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Boeing's 787 Dreamliner Has Taken Its Battery Certification Flight
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Boeing just flew the flight it needed to certify the improved battery housing on its 787 Dreamliner, whose battery woes have marred the next generation plane's launch. Here is Flight Aware's live data map, showing the path of BOE272, the test flight from Friday afternoon.
On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that the 787's recertification flight was pending. A Boeing news release stated yesterday that the '...flight departed from Paine Field in Everett, Wash. at 10:39 a.m. Pacific with a crew of 11 onboard, including two representatives from the FAA. The airplane flew for 1 hours and 49 minutes, landing back at Paine Field at 12:28 p.m. Pacific.'"
I don't think it was even a bad battery design. It was wired incorrectly. After reading the book "Airframe," I understand why Boeing hasn't hyped this more. They can't shit on their customers, so they have to keep their mouths shut lest they lose sales to the people they are (rightfully) blaming.
For scheduled maintenance, airlines fly their aircraft to major maintenance bases around the world - if they do their own maintenance, that's usually one of their hubs.
Sorry, but the fact that this aircraft was "not built by Boeing" have nothing to do with the issues that have shown up thus far - no Boeing aircraft have flown with a battery system designed or built by Boeing, it's always been an item that's been outsourced (same for Airbus).
The fastener issues were 100% Boeings direct fault (hey, let's ignore the fastener suppliers lead time and assume they can fill any order we want in an mpossible time - wait, no, they can't. Arse. Let's use off the shelf non-aviation grade fasteners then and replace them before the plane flies! Oops, that just cost us months of extra work....).
The side of body issues were a Boeing design fault.
The electrical panel fire was a Boeing design issue.
None of the issues the aircraft has thus far seen has been the result of a part that was outsourced when before it hadn't.
Spirit builds the entire 737 fuselage as an outsourced process, no issues there...
Thousands of suppliers provide major components of the 777, no issues there.
Boeing flew the 787 for over 7,500 hours during certification, testing and route proving without this issue showing up - what would you have them do?
No - the plane is safe even if the battery catches fire. My understanding of the comment is that safe failure is the result of the change in design. With the previous design, battery failure by fire could endanger the aircraft. With the new design battery failure by fire does not endanger the aircraft. This is how subsystem failure is managed in aircraft. Whether or not a failure endangers the craft has huge implications for how its safety is evaluated.
Uh. No.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2012/10/03/american-airlines-seats/1610189/
The work in question was either done in-house by American Airlines employees or in a contractor's facility in North Carolina. Unless North Carolina is now part of China, your fear mongering is just that.
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