Boeing Co is re-evaluating plans for a short-range version of its 787 airplane after the sole airline with pending orders went with other Boeing models instead.
Randy Tinseth, vice president of marketing for Boeing’s commercial airplane division, wrote in a company blog that Boeing will “continue to assess the market viability” of the 787-3, a model that Boeing describes as a “super-efficient airplane” aimed at the middle of the market. Boeing says the plane uses 20 percent less fuel than other planes of its size, and seats 290 to 330 passengers and has a range of 4,600km to 5,612km.
Boeing has poured billions of dollars into developing the family of sleek blue-and-white 787 jetliners, which feature radical departures from other planes in design to make the planes quieter, lighter and less fuel-thirsty.
The initial flight of a 787 took place last month, two years behind schedule as the program has been plagued by parts problems and other delays.
The move to rethink the 787-3’s future comes after Japan’s All Nippon Airways Co converted its 787-3 orders into other models, a decision that left Boeing, based in Chicago, with no orders left for the plane in the company’s backlog, Tinseth said.
“Simply put, getting aircraft into their hands for earlier delivery was a better solution for them,” Tinseth wrote in the blog posting on Friday.
Other models in the 787 family include the 787-8, which can carry 210 to 250 passengers with a range of 14,076km to 15,088km, and the 787-9, which can carry 250 to 290 passengers with a range of 14,720km to 15,640km. Boeing says it had a total of 851 orders for 787 models as of Thursday.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained