Boeing 787 grounded

[Skybird]

Japan has grounded all Dreamliners after a battery fire. It is not the first serious incident with Boeing new dream which now threatens to become an expensive nigthmare for Boeing. On Professional Pilots rumour Network, and internet platform for professional pilots, many pros express doubts on the concept of the new airplane.

The new Boeing is heavily depending on use of lithium ion batteries, far more than other airplanes since it has replaced many hydraulic and mechanical systems with electrical ones. Some pilots expressed concerns over putting so many of these batteries, which are known to explode and go up in flames occasionally in laptops, cellphones and pedelecs as well, into an airframe "largly made of plastic". The general design of these batteries and their isolation is being doubted, too.

Also, dissatisfaction with Boeings' crisis management is being voiced, too, saying that they made no progress, whereas Airbus with intial problems with its A380 step by step adressed them and cleaned them up. Sinc ethe serial production has been driven up by Boeing recently, the hiuger production activity also is assumed to have something to do with insufficient quality of components, some pilots assume.

In the worst scenario, the electrical design of the Dreamliner is insufficient and the batteries cannot be used. In this case, Boeing practically would need to replace the e-system and design a new Dreamliner around the replacement system.

In the imminent past, several Dreamliners ran into problems, from cracks in the cockpit windows and failing generators over failures in the braking system and engine problems to fires in the freight compartment and melting battery and cable isolations. Many of these incidents were not taken note of by a wide public, but some of them led to emergency landings by Dreamliners.

Also noteworthy is that due to the heavy dependency on electrical power, these new batteries represent a new technological design with specifications for which no previous certification standards existed. The negotations between Boeing and the American authorities were unusually long over these items alone, and in principle the batteries are not properly certified by the authority on grounds on any proven standards.

Some pilots get quoted with making their position clear: "If it is Boeing, I am not going."

I wonder if "new materials" maybe get overestimated in the industry, and their longevity and robustness gets overestimated. I think of the unforseen microcracks building in the wings and airframe of the A380, but Boeings as well.
American and Japanese authorities are running investigations. I think the Poles are about to do that as well. So far, some 40 787s are in service wordwide.

[Skybird]

Just in: the US now have grounded all B787s, too.

[Oberon]

Update: The US has also grounded their 787 fleet over the battery failure risk.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21054089

It's not good publicity for Boeing, that much is certain, and this battery design could be the undoing of the 787. I think the major selling point of the 787 was its low fuel consumption rate and light rate materials used, which in this world of high oil prices is a boon for the smaller air companies looking to skim a little extra profits from their flights. Airbus went in a different direction with the A380 by offering to put more fee paying passengers into the same journey.
However, it's certainly having a bad start, Boeing has a very loyal customer base, so I can't see it suffering unduly from this, and they still have the 767 and 777 designs which are tried and tested, but in a world where Airbus is looking to seize the initiative in aircraft design, this is not a good advertisement. Still, unless it's the entire electrical system design that's at fault then this is something that can be rectified, the A380 wasn't perfect at launch either, just ask Quantas.

Personally though, I think that the future of airline technology may come from Japan, or more specifically, their space agency, JAXA which has some interesting super and hypersonic design proposals that it hopes to get into action by the middle of the century. Time will tell, who knows, perhaps by then I'll have actually flown in something that is not on a computer screen. Although God help us all if I'm the one flying it!


EDIT: Sniped by a whole ten minutes, that's what I get for rambling and stopping to check the specs of the A380 and 787!

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by Oberon

EDIT: Sniped by a whole ten minutes, that's what I get for rambling and stopping to check the specs of the A380 and 787!

Yes, but you actually provided a link.

[BossMark]

Better to be safe than sorry.

[U570]

Originally Posted by Oberon

Quantas.

I can tell you're not Australian

[Herr-Berbunch]

I thought I read the other day they'd been grounded over all the previous emergency landings et al, maybe that was individual airlines.

[Cybermat47]

Oberon, the A380 didn't cause Qantas to fail, Qantas caused Qantas to fail

[Tchocky]

Grounded in Europe now also - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21054089

This is very bad news for Boeing. The plane is still very much in demand, I don't think we'll see orders cancelled over this. But a string of entry-into-service problems is really just the icing on the cake of a troubled design and manufacturing process.

A lot of the incidents over the last couple of weeks are totally routine (brakes, fuel leak) and would never have made the non-industry news had they not happened to a 787, but there are also some points of concern.

As usual, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, it's time to let the engineers get to work and get them flying again!

[Skybird]

Poland's LOT announced today that they will sue Boeing for compensation.

Regarding Oberon's comment, just recently Boeing has re-taken the crown from Airbus again and was seen in a trend to re-claim lead position for the forseeable future. In the past two or three years, Airbus had the lead by a narrow marginThe A380 is not in high demand, and the impression was that the Europeans may have made a politically ambitioned miscalculation when doing a plane this big: the political interference at Airbus is immense and the criticism is voiced that politicians wanted to show the Americans that they can build "the biggest". Economic reason and demand maybe had less with it to do than was economically healthy.

The race between Airbus and Boeing is extremely tight, however.

[Jimbuna]

There is a lot at stake for Boeing having seen orders for over 800 units thus far.

Hopefully these are just teething problems that can be ironed out.

[MH]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Hopefully these are just teething problems that can be ironed out.

Most likely
This media hysteria and over dramatisation dates back with almost all popular airliners.
Yet some bad publicity is not bad in such cases since in puts a lot pressure on the companies involved to deal with the issues.

[Skybird]

Der Spiegel now has picked up the story, confirming what I said yesterday.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-878160.html

Until now, Boeing has tried to depict the problems with its prestige project as nothing more than normal growing pains. But aviation experts say that issues with the battery go to the core of the airplane's design. The problem could turn out to be even more serious than the hairline cracks in the wings of Airbus's A380 superjumbo, which are annoying and costly to repair, but don't affect the architecture of the plane as a whole.

This isn't the case with the Dreamliner's problems. Kevin Hiatt, president of the Virginia-based Flight Safety Foundation, says the problems "are quite serious for Boeing because they affect the Dreamliner's entire system."

The Boeing 787's electrical system is powered by lithium-ion batteries, a type that has never been used on passenger jets. These are like the ones used in smartphones, but much bigger, with one version weighing some 30 kilograms (66 pounds). Their capacity is also considerably larger than the nickel-cadmium batteries that are otherwise used in planes and pose little fire danger. The lithium-ion batteries, however, are at risk of catching fire or exploding, and they can become hot enough to melt the aluminium used to build airplanes.

But the Dreamliner desperately requires such a large energy-storage unit because Boeing engineers in Seattle redesigned a number of control systems to be powered electrically rather than hydraulically. That includes the compressor that provides cabin air as well as the electro-thermal heater mats meant to prevent the wings on the wide-body plane from icing over.

[HundertzehnGustav]

what about that german that reported a crack in the window developping in flight?

Plastick wrap planes on batteries...

787 got grazie.
but i would not want to be in one.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by HundertzehnGustav

what about that german that reported a crack in the window developping in flight?

I have not heard of "a German" reporting that, I only heard of an incident with a developing crack in the cockpit window. Which means that it was either the pilot or the copilot reporting it.

In Europe, the Poles are the only 787 operators so far.