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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.'"
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.
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.
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!"