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Production of Boeing 787 Dreamliner Delayed Again
Hugh Pickens writes "Boeing has discovered microscopic wrinkles in the skin of the 787's fuselage and has ordered Italian supplier Alenia Aeronautica to halt production of fuselage sections at a factory in Italy. 'In two areas on the fuselage, the structure doesn't have the long-term strength that we want,' says Boeing spokeswoman Lori Gunter. To repair the wrinkles, additional layers of carbon composite material are being added to a 787 at the South Carolina factory and twenty-two other planes must also be patched. Production of the 787 has been fraught with problems with ill-fitting parts, casting doubt on Boeing's strategy of relying on overseas suppliers to build big sections of the aircraft before assembling them at its facilities near Seattle. The 787, built for fuel efficiency from lightweight carbon composite parts, is a priority for Boeing as it struggles with dwindling orders amid the global recession. Customers had been expecting the first of the new jets in the first quarter of 2010 — nearly two years earlier than they will be delivered. The delays have cost Boeing credibility and billions of dollars in anticipated expenses and penalties. Orders for 72 planes have been canceled already this year, although Boeing still has confirmed orders for over 800 aircraft."
It's a little more than just outsourcing - Boeing had cut their internal engineering resources to the point where they didn't have the capacity to do all of design work in house. Since you don't just go out and hire a few thousand airframe structural engineers the only option left was to outsource - and now it turns out the partners they had vastly overstated their capabilities. After all, any engineer is the same as any other, right?
My brother is an engineer at Boeing... he claims that this is the most screwed up engineering project in terms of cost in human history. I think he has a point.
Boeing is designing a permanent fix to the wrinkle problem so future versions of the plane won't have to be modified. The existing fuselage wrinkles, she said, will not compromise the flight safety of the 787s.
The existing fuselage wrinkles might not compromise the flight safety of the 787s, but they will weigh and cost a lot more than planned because of the extra layers of carbon composite material. The added weight will reduce fuel efficiency for the entire lifetime of the airplane, which further increases the cost of use of these planes for the airlines that will be buying them. As for the permanent fix:
Boeing said tests had shown it needed to reinforce areas where the plane's wings join the fuselage.
You can bet this means all future 787s will weigh more than Boeing told their investors they would, which means some companies who slightly prefered 787s over an alternative by, say, Airbus, might also cancel their orders and buy from the competition instead.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
The problems are with barrels that aren't even close to production yet. Boeing (in as much as you can believe them anymore) says that this will not delay the production of the 787 (to first flight) of the 787 any further than it already has been.
This information is out there, is it so difficult to go find it before publishing wrong info instead?
http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/flightblogger/2009/08/breaking-structural-flaw-halts.html
Oh yeah, and the problem with the sections isn't with the skin, it's with the stringers behind them. It leads to wrinkles in the skin, but the real fix is to not mess up the stringers in the first place.
The statement that this casts even more doubt on the outsourcing model set up at Boeing under Alan Mullaly is most definitely not diminished by the inaccuracies in the reporting of these details.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Flying in general is extremely safe.
Plus 53% of Aircraft crashes are caused by Pilot Error. A total of 67% are caused by "human factors" (e.g. Human Error, Sabotage, Maintenance mistakes etc). 11% by weather. Which leaves a 21% chance of mechanical problems.
Which tells me you should be a lot less concerned about who builds your aircraft and instead look at how well trained your pilot and the ground crew are. Because they are more than likely the ones who will get you killed.
PS - Plus Boeing aircraft have crashed over five times more than Airbus Aircraft (but are also much more popular, so reading the above it isn't surprising).
Stop spreading this myth.
From Snopes:
Claim:NASA spent millions of dollars developing an "astronaut pen" which would work in outer space while the Soviets solved the same problem by simply using pencils.
Status:False.
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
It's a manufacturing problem related to the connection between the fuselage stringers and skin. Alenia and Boeing have known about it for a while. Alenia can't make the stringers with a close enough tolerance on the landing (the "bottom" that bonds to the skin) to get a proper cure of the skin and Boeing refuses to relax the tolerances. Until they can agree on a manufacturing fix they have stopped work.
The fix for the parts already made is to put an exterior patch. That's usually a last resort but not unheard of. Customers don't like to get new airplanes with visible patches on them.
Alenia has scrapped two barrels and sectioned them to get a good look at the internals of the problem. The manufacturing fix will be pretty straightforward, probably a few extra plies in the skin to make up for some reduced thickness in the stringer landing.
Alenia likely did a facir (first article conformity inspection report) on the first barrel which is where they cut the first barrel up and look at sections to find wrinkles and other things. The problem is, they changed the mfg process on the stringers after the facir. Not unusual, but they blew it when they asserted that the new method would be equivalent to the original that passed the facir.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
Russian planes fly with airlines worldwide. Just two examples:
Tu-154 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-154 "The aircraft has been exported and operated by about 17 non-Russian airlines, as well as a number of non-Russian airforces. It remains the standard airliner for domestic routes across Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union (CIS). The Tu-154 is one of the fastest civilian planes in operation (975 km/h) and has a range of 5280 km. Designed to handle unpaved and gravel airfields, it often operates in extreme Arctic conditions of Russia's northern territories."
(I've flown on it. Nice plane.) pics at airliners.net
The older Tu-134 "has seen long-term service with some 42 countries, with some European airlines having made very intense use of the 134 (as many as 12 takeoffs & landings per plane daily)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-134
Citation Provided.
Accidents by aircraft type.
Fatalities by aircraft type.
The Boeing 737 NG, 757 and 767 have crashed more times then A330 and A340's. If we include older aircraft such as the B737 (Classic) and B747 vs the A320 and A300 we have the same story.
Airbus' highest fatality for a single aircraft type A300 - 1423 deaths.
Boeing's highest fatality for a single aircraft type B737 - 3990 deaths.
That being said, if you are boarding any type of aircraft you have already survived the most dangerous part of your journey, the drive to the airport.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The Big Dig numbers you quote are rather distorted by inflation and included interest costs. Stripping out these factors the original cost estimate works out to 6bil and the final cost is 14.8bill.
The 787 overruns PRIOR to this wrinkle problem are 11bil.
failing to meet the challenge of the A380.
I don't think that's an accurate description. The business is all about cost per passenger mile, and Boeing did the math and decided that a major shift in materials was a bigger win than making a bigger airplane.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Perhaps you'd prefer Scientific American: http://preview.tinyurl.com/lvnqa3
rj
That tells me it's Boeing's fault that the problem exists, not the Italian manufacturers.
No, it's Alenia's.
There are two issues here. The first is that the wing body join failed earlier than it was supposed to - that's a design fault on Boeing's part. The second is that starting with the seventh frame, the fuselage skin was wrinkled. That's a production fault.
Alenia has since admitted that they changed production processes after the seventh frame, and something having to do with that change caused the faults. This issue has already been resolved. The information in this article is apparently a bit old, although the issues it brings up are still at least somewhat valid... though there is honestly no practical way of building an airliner these days without using offshore suppliers. But it highlights the dangers of lowest-bidder contracts.
Boeing pulled out the 787 after scrapping the Sonic Cruiser. It had nothing to do with the A380. Boeing had already been down the VLA route before Airbus had and decided there was no market.
You could say the A380 was a reaction to Boeing's "challenge" offered by the 747-700X, which was first offered in 1996. Boeing received no interest from airlines, leading them to explore smaller airplanes. The A380 had nothing to do with it.
The 747-8 could be considered a reaction to the A380, although it is obviously smaller than both the A380 and the proposed 747-700X. But that was Boeing saying "ok, look, you guys said you didn't want this in 1996, but if you've all now changed your mind about wanting a bigger plane with a better cost per seat mile, here it is."
There are ten times as many 737s as there are A300s so 3 times the number of fatalities is still 3 times safer.
Please stop spreading bullshit. Tn the history of aviation there are far more crashes caused by pilot error than caused by fly by wire. Also, flying Boeing is potentially much more fatal.
Let's compare the statistics for the A320 family and the Boeing 737 family - that's the airplane you are most likely to fly.
Of the 6000 delivered Boeing 734 planes there were 144 hull-loss accidents resulting in 3847 fatalities. Of the 3958 delivered A32x there were 20 hull-loss accidents with a total of 631 fatalities.
Yes, that's right. There are only 1.5 times more delivered Boeing 737 but they have a 5 times higher hull-loss accident rate a 6 times higher fatality rate. Correcting for the same number of machines there would be 4.8 times more hull-loss accidents and 4 times more fatalities at Boeing.
Maybe you should change your sitting location.
Ah, by the way, A32x is pure fly by wire.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap