Excitement builds for Boeing 777X as cabin video goes viral

If there is a silver lining to the news that Boeing 777X deliveries won’t commence until 2026, it is that excitement is clearly building for the debut of this much delayed twinjet-with-foldable-wingtips.

That’s especially true after Boeing 777X fan page, @b777Xlovers, published this video of the twinjet’s interior to the socials. The video is authentic, Boeing confirms, and if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s worth taking a look at the airframer’s vision.

“Looks like everything you learned from the 777 and the 787 have been synthesized and pulled into the 777X,” enthuses one viewer on YouTube.

Close observers of the industry are aware that production refinements have allowed Boeing to carve out a wider cabin on the 777X, indeed four inches wider than today’s 777 twinjets to facilitate a more comfortable 10-abreast layout in economy class.

The 777X’s large dimmable windows, and its vast array of mood lighting choices, including starry night scenes, may also be familiar, especially to those who attend major airshows and exhibitions, where Boeing has showcased mockups and video projections.

In terms of the center section overhead bin design, two flavors will be offered on the 777X — a large standard bin or, as is increasingly seen in business class cabins, none at all, creating an airy feel.

At Door 2, Boeing is being flexible, offering several architecturally welcoming configurations for airlines including the ability to preserve ceiling architecture from premium cabins or institute a full arch. That flexibility continues in the aft galley, where airlines can choose between a transverse or longitudinal design.

The crew accommodations also look spacious and attractive. But passengers and indeed crew will have to wait a bit longer for the 777X to enter revenue service with global airlines, including launch customer Lufthansa, which has ordered 20 of the 777-9 variant.

Because while Boeing now has five aircraft in its test program — and, in flying a lot of sorties, is observing no new technical issues on either the aircraft or the engines — it isn’t burning down the certification tasks quickly enough, Boeing president and CEO Kelly Ortberg explained on 11 September during the Morgan Stanley Laguna Conference.

Ortberg admitted there is still a “mountain of work” to do in order to certify the 777X and ensure 2026 deliveries, and confided:

[W]e are falling behind on the certification. In order to actually get the completion, we can go fly, but we can’t actually get the certification credit until we get this thing called a TIA [type inspection authorization].

And you’ve probably seen where … we’re getting incremental TIAs, which give us some limited capability of being able to get the certification credit done, but we still don’t have authorization from the FAA for a good portion of the certification program.

So, we’re working through that right now with the FAA, but we’re clearly behind our plan in getting the certification done.

Even a minor schedule delay on the 777X “has a pretty big financial impact because we’re in a reach forward loss situation, so we’re looking at that real hard,” he explained. The aircraft was originally scheduled to be delivered in 2020.

On a positive note, demand for the 777X “is fantastic,” Ortberg said. That demand extends to passengers, it seems, as a quick glance at the comments on @777Xlovers’ YouTube channel attests.

Another positive? When Ortberg replaced Dave Calhoun as president and CEO of Boeing just over a year ago, he began working to improve its corporate culture and overall approach, and rolled out new values and behaviors.

“We’ve done our first ‘voice of employees’ survey; we hadn’t done one in over four years,” he said. “We got some really good feedback from our employees about the things that we need to change, and so we’re off working on that. In fact, we’ll do a refresher survey here this fall and measure how we’re doing.

“But I think we put some building blocks in place. I’m seeing major change. Our customers are talking about it. If you talk to our DoD customers, many of them will say, ‘Hey, this is a different Boeing showing up.’ A little bit of the arrogance, knocking it down; a little bit of humility. Letting our technical people do the talking and not forcing things. And I think we’re being effective. Our organization is rallying around these new values. And so, you know, we just got to keep that going.”

Related Articles:

All images credited to Boeing