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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.'"
You know walking is slower than flying :)
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
These days? Not so much...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Give me a break. The plane is solid. And as to this battery, it is in a strong case that vents to the outside. If you are up in the air, then it will go out on its own. If down by the ground, not a problem.
.Sadly, they allowed their board to be composed of others outside of the aviation industry, who were more business idiots than engineers.
Any real issues with this plane has been the fact that Boeing did NOT build it themselves.
Regardless, I trust the craft, but think that it was expensive. Hopefully, next time, Boeing will revert back to how they do things.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You know, just about any of the commercial crafts are safe. The real issue is how are the airlines doing their maintenance. US airlines used to be the best. Now, they are offshoring and I think that they are an issue. For example, I grew up on American Airlines. BUT, they are now offshoring this to China. Recall the seats that were not fastened? That was the Chinese company. Scary. Very scary.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
and that does not reassure me, at all.
Exactly, this issue was a bad battery design, a design not even done by boeing. If they replaced it with a standard lead acid it would have been flying already. The problem is the extra weight by multiple larger heavier batteries. So they fixed this version. Being the design it is it wull probably have future issues but the plane itself is safe. You dont think your laptop or tablet is going to catch fire do you. But that has happened too.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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.
I'm not particularly troubled. The transition from lead-acid to NiCd followed a similar trajectory.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Do you really want a list of all the maintenance fuckups caused by unionised American maintenance companies and groups? Like the unauthorised manner of engine change that ultimately caused the downing of AA 191?
The problem isn't outsourcing, it never has been - but as always, it's a good excuse for those who want to bang the nationalistic drum.
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.
The design "flew" for hundreds of thousands of hours on the desktop simulation without any problems;-)
I'm looking over the wall; and the're looking at me!
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.
So the plane is safe so long as the battery doesn't catch fire - again - and get hot enough to burn through its containment box. Hmm , let me think about that definition of "safe" for a moment....
Where is it going to get the energy to get hot enough to burn through the containment box? There's only so much energy in that battery. Build a box to contain that and that's it - as long as the fools who can't wire batteries correctly don't figure out a way past that.
No one has a perfect record but generally American workers have a better record. One thing that helps is that if you screw something up then 7 or 8 years down the road it causes a problem it will come back on you. They keep records of work done that is stamped by journeymen mechanics and that record stays for the life of the aircraft. Generally with overseas contractors your chance of actually putting the mechanic responsible in jail is nil. I do depot level work and I know that I and my fellow mechanics obsess over safety to the point that it often causes clashes with supervisors who push for speed. I've seen multiple times that a mechanic refused to stamp something because he didn't feel comfortable with it and no amount of pressure would persuade them to do it. Many is the time is that I've heard "It's my fucking stamp and I'm not going to jail for your ass!"
It's not the flying part - it's the hitting the ground you should be scared of.
I never used to have a problem with flying, and I'm still 'fine' with it - but I still remember with f'in terror a take-off I had from LHR.
Go down the runway, nose up, we're going up - and then we drop like a stone for a few seconds on what I assume was an air-pocket. Seeing things on the ground getting significantly bigger whilst the nose is still pointing up is *not* a good feeling.
Now the majority of my brain is reasonably comfortable with the idea there was never really a danger, but my lizard cortex takes a couple of G&Ts to completely silence now.
Assume that it catchs fire. That is the SAME assumption that Boeing has made. That is why they not have the battery in the equivalence of a fireproof safe, where there is a value that allows for pressure to spill outwards. IOW, if it explodes or catches fire, it will be directed OUTWARD, not inward. That is safe.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And bicycling is faster.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
The battery has not marred the plane's launch. In fact, the plane has been launched and in service for a while.
Being grounded for weeks due to a marked tendency to catch fire is the kind of thing that most people would consider to have marred its launch.
I certainly don't plan to get on a Doomliner in the next couple of years.
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.
I'll take that bet. Digital representations count.
First off, The pilot, walt lux, of that was a close friends of our family. My dad and he would ssched together on the DC-10 of that time. In fact, Walt had allowed me to jump on that particular aircraft.
Secondly, the engine swap was not in the books, BUT ALL of the airlines did it that way. In fact, DC showed many of the companies how to shortcut that. American did NOT develop it.
Third, the Chinese (and other maintenance bases such as the one in Columbia) have screwed up a number of things royally. US Airways has had more than their fair share of issues from the Colombian hub.
In addition, the Chinnese themselves beat their nationalistic drums such as saying that they do not want to be dependant on ANYTHING from the west. Even to this day, unless the work is done in China, they reoutinely block every item. It is only a matter of time before China will raise the tariffs on Tesla and tell them if they will turn over a lot of IP that they will drop it.
It is sad when ppl like you are willing to scream that others are being nationalistic when the fuck-ups make the news, while you ignore and even uphold China's ability to block western goods.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yeah, but isn't it far less economically viable to fly a plane all the way to China for maintenance instead of to somewhere in the middle of the US?
Wherever you perform the maintenance, you're going to have to fly there. If you have more than two brain cells to rub together, you ensure that the last revenue flight the plane makes before maintenance brings it close to the maintenance depot, wherever in the world that may happen to be.
Exactly. In fact, where American went to, is the same place that most of the Chinese national airlines, ESP. CHINA AIRLINES (worst record GOING) use. They have had issue after issue after issue. And with those seats, Horton was busy blaming the unions and then it turned out that it was the Chinese group.
This is no different than the AA flights that fly the Latin American routes, Either Carty or Aprey had started using the Colombian base for those aircraft's. Then they have seen a rash of accidents that was attributed to the pilots. Consider AA's rigorous flight training (unless they have changed that over the last 20 years), I seriously doubt that it was pilot error.
I know that US Airways uses the Colombian base as well, BUT, I am hopeful that Parker will move from the Chinese maintenance to Colombian, or better yet, bring back the base that was just shut down in Sept. Heck, Parker learned under Crandal so it would be nice if he takes it back to how he ran the airline. Heck, he would be smart to create an airline that is nothing but a single class of business class and run it on the profitable routes that has plenty of traffic. Then convert the first class on all of the domestics to have the same seats and fringes as that airline has. With such an approach, I think that they could capture what AA (and other US national airlines) was.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
having a battery like this in a place with no fire extinguisher
Uh, once a LCO battery goes, your not putting it out with a "fire extinguisher". These things are nasty, and the lithium itself burns so hot that its damn hard to contain it.
Check out https://leehamnews.wordpress.com/2013/01/28/airbus-examines-lithium-battery-safety-fire-suppression/
Total BS.
The way Boeing aircraft design has always worked is that engineers come up with CATIA designs that craftsman start implementing. As this is put together, the engineers crawl in and amongst the air frame and checks how things will go. I assume that Airbus does the same. Many times, parts get re-engineered as the engineers play with them and see what happens. In this case, it was because of the outsourcing that they could NOT do things that way. It was basically, a waterfall approach to design rather than iterative approach.
Now, who forced this? The executives who outsource 50% of the aircraft. How much is normally outsourced? Less than 10% of a Boeing aircraft is outsourced beyond the plant and the local companies. And when it came to the airframe, NONE of it was outsourced in the past (save fasteners and metal, but all was local production so that Boeing could keep control of it). This was the FIRST time that Boeing has outsourced anything out of their control WRT airframe. The problem was NOT that the fasteners were not aircraft grade. The outsourcing was.
The issue was that Boeing's engineers were used to their mechanics BUT, they were dealing with mechanics in China, japan, etc. And over there, they did NOT understand how to do countersunk on specific dimensions by the instructions that the engineers gave them. Basically, the engineer and mechanics at Boeing had worked together for so long, that it showed a weakness in how information is passed. So, correct fasteners, BUT, the holes were every so slighting mis-aligned due to inferior craftsmanship overseas.
You mention the electrical panel fire which would be the P100. That was a piece that was outsourced to a subsidiary of EADS. They left a wrench inside that caused the fire when it shorted.
The side of body issue with a problem with Fuju heavy's inability to do the work in the same way that Boeing was used to. So now, when the stringers come in from fuji, sections are cut away by Boeing, with the exception of one stringer. In that case, it is carrying an extra 25-50 some odd kgs. Does not sound like Much, but Boeing (and companies like Airbus) work on getting kgs knocked off.
Basically, EVERY major issue was an outsource issue. It had to do with a lack of communication, combined with a different level of craftsmanship, and carefulness. Now, you appear to not want to look at facts, and that is fine. However, you have no rights to make up stuff that you obvious do NOT know.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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.
The revolution will be mocked
Unless North Carolina is now part of China
I guess that's one way of settling the national debt...
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