The Seattle Times’ aerospace reporter Dominic Gates has just published some additional revelations concerning what Boeing insists is the tiny side-of-body (a.k.a wing failure) issues with the plastic fantastic 787 Dreamliner.
Graphic forming part of today's Seattle Times 787 coverage
The report clarifies that the original wing root failure late in May occurred just above ‘load limit’ that is defined as 100% of the load the structure would ever be expected to encounter in airline service.
The ‘ultimate’ load test is 150% of the nominal operational maximum load limit and represents the test that must be passed for certification for airline service.
With the possible exception of the Bristol Brabazon, a post war folly of the British aircraft industry, no part of the wing of any airliner is believed to have failed at such low stress levels.
This is the super light 300 passenger ‘game changer’ twin engined jet that Boeing promised was based on technology that no longer held any surprises, and was falsely rolled out as a prototype when it was in fact just a shell in July 2007 and promised for testing and delivery by May of 2008.
The genius and vision of the design is undeniable. The Dreamliner concept was exciting and relevant and at one stage had generated more than 900 orders.
But it is all fantasy and hype? Boeing’s disclosures concerning the status of the program have been 100% unreliable. There is no longer any certainty that any of the promises made for the applications of laminated reinforced sheets of carbon fibre to the 787 design are realisable.
It is a gravely disappointing situation, and one in which the public guidance and general competency of the management of this once great company is continually exposed as being completely untrustworthy and incompetent.
4 Comments
Not rhetorically, and let alone airline management concerns, how much longer before Boeing’s growing lack of credibility translates to the traveling public’s lack of confidence in the design and “787 avoidance”? I guess we’ll have to wait a year or so to see.
I agree with LongTimeOberver’s comment. If the 787 ever flies, who will want to fly in it? Even if an airline has only one 787 Dreamliner in its fleet, if you want to avoid flying the 787, you’ll have to avoid that airline entirely.
It’s the de Havilland Comet all over again. In the cases of both the Comet and the 787, there were engineers speaking out over safety issues, and early warnings. Both aircraft suffered catastrophic structural failures. The Comet failed inflight. The 787 on the test bed.
Anyone remember a movie called ‘No Highway in the Sky’, starring Jimmy Stewart and Marlene Dietrich. The movie was about the problem of metal fatigue in early pressurised airliners. The story was written by an aeronautical engineer by the name of Nevil Shute, who wrote it because he was so concerned that not enough was understood about these structural issues, and the authorities were not taking it seriously enough. The movie was released in 1951, three years before the first Comet crash.
Great movie. Someone should create a modern remake. But this time based on carbon composite fuselage cracks.
The Boeing 777 consists only of 9% composite parts by weight. The 787 takes it to over 50% composites by weight (80% by volume), yet the long-term reliability of composite fuselage and wings has not been established. Like the Comet, the 787 is a radical aircraft, appearing too early for its time.
Ben it’s not difficult to imagine Boeing being in such dire straights with inept management of the B787 when you consider how they have performed since the take over of McDonnell Douglass in 1997. I can remember being in Long Beach not long after the Boeing take over and watching the last MD11 freighter being assembled on the production line. The story from local production line staff was Lufthansa were pleading with Boeing for another 6 aircraft, but were rejected as Boeing only wanted the McDonnell Douglas brand dead and buried. The B717’s, which were being assembled in the adjacent production line facility were also eventually doomed to the production line graveyard.
I personally think that Boeing is an analogue for the wider economy.