Japanese Probe Finds Miswiring of Boeing 787 Battery

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Japanese Probe Finds Miswiring of Boeing 787 Battery

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday February 20, 2013 @12:51PM from the who's-to-blame dept.

NeverVotedBush writes in with the latest installment of the Dreamliner: Boeing 787 saga. "A probe into the overheating of a lithium ion battery in an All Nippon Airways Boeing 787 that made an emergency landing found it was improperly wired, Japan's Transport Ministry said Wednesday. The Transport Safety Board said in a report that the battery for the aircraft's auxiliary power unit was incorrectly connected to the main battery that overheated, although a protective valve would have prevented power from the auxiliary unit from causing damage. Flickering of the plane's tail and wing lights after it landed and the fact the main battery was switched off led the investigators to conclude there was an abnormal current traveling from the auxiliary power unit due to miswiring."

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Yay, time for finger pointing by DavidRawling · 2013-02-20 12:54 · Score: 2

Who will it be? Maintenance? Boeing?
1. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by the+eric+conspiracy · 2013-02-20 13:03 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Outsourcing contractor.
2. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 13:06 · Score: 0
  
  Nobodys of course. Nobody except that technician who can' t afford a truckload of lawyers.
3. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 13:13 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Really? I am actually quite impressed. The degree of investigation over lighting failures and back up safety systems and all that is pretty awesome. Putting aside my condemnation of corporations like Boeing, this mess isn't damning, but rather assuring. Any finger pointing should be met with a reminder that the plane landed just fine. Granted, I'd be annoyed if my flight was grounded for this nonsense but degree of blame should reflect the problem caused.
4. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 13:16 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Themselves?
5. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 13:17 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  I was just thinking that..the media will now have their blame game but at the end of the day it was a plane mishap that didn't include charred bodies strewn on the countryside. It was a glitch, that was easily fixed. I could have been much worse.
6. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by bobbied · 2013-02-20 13:27 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Who will it be? Maintenance? Boeing?
  All of the above!
  I'm skeptical of this story. They are basically saying that somehow the wiring got messed up in such a way that everything still worked, but the battery was improperly charged/discharged by the APU. The evidence they have is some lights that flickered. This seems fishy to me.
  If something is miswired, then it's going to be possible to PROVE that as fact. Even if the unit was cut from the aircraft, it would be possible to physically inspect and verify what wire went where. Flickering lights are NOT PROOF of anything being incorrectly wired.
  If the drawings don't match the design, you can PROVE that by inspecting the drawings. If the aircraft doesn't match the drawings you can PROVE that by inspecting the aircraft. We have NO proof here.
  I'm guessing that somebody in Japan wants to get these aircraft back into the air, bad enough to come up with some story with flimsy evidence and managed to get Japan's version of the NTSB to agree.
  
  --
  "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
7. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by bobbied · 2013-02-20 13:34 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I was just thinking that..the media will now have their blame game but at the end of the day it was a plane mishap that didn't include charred bodies strewn on the countryside. It was a glitch, that was easily fixed. I could have been much worse.
  This whole idea of a wiring error sounds fishy and it seems to be based on flimsy evidence. These kind of things are proven by hard inspection of the aircraft, drawings, and designs not by observing flickering lights. Somebody in Japan wants these aircraft in the air really bad, and I'm betting they managed to talk Japan's version of the NTSB into this idea.
  I'm waiting for the final report on this... Before I decide to get on one of these.. Because if this flimsy sounding reason is what I think it is, another plane is going to have a battery fire pretty soon and this time we might not be so lucky.
  
  --
  "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
8. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by marcosdumay · 2013-02-20 13:43 · Score: 2
  
  Add to that that there were other, less severe but similar problems with the battery on other planes.
  Also, I'd say (but nobody listens to me anyway) that if the battery can be misswired like that, it's a design flaw and Boeing should issue a correction. Of course, there is a lot of needed research before stablishing that the battery in fact has this problem, but that'd be the proper action.
  
  --
  Rethinking email
9. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by icebike · 2013-02-20 13:44 · Score: 1
  
  I'm skeptical of this story. They are basically saying that somehow the wiring got messed up in such a way that everything still worked, but the battery was improperly charged/discharged by the APU. The evidence they have is some lights that flickered. This seems fishy to me.
  
  I tend to agree. The summary and TFA are so confusing, its hard to figure where exactly the miss-wiring was. Was it in the APU, or the APU's seperate battery, or the Main Battery, or what? They simply say the APU Battery was "incorrectly connected". Does that mean it was never intended to be connected to the main battery, or was reverse wired, or shorted or operates as a different voltages, or what?
  So far Boeing is mum on this particular report.
  Instead they are proceeding with insulation between battery cells and cooling.
  
  Boeing’s plan would be to redesign the batteries to place insulation inside and around each of the eight cells to minimize the risk that a short circuit or fire in one of thecells could spread to the others, as investigators have said occurred on the battery that caught fire in Boston on Jan. 7. Boeing might also adjust how tightly the batteries are packed.
  So no clue what caused it but if we insulate the battery a little better maybe we can contain it? Seems almost as fishy as the article mentioned above.
  
  --
  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
10. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 13:48 · Score: 1, Funny
  
  Yes, never let a (albeit short) track record of no fatal crashes get in the way of an entertaining conspiracy theory.
11. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by ColdWetDog · 2013-02-20 14:07 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  You do realize that the flickering lights pointed investigators in a particular direction. THEN, after more analysis, they discerned the problem lay in miswiring. The flickering lights are not prima facie evidence of a wiring fault.
  A bit more detail would be welcome. As it is, one cannot tell what happened or how many aircraft are affected.
  
  --
  Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
12. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by PolygamousRanchKid+ · 2013-02-20 14:09 · Score: 2
  
  Boeing should have called the Call Center Help Line. The first question they always ask, is, "Is the device plugged in correctly?"
  I find it mildly amusing that the Airbus A-800 also had problems with the wiring. They blamed that on a mismatch in CATIA system between French and German engineers.
  It's amazing, all those high-tech doo-hickies, whatchits and gadgets in the plane. . . and in the end a wiring problem causes the system to fail. Maybe in the future, they can just all use one bus, and get rid of the wiring.
  
  --
  Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
13. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by anubi · 2013-02-20 14:10 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  When I read of it, I felt more vindicated than surprised.
  
  During my tenure in aerospace, I had witnessed more and more of a disregard for detail work. What used to be a good thing called "attention to detail" started being regarded negatively as "being a perfectionist".
  
  The devil is in the details. Thousands of things work perfectly. One does not. This is the inevitable result of overlooking just one detail.
  
  --
  "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
14. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Solandri · 2013-02-20 14:34 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  The 747 has something like 150 miles of wiring. The 787, which was specifically designed to reduce the amount of wiring, still has some 60 miles of wires. There's a lot of opportunity for miswiring something.
15. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by sjames · 2013-02-20 14:35 · Score: 2
  
  That is important to keep in mind. Because of the things they did right, the thing they did wrong hasn't killed anyone.
16. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 14:42 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  You do realize that the flickering lights pointed investigators in a particular direction. THEN, after more analysis, they discerned the problem lay in miswiring. The flickering lights are not prima facie evidence of a wiring fault.
  A bit more detail would be welcome. As it is, one cannot tell what happened or how many aircraft are affected.
  the Japanese government is not big on providing details. the culture is one where you trust your elders, and the government is the ultimate parent. personally, I resent that.
  *bows head to dodge trolls*
17. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 14:48 · Score: 0
  
  the flickering lights triggered the hunch. deep investigation of the hunch uncovered the proof. I would tell you to RTFA, but this is easily inferred from the summary. mods should be banished from getting points...
18. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by buybuydandavis · 2013-02-20 14:48 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The length of the wires isn't a useful metric - it's the complexity of the wiring that causes miswiring.
19. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Runaway1956 · 2013-02-20 14:52 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  It wasn't me! I swear it wasn't me! I've never worked on an aircraft in my life!
  Sux2bthatguy!!
  (Note that Runaway is color vision impaired, and has in fact wired things wrong from time to time.)
  
  --
  "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
20. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Runaway1956 · 2013-02-20 14:59 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  At a guess, I'd say the total length of wiring might be indicative of complexity. The machines that I have worked on that have only a few hundred feet of wiring are generally less complex than machines with thousands of feet of wiring in them.
  For comparison, find an old Farmall or John Deere tractor, and compare the wiring to your modern automobile. An elementary school child can figure out the wiring on an 50 to 80 year old tractor. Good luck with your car - experience mechanics have problems chasing down problems, especially intermittent shorts.
  
  --
  "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
21. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by aaarrrgggh · 2013-02-20 15:07 · Score: 1
  
  Yeah... I'm pretty curious what kind of valves they have on the power system to prevent damage per the TFA.
22. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 15:07 · Score: 0
  
  There needs to be zero tolerance for ANY failure of an aircraft. Especially on fly-by-wire system planes.
  Falling out of the sky is not optional when something really goes wrong.
23. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by aaarrrgggh · 2013-02-20 15:09 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Only if you assume the topology is the same. The 747 is likely to be much more of a "star" topology with traditional circuit breakers. The 787 is more of a "bus" topology with solid-state relays.
24. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by viperidaenz · 2013-02-20 15:14 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Then compare a "modern" car with a very modern car. The huge mess of wires is being replaced by CAN and LIN buses.
25. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by athmanb · 2013-02-20 15:31 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  They originally planned to use 60 miles of wiring but then they only ordered 60 kilometers of wires so two thirds of the devices are not connected. It's not that big of a problem though since most things are covered by redundancy.
26. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by router · 2013-02-20 15:41 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I agree.
  It shouldn't have been possible to "miswire" an aerospace battery, the connectors should have been coded, the wires, and the inspectors should have seen and tested this. Battery failure is still a process failure. Unfortunately, process failures are the most systemic failures possible. Lets hope I'm wrong....
  andy
27. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by ShanghaiBill · 2013-02-20 17:03 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  A big chunk of the blame should go to whoever designed the connectors. For safety critical systems, it should be physically impossible to connect them in an unsafe configuration.
28. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Redmancometh · 2013-02-20 17:09 · Score: 1
  
  Why did some jackass vote this down? It's just an obsrevationof how things work there. Both succinct and accurate...Most of us Americans have no idea what a "nanny state" really is.
29. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Redmancometh · 2013-02-20 17:11 · Score: 1
  
  I thought valves just referred to semi-seals for fluids like gas or water.
30. Re: Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 17:18 · Score: 0
  
  There aren't really any "connectors" in that sense. There are termination points, and how you connect your wiring is up to the engineer/electrician working on it.
31. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 17:33 · Score: 0
  
  No one voted it down, Red. AC posts have a starting score of 0.
32. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by plover · 2013-02-20 17:51 · Score: 2
  
  They learned at least two things from this incident, not one. The first lesson is that it was "miswired" (agreed, a fishy statement), but it means they can test some wiring or insulation in existing and future planes to make people think they're doing enough to get the planes back in the air. Second, and more importantly, they learned that the batteries can burn as a group, and that they need to minimize the damage a battery fire can cause by better restricting the ability of the fire to spread. So the next time this happens, the plane won't be at as much risk.
  
  --
  John
33. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by TheLink · 2013-02-20 18:31 · Score: 1
  
  What you need is a phone app to tell you what colour stuff is.
  
  There are many...
  --
  
  Too many replies beneath your current threshold
34. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by fluffy99 · 2013-02-20 18:50 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  A valve is also another term for a diode, which only allows current to flow in one direction.
35. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 20:21 · Score: 0
  
  It should be physically impossible and obviously stupid to connect ANY connector in a wrong configuration. All plugs should be absolutely obvious the right way but making it the only way, and making other ways that could be unsafe not only impossible but obviously stupid. Don't make it even look forcible. Design the plug so that it gravitates towards the correct configuration regardless of the safety or requirements.
36. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by gl4ss · 2013-02-20 20:24 · Score: 1
  
  and older luxury cars are quite complex. not to mention the complexity of vacuum and mechanical linkages in old cadillacs etc..
  
  --
  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
37. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by semi-extrinsic · 2013-02-20 20:28 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Yes, and it's extremely annoying if you want to do anything to your own car. It's bad on the same level as proprietary connectors for phones and all that, but unfortunately the amount of people improving their own cars is too low to cause any consumer feedback to manufacturers.
  
  And I don't mean adding stupid spoilers and boost chips and sillyness, I mean stuff like adding an extra pair of high beams that can be operated with the same button as the regular high beams. That will take some serious hacking on a modern car. If car manufacturers were good at making things, this wouldn't be a huge problem, but modern cars do so many things wrong that it's infuriating. Like putting lambertian leds in places where they should have put batwing ones, forcing me to put a diffuser in front of it so that my daughter is able to sleep in her car seat. Or making it a fifteen-minute job to remove the battery for charging it during the winter, when it should take two minutes. Or putting the light that activates when you open the trunk in the far left corner of the trunk, so that it doesn't light up anything if you actually have something in the trunk. I could go on about this for a while...
  
  --
  for i in `facebook friends "=bday" 2>/dev/null | cut -d " " -f 3-`; do facebook wallpost $i "Happy birthday!"; done
38. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 20:31 · Score: 0
  
  Let Apple redesign it. Once there is no possibility of changing the battery there will be no possibility of putting it in wrong.
39. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 20:35 · Score: 0
  
  Wiring in an electric motor, or generator, can have thousands of feet of wiring (wrapped) but is certainly less complex than the wiring of your basic iDevice.
40. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 20:46 · Score: 0
  
  Commissioning engineer should have picked this up. I imagine commissioning for a plane should be just as thorough as in the electrical industry.
41. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by dwywit · 2013-02-20 21:01 · Score: 1
  
  Murphy strikes again! No, I'm not being sarcastic -that's the origin of the phrase - a cock-up concerning connectors that weren't one-way only.
  
  --
  They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
42. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by dwywit · 2013-02-20 21:05 · Score: 1
  
  I'd mod you up, but I've already commented, and I hate seeing that "undoing mods" bar of shame :-(
  
  --
  They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
43. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by dwywit · 2013-02-20 21:07 · Score: 2
  
  Yes, and how much are you willing to pay for your ticket/s?
  
  --
  They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
44. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by aethelrick · 2013-02-20 21:16 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  a wiring problem could be as simple as using an incorrect thermistor on a Li-ion pack or not wiring a thermistor in at all. These are often used to alter charge/discharge rates in response to the battery pack temperature. A battery will still work in every other respect, except it won't respond accordingly in response to overheating. This is a fairly simple example of what could go wrong to cause a fire that would not stop the battery from working (until it failed by going on fire). The trouble with Li-ion packs is that if this happens (and it does) then the fire can very easily spread to the surrounding cells. I can see how this could cause short voltage spikes that would overcome resistance in a line to "flicker" a light.
  I'd just like to add, I may be totally wrong, but I thought I'd weigh in for the fair minded rather than the conspiracy theorists on this one. Also, before anyone assumes I'm a Boeing employee, I'm not. I'm just a bloke who works with Li-ion batteries and who has seen faults similar to this in the past.
45. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 21:24 · Score: 0
  
  valve = diode ... thats a new one.
46. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Luckyo · 2013-02-20 22:01 · Score: 2
  
  Those thinking this is "nonsense" should stop for a moment and recall what happened when pilots didn't take smoke warning seriously:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111
47. Re: Yay, time for finger pointing by dougwandell · 2013-02-20 23:35 · Score: 1
  
  Valve = Brit fot vacuum tube. Strange that Boeing still uses those.
48. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 23:41 · Score: 0
  
  I'm sorry but parent is in fact incorrect and you are as well. Japan could hardly be considered more of a nanny state than America, and the Confucionistic culture traints of absolutely respecting your elders found in places like Korea and some parts of China are NOT AT ALL part of Japanese culture. Asia is not one country, you are confusing your sterotypes.
49. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Captain_Chaos · 2013-02-21 00:22 · Score: 1
  
  This is true. It's also possible they meant an actual valve, for bleeding off overpressure in the battery, or something like that.
50. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by andydread · 2013-02-21 00:24 · Score: 2
  
  a Valve lets the Steam out.
51. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-21 00:29 · Score: 0
  
  If you've ever had the opportunity to take a closer look at aircraft wiring you'd appreciate how easily this can happen. On the A320 - a smaller, much simpler competitor albeit one with a similar bus system for data - thousands of wires, all white, all small gauge, and all unlabelled terminate in the electronics bay under the cockpit.
  It's easy enough to wire them in when they come through one at a time, but making changes is exceptionally difficult. The 787 suffered several electrical glitches during development suggesting that changes were retrofitted to aircraft under construction, which is exactly how something might get mis-wired. It shouldn't happen, but it does. Time constraints etc all help the holes in the cheese line up.
  A particularly memorable example on the Airbus is the time when the Captain's side stick was required back to front, with the aircraft only saved by a very quick thinking copilot who inhibited the Captain's input and took control of the plane.
52. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by AmiMoJo · 2013-02-21 00:42 · Score: 1
  
  It wasn't the battery itself that was miswired, it was the backup battery. It sounds like they have a second battery for when the first is unavailable, e.g. during fast charging. Lithium batteries get very upset if you try to charge them too quickly, or overcharge them or charge them while drawing significant current. Furthermore if the backup battery is not isolated correctly from the main battery the charging circuit may not be able to determine the main battery's state correctly and end up overcharging it.
  Wiring to bother batteries is probably fine, the fault being with how they are connected to the rest of the aircraft.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
53. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Gothmolly · 2013-02-21 00:46 · Score: 1
  
  Which makes it even harder - you could use a simple circuit tester in the past, now you need specialized software and a laptop.
  
  --
  I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
54. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by 140Mandak262Jamuna · 2013-02-21 01:16 · Score: 2
  
  You got it backwards buddy. Not connecting most things would mean there can not be a fire. What happened was they ordered 60 miles of wiring when they needed only 60 km. The extra wire was looped round and round, held together with plastic ties, just in case we need it later. That is what causing the fires.
  
  --
  sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
55. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by nomorecwrd · 2013-02-21 01:54 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Did I ever told you about this guy, I met some years ago, that used an abrasive file over the edges of the HardDisk power connectors, because they "didn't fit" the way he wanted to connect them?
  
  Q: What is worse than a dumb guy?
  A: A dumb guy with initiative.
56. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-21 02:04 · Score: 0
  
  http://dilbert.com/fast/2003-08-03/
  Dilbert fast it's for people who actually are smart enough.
57. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-21 02:09 · Score: 0
  
  And how do you keep the connectors from being miswired?
  Magical thinking and 20/20 hindsight?
58. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2013-02-21 02:26 · Score: 1
  
  Which still have problems. Its the connectors, it's always the connectors. Dust works its way in their over years of vibration.
  Making a connector that stops this and is still removable is a holy grail, still unacheived.
  
  --
  (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
59. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by csnydermvpsoft · 2013-02-21 02:32 · Score: 1
  
  Not connecting most things would mean there can not be a fire.
  Unless the cooling fans, battery monitor system, etc. are among the things left disconnected...
60. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by dywolf · 2013-02-21 02:32 · Score: 2
  
  ever actually have to trace wires on an aircraft?
  i've worked on Huey and Cobras...small helos. And they can be a PITA to track things down.
  And yes, i've found things that were caused by miswired connections, usually in the solder terminals of a switch.
  so yes, i can easily see something simple like putting the wrong wire into the wrong terminal of a terminal lug/connector as all it was.
  wouldnt be the first time, just like it wouldnt be the first time a tech manual drawing was unclear or even incorrect.
  
  --
  The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
61. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by gr8_phk · 2013-02-21 02:36 · Score: 1
  
  A particularly memorable example on the Airbus is the time when the Captain's side stick was required back to front, with the aircraft only saved by a very quick thinking copilot who inhibited the Captain's input and took control of the plane.
  OMFG the PRNDL in your car is designed to be safer than that. Seriously.
  
  I'm quickly losing my respect for aerospace companies.
62. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by csnydermvpsoft · 2013-02-21 02:43 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe in the future, they can just all use one bus, and get rid of the wiring.
  For power? How would that work?
63. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by bobbied · 2013-02-21 02:45 · Score: 2
  
  I agree.
  It shouldn't have been possible to "miswire" an aerospace battery, the connectors should have been coded, the wires, and the inspectors should have seen and tested this. Battery failure is still a process failure. Unfortunately, process failures are the most systemic failures possible. Lets hope I'm wrong....
  andy
  One must think about how aircraft are actually assembled. In most cases, wire bundles are installed without the terminating connectors installed on at least one end. This is because the connectors are too bulky to easily pull bundles though the small spaces required and it is difficult to know the exact length necessary to provide the proper clamping and clearances. It is simpler and cheaper to just install the wires and then cut them to length and install the connectors.
  Manufacturing processes for aircraft usually include a comprehensive double check of wiring harness installation. This includes manual and automated testing using machines the connect to the huge number of connectors in a wired aircraft, followed by extensive functional testing of just about everything. Errors are not uncommon, but they are generally caught and corrected long before the aircraft gets signed off as airworthy.
  Usually, manufacturing designs for aircraft include specific keying for connectors which might be miswired. This means that it would be impossible for an avionics mechanic replacing a battery to connect up something incorrectly, unless they altered the keying on the connectors or did something really stupid like re-routing an existing wiring harness to "make it reach". Both activities would be physically obvious.
  Beyond routine maintenance, you have ongoing modification processes, where wiring can get changed due to design changes. This process is very strictly controlled and involves a verification process that should have independent review of all the work done. If someone miswired the aircraft, and the review missed it, then ALL three entities are going to be at fault. The guy who re-wired it, the guy who signed it off as complete and the manufacturer who designed the verification test. Assuming everybody was following procedure and nobody is guilty of not doing their job.
  Again, this whole "it was wired incorrectly" idea sounds fishy to me given the "blinking lights" as evidence. Either the plane was wired wrong or it wasn't, and you can grab the design drawings and verify the wiring pretty quick. Now if they are saying there is a *design* issue, that too should be something that can be clearly explained by looking at the drawings. Reports of blinking lights might be an indicator of where to look, but it is not proof we found the problem.
  
  --
  "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
64. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-21 02:47 · Score: 0
  
  No one cares that you're genetically inferior and defective.
65. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by bobbied · 2013-02-21 03:00 · Score: 1
  
  ever actually have to trace wires on an aircraft? i've worked on Huey and Cobras...small helos. And they can be a PITA to track things down. And yes, i've found things that were caused by miswired connections, usually in the solder terminals of a switch. so yes, i can easily see something simple like putting the wrong wire into the wrong terminal of a terminal lug/connector as all it was. wouldnt be the first time, just like it wouldnt be the first time a tech manual drawing was unclear or even incorrect.
  As a matter of fact.. I have worked on aircraft some...
  My point was that observing "blinking lights" on an aircraft is not proof of anything. It may be an indicator of where to go looking for a fault, but it's not proof. If there are incorrect terminations or shorts in the wiring, they will be physically observable and verifiable by inspection of the aircraft in almost all cases I can think of. Where is the "We sent our inspection team in and they found wire x crossed with wire y as it passed though connector z"? Or the technical critique of the design that says "Because wire x connects device y to device z you will see this undesired behavior when the aircraft is in such and such configuration"?
  It still seems to me that somebody is applying pressure to get these aircraft airborne and we got some flimsy story about a wiring issue to explain why it's OK. I'm not saying it's not true, I'm saying we need to have proof that this is the problem, that the proposed solution will prevent future issues and that all flying aircraft have been properly modified before I'm for putting passengers in the air.
  
  --
  "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
66. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by ShanghaiBill · 2013-02-21 04:18 · Score: 1
  
  And how do you keep the connectors from being miswired?
  By making them asymmetrical. USB is a good example. You cannot insert it upside down, and the device and host have different connectors. To connect USB wrong would require malicious intent rather than mere passive stupidity. The only time I have seen people screw it up is when they have non-standard connectors, like Apple's original iPhone connector (which Apple has now improved).
  
  Magical thinking and 20/20 hindsight?
  No, foresight and good engineering. Any engineer designing safety critical systems should be thinking: I there any way a poor trained, apathetic, low IQ, sleep deprived, color blind technician, who had an argument with his wife last night, just got chewed out by his supervisor, and is working a a cold dim hanger with gloves on, could screw this up?
67. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-21 04:19 · Score: 1
  
  I can't comment on the Japanese government, but having worked directly with Japanese airline maintenance crews, I can say from personal experience that they tend to be very thorough and precise in their fault reporting. They also tend to want answers which yield long-term results, and often display great proactive initiative when it comes to independent troubleshooting. My experience indicates that presenting a symptom as a scapegoat in order to hand-wave their aircraft back into service would be extremely out of character. I'm sure they're not happy about having their multi-billion-dollar fleet of new planes sitting on the ground and would like a rapid solution, but even more than that they want a -good- solution.
68. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-21 04:23 · Score: 0
  
  You are obviously clueless. There are thousands of wires and hydraulic pipes in the aircraft. You can't idiot-proof the connectors by making each one individual; all you can do is to clearly label them. That is why aircraft mechanics need a proper education plus a real exam.
  Maybe the design engineers actually messed up some of the wiring and they only discover it now. I would not be surprised to learn that. It is already quite tricky to properly design the electrical power system of a modern car, so a modern jet would be even more difficult.
69. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-21 04:31 · Score: 0
  
  If 99.999999999999999999%
  of the world is a cooperative effort
  then is there a need differentiate, when it's the norm?
  We all conspire, all day, every day, 24/7/365.
  The grandparent's theory be it lone gunman in nature, or one that is a cooperative effort is relevant, but since most the world is involved with each other, then 99.999999999999999% of theories will involve 2 or more actors
  hence your phrase "conspiracy theory" is patently obvious.
  if there's any kind of corporate effort to downplay certain issues, and upplay others, it's conspiratorial in fact. not in theory.
  the point is, which act is the fact, and which utterance matches with the fact, and which is theory?
  this idea that you have "spotted" the rare conspiracy-theory, as if you found the golden ticket, ...what? you want a pat on the head little puppy?
  someone needs to put you against the wall.
70. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by CaptSlaq · 2013-02-21 04:39 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, and it's extremely annoying if you want to do anything to your own car. It's bad on the same level as proprietary connectors for phones and all that, but unfortunately the amount of people improving their own cars is too low to cause any consumer feedback to manufacturers. And I don't mean adding stupid spoilers and boost chips and sillyness, I mean stuff like adding an extra pair of high beams that can be operated with the same button as the regular high beams. That will take some serious hacking on a modern car. If car manufacturers were good at making things, this wouldn't be a huge problem, but modern cars do so many things wrong that it's infuriating. Like putting lambertian leds in places where they should have put batwing ones, forcing me to put a diffuser in front of it so that my daughter is able to sleep in her car seat. Or making it a fifteen-minute job to remove the battery for charging it during the winter, when it should take two minutes. Or putting the light that activates when you open the trunk in the far left corner of the trunk, so that it doesn't light up anything if you actually have something in the trunk. I could go on about this for a while...
  An extra pair of high beams/driving lights can usually be done by just wiring a relay up to one of the lights that come on when you trigger the event you want to do; they still have to get a boatload of power to those lights somehow. It's not as elegant as pulling it from somewhere closer to the control itself, but it's very doable without too much work. The only exception I can think of for this is the HID systems that use servos to reposition the lens for high beams. Those are still fairly rare in my experience, and usually on offered on higher end vehicles that will seldom see a knife anyway. That said, I have a passion for cars and think about this kind of stuff quite a bit, so I may not be the audience you're speaking to about your complaint.
  
  CAN has the potential to help modders actually: More and more is getting monitored by the system. If the system can be accessed by a third party device (like say via a standardized port) and the communication spec is public, the ability to do stuff with your car could be really neat. Your extra driving lights could be done elegantly, after you worked out how to get the raspberry PI to interface with the system.
  
  Bad design lurks everywhere, it's not strictly the bailiwick of the automobile. It just happens to be one of the most common things that make it obvious.
  
  That said, I completely agree: Some designers don't appear to actually have to use what they're designing.
71. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-21 04:50 · Score: 0
  
  Brother you ain't kidding. Nobody complains when the finished product just magically falls together without any significant investment of effort, but the jack rabbit who pushes half-baked prints out the door early gets a pat on the back while the responsibility falls on others to mop up the resulting mess.
72. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Muad'Dave · 2013-02-21 04:55 · Score: 1
  
  A perfect example. I just fixed a Motorola MaxTrac radio. The connector on the main logic board that goes to the front panel consists of about 60 naked pins - that's usually a disaster waiting to happen. They were smart, however - on the left end of the row of pins, the 3rd pin from the left is missing. On the right side, the 4th pin from the right is missing. On the connector intended for the left side, the 3rd hole is plugged; similarly the 4th pin on the right connector is plugged. That makes it impossible to install the connectors incorrectly without great difficultly, and the solution is incredibly cheap.
  
  --
  Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
73. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by fnj · 2013-02-21 06:05 · Score: 1
  
  "Main steam stop valve"
  - Steve McQueen
  "Men stim stop wow"
  - Mako
  (The Sand Pebbles)
74. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by viperidaenz · 2013-02-21 06:17 · Score: 1
  
  If you have the equiptment and software, fixing it is easier. It can tell you exactly what isn't working.
75. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by viperidaenz · 2013-02-21 06:21 · Score: 1
  
  When there is information going down those wires and the device that is sending that information expects a response in a timely manor, a broken connection can easily be diagnosed
76. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by aix+tom · 2013-02-21 06:26 · Score: 1
  
  But that "asymmetrical connector that you want to put on the battery" still has to be wired to the INSIDE of the battery.
  And the "asymmetrical connector that you plug into that" still has to be fitted on the cable.
  Still two places where a miswirings can happen.
77. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by home-electro.com · 2013-02-21 07:52 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, miswiring is strange. I would imaging they do have have coded connectors, and use pre-built and tested wire harness rather than individual cables to wire equipment in an adhoc fashion. Anybody heard of a car being "mis-wired"? It does not happen because it is designed not to allow that to happen.
78. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by marcosdumay · 2013-02-21 10:35 · Score: 1
  
  You mean that you can't just put a diode inside a battery? I guess I was just imagining some 90% of the batteries out there.
  Anyway, if they don't issue a correction to the hardware, they should issue a correction to the procedures. It a correction anyway. An airplane simply can't have such a huge amount of incidents. That is, assuming the problem is what was reported, what is not a certainty right now.
  
  --
  Rethinking email
79. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-21 11:41 · Score: 0
  
  Why reasonable and technically accurate post should be this apologetic while longwinded diatribes are so obtuse?
80. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by fluffy99 · 2013-02-21 17:52 · Score: 1
  
  http://www.mlit.go.jp/jtsb/flash/JA804A_130116-130220.pdf
  Scroll down to page 10 where it shows a large diode between the APU battery and the main bus/main battery.
81. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-22 16:42 · Score: 0
  
  Actually, flickering lights pretty much are prima facie evidence of a wiring fault of some sort. They would certainly need to do further inspection to determine the specific nature of the fault and correct it though.
82. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-22 17:30 · Score: 0
  
  Spot on.
83. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-22 17:32 · Score: 0
  
  Who would do this on a commercial jetliner?
84. Re:Yay, time for finger pointing by RockDoctor · 2013-02-25 22:57 · Score: 1
  
  They were smart, however - on the left end of the row of pins, the 3rd pin from the left is missing. On the right side, the 4th pin from the right is missing. On the connector intended for the left side, the 3rd hole is plugged; similarly the 4th pin on the right connector is plugged. That makes it impossible to install the connectors incorrectly without great difficultly, and the solution is incredibly cheap.
  If only it were so. At some point, a third-part add-on, or repair part, will come on the market where those two blanking plugs are omitted to save 3 micro-coins of currency on the bill of materials and 10 micro-coins of assembly costs. and the mis-wirings will continue ...
  Never seen it? Look at 2/3 of the PATA connectors made in the last half-decade of the format's life. Look at cheap & nasty SCSI cables.
  Also, never underestimate the power of a twit with muscles. I had an idiot boss once - a Lebanese cunt - who managed to assemble a desktop computer by plugging the 15-pin density-and-a-half SVGA cable into a serial port. It took me 3 hours of painstaking work to un-bend the pins and get it working again (which since the site was 12 hours drive from the nearest road ... was worth the effort. Because I needed that machine, even if he didn't know what it was for).
  
  --
  Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
What? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 12:56 · Score: 0

Can't they make an idiot proof power plug?
1. Re:What? by girlintraining · 2013-02-20 13:09 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Can't they make an idiot proof power plug?
  Because idiots are much more resourceful than ordinary people.
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
2. Re:What? by Areyoukiddingme · 2013-02-20 13:17 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Yes, but commercial airliners aren't built with plugs and sockets. For weight savings, everything is directly hardwired. At least, in pretty much every airliner prior to the 787, and I can't imagine Boeing changing that. Military aircraft are built with plug and socket connectors, but both sides of the connection are big bulky heavy metal components. When your plane is a cockpit and wings strapped onto a giant oversized turbine, you basically don't care about weight, but commercial airliners are the exact opposite. They're obsessed with weight savings, so the miswiring happened during initial assembly and their quality control procedures were too poor to catch it. Boeing has fallen a loong long way.
  Someday, people are going to look back on the outsourcing mania of core competencies by MBAs over the past generation as sheerest idiocy.
3. Re:What? by Sponge+Bath · 2013-02-20 13:18 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Because idiots are much more resourceful than ordinary people.
  Behold!
4. Re:What? by hawguy · 2013-02-20 13:42 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Yes, but commercial airliners aren't built with plugs and sockets. For weight savings, everything is directly hardwired. At least, in pretty much every airliner prior to the 787, and I can't imagine Boeing changing that. Military aircraft are built with plug and socket connectors, but both sides of the connection are big bulky heavy metal components
  Do you have a reference for that? It doesn't make sense that field replaceable parts are hardwired in - you'd have to clip the wires to take it out, and every time you clip the wire it gets shorter, so eventually you'd have to run a new wire back to the source.
  Even for parts that aren't replaced often, it seems that hardwiring would just increase the chance of error - if everytime they replace an engine someone has to sit down and manually splice 200 separate wires, that seems a lot more trouble prone than plugging in a dozen connectors that were wired in at the factory and tested on the factory test harness to be sure every wire was connected to where it should be.
5. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 13:55 · Score: 0
  
  Today, people are looking back on the outsourcing mania of core competencies by MBAs over the past generation as sheerest idiocy.
  FTFY. I think the only ones around the lazy B cheering about outsourcing at this point are the idiot MBAs.
6. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 14:02 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Slightly different, but my friend works for a company that makes in-flight video systems for planes including Lufthansa. While not mission critical, they still have to follow FAA and other regulations... one of which is some of the plugs they use plug in and then are secured in place with 12 to 16 screws even though the signals being passed are just network/video/audio.
  I don't see why they couldn't use plugs of the same fashion instead of hard wiring everything
7. Re:What? by Brett+Buck · 2013-02-20 14:15 · Score: 1
  
  What in the world are you talking about? Very few connections are hardwired, almost everything has a plug, usually, a rotary cam-lock plug from Cannon, etc.
  Do you think they solder all the avionics in place?
8. Re:What? by anubi · 2013-02-20 14:24 · Score: 1
  
  Those "idiot MBAs" landed a comfortable retirement plan.
  
  The "perfectionist engineers" were laid off.
  
  What used to be the crown jewels of the company, the core competencies, are now commoditized for lowest cost overseas manufacture.
  
  Most of our core corporations have been reduced to a cadre of highly paid salesmen selling a branded product, of which one can purchase identical generic equivalents. The last vestige of holding onto power is by keeping the generics out of the market by legal maneuverings of copyright and patent law.
  
  --
  "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
9. Re:What? by colfer · 2013-02-20 14:47 · Score: 1
  
  I'd say in-flight video is mission critical, look at SwissAir 111. The company was so eager to cash in on midair gambling they overloaded the wiring with standalone power supplies rather than putting in a more sensible system. Crash. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111#TSB_findings
10. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 15:10 · Score: 0
  
  Those "idiot MBAs" landed a comfortable retirement plan. The "perfectionist engineers" were laid off.
  Engineering and salesman are both skilled jobs. Engineering can be done easier overseas than selling to the US market. Selling to the US market requires a certain skill that can't be outsourced. So, the MBA is more valuable than an engineer.
  Of course, the US is buying by racking up enormous debt and selling to America will hardly be the skill of the future.
  
  What used to be the crown jewels of the company, the core competencies, are now commoditized for lowest cost overseas manufacture.
  Well, the overseas engineers and salesman woke up from their deep slumber and started building their economy. A company needs to act in it's best interests and if you think protecting the crown jewels is what a company should be doing, that is the fast lane to stagnation and obsolescence. Companies constantly need to innovate, understand the market, find new avenues of income and take risks.
  
  Most of our core corporations have been reduced to a cadre of highly paid salesmen selling a branded product, of which one can purchase identical generic equivalents. The last vestige of holding onto power is by keeping the generics out of the market by legal maneuverings of copyright and patent law.
  One might argue that we are smarter, more innovative or better than them and there is some inherent exceptionalism to what we are. However, people anywhere in the world can achieve what we have if the social environment is right. The rest of the world lives on less but have the same number of hours in their lives and thus the labor will be cheaper overseas. Their skill levels might not be par to our top engineers but they do work for less. However, there is no inherent ceiling to overseas engineering skills and within a decade or two can "catch up".
  Take the example of top guitar manufactures like Gibson and Fender. They decided to outsource some guitar making to Japan for the lower end models. Within the decade, they had to close that down because the craftmanship had improved so much in the Japanese factories that they were competing with the "Made in USA" lines. Next cheap stop was Korea and the same thing happened. The other cheap stop was Mexico and same thing happened. They have kept the "Made in USA" line intact my severely restricting the components and features that are allowed to be made in the outsourced countries (inferior electronics, less frets, less finishing etc).
  While foreign engineering and talent is currently inferior, it will not remain so. It can as good as American talent and engineering in the near future.
11. Re:What? by garyebickford · 2013-02-20 15:12 · Score: 3
  
  AFAIK you are completely incorrect. Just using the 787 for example, the entire thing is built in modules including wiring and all, that are built and tested by subcontractors and then plugged and bolted together at the Boeing assembly plant. All commercial aircraft that I am aware of at least since the 1940s has had connectors. The biggest problem with connectors is not the weight but the unreliability. Each connector is a potential point of failure, so aircraft electrical connectors are actually heavier - they have positive scraping between the two parts of each connection, often have moisture resisting / sealing. and have a threaded ring that holds them together. Then (IIRC) there is an additional set of tabs through which a wire is threaded and itself positively bound - used to be twisted, now I think they use a mechanical crimp. The wire assures that the threaded ring can not unscrew itself due to vibrations.
  The most expensive cost for a commercial aircraft after fuel is the cost of downtime - time spent fixing things costs thousands of dollars per hour. Therefore everything on an aircraft is designed to be removed and disconnected quickly, efficiently and safely - including things like wings, tail fins, etc. FAA is not going to allow the mechanics to cut wires and fasten them back together, so again the connectors are designed so that each one can only go one way.
  
  --
  It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
12. Re:What? by confused+one · 2013-02-20 15:14 · Score: 2
  
  I'm sorry; but, you're wrong. Work for a sensor manufacturer that sells to the aerospace industry and I can tell you, commercial aircraft cabling is full of connectors. Same kind of locking connectors found on military aircraft.
13. Re:What? by girlintraining · 2013-02-20 15:15 · Score: 1
  
  Yes, but commercial airliners aren't built with plugs and sockets. For weight savings, everything is directly hardwired.
  
  So they've managed to skim off maybe 10 pounds off the design of the aircraft, saving some several thousands in fuel costs over the operating life of the aircraft. A reasonable tradeoff considering the chance of the aircraft catching fire and then exploding when it hits the ground, killing everyone on board. *sips tea* Yeah. Makes sense to me. I mean, what's the cost of settling an accidental death claim for 300 people?
  Here comes the math!
  The cost of failure:
  A product defect typically weighs in at $2.1 million USD per. So assuming 300 passengers and 10 crew, that's $651 million payout per plane going pop.
  The cost savings:
  Now, a 747 at least uses a gallon of fuel per second, or about 5 gallons per mile (average) on a flight. A typical domestic flight is about 2.5 hours in flight time, or 9,000 gallons of fuel. The weight of the aircraft, empty and unloaded, is about 95,000 pounds. It has 171 miles of wiring. Let's assume that we want to add connectors every 100 feet; That gives us 902,880 connectors. The average weight of a connector we'll say is 1.5 grams. that gives us 1,354,320 grams of extra weight to add connectors, or about 25,031 pounds.
  So to add all those extra connectors would add an extra 26.3% cost to fuel. Now, the Dreamliner is slated to have a service life of about 30 years. We don't know how many pressurization cycles that equates to, but we can make an estimated guess. Let's just say 2 flights per day, 5 days a week. That'll be 1,560 flights before retirement then.
  The average domestic flight is around 700 miles, we'll say. If the fuel cost before modification is 5 gallons per mile, at $3.30 per gallon... the cost of fuel per flight is $46,200. With the modification, it would cost $57,750.
  Fuel cost over life of vehicle (before mod): 72,072,000.
  Fuel cost over life of vehicle (after mod): 90,090,000.
  Difference: $18,018,000.
  Cost on failure: $651 million
  Failure rate cutoff: 1 in 36
  In other words, if a catastrophic failure that could have been prevented with electrical connectors happens more than 1 out of 36 planes, it's worth it. Otherwise, it's not.
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
14. Re:What? by c0lo · 2013-02-20 15:30 · Score: 2
  
  The original
  
  --
  Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
15. Re:What? by rsclient · 2013-02-20 15:46 · Score: 1
  
  Hmmm -- a quick bing search for "aviation grade connector" shows lots and lots of connectors. There are even magazine articles about them.
  http://www.aviationtoday.com/av/issue/feature/Product-Focus-Connectors_18865.html
  
  --
  Want a sig like mine? Join ACM's SigSig today!
16. Re:What? by Nefarious+Wheel · 2013-02-20 16:21 · Score: 1
  
  Posting to undo an egregiously stupid mod. #spamapology
  
  --
  Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
17. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 16:34 · Score: 0
  
  Yes, but commercial airliners aren't built with plugs and sockets. For weight savings, everything is directly hardwired.
  Skinny guy who makes plugs for a living goes out of work, making savings for fat guys air ticket. Nothing new
18. Re:What? by hairyfish · 2013-02-20 17:30 · Score: 1
  
  Someday, people are going to look back on the outsourcing mania of core competencies by MBAs over the past generation as sheerest idiocy.
  I think my grandad said the same thing about transistors. You'll rue the day you ever gave up on valves he'd yell...
19. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 17:48 · Score: 0
  
  erm....That's not how we (Airbus) build our stuff! Nearly everything has sockets, and how!
  The older stuff has sockets with up to 100 connectors on them, the newer bus technologies are simplifying that, but not to the point of eliminating sockets.
  It's vitally important for maintenance/Customisation etc, that we have the ability to quickly exchange any devices in the aircraft.
  The errors normally happen in the plug/socket wiring process, as this normally occurs within the aircraft:
  The cable trees are delivered ready made to the correct lengths etc, pulled through the cabin or wherever, and then the pulgs/sockets are fitted, and then the crosschecks are made.
  What worries me in this finding is, if true, it indicates that the final wiring checks and not being carried out properly by Boeing, otherwise such errors should be found. I certainly hope that's not the case!
20. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 20:15 · Score: 1
  
  Plugs can also have issues when compared with color-coded cables. An Airbus A320 had a scary situation when the cable to the captain's side stick was inserted incorrectly into the plug by the mechanic who maintained it. Left and right were reversed and the crew missed it when performing the checklist and thus only noticed a problem when the aircraft had just become airborne. Luckily they were able to quickly identify that there was a problem with the captain's side-stick and the first officer pressed his override button and thus they could climb without the passengers ever realizing what a near-miss it was and were surprised when they had to return immediately due to a technical problem. It did lead to the plug being redesigned to be impossible to insert incorrectly but I doubt that that lesson has propagated everywhere in the industry (not that I'm pointing at Boeing in particular here since I think all manufacturers still probably have similar flaws in existing aircraft, which is why mechanics are worthy of more respect than they usually get because nobody appreciate mechanics when they do their job right and nothing happens).
21. Re:What? by Copperhamster · 2013-02-20 20:53 · Score: 2
  
  Never underestimated the ingenuity of dumb. I gave a guy a hard drive to replace the one in his computer. He 'knew all about it' and I knew he had the knowledge to format and reinstall his OS no problem.
  He brought the drive back to me, claiming it didn't work, in fact the power cables would not fit till he took his dremel to them, so it must not have been the right drive for his machine.
  He had shaved off the corners of a standard hard drive power connector so he could fit it upside down in a used 512 MB IDE hard drive. Which of course killed the drive, but I also determined it killed that connector on the motherboard's IDE bus.
  The reason for this mistake?
  His computer had been built with some oddball brand of hard drive (I can't remember... Paladin or Palladium? I think it started with a P) which put the controller board on TOP of the drive instead of on the bottom.
22. Re:What? by wildsurf · 2013-02-20 20:57 · Score: 1
  
  It has 171 miles of wiring. Let's assume that we want to add connectors every 100 feet; That gives us 902,880 connectors.
  Um, you're off by two orders of magnitude. 171 miles / 100 feet = 9,029 connectors, not 902,880. So the failure rate cutoff (assuming the rest of your calculations are correct) works out to 1 in 3600. Care to re-analyze?
  
  --
  Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
23. Re:What? by mjwx · 2013-02-20 21:13 · Score: 1
  
  The UK tried.
  
  They ended up with the safest plug in the world... that causes more foot injuries than any other plug.
  
  Behold the BS1363, bane of the foot.
  
  --
  Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
24. Re:What? by wildsurf · 2013-02-20 21:15 · Score: 1
  
  And also: 1,354,320 grams is 2,986 pounds, not 25,031 pounds. (Correcting for this, as well as the number of connectors, makes the actual failure rate cutoff 1 in 30,180.) You didn't work on the Mars Climate Orbiter, did you? ;-)
  
  --
  Weeks of coding saves hours of planning.
25. Re:What? by dwywit · 2013-02-20 21:17 · Score: 1
  
  Asymmetrical plug/socket design. It's not that difficult.
  
  --
  They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
26. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 21:46 · Score: 0
  
  I love those plugs. I've lived in many countries and I've frequently had trouble with sockets that don't reliably make contact, wall warts that fall out of sockets and sockets that spark like July 4. The British plug doesn't have these problems. It just works. And you soon learn not to leave them lying about.
27. Re:What? by dunkelfalke · 2013-02-20 21:53 · Score: 1
  
  That kind of math only works if electrical connectors are the sole reason for possible catastrophic failures that can be blamed on the manufacturer.
  Since there are also possible hydraulic failures, wiring fires and so on, the manufacturer certainly needs a buffer larger than one in 36.
  
  --
  "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
28. Re:What? by mjwx · 2013-02-20 21:58 · Score: 1
  
  I love those plugs. I've lived in many countries and I've frequently had trouble with sockets that don't reliably make contact, wall warts that fall out of sockets and sockets that spark like July 4. The British plug doesn't have these problems. It just works. And you soon learn not to leave them lying about.
  No argument here. the 2 pin US and Euro plugs seem to fall out if so much as a slight breeze hits them. A shame these plugs are so prevalent in Asia.
  
  The Australian plug is the same, once it's in you know it'll take force to remove it, but a bit less deadly to tread on.
  
  --
  Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
29. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-21 02:59 · Score: 0
  
  and the sound of crickets was deafening...
30. Re:What? by lloydchristmas759 · 2013-02-21 09:23 · Score: 1
  
  It's funny because the link you provided gives a completely different story, and incriminates neither the company, nor the in-flight entertainment system:
  
  Aircraft certification standards for material flammability were inadequate in that they allowed the use of materials that could be ignited and sustain or propagate fire. Consequently, flammable material propagated a fire that started above the ceiling on the right side of the cockpit near the cockpit rear wall. The fire spread and intensified rapidly to the extent that it degraded aircraft systems and the cockpit environment, and ultimately led to the loss of control of the aircraft.
  
  --
  I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
Links by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 12:58 · Score: 0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Transport_Safety_Board
http://www.mlit.go.jp/jtsb/english.html
Report is in Japanese, so feed the link to your favorite translator. Just now, Google returns "Sorry, we are unable to translate the page you requested." Which'd be fine if they didn't offer the "Translate this page" link, then take a while processing. Boneheads.
http://www.mlit.go.jp/jtsb/flash/JA804A_130116-130220.pdf
User error by girlintraining · 2013-02-20 13:01 · Score: 5, Interesting

So basically, the user reached back behind the power supply while fiddling and bumped the 110/220V switch, and it caught fire. Naturally, they didn't say anything to the tech after setting the switch back besides, "It just caught fire! All by itself!"
The user in this case is a giant airline company, and tech support would be Boeing. The FAA, of course, is the QA manager, who reviewed the call, and after reading the ticket closure notes, facepalmed, leaned back into his chair, and took a deep draft of coffee.

--
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
1. Re:User error by Cassini2 · 2013-02-20 13:11 · Score: 2
  
  Many power supplies are designed to autoswitch between 110V and 220V for just this reason. Cheap power supplies aren't.
  I knew one customer that said: "We didn't know that it was a 220V machine when we connected it to 600V!" That bang was audible.
2. Re:User error by girlintraining · 2013-02-20 13:16 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  No no, I know. I was just reframing the "black and nebulous art" of airplane maintenance into something easier to digest for slashdotters. It was either that, or a car analogy, and turning a plane into a car just felt wrong. :) The truth is a bit more complicated; But it still boils down to operator error and not a design flaw. Of course, a design that allows someone to plug in one component backwards and have the entire device go up in flames is not a good one, but it's not flawed in the strict sense of the word. It's disappointing that my $500 laptop has a feature that prevents the battery from being plugged in backwards, but a multi-million dollar state of the art aircraft does not.
  
  --
  #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
3. Re:User error by peragrin · 2013-02-20 13:26 · Score: 1
  
  actually at work we are dealing with that exact issue.customer returned an item that "stopped" working. After painfully trying to figure it out, we traced it to the power secondary power supply that converts 120 to 24v for the control systems. We replaced the PS tested the unit.
  The customer had it for less than 20 minutes when they called up and said it wasn't working again. A quick check and the new power supply was toast.
  They have a short in the box that supplies power to the unit in their shop dropping 240v into the machine at random.
  
  --
  i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
4. Re:User error by Obfuscant · 2013-02-20 13:37 · Score: 1
  
  They have a short in the box that supplies power to the unit in their shop dropping 240v into the machine at random.
  Most modern, well designed power supplies can handle anything from 95V through 250V because that is what they could expect on their input depending on where in the world they are used.
  That's because they are switching power supplies, and instead of using a simple transformer to create the right internal voltage that is then rectified and provided to the powered equipment, they switch the incoming current to maintain the right voltage on the output.
  Now, I'd like to know where this "120/240V" stuff regarding the Dreamliner is coming from. TFA says nothing more than the summary about what was miswired. I'd suspect it wasn't a voltage issue when they say "a simple valve" would fix it (valve? Are they really using ancient tube-based circuits?). I'd suspect the problem is a current path that applies APU power to the batteries when it should not be. But, lacking any real description, it's a guess.
5. Re:User error by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 13:52 · Score: 1
  
  universal power supplies have more to do with the emergence of power factor correction. the old supplies with the 110/220 selector are switchers too - the selector switch controls the topology of the rectifiers that feed the ~300v input capacitors. on a pfc supply, that step is done by another switcher that draws current proportional to the instantaneous line voltage, and that switcher is made to handle the full 240v range anwyay.
6. Re:User error by drinkypoo · 2013-02-20 14:22 · Score: 1
  
  You can't use a car analogy because the average slashdotter would cause the same kind of problem if they worked on their car. Auto shops are always seeing cars come in after they tell the customer about a problem with something fixed totally wrong, parts put on upside down and crap like that. Most people know jack diddly about cars. This, frankly, is a positive thing. I look forward to when they're all EVs and we can know even less about cars to keep them maintained.
  In any case, this is basically an ideal demonstration of Murphy's law, not the popular conception thereof, but the actual meaning and history...
  
  --
  "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
7. Re:User error by Obfuscant · 2013-02-20 14:24 · Score: 1
  
  the old supplies with the 110/220 selector are switchers too -
  No, old power supplies with a switch are not switchers. The switches on old supplies actually changed the selection of the primary on the transformer. Most of them had two primary windings. Wired in parallel, they handled 240V. Wired in series, 120V. That produced the right output from the secondary so you'd not over-voltage the regulators or dissipate excessive power dropping too high a voltage. If you didn't care about the dissipation, you could have a linear supply that ran on 120 or 240 without caring, you'd just have to make sure you rated all the components to handle the higher voltage.
  Newer supplies that are switchers may still have a switch, but it really shouldn't be necessary in a well designed supply.
8. Re:User error by colfer · 2013-02-20 14:51 · Score: 1
  
  It was an analogy, bot really what is on the airplane.
9. Re:User error by garyebickford · 2013-02-20 15:20 · Score: 1
  
  Actually from my admittedly limited experience, FAA and airplane mfgrs are downright obsessive about making connections idiot proof and failsafe. It's pretty difficult to find places in an airplane where it's possible to plug the wrong things together or backwards. FAA has been dealing with Murphy for a very long time. In this case, if that's what happened, then it's one that slipped through the design and development process. FAA will mark this as a design failure and require Boeing to make it impossible to connect wrongly.
  One thing I've learned from reading NTSB and FAA reports after aviation accidents (they usually come out about a year after the accident) - there is ALWAYS someone who gets pinned to the wall. There's always someone, sometimes multiple someones, who gets blamed. And then corrective actions are set out for all concerned.
  
  --
  It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
10. Re:User error by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 15:34 · Score: 0
  
  FAA will mark this as a design failure and require Boeing to make it impossible to connect wrongly.
  Or, way more simply, the connecter pins were soldered up wrong.
11. Re:User error by number11 · 2013-02-20 16:17 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Actually from my admittedly limited experience, FAA and airplane mfgrs are downright obsessive about making connections idiot proof and failsafe. It's pretty difficult to find places in an airplane where it's possible to plug the wrong things together or backwards. FAA has been dealing with Murphy for a very long time. In this case, if that's what happened, then it's one that slipped through the design and development process. FAA will mark this as a design failure and require Boeing to make it impossible to connect wrongly.
  Looking at that Japanese powerpoint, it looks like that may be exactly what happened. The battery cells are rectangular with a stud on each side of the top. Not even any prominent markings to indicate polarity, though the two studs seem to be mounted with different colored rivets. You'd think they'd at least have different diameter studs for the positive and negative, and jumpers with holes to match.
12. Re:User error by Nefarious+Wheel · 2013-02-20 16:36 · Score: 1
  
  Back somewhere in the late 60's-early 70's, there was a computer that came in for repair in the company I worked for - it was an SDS 930 (lovely old discrete-transistor machine). Someone had plugged a "MagPack" (an early cartridge tape drive) into the wrong slot on the bus, and the connector that was supposed to go there, into the MagPack's bus. The connectors were the same, but the circuits weren't. The circuit plugged into the MagPack's slot got a good healthy dose of one phase of a 440v power supply into a circuit that was expecting 0.5VDC. You could tell the logic state of the machine at that moment by following the carbon trails. Flipps were permanently flipped, flopps were permanently flopped. It looked like lightning had struck the frame.
  Connector standards, even for simple antiques like RS-232 were a revelation, and were a service to us all. Gotta remember that engineering practices didn't just appear, they evolved. I respect connectors, especially after diving into their construction in a bit of detail. Properly designed, any good standard wiring loom connector will give you very little grief.
  
  --
  Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
13. Re:User error by Nefarious+Wheel · 2013-02-20 16:40 · Score: 1
  
  SCREAM... PAF! (small mushroom cloud of oily capacitor smoke).
  Maybe it was 120V after all...
  
  --
  Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
14. Re:User error by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 18:00 · Score: 0
  
  after linear pc supplies but before pfc, there's a long period where the first stage is a simple rectification of the line voltage up to ~340VDC. the selector basically choses between a full wave bridge (for 240) or two half-wave bridges each charging half of the +/- 170V (for 120). This 340V rail is then the input to the switcher.
15. Re:User error by fluffy99 · 2013-02-20 19:02 · Score: 1
  
  the old supplies with the 110/220 selector are switchers too -
  No, old power supplies with a switch are not switchers. The switches on old supplies actually changed the selection of the primary on the transformer. Most of them had two primary windings. Wired in parallel, they handled 240V. Wired in series, 120V. That produced the right output from the secondary so you'd not over-voltage the regulators or dissipate excessive power dropping too high a voltage. If you didn't care about the dissipation, you could have a linear supply that ran on 120 or 240 without caring, you'd just have to make sure you rated all the components to handle the higher voltage.
  Newer supplies that are switchers may still have a switch, but it really shouldn't be necessary in a well designed supply.
  You're describing a simple transformer type of power supply. There are plenty of examples of switching supplies with a 120/240 switch. I've got a whole bunch of PC switching type power supplies with a 120/240 switch. Those supplies have two large caps that get charged to 120volts each. The switch controlled whether they were charged in parallel off the 120, or in series off the 240. Those caps fed the switching transistors.
16. Re:User error by fluffy99 · 2013-02-20 19:04 · Score: 1
  
  You gotta love Dell who decided to make their PC power supplies a proprietary pinout but use the standard ATX power supply connector. Many unsuspecting folks tried to replace either the power supply of the motherboard, only to smoke the motherboard because the pinout was non-standard.
17. Re:User error by AaronW · 2013-02-20 19:43 · Score: 1
  
  That reminds me of when I was working with an early revision of a new PCIe board. I double checked the auxiliary power connectors and found that they had used the wrong 8-pin connector. Instead of a PCIe power connector they used the motherboard power connector. The 8-pin PCIe power connector and 8-pin motherboard connectors are almost identical except the power and ground is swapped between the two and they're keyed slightly differently.It seems rather stupid to me. As far as I'm concerned they should have designed it such that the connectors and pinouts were the same.
  
  --
  This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
18. Re:User error by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-21 01:34 · Score: 0
  
  If that were really what happened, I'd be very surprised indeed. I work in airline components, and almost everything is connected with specifically sequenced keyways, so that you can only plug A into A', and it hasn't a chance of going into B' no matter how you try to force it. Even when the number of plugs is the same, they still build specific physical keyways to stop you plugging module X into bay Y'. Something doesn't gel in this explanation at all.
19. Re:User error by gr8_phk · 2013-02-21 02:43 · Score: 1
  
  The truth is a bit more complicated; But it still boils down to operator error and not a design flaw. Of course, a design that allows someone to plug in one component backwards and have the entire device go up in flames is not a good one, but it's not flawed in the strict sense of the word.
  That's still a design flaw. Part of design is to make things work in the real world when used by real people in real situations. What you describe is an excuse for poor design, trying to put blame on the user.
20. Re:User error by WaffleMonster · 2013-02-21 04:35 · Score: 1
  
  So basically, the user reached back behind the power supply while fiddling and bumped the 110/220V switch, and it caught fire. Naturally, they didn't say anything to the tech after setting the switch back besides, "It just caught fire! All by itself!"
  The user in this case is a giant airline company, and tech support would be Boeing. The FAA, of course, is the QA manager, who reviewed the call, and after reading the ticket closure notes, facepalmed, leaned back into his chair, and took a deep draft of coffee.
  In systems with lots of power sources you have to be careful to account for worse case and unexpected current flows between components. Even components you might think are isolated may in fact have unexpected dependancies allowing current flow between them.
  The simplest example of this is two batteries operating in parallel to support a given load. If one of the batteries fail or is switched off all of the sudden the remaining battery sees twice the power demand to support the same load. Based on the description my guess is something like this has happened here. One source of power was disrupted which caused unexpected flows of current along a different path. More of a design issue than user error but this is all just wild guessing.
  Translating the latest feb 20th JTSB document page by page... there is not much new and nothing resembling the information presented in TFA :(
21. Re:User error by Obfuscant · 2013-02-21 08:05 · Score: 1
  
  You're describing a simple transformer type of power supply.
  I described a simple linear power supply and compared it to a modern switching supply in what you replied to. Are you just noticing that?
  Those older, linear supplies are NOT "switchers" just because they have switches on them to change input voltage. The switch marked "120/240" actually changes the input to the transformer, as I described, and has nothing to do with "power factor". Newer switching supplies might have such a switch, but not for the same reason, and they aren't the same as the old supplies I was talking about. (New/Old, one of these things is not like the other...)
  
  There are plenty of examples of switching supplies with a 120/240 switch.
  Yes, as I said, newer supplies may have such a switch, but the old supplies don't suddenly change into "switchers" because they had a switch marked the same way.
22. Re:User error by quacking+duck · 2013-02-21 08:32 · Score: 1
  
  Actually from my admittedly limited experience, FAA and airplane mfgrs are downright obsessive about making connections idiot proof and failsafe. It's pretty difficult to find places in an airplane where it's possible to plug the wrong things together or backwards.
  Given that, I was astonished when I watched the Mayday episode about Tuninter Flight 1153. The fuel quantity indicator for an ATR 42 had been installed onto the larger ATR 72, giving false indicators there was more fuel on board than there actually was. The equipment was physically identical and electronically compatible. According to the episode the only exterior difference was a single digit in the model number, in tiny font (the wiki article merely mentions "different marking" on the front), which wasn't noticed by the maintenance tech who replaced it the night before.
23. Re:User error by garyebickford · 2013-02-21 10:00 · Score: 1
  
  Wow.
  
  --
  It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
24. Re:User error by fluffy99 · 2013-02-21 18:02 · Score: 1
  
  You stated that "old power supplies with a switch are not switchers", and I simply showed that assumption to be wrong. Your later reply that having a 120/240 switch doesn't mean it's a switching type supply makes much more sense.
Japanese Probe by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 13:20 · Score: 0

I haven't seen enough hentai to know where this is going...
Happened before by Grayhand · 2013-02-20 13:23 · Score: 4, Funny

It's the damned metric +/- that causes all the confusion.
1. Re:Happened before by deniable · 2013-02-20 13:52 · Score: 1
  
  They had a problem converting to Volts.
2. Re:Happened before by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 16:02 · Score: 0
  
  It's the damned metric +/- that causes all the confusion.
  absolutely !
  sign the demand at Move On. org to switch to the metric system !
  I'm calling BS here. The sys would have been run on battery for months before they flew these.
  The drain would have been even higher without the engines firing, and the recharging load would have been much higher than the inverter load too...
  This is a feel good explanation, and they are trying to make the japanese take the hari-kari, when it is obvious that a miswiring at the battery would have turned up at the battery inverter outputs WAY before a failure would happen at 50 % load.
  Not seeing any of those commercials about the GE jet engines on these anymore either , are you?
  This is/was a fail by the electrical engineers, and no one wants a bite of the sandwich, so they are making sushi out of it.
3. Re:Happened before by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 20:20 · Score: 0
  
  They had a problem converting to Volts.
  Musk was right, Tesla is better for Boeing.
A protective valve? by dgharmon · 2013-02-20 13:29 · Score: 2, Informative

"the battery for the aircraft's auxiliary power unit was incorrectly connected to the main battery that overheated, although a protective valve would have prevented power from the auxiliary unit from causing damage"

What is a power diode

--
AccountKiller
1. Re:A protective valve? by viperidaenz · 2013-02-20 13:39 · Score: 1
  
  Perhaps they're using the term "valve" as a generic term to describe the behaviour, not the components used to implement it.
  I wouldn't be surprised if they use transistors instead of diodes, to avoid the inherent voltage drop and subsequent power dissipation.
2. Re:A protective valve? by the+eric+conspiracy · 2013-02-20 13:55 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  "Valve" is a generic term, slightly archaic for an electronic switch. Some vacuum tubes are called valves.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_tube
  Since a transistor is simply a crystal triode, the terminology is reasonable.
  http://www.beatriceco.com/bti/porticus/bell/belllabs_transistor.html
3. Re:A protective valve? by PPH · 2013-02-20 14:25 · Score: 2
  
  That might be a translation of the Japanese term. By a non-technical translator.
  
  --
  Have gnu, will travel.
4. Re:A protective valve? by confused+one · 2013-02-20 15:17 · Score: 1
  
  They were called vacuum tubes in the U.S. and valves in the rest of the English speaking world. British translator perhaps?
5. Re:A protective valve? by MichaelSmith · 2013-02-20 15:36 · Score: 1
  
  I think it means circuit breaker.
  
  --
  http://michaelsmith.id.au
6. Re:A protective valve? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 17:16 · Score: 0
  
  its reverse current protection (in the most simple form a diode), breakers only protect from overloads
7. Re:A protective valve? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 23:52 · Score: 0
  
  No, the translation is accurate. The Japanese word for valve [ben] means the same thing, a device that opens to allow flow. In this case it is unlikely the current flow control hardware is a single component, thusly the generic term "valve" is accurate.
8. Re:A protective valve? by KH · 2013-02-21 02:16 · Score: 1
  
  In fact the JTSB used the term BDM (Battery Diode Module), even in their Japanese press release.
9. Re:A protective valve? by PPH · 2013-02-21 03:57 · Score: 1
  
  That's what I was trying to say. We (English speakers) used to use the term 'valve' for vacuum tubes back in the day. But that was replaced by tube, transistor, diode, etc. The Japanese, it appears, still use this term. A non-tech writer would translate that literally, not realizing the context dependence in English.
  
  --
  Have gnu, will travel.
Japanese spin by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 13:40 · Score: 1

The Japanese are doing everything they can to point blame away from Yuasa. As someone above noted, and, yes I did read the fine article, they have concluded that it must have been wired incorrectly after seeing some lights flicker and a white dove flying in the southern quadrant.
1. Re:Japanese spin by anubi · 2013-02-20 15:09 · Score: 1
  
  If the battery management board was doing its job right, it would not have made any difference if they had miswired it that way. That is what "smart battery" technology is all about.
  
  Smart battery technology enables the controller to look at every cell individually. No two cells are identical. They will leak charge at different rates. And won't have identical capacity. Especially over time.
  
  A "smart battery controller" keeps track of the state of charge of each cell of the battery pack and allocates charging energy accordingly, likewise it supervises the rate of charge and allowable rates of discharge, including shutting down battery discharge as any cell approached its low charge level limit.
  
  A miswire to the pack should not make it catch fire; however the miswire may well lead to unexpected behaviour, such as the battery "going dead" unexpectedly or failing to charge properly. In my expectations, a properly designed battery management device will have the capability of blowing open a fuse if necessary to completely disable the battery in the event of a severe failure or miswire - especially in the case of lithium chemistries which are intolerant of abuse.
  
  I highly respect lithium cells for their performance, but also am highly aware of their response to being mistreated. They are very intolerant of being either overcharged or overdischarged. These things must be supervised.
  
  --
  "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
2. Re:Japanese spin by jet_silver · 2013-02-20 15:42 · Score: 1
  
  It may be you're right but the requirements might have led Yuasa to believe the battery management would be taken on by other system elements. Requirements writing is not all that easy, especially when you're trying to anticipate problems in equipment no one has had to rely on to such an extent before.
  Damn fine work by the Japanese MoT nonetheless, aggregating clues from all over the place.
3. Re:Japanese spin by fluffy99 · 2013-02-20 19:09 · Score: 1
  
  Exactly! Wish I had points to mod you up.
  Hell, even the lithium battery for my cordless drill has these basic smarts built in. Cutoff on any cell reaching it's upper voltage limit during charging, hitting the lower limit during discharge, or thermal limit during either charge or discharge. It also has cell leveling to keep all cells at a similar state of charge to maximize the overall useable capacity of the battery string.
Fucking idiot by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 13:46 · Score: 1

What the fuck are you talking about? There are cannon plugs all over the place. The reason you think "directly hardwired" is because almost each LRU has its own circuit breaker. You must be one of the fucking PHBs
whistleblowers by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 13:50 · Score: 1

It's gonna be fun to watch. Whistleblowers are starting to emerge telling of how safety issues were swept under the rug in the name of getting an already late project out, and engineering concerns were ignored or overridden by managers. It's very similar to the story of the O-rings on the Space Shuttle, where engineers knew there were problems, but their concerns were ignored.
Gonna be a real show over the next year as these people start coming out in greater numbers.
Japanese Probe? by Charliemopps · 2013-02-20 14:00 · Score: 4, Funny

When you say "Japanese Probe" I had an entirely different idea in my head regarding what this story was about.
1. Re:Japanese Probe? by MyHair · 2013-02-20 14:12 · Score: 2
  
  When you say "Japanese Probe" I had an entirely different idea in my head regarding what this story was about.
  Weren't you surprised nothing was pixelated?
2. Re:Japanese Probe? by viperidaenz · 2013-02-20 15:24 · Score: 1
  
  I'm still waiting for the tentacles.
3. Re:Japanese Probe? by mdielmann · 2013-02-20 15:50 · Score: 1
  
  When you say "Japanese Probe" I had an entirely different idea in my head regarding what this story was about.
  Miswiring sounds like it would be just as dangerous, either way.
  
  --
  Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
4. Re:Japanese Probe? by tool462 · 2013-02-20 15:54 · Score: 1
  
  Tentacle porn is a reasonably good approximation of the 787s wiring diagram. And in both, bad things happen when the wires go in the wrong hole.
5. Re:Japanese Probe? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 17:59 · Score: 0
  
  All your 787 are belong to us.
6. Re:Japanese Probe? by Charliemopps · 2013-02-21 00:45 · Score: 1
  
  I've learned not be surprised by anything I see from Japan.
Idiot by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 14:04 · Score: 0

They are wired together with bolts and screws, often coded so you need the right tools,
FRUs are socketed, the inside hard wired
simple, MFG, omb
The wiring was wrong by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 14:25 · Score: 0

Pick on something, question it's validity and then suggest conspiracy... are you Elon Musk?
"The Transport Safety Board said in a report that the battery for the aircraft’s auxiliary power unit was incorrectly connected to the main battery that overheated"
The lights flickering is a secondary indicator, the primary indicator is the actual miswiring!
Stand by for SPEEA by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 14:30 · Score: 0

The technical workers authorized a strike. Just watch Boeing goad them into it for a few weeks. They have a clause in their sales contracts relieving them of late delivery penalties due to circumstances beyond their control. Like strikes.
The contract will magically be settled after the engineers design a fix and its ready for manufacturing.
OK Now we are even by Camel+Pilot · 2013-02-20 14:55 · Score: 1, Funny

For the Prius accelerator screwup....
1. Re:OK Now we are even by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 17:06 · Score: 1
  
  The Prius screwup was proved a hoax. Everyone involved were liars.
2. Re:OK Now we are even by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 23:12 · Score: 1
  
  You mean that we're likely to get bad pilots blame the 787 for their own mistakes, and a bunch of copycat crashes to claim on insurance?
  You mean that the psychology of the country and groupthink will reach the false consensus that somehow something is wrong with the 787, and will cause Boeing to replace the battery several times rather than upset its customers?
  Wow!
If one plane was miswired, what about others? by Streetlight · 2013-02-20 16:45 · Score: 1

Presumably the same person who miswired the Japanese 787 miswired at least one other plane. That should be easy to check. If there are other planes with smoking batteries, check the wiring, then do it for all other 787s.

--
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
Apparently not the cause of battery fire by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 16:52 · Score: 1

Nikkei is reporting that this miswiring, which connected the auxiliary and main batteries by mistake, is due to a bug in an older version of the 787's electrical design. The bug was found and fixed in November 2011, but somehow Boeing never got around to re-wiring this particular aircraft according to the new plan. Nikkei also reports that the miswiring probably did not cause the battery fire, because there is some sort of an "anti-reverse current mechanism" in place to prevent damage even if the auxiliary had started to feed current into the main battery.
Re: the two studs seem to be mounted with differen by girlinatrainingbra · 2013-02-20 17:39 · Score: 1

Re: The battery cells are rectangular with a stud on each side of the top. Not even any prominent markings to indicate polarity, though the two studs seem to be mounted with different colored rivets.
.
The other possibility is that the installer was color blind and has been able to get by without that disability showing through. Most items that are color-marked often have a redundant marking that is not dependent on color vision perception (except for resistors and their color banding indicators, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_color_code#Resistor_color-coding and for cable runs of twisted-pairs that use paired coloring indicators
the safe way to do this by r00t · 2013-02-20 18:27 · Score: 1

You need a blow-out panel.
The M1A2 Abrams tank has one for the shells. If they start to burn, the blow-out panel pops off and the whole mess exits the tank.
Factories that make vinyl have them. When the concoction goes boom, blow-out panels prevent total destruction of the building. Workers may even survive.
Meth labs don't have them. :-)
A reasonable design would have several battery compartments, each with a separate blow-out panel. These should be located so that debris will not enter the engines or get run over by the landing gear. The rear underside seems like a good location.
1. Re:the safe way to do this by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 19:09 · Score: 0
  
  The 787 has these.
2. Re:the safe way to do this by r00t · 2013-02-20 20:21 · Score: 1
  
  Clearly not! If the 787 had blow-out panels, batteries could burn and/or explode with little consequence. The news stories would be about the danger to people on the ground, not to the aircraft.
  (it goes BOOM, you get a nice neat predetermined circular hole in the bottom, and chunks of flaming battery fall from the aircraft... meanwhile, the aircraft continues operating on the other battery packs)
3. Re:the safe way to do this by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 20:23 · Score: 0
  
  A reasonable design would have several battery compartments, each with a separate blow-out panel. These should be located so that debris will not enter the engines or get run over by the landing gear. The rear underside seems like a good location.
  That's an excellent idea but when the burning battery is under the cockpit it will require a conveyor belt under the cabin to move the debris to the rear. Maybe I should give Boeing my advice just like everybody else is doing right now...
4. Re:the safe way to do this by mjwx · 2013-02-20 21:19 · Score: 1
  
  Meth labs don't have them. :-)
  Ahem,
  
  Why do you assume just because I make meth, my lab is not set up to conform to AS2343 standards.
  
  For shame sir, for shame.
  
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5. Re:the safe way to do this by Michael+Woodhams · 2013-02-20 22:50 · Score: 1
  
  Remember that an airliner is a pressure vessel. The maximum pressure differential is on the order of 60 kPa, which is about the pressure of a water column 6m deep. So you want a panel which will absolutely not ever blow out at 60 kPa pressure, but will reliably blow out at (60 kPa + excess pressure caused by fire.) Given that the battery is not in a gas-tight compartment, I can't imagine that excess is very large, even for a significant fire. And all this is without even considering the fact that 60 kPa is the maximum pressure differential, but during significant periods of the flight the difference will be less.
  I believe that blow-out panels are already used in the cabin floor so that should one (but not the other) of the hold and cabin suddenly depressurize, the floor will not fail. Such a failure of the floor was part of the chain of causation that caused a near crash and a crash in the DC-10. Wikipedia refers to 'vents' without specifying the type, but I remember reading elsewhere they were blow-out panels. (Although present, they proved inadequate, and improving them was part of the engineering fix made in response to these incidents.)
  
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6. Re:the safe way to do this by vbraga · 2013-02-21 05:41 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe It's easier to dodge DEA than OSHA :-)
  
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7. Re:the safe way to do this by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-21 14:21 · Score: 0
  
  Part of the airliner is a pressure vessel. Part of it is not. The tail cone, behind the rear bulkhead, is unpressurized. While the battery compartment might best be pressurized, it definitely should NOT be within the aircraft's primary pressure vessel. That would be disasterous, allowing fumes to spew into the passenger compartment or worse.
  Anyway, picture a hemisphere with the equator flush against the lower exterior surface. It actually meets up at a circular hole, with a distinct circular door for battery access. The dome thus protrudes inward much like the landing gear compartments do. The dome itself doesn't have any perforations; wiring runs through the door and then briefly along the outside. (this prevents weak spots in the dome-like upper side of the compartment) The batteries can be mounted to the inside of the dome with something that has a low melting point, helping them to drop through the circular panel if they fail.
8. Re:the safe way to do this by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-21 14:24 · Score: 0
  
  "under the cockpit" is FAIL
  We have these things called "wires" and "power cables". If we desired, we could place batteries beneath the engines or at the tip of the tail. We could even hang the batteries so they dangle over the toilet.
9. Re:the safe way to do this by Michael+Woodhams · 2013-02-21 16:46 · Score: 1
  
  You're right about the tail cone, and your hemisphere plan sounds like it would work. I doubt it would be economically viable. I expect they'd be better off using the older less combustible battery technology than doing all this.
  
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Nitpick by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-20 19:07 · Score: 0

Series for 240V input, parallel for 120V, but otherwise you are correct ;)
1. Re:Nitpick by petermgreen · 2013-02-22 05:38 · Score: 1
  
  The capaitors are connected in series regardless of how the voltage selector is set.
  The ends of that series combination are connected to the AC supply by a diode bridge, they are also connected to the load. The switch is connected between the midpoint of the capacitors and one side of the incoming supply.
  With the switch off (240V mode) the system acts as a normal bridge rectifier and the capacitors are charged in series during both half cycles.
  With the switch on (120V mode) the system acts as a voltage doubling rectifier and charges one capacitor during each half cycle.
  Either way you get about 300V DC across the capacitors which can be used to power a flyback converter to provide isolation and voltage conversion.
  This design is cheap and works ok but connecting a rectifier-capacitor circuit directly to the mains results in a HORRIBLE power factor (even worse than connecting one via a transformer as the transformer limits the harmonic currents). As PCs have become both more common and more power hungry this horrible power factor has been deemed unacceptable (at least in europe) and all but the shittiest power supplies have moved to other designs
  
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Re: the two studs seem to be mounted with differen by AaronW · 2013-02-20 19:36 · Score: 1

This reminds me of when I was having a new furnace installed. The installer wiring up the thermostat was having a hell of a time because he was color blind (I helped him out there).
Looking at the pictures here though even a color blind person should be able to easily tell positive from negative on the battery terminals.

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I have to ask.. by PhilJC · 2013-02-21 01:34 · Score: 1

Did they try turning it off and on again?
Lost in translation by KH · 2013-02-21 02:12 · Score: 2

I see that the discussion here is based on a sketchy summary from the originally Japanese press conference. More coherent information is available if you could read Japanese but I know it's too much to ask for...
Here is the latest update of the on-going investigation from the JTSB issued 20 Feb, 2013; this mentions the mis-wiring:
http://www.mlit.go.jp/jtsb/flash/JA804A_130116-130220.pdf
More in-depth information is given at
http://www.aviationwire.jp/archives/16032
According to this article, the mis-wiring was in the original specs/design, and the design had been corrected. The aircraft in question was manufactured in accordance to the earlier specs but no modification was made to comply with the new ones. One can infer that the bug was considered insignificant to compromise the safety of the aircraft. The JTSB currently does not think this mis-wiring was the cause of the battery incident although they will keep looking into it as a potential cause of anomalous voltage readings.
In Other Words by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-21 04:28 · Score: 0

..they will add fire-proof coffins with vents for their batteries in case they decide to burn themselves off. Nice. Very Nice.
But yeah, that might be a proper engineering solution, provided that the "coffin" actually works as advertised. I can already see the PHB doctoring the test scenarios. "There will never be so many cells being shorted at the same time ! We don't need that scenario !"
Well by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-21 04:34 · Score: 0

In the case of the A380, wiring caused only delays in the design and manufacturing processes.
The BRITISH tried to crash an A380 by means of a little fire plus high-speed explosion of a Rollys-Royce engine, though. The shrapnel destroyed so many systems the pilots needed one hour to read all the failure report console. Meanwhile they let off fuel and brought the thing down again.
Rolls-Royce also had a problem with an ice-clogged fuel filter (from normal water in the fuel) and that made a 777 do a nasty crash-landing at heathrow.
All the joys of Margret Thatcher and The Market Will Fix It By Itself.
Re: the two studs seem to be mounted with differen by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-21 07:20 · Score: 0

You type like comic book characters speak.