Preparing for more Dreamliner surgery at Paine Field©Peter Ricketts, Asia-Pacific Aerospace Report
It looks more like a reassembly line, or an operating theatre, at Paine Field, Everett, where the 787 Dreamliner test fleet is being torn apart pending further remedial surgery even before it gets to fly.
This is the scene at Dreamliner 4, (obviously) where Peter Ricketts, the editor of the Asia-Pacific Aerospace Report captured one of the six flight test jets with its fairing fillets removed ready to receive the wing-body join modifications which the president and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Scott Carson described as so small they will fit in the palm of his hand.
Carson made that confident assurance about the ‘fix’ late in June only days after he had emphatically assured the airlines that the first flight of the much delayed and rebolted together prototype of the plastic airliner would beyond doubt take off before 30 June, this year.
After Carson then announced that the first flight was postponed to a date to be fixed he also said the ‘fix’ that applied to a tiny inch square section of the side-of-body of the jet was going to be incorporated in a new schedule that Boeing was going to announce by the middle of July, this year, which it didn’t, but which is now officially the subject of a provisional test, then a retrofit, all to to be announced by about the end of September, this year.
The fix arose because a static test of the wing in May caused it to begin delaminating well below the stress levels required for certification. Much of the 787 is made with reinforced sheets of carbon fibre glued together and baked in a giant oven. Exactly how the management of Boeing came to realise the gravity of the failed stress test in May only days before the first flight that was promised for 30 June has not been explained.
Carson’s simple, easy, quick and small fix announcement coincided to within a few hours of Qantas announcing that Boeing had promised firm delivery date for the 787-9 version of the Dreamliner from the middle of 2013. The -9 model isn’t the one having a tiny side-of-body issue prepared for whatever and whenever the fix proves to be as shown in the image.
No sir! The -9 is the stretched and longer range version of the plastic jet which follows the -8 model shown in these photos by about two and half years after the latter is actually certified for passenger service and delivered to the first customer, All Nippon.
The prototype 787-8 was rolled out on 8 July 2007, and has yet to fly.
Silence and Paine, Boeing's restricted talking area at Everett©Peter Ricketts, Asia-Pacific Aerospace Report
Outside the 787 triage stations Boeing has declared a Restricted Conversation Area as illustrated above. Which is amazing, since everywhere else within Boeing the talking point of every day is said to be how much longer this fiasco is going to be left in the hands of the current management.
No-one appears to have any firm idea what happens next to the actual customers who have orders for this ‘game changer’ jet, since everything depends on the flight test program for which there is no timetable.
It is the biggest shambles ever seen prior to the first flight of any jet airliner in history
And it is obvious Qantas isn’t going to get a 787-9 in the middle of 2013.
But don't mention it here, you might offend a waiting 787@Peter Ricketts, Asia-Pacific Aerospace Report
7 Comments
Great to see these inside pictures of the crew working on the 787. It’s rather ironic, as there is another aircraft being worked on at Paine Field in Everett, Washington. That aircraft is the de Havilland Comet 4.
The last existing Comet in North America found its resting place at Paine Field. It’s being restored by the Museum of Flight. The two greatest fiascos of jet aviation history now sit together at the same airfield.
I’d actually feel safer flying in a Comet 4 than a 787. Maybe the two aircraft should swap places! The Comet to fly, and the 787 put into the Museum of Flight.
That is possibly the funniest sign I’ve ever seen. You can’t discuss the “export-controlled information” here, but hey go down the road and it’s all fine.
I would have thought you can either discuss something or not and the location of the discussion was irrelevant, but apparently not.
In the same manner that EADS and Airbus senior management were sacked, or had to fall on their swords after the A380 electrical loom design disaster was found following the final stages of aircraft production, Boeing senior management should accept their fate that the B787 dream is now over under their tenure.
The carbon composite wing and the centre wingbox of the 787 failed the stress test, yet these were enclosed components that failed. Even more worrying is the use of plastic composites for external structures, such as the fuselage, which is completely untested under the rigours of daily airline life.
“The two greatest fiascos of jet aviation history now sit together at the same airfield.”
Now all they need is a Convair 990
Ah, the memories. Yes, the 990A, aka American Airlines Coronado Astrojet was a very fast fiasco. Over short distances. I don’t believe it ever achieved the promised mach 0.95 in cruise, but 0.89 and 0.9 were not unknown in the brief glory days when it made the sun stand still.
Folks,
To be fair to the Comet 4, the disaster was the Comet 1. Probably as will happen with the B 787, the Comet 4 was a complete redesign (of the pressure hull), compared to the original Comet 1. The Comet 4 pressure hull structural detail was much like the DC-6, 8 or Boeing 707 and similar pressurised aircraft of the era.
Also remember that, for a long time, the SUD Caravelle forward fuselages came out of the same jigs at Hatfield, as the Comet 2/4.
I always thought it was something a bit special that (the old Seattle) Boeing would preserve a Comet.
Swissair were also a successful operator of the Convair 990, I have often wondered if it would have been more successful with “conventional” P&W engines, rather than the slightly strange “aft fan” GE. Don’t forget that the B747 operated at at M0.89 cruise trans US, until the fuel prices went through the roof.