Its fuselage will be the first to make extensive use of composite materials rather than traditional aluminum.
A second factor has been the widespread development of the use of composite materials in aircraft structures.
But EverGreen's chairman, Kelly Rose, said the price reflected the use of composite materials, rather than wood and particleboard.
Most sleds are made of ash lashed together with leather or nylon, though a trend is developing toward the use of composite materials.
The use of composite materials started on military jets and has grown steadily on commercial planes over the last several decades.
Big planes almost always use more fuel than smaller ones and the use of composite materials has made modern, twin-engine planes even lighter and more fuel-efficient.
The use of composite materials, similarly assisted in both design and application by the use of computers, has grown from the occasional application for a nonstructural part (e.g., a baggage compartment door) to the construction of complete airframes.
This programme includes the so-called Tango projects for encouraging the use of composite materials in civil aircraft, with the aim of cutting 20% from both the weight and the manufacturing cost of new European airliners.
The use of composite materials opened up whole new methods of construction and enabled engineers to create less expensive, lighter, and stronger parts of more streamlined shapes than had previously been feasible with wood or metal.
Also, because their strength tends to be directional, they can fail under sudden loads from unexpected quarters.One of the ways that Chapman added lightness to his cars, the use of composite materials such as carbon fibre and glass-reinforced plastic, is not that practical either.
The consortium's next airliner, the A310 (entered service in 1983), introduced many new concepts, among them a two-pilot cockpit (in which the duties of a third crew member, the flight engineer, were performed by computers) and extensive use of composite materials for the airframe.
