Boeing Dreamliner Catches Fire In Boston

19061969 writes "The BBC reports that a Boeing 787 Dreamliner caught fire in Boston. Carter Leake, an analyst at BB&T Capital Markets in Virginia, said, 'I don't want to be an alarmist, but onboard fires on airplanes are as bad as it gets.' This represents bad news for Boeing especially after the FAA identified errors in the assembly of fuel line couplings in the Dreamliner."

Comments

With one fire

[Cryacin]

The dreamliner turns into a nightmare. Film at 11.

Re:With one fire

[Anonymous Coward]

... there have been plenty of issues on the 787 which should not have made it to production - the QA issues that have hit over a dozen aircraft, numerous technical faults and electrical system issues etc etc etc.

I fully agree. Yes, all planes have issues when they're first deployed. For example, it was discovered that some parts of the wing structure on the A380 needed to be strengthened in order to meet the fatigue lifetime. However, this is not the kind of thing that would have caused failures in flight - it's a long term fatigue issue that was discovered years before it would have caused a problem. Issues like this are common since strength/fatigue vs. weight is such a difficult compromise on aircraft. 787 issues have been more the kind of thing that should have been fixed during design and testing.

The problem with the 787, and the reason that it was years behind schedule and has so many problems, is that the executive geniuses at Boeing decided to outsource as much of the engineering as they could ("outsource" here referring to both domestic and offshore outsourcing). Many of the companies that engineering was outsourced to simply didn't have the expertise. Large airliners are not exactly the kind of thing that every job shop and subcontractor has the know-how to design. There are only two companies worth mentioning in the world that do.

The only way they got the 787 out the door at all (and stemmed the financial bleeding of Boeing) was by taking emergency steps to find a large cadre of engineers who had decades of deep experience in airliner design. They found them at (surprise, surprise) Boeing! Golly, you mean there was some wisdom to the way the world's most successful airliner manufacturer has designed planes for decades? Whodda thunk it? No doubt the top execs at Boeing will get large bonuses for discovering this brilliant last minute solution, and blame Boeing engineering for the problems that do remain.

Re:With one fire

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes- this ^

I live in Boeing's former home town (Seattle) and it may be sour grapes, but the buzz I hear here is that the other/new assembly site in South Carolina is an amateur hour kind of thing. Boeing set up shop there because of the union workers here, and the quality went away. I hear from labor and management folks both that Boeing is no longer in the aircraft business- they are now in the vendor management business, and there are no effective mechanisms for enforcing quality or delivery timeframes.

Lithium ion battery

[Dan East]

It was one of the two large lithium ion battery packs the power the plane when the engines are off. The FCC and pilots were already concerned about the use of lithium ion batteries for this purpose (apparently it's a first), and they issued special regulations just for this plane.

Also the only person on board when this happened was a mechanic (which is probably a good thing at least someone was able to spot the smoke right away).

Re:Lithium ion battery

[YrWrstNtmr]

...but I have thrown out a NiCad that was swelling and smelling. Yes, I mean thrown out, from 35,000 ft, somewhere over the North Atlantic. Glad we had a door that opened in.

Uh huh. Sure you did.

Re:MSM Strikes Again

[Dupple]

From TFA

"The fire started after a battery in the jet's auxiliary power system overheated."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20942484

Re:MSM Strikes Again

[Richard_at_work]

The aircraft wasn't departing, it had just arrived and the passengers and crew had deplaned.

Also, no certified crew on a commercial carrier leaves the APU running after its needed - it takes up substantially more than a "tiny fraction of fuel" and leaving it on for even a short haul flight can cost the operator thousands of dollars in extra fuel costs for just that one flight.

Here's a more educated guess: faulty battery underwent thermal runaway and caught fire, causing a minor explosion and a heck of a lot of smoke.

Re:Titanic

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear passengers: I have bad and good news for you. The bad news: we lost a wing. The good news: it was on fire anyway.

Re:Titanic

[LeadSongDog]

Stop, you're both wrong.
1. This is not, by definition, an aviation accident: even the crew had deplaned.
2. Many parked aircraft have lost wings without crashing: all it takes is wind passing over the tarmac on the wrong vector.
3. A fire, even in flight, doesn't have to be the end of the world if the systems design detects the fire and limits its ability to spread. This was the principal lesson-learned from SR111, which has since changed material approvals for aircraft. SA295 was never adequately explained, so teaches us little, but evidently the firefighting routines were not followed. VJ592 was caused by illegally carried hazmat (oxygen generators) in the cabin. AC797 had many similarities to SR111 (insulation burning spread the fire), but the lessons learned were not applied to designs in time to prevent SR111. I'd blame the FAA's inaction on NTSB recommendations.