Getting the truth out of Boeing is a real struggle. This issue that the company is trying to represent as something minor that can be patched internally was the wing starting to delaminate at something less than 120% of the maximum design load.
The side location dutifully noted by the US media in a Boeing conference call overnight is in fact the section of the wing closest to the wing box at the fuselage, while the wing box had already been redesigned and strengthened after it failed earlier stress tests.
The latest failure area is the bit that keeps the wing attached to the airliner.
This is not a trivial issue. To achieve certification the wing must not fail at less than 150% of designed maximum loads.
For Boeing management to suggest that it even remotely contemplating flying this jet with a ‘patch’ holding together a wing that started to delaminate under a ground test is to admit a total incapacity to manage the project, and a serious failure of the assumptions made in the design.
It has known about this issue since April.
Urgent remedial action in the management of this once great company and this ballyhooed project is needed.
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It appears Boeing are going to learn the hard way in using ground beaking technology for an all composite aircraft of this scale. It also will be interesting to see if they learn the hard way from using new design technology for the aircraft pressurisation system to be supplied by electrically driven compressors and not the traditional pressure air tappings from turbine engines. Electrical load shedding in an emergency at high altitude has to be an interesting exercise.
The most disturbing part of this is that they’ve known since April. They spent the whole of the Paris Air Show pating on about the first flight at the end of June. The first possibility is that this information had percolated to the higher levels (such as Scott Carson) and they were deliberately misleading press, public and shareholders about the first flight – in which case they should do the honourable thing and resign. The second possibility is that the management structures at the company are so unfit for purpose that information about a major problem such as this had not yet made it to the top-level management responsible for those structures… in which case they should do the honourable thing and resign.
I really don’t see how Boeing’s current management can remain at the helm.