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I have flown on the Dreamliner 3 times. The 4th time I was booked on it, it had to be swapped for another aircraft due to a maintenance issue. From a passenger's perspective, these are some of the features I noticed that make it so special, compared to other currently available aircraft:Quieter - Special chevron design to make engines less noisy and better sound insulationSmoother - Longer range weather radars to detect and avoid turbulence/weather earlierAtmosphere - Pressurized more naturally at below 6,000 feet instead of the typical 8,000 feetHumidity - More natural level of humidity, so is not as dry to breatheLighting - Mood lighting to set the mood based on time of day to mimic sunset/sunrise at your destination to reduce jet-lagWindows - Larger, and with adjustable tint that can be darkened without shadesThe list can go on. Overall a wonderful aircraft to fly in.

When Boeing first designed the 787, it had four variants: the -3, -8, -9, and -10. The -3 is now dead so we won’t worry about it.The -8 was first off the production line. When we were living in Vancouver in 2008, my parents did a tour of the Boeing factory and saw the very first pre-production 787–8s on the production line (line numbers 1–5 I think)!It was over five years later, in 2013, when the 787–9 first flew. Technology improves a lot over five years, especially in aviation.Also that year, the 787–10 was confirmed. And another two years later, Boeing decided to start designing it.When Boeing started designing the -10, they were able to take advantage of technology that wasn’t available in 2008.Among these advances are the Trent-1000 engines and a secret military technology that even most Boeing employees don’t know about.*Locks windows, tapes laptop camera, dims lights, deadbolts doors, and switches to Incognito browser*Okay what I’m about to tell you is so highly illegal that you can’t tell anybody, okay?It’s called the HLFC system, which stands for Hybrid Laminar Flow Control system. What does it do?Nobody knows.Why do they have it? Because they can.While the technology certainly is legit, there’s almost no information about it. The only people who know about it are Boeing executives who refuse to say a word. But here’s what we do know:The HLFC system was developed for the 787–10, which they then introduced onto the money-making 787–9 slightly later. You can see it on the tail and and horizontal stabilisers in the photo above.Closer up, you can see little doors that appear to be double-hinged.These doors most likely act as tiny Krueger flaps, opening and closing at various times to produce maximum efficiency on the wing. I’m not sure where laminar flow comes into this, but it would probably mildly distrupt airflow at certain times. Not sure why.Boeing says it’s to ‘delay the transition of airflow from the laminar layer to the turbulent layer’, but that’s a very vague answer (probably on purpose).And as if this wasn’t sketchy enough, Boeing won’t even tell us how much more efficient it makes the plane. They simply say “it significantly benefits” the wing; refusing to put an actual number on it.So at least for now, we won’t be finding out much about the HLFC system.There is also another technology on the 787 that is relatively little-understood.You may have heard of the strange holes that were poked into the tail of the 777X. These are called sweeping jet actuators and they help to assist with laminar flow.NASA is currently testing it on a 757.So what does all of this mean?Well, these were all technologies that were applied to the 787–10, and then carried onto the 787–9. So what about the 787–8?The 787–8 is a less popular plane, with a lot of them already in service. Redeveloping an aircraft that is almost halfway through its life is a poor idea, and would probably cost too much to be successful.Thus, the 787–8 is actually slightly less related to the other 787s, and has poorer range than expected too. This is also the reason the 787–10 can actually take off on a shorter runway than the 787–8, despite being much heavier.Also, the 787–9 is considered the ‘perfect’ 787. It has just the right fuselage length for the wings, with the -8 being too short and the -10 being too long. This is why the -9 has the most range, and is also the most efficient.TL;DR: The 787–8 isn’t as advanced or efficient as the 787–9.Hope this helps!