started to hit the fan the world actually discovered how optimistic these guys had been. But honestly, I had anticipated most of what happened just by reading Aviation Week. On numerous occasions I found myself shaking my head in disbelief when learning about how the bold industrial innovations Boeing had introduced were supposed to save time and money. It was easy to see that those grandiose plans had been devised by a bunch of MBAs. In case you din't know, Boeing used to be a company run by engineers. Not anymore. It's now run by Wall Street.

This book lacks a key ingredient that could have thrusted it from the level of a mere technical bulletin into the realm of a literary thriller. The human factor is totally neglected in this story. We see the machine everywhere, but the men and women who designed and build it are conspicuously absent from these otherwise flamboyant pages. It takes more than pretty pictures and flashy technologies to make a compelling story. The "Twenty-First Century Jet - The Making and Marketing of the Boeing 777" by Karl Sabbagh had actually too much human factor in it. It makes for an interesting comparison. When Guy Norris mentions an individual in his book it is always to let him say something banal he could have written himself. It's always interesting to know how people with different responsibilities and with various backgrounds and cultures interact with each others. Especially on a complex project like the 787. On the other hand in Karl Sabbagh's book there was so much "dramatis personae" that I quickly tired of it. What I would have liked to see in the present effort is a more balance ratio of man and machine and a more profound examination of the roles played by various people. At the risk of being politically incorrect at times.

Interestingly, the most obvious person missing from this book is the author himself. He never really expressed a personal opinion. It's like if the whole time he had been locked inside his purely analytical left brain, unable to cross the barrier to his more synthetical right hemisphere, from where he would have been able to develop a broader view. Therefore what we end up with is an incomplete picture. But I suppose it was not the purpose of this endeavour to recount the whole story, only an embellished one.

This book contains a lot of valuable technology information that I really liked. One of the amazing things that I liked about this plane is the wing design which makes the plane take off faster. Boeing is using this technology in all other new planes including the 747-inercontinnetal, so international airports will not change their runways any more which cost a lot of money like other airports did for the airbus 380.

I referenced this book for a business case study. The material provides plenty of information about the players and events leading to the decision to start a project with new materials, new design, new production processes & a new supply chain. It also spends time explaining Boeing's implementation of these new risks, what made them so unique and then discusses issues that resulted from these decisions. I found it to be a useful source.

Good book, very detailed story. Seems to have been written from inside the factory. Great pictures also. Unfortunately the book was finished before the first flight and entry in service. I sugest waiting for the next edition to read the end of the story.