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Boeing's Folding Wingtips Get the FAA Green Light (engadget.com)
Boeing received FAA approval today for its folding wingtips, which will let the planes stop at airport gates big enough to accommodate typical 777 models. "Once the 777X lands, the wingtips will rotate until they point upwards," reports Engadget. "Bloomberg notes that the plane will be the only commercial model in widespread use to have such a feature." From the report: The 777X's wingtips are so novel that U.S. regulators had to draw up new standards for them. The agency was concerned that the wingtips could cause safety issues -- some plane crashes occurred after pilots did not secure flaps on wings before takeoff. The FAA required Boeing to have several warning systems to make sure pilots won't attempt a takeoff before the wingtips are locked in the correct position. The FAA also wanted assurances that there was no way the tips would rotate during flight, and that the wings could handle winds of up to 75 miles per hour while on the ground.
The new wings are made from carbon-fiber composites that are stronger and lighter than the metal Boeing uses in other wings. That lets the company increase the wings' width by 23 feet to 235 feet, which makes flying more efficient. These are the widest wings Boeing has attached to a plane, surpassing the 747-8's 224 feet. However, it doesn't hold the record for a commercial plane: the Airbus A380 has a 262-foot-wide wing, which forced some airports to install gates specifically to accommodate it.
The new wings are made from carbon-fiber composites that are stronger and lighter than the metal Boeing uses in other wings. That lets the company increase the wings' width by 23 feet to 235 feet, which makes flying more efficient. These are the widest wings Boeing has attached to a plane, surpassing the 747-8's 224 feet. However, it doesn't hold the record for a commercial plane: the Airbus A380 has a 262-foot-wide wing, which forced some airports to install gates specifically to accommodate it.
I'm unaware of any accidents involving the folding wings on US Navy aircraft, or at least, not in the last 3 decades. The airlines primarily get their pilots from the military, so having some airline pilots who are already familiar with the checklist step of making sure that the wings are unfolded and locked won't be an enormous training issue.
The FAA rubber-stamped those measures Friday. (emphasis added)
"Rubber-stamped" is an idiomatic expression meaning roughly "to approve without review," which is not at all how the FAA works.
I know that it is a bit pedantic but I find that more and more people speak and write using phrases that are not appropriate for the context and it makes communication more difficult than it needs to be.
The summary said the FAA "rubber-stamped" the folding wingtips. However, the FAA made Boeing put in several warnings on the planes on whether the tips were in the right place, withstand 75mph winds on the ground, and could not rotate during flight.
Doesn't seem like a "rubber-stamp" to me.
--PM
A folding wing option was offered when the 777 was first being developed. No airline wanted to pay for it, so it never happened.
Here is a discussion on why that was, and how the new 777x folding wing differs from the old rejected folding wing plan. The new folding wing section is much smaller and lighter than the old proposal. The old plan required flight controls on the folding section, which the new plan does not.
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No worries, plane will still fly even with the wingtips folded -- it only would be losing about 20% of the wing length. Planes have lost more (on one wing) and landed safely. Takeoff/landing speeds might be a bit faster, though.
That would defeat the purpose, since engines are started while planes are still sitting at the gate.
Not saying it's recommended, or particularly safe.
https://theaviationist.com/201...
Video of a prototype folding and unfolding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It's actually not that large a section of the wing.
The pulling of circuit-breakers to stop alarms and warnings resulted in a way to get around sounds and longer check lists.
Lots of no-brainer features got designed in and often got turned off to save time.
A lot of work had to be done to ensure warnings and no-brainer features did not get turned off.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It shouldn't've been too hard to come up with standards. The Navy flies aircraft with folding wings daily, and we're talking the entire wing folds so the hinge and locking mechanism have to handle the full load of high-G combat maneuvers, I'd imagine the FAA could simply grab the Navy's standards and edit them down to remove the parts only relevant to combat aircraft. That'd cover the wingtip lock status indicator too, all naval folding-wing aircraft have them so the pilot knows if his wings are safe to launch with.
They start the engines after they push the plane away from the gate. There's usually too much stuff near the gate to safely start them up.
The noise you hear when you're at the gate is the APU running. It's *really* loud 'cause it's usually mounted on top of the cabin in the back of the plane. Once they use it to start up the main engines they shut it off and the cabin gets quieter.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
>"Doesn't seem like a "rubber-stamp" to me."
It looks like someone corrected the summary, since "rubber stamped" is not current there...
That's the point. It's an integral kill-switch for the engines. If the wing-lock isn't engaged, you can't run the starter for the engines. There's no breaker or bypass.
Sure a mechanic could probably hot-wire the kill-switch or something. This is what FAA audits are supposed to catch. But at that point you might as well not build planes at all, because all a pilot has to do is ram the yoke forward on takeoff to crash. You can't build a plane completely idiot-proof.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
winglets reduce drag, wings provide lift.
Longer wings create less drag for a given lift, everything else being equal.
"That lets the company increase the wings' width by 23 feet to 235 feet, which makes flying more efficient."
Pretty fat wings on this bird! Perhaps 'span' would be a better term.
4wdloop
Does the other wingtip get the red light?
Me, I was confused by the wings being "wide".
The word is "wingspan".
Hell, I would've accepted "long". But "wide" is the wrong dimension.
I found a moron.
I can't tell whether the writer means that incident "X" did not make the landing hazardous,
In the F-15's case that the former :
- The plane has body lift too. Thus there are some safety margins (even with missing bits it can generate enough lift).
- The onboard avionics(*) are able to compensate for quite a lot of situations.
So even with a wing missing, although it couldn't probably perform complex acrobatic maneuvers, could still land safely provided that the pilot is experienced and know how to handle the plane too.
TL;DR: brilliant pilot + bad-ass airplane = can still fly "almost normally" even with missing bits.
Just don't try this it at home, you have drastically reduced quite some safety margins.
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I've read somewhere that Airbus has some software routine in their avionics that are able to compensate for missing / damamged tail bits. I'll have to track down the reference.
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Do the same for the Boeing, but put a little LED right next to it so they won't miss it in the dark.
Not a bad idea but it creates a new issue. Namely how do you tell the indicator is working if the LED malfunctions? Instruments are generally quite reliable but not 100%. That's a fundamental issue with any status indicator - false positives or worse, false negatives. The problem can be with the device or the indicator and it can be difficult to tell which is the problem. The indicators are still worth doing if the failure modes are severe enough but it doesn't completely eliminate the risk.
That means that Slashdot has been hacked, since we know Slashdot editors don't actually edit the summaries - ever.
Maybe that means we'll get Unicode support sometime soon!
I just wish they folded down. Back in the 60's this allowed the plane to get to Mach 3 and beyond!
*** Don't be dull.***
Thanks! I hadn't ever considered this phrase until now and I appreciate knowing that much more about it now.
Still a classic!
Incorrect. LOT Polish airlines was flying 767s NYC-Warsaw and ORD-Warsaw in the early 1990s, before the 777 was even released to production. They went directly from Russian jets to modern 767s.