Al Jazeera Investigates - Broken Dreams: The Boeing 787

a reply to: bigx001

Major incident = crash/people injured. So, no the 787 has not had a major incident.

a reply to: Sammamishman

that would be major accident. a minor one is where the fire truck giving the water cannon salute hit the wing, or where the battery caught fire when the plane was parked.

catching fire while the plane is in the air would be major

a reply to: bigx001

Sorry, still not major. NTSB and FAA accident definitions :

www.airsafe.com...

a reply to: bigx001

Not a major incident, and not a fire. Thermal runaway =/= fire. Smoke =/= fire. If that battery had caught fire in flight it would have still been on fire when they landed.

I've had a dozen planes come back got smoke in the cabin or cockpit, and not found a single fire.

a reply to: Zaphod58

pictures of the battery would indicate that there was fire. of course we don't know if it was or not b/c we are only told what we are told. pictures however indicate the batteries did have fire at one point

JAL battery

Comparison

a reply to: bigx001

Wait, you're talking about the JAL fire? You should go back and fact check then. That fire didn't start until after they landed and the passengers were off. It was thirty minutes after the last passenger left when the first indications of fire were noticed, which put it at over an hour AFTER landing.

There hasn't been a single instance of a battery fire in flight on a Dreamliner.

a reply to: Zaphod58

what we are told and what happened are two different things.

but i find it interesting that the fix makes the battery pack the same weight as the one it was supposed to replace.

what really needs to happen is that once someone retires that it is against the law for them to become a lobbyist for the same industry they retired from.


I also find it highly likely that a specific customer has requested delivery of planes assembled only @ Everett

a reply to: bigx001

Do you even begin to understand how fast fires spread on a plane? If a fire starts in the cabin you have a minute and a half maximum before flash over occurs and the cabin is engulfed.

If that fire had started in flight the plane would probably have been destroyed, not suffered relatively minor damage.

Swiss Air 111 was on fire for 16 minutes from the time they noticed the odor in the cockpit, to impact with the Atlantic.

So, the actual report on the JAL fire is lying, but an anonymous source, talking about an anonymous airline is the truth. Great reasoning there.

a reply to: Zaphod58

yes i do know how fast it moves, but do you believe everything they put in print?

pictures tell something different than what has been printed and what we were told. it would not be the first time the actual story was suppressed.

need i remind you of the rudder changes to the 737 vs what we were told.

a reply to: bigx001

The rudder changes to the 737 were exactly as described if you read aviation pages. Just as this fire is exactly as described.

Contrary to what you believe not everything is a conspiracy. Things change in the aviation industry as more information becomes available. That's why accident reports frequently take two or three years to complete.

There is no way this battery caught fire before landing and no one noticed it was burning until an hour after landing. Lithium ion batteries don't go out on their own. There would have been flames burning through the floor if it had been burning that long.

a reply to: Zaphod58


here's an investigative series on the aforementioned rudder issues

Safety at issue: the 737

you don't know what to believe until you have all the facts at hand and then work your way through what is the truth

a reply to: bigx001

And the facts ARE at hand on the Dreamliner. It's as good as the 777 was at this point in its career, and the 777 had become one of the best aircraft ever built.

The facts are in on the JAL incident as well. The battery fire started after landing, and wasn't a danger to the aircraft or anyone on board.

I'm also very familiar with the rudder problem. Investigators admitted to it not being what they initially thought, and said what it was, and Boeing took corrective action.

a reply to: Zaphod58

we're only told what they want us to hear and that's the issue, hence why the pr guy stopped the interview when the memo was displayed. one would hope all the issues are fixed, but we continue to hear rumblings about workmanship from SC.

they can't even find a buyer for plane #3 so it's going to the museum of flight. or maybe it's #4

a reply to: bigx001

The first aircraft are usually retired on ANY new aircraft. The first four or five aircraft are not built to production aircraft standards, as they're test articles. Number one and four are currently sitting at Palmdale sans engines and other pieces, as both were too expensive to refit to production standards.

No company is required to divulge every single detail of what they're doing or any internal problems they have.

Contrary to what you or luxordelphi believe, or want others to believe, the Dreamliner is growing into a very good aircraft, and will only get better.

Now here's an interesting twist.

Here is what Cynthia Cole, former President of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) had to say in 2009, when the Dreamliner first flew:

“Today’s flight is a testament to the skill, hard work and diligence Boeing employees put in to get this airplane ready to fly,” SPEEA President Cynthia Cole said in a news release. “Boeing returned to engineering, and that’s what made today possible and successful.”

Yet, in the documentary, she says:

that Boeing “shortchanged the engineering process.”

So which is it? Did they return to the engineering process, or did they shortchange it? And why the sudden flipflop?

www.businessinsider.com...

a reply to: Zaphod58

one was when she was employed by boeing and the other is after retirement.

boeing would have found a way to fire her had she made that statement in 2009. of course the union would have filed a grievance and boeing would have denied the grievance. it then would have gone to an arbitrator.

if the arbitrator rules in favor of the employee they would get their job back and usually all back wages and benefits. of course this would take a minimum of 2 years, during which she wouldn't have a job.

now considering she is at the end of her career in 2009 and would not want to lose her pension if she were fired, they could deny it if fired, what do you think would be the statement?

yes they could deny the pension and she would have gotten it back through the whole grievance process, but that would take at least 2 years also.

i can bet you this, once boeing fires those in SC who were on camera speaking and the person who brought the camera in, there will be a union vote and it will pass nearly unanimously.

they will conduct a scorched earth investigation to find them and no ones job will be safe if they even think someone helped on the film, whether they did or not

I find the whole battery debacle perplexing.

The chemistry Boeing are using is somewhat old at this point, and has usually been replaced with others that have in general better safety characteristics. Also the battery is only about 2 kWh and 29.6 V. Most EVs are around 22 kWh and 350 V (the Tesla Model S is 85 kWh!). I'm betting automotive batteries are subjected to worse conditions than those inside the 787 - and with far less fires. In my experience the newer batteries can take a fairly large amount of abuse before damage. It would be interesting to see a detailed design of the battery (to critique it).

Perhaps one issue is using a small number of very large cells (65 Ah) in close proximity, without electrical and thermal insulation between them and perhaps without proper venting. I'm only speculating but a small issue could result in catastrophic failure in that case. Usually you want to separate the battery into smaller segments with contactors between them, separated by a fire resistant material. Any problem and the contactors open, so hopefully the problem will be limited to a small section.

Some interesting videos:





It's also interesting, that, instead of simply designing a proper Lithium battery, Airbus have instead elected to use NiMH. Aviation is a conservative industry.

a reply to: bigx001

Right, so instead, lie about it, and throw your credibility out the window for later. Because the fact that she changed her story will be brought up if she's ever considered for a consulting job, or anything else now that she's retired from Boeing, and it's going to look bad for her.

a reply to: Zaphod58

that's your point of view, that she lied, but did she really or did she just omit her personal point of view and then express that point of view in that report. because that's more the reality of what happened.

if there were no issues than that point of view would just be a disgruntled worker, but since there have been issues, documented ones of poor workmanship coming out of SC, then it is the no so much that of a disgruntled worker but someone under pressure to put on a good face for the company