After three years of delays Boeing's new 787 is finally entering service. They sold a LOT of these things long before the prototype made its first flight, so there are a whole lot of airliners (and a whole lot of sales reps) that are going to start being happy again.

Ten, maybe fifteen years ago when the A380 and the 787 were still on the drawing boards, the industry was at a kind of crossroads. The Airbus people thought the future was bigger and better "hub and spokes" patterns, while the Boeing people thought the future was more point-to-point flights. Now that both are finally in service, it'll be interesting to see which vision was the correct one.