Whatever you do don't fly in China

[KevinB]

http://iagblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/chinese-aircraft-maintenance.html

[STEED]

:o:o

[HunterICX]

:o holy macaroni!

Well, I never wanted to fly any of the Eastern air companies...they crash a bit to much for my liking

[Myxale]

:-?

We fly so hiiigh!

Holy crap! They must been selling Thirilling flights!:shifty:

[KevinB]

Yes, may we borrow your seat belt sir, the engine's looking a bit shaky.

[STEED]

Yes, may we borrow your seat belt sir, the engine's looking a bit shaky.

Don't panic if the plane falls apart on the runway. :lol:

[U-533]

I dont fly no more anyway.

I aint in that much of a hurry.

This does kinda make a statement about conditions in the almighty socialist / communist Chinese gummint dont it?

:sunny:

[tycho102]

**** YES~!!!!

Awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome. That is absolutely motivating! It's too bad they didn't use an 11-megapixel camera to take the photos -- I'd use it for my wallpaper!

However, I have seen superior FOD. Not on all three bloody engines at the same time with seat-belt debris still clogging it, but one engine that was as impressive.

[Ducimus]

Reminds me of "adashi craftsmanship" i saw in Korea.

Im gonna make a wild stab here.

It's well known that China is really going aggressive in umm i guess ill use the word "modernization" for lack of a better word. Aggressivly on their way to becoming a superpower.

Korea has been aggressivly "modernizing" for years now. The term that we liked to use was "their trying to become a First world nation in one generation". In their determination to move their nation forward, they miss minor details or take shortcuts.

Since i was an engineer, heres a couple examples that strike near and dear to my own former trade.

Buildings and bridges. On my first tour there they had a bridge, and a shopping mall collapse. You should have seen their news. Finger pointing everywhere, and a few blurbs about american construction. They really have no construction codes there that im aware of. The reason why their buildings fall down is because they're concrete is runny weak crap. They use pumper trucks so they wet down their 'crete to a 9 inch slump, full of twigs, and other assorted umm "aggregate" that shouldnt be there. Incase you may not know, the wetter concrete is at pour, the weaker it is during its lifetime, even though it continually cures. US codes dictate about a 3 inch slump, they pour 9's.


Another example is this.
My NCOIC and i were watching these guys drive piles for a building foundation. Such things have to be set in the ground at a certain depth with the ground compacted to a certain hardness with apporpriate course grade and such. These guys are out their drving piles in uncompacted earth, and using.. A RULER...YES A RULER to measure how much further down the pile needed to go. So out comes Adashi (korean for young man) with his ruler, measures the pile with his mighty ruler, shakes his head no, and tells the pile operater to keep going. Right after that, out comes their foreman, bawls out the guy with the ruler, kicks the dirt away near the pile and tells the guy with the ruler to measure it again. AFter that he's all nods and thumbs up.

So given that kind of.. "craftsmanship" from a rapidly industrialzing nation, the seatbelts on the fanblades strikes me as being VERY SIMILAR, and probably the tip of the iceberg.

[bradclark1]

It's to keep costs down.

[CCIP]

Any pilots? What do you think guys, is this real or not?

To be honest, it sorta looks more like an engine after a bird strike than something that would've taken off :dead:

[ASWnut101]

that engine is banged up enough that if it was a bird strike, there would have to be multiple birds of large size. but proabably not because 1) Every fan blade has damage 2) There is no blood spatter on the edge of the engine. 3) if you look at pic #2, see the straigt blades behind the destroyed ones? (The straigt ones don't spin.) They are untouched.

Those staps don't look airworthy, but hey-Chinese Intuition.


It almost looks as if someone took a large, heavy object and banged it against the blades as they were wind-milling (spining from the wind), but never touched anything else. Now why someone would do that is beyond me, but I belive that the damage was either by dirt-poor maintinence, or intentional.



As for the story on seatbelts: Bull****. The blades move so fast, (very roughly ~15,000 rpm) that the seatbelt would tear itself apart, not only from being flung off the blades by cintrifugal force, but beat into subbmisison by the wind speed. There's also the matter of engine heat on the ground, and -50 F cold temperature at 36,000 ft.


If this is what only a portion of the plane looks like, i don't want to see the rest.

[edjcox]

They fewer there are the more room anf food for the rest of us.....

nuff said:up:

[tycho102]

3) if you look at pic #2, see the straigt blades behind the destroyed ones? (The straigt ones don't spin.) They are untouched.

As for the story on seatbelts: Bull****. The blades move so fast, (very roughly ~15,000 rpm) that the seatbelt would tear itself apart, not only from being flung off the blades by cintrifugal force, but beat into subbmisison by the wind speed. There's also the matter of engine heat on the ground, and -50 F cold temperature at 36,000 ft.

The straight ones are called "stators".

If the object is long, such as a chain, it will knock the hell out of the majority of blades. Some fragments will sheer, causing damage to the rest of the blades. So a nylon seat belt with a buckle would rip the heck out of the blades like that. And that's just the forward fan blades. They don't turn all that fast (commercial planes use a low-pass design with slower blades). Their job is to pass air at operating altitude, and to suck air when the plane is taxing around on the ground. There's several pair of compressor blades further back, and they're going to look even worse.:rotfl:

There were four engines on the plane. Only three were functional, the one looks like hammered dog stuff, and the rest had a lot of blade nicks because they were also swapped out but didn't make the headlines. The guy writing the article didn't quite understand that those straps weren't there intentionally. They were not some form of maintenance -- those straps were on a seat belt that went down the intake, including the buckle.

However, the survivability of those engines is what is remarkable. No one died, the poor German guy on the ground crew who saw and reported the engine damage was probably white as a ghost (no one ever considers the emotional state of the ground crew after finding something like this), and this plane had flown non-stop for at least 1500 miles.

[XabbaRus]

huh, I would have thought had the seatbelt been sucked in there they wouldn't have stayed wrapped around the fan blades like that. Even though they might not spin that fast compared to the turbine or HP compressors they still go fast enough to shred stuff.

[Safe-Keeper]

"Seat belts? Oh no, sir, they hold the engines together. Here, let me nail your coat and pants to the seat with these here chop sticks".

Safety regulations, anyone:shifty:?

No surprise, though. This is the same nation that loses, what is it, 3000 people in its mines a year. Any mainlanders on this board: Move to Formosa. [Struck me after I finished typing:] Er, but not by plane.

Oh, and this (http://www.snopes.com/photos/airplane/mandarin.asp) seems infinetely appropriate:p.

[SimNut]

It's fake. The damage is real <bird strike> but the story is fake.

[U-533]

It's fake. The damage is real <bird strike> but the story is fake.


You should not go around saying these Chinamen were scoop'in birds up in thier jet engines.

Next you'll be saying that the birds were wearing the seatbelts too...:roll:

[tycho102]

Looking at the pictures again, I see that I didn't quite read the article fully. The pilot reported excessive vibration of the engine after a flight, in which he shut down the engine. The ground crew saw the damage and immobilized the fan by wrapping those straps between the fan and stators. I didn't see the straps went back through the stators -- I thought they were just wrapped around the fan blades and the engine was allowed to windmill. The engine was NOT allowed to windmill. That's like flying around with a thrust reverser engaged. It would be bad enough if the engine was just windmilling, but it makes it even worse (better?) if it's completely immobilized.

The fan has so much small damage, I'm not convinced there was any large object involved. It seems more indicitive of a small fod over a long period of time. The tip of that one blade finally failed, causing some damage to the remaining blades by collision. Many of the blade tips have been bent and sheered back, which would certainly be caused by rubbing against the engine frame at operational speeds.

It seems that it was caused by chronic neglect rather than an accidental fod encounter, which makes the airline look even worse.

[bookworm_020]

My parents, many years ago, flew a airline in asia that didn't inspire confidence. When they boarded the aircraft they saw the ground crew tie down the engine cowling with pink rafia and wipe off the engine oil on the outside of the engine.
They were moved around the iarcraft several times untill seats were found that had working seatbelts. The door to the cockpitwouldn't close so it was left open, this ment my parents could watch the aircrew navagate by road map!!:o