Boeing batteries back under spotlight as 787 burns at Heathrow Boeing has suffered an unfortunate double-whammy after problems with two of its 787 Dreamliner aircraft in the UK on Friday. Ethiopian Airlines 787 Dreamliner fire at Heathrow Fire damage near the 787's tail London's Heathrow Airport was shut for over an hour on Friday evening after an Ethiopian Airlines 787 caught fire …
Perhaps the 787 is becoming Boeing's 'Comet' aircraft.
This is karma for me as I worked for a while at the old De Haviland factory where the Comet's were built.
For those who don't know, the Comet was the worlds first production Jet Aircraft build solely to carry passengers. There were a few cases where they literally 'fell out of the sky'. Most of the problems were due to metal fatigue although the almost square windows didn't help with the stresses one little bit.
The Comet 4 series solved all that and gave many years of happy service to a number of airlines.
Boeing was able to learn from the Comet's problems and make the 707 a real success.
A side effect of this was the setting up of the AAIB (Air Accident Investigation Board) and it was their painstaking reconstruction of a crashed airframe that led to the discovery of the fatigue problems. This is turn tightened up the safety rules for all comercial aircraft much of which is still in force today. They were the people who rebuilt the PAN-AM 747 that was blown up over Lockerbie thus pinpointing where the explosion has occurred.
In a sense, the Comet crashes were the result of penny-pinching. The engineers had come up with an elaborate (and expensive) technique for fixing the panels together which involved chemical bonding, drilling and riveting. The bean-counters then stepped in and decided to cut costs. After all, we're joining two bits of metal together. What's complicated about that? What could possibly go wrong? Their solution was to omit the chemical bonding and then bang in a load of self-piercing rivets (basically nailing it together). Sure they left a few cracks around the sides of the rivets, but think of all the money saved! Of course, when it all came apart at 35000 feet, the engineers got blamed for not anticipating this, and not building in enough margin of strength to allow for it.
Any engineer who's been around for a while designing things will know how infuriating it is when the bean-counters decide to alter your perfect design in the interests of cost-saving, convinced they know better than you, and with no idea of the technical implications of the changes they're making. Usually the consequences are not quite as disastrous, but I've had cases where a design of mine was made positively dangerous because a bean-counter replaced a safety-critical part with something cheaper (and which the sales rep said was "just as good").
(I'm starting to get hot under the collar about this, so I think I'd better use the "Fire" icon)
"In a sense, the Comet crashes were the result of penny-pinching. The engineers had come up with an elaborate (and expensive) technique for fixing the panels together which involved chemical bonding, drilling and riveting. The bean-counters then stepped in and decided to cut costs. After all, we're joining two bits of metal together. What's complicated about that? What could possibly go wrong? Their solution was to omit the chemical bonding and then bang in a load of self-piercing rivets (basically nailing it together). Sure they left a few cracks around the sides of the rivets, but think of all the money saved! Of course, when it all came apart at 35000 feet, the engineers got blamed for not anticipating this, and not building in enough margin of strength to allow for it."
It started long before that. De Havilland wanted to keep the engine work in the group.
Trouble was they did not have a decent sized engine to do this. So they reduced the wall thickness a lot. Not quite tin foil but not much thicker.
DH then were terrified Boeing would be in the market before them so they skipped the fatigue tests. And of course that saved quit a bit of money.
Bad idea as it turned out. . By the time they got their s**t together and fixed the problems Boeing was well entrenched. Couple that with Duncan Sandys death warrant to the UK miltary aircraft industry in 1957 and the rest is history.
DH always seemed to have a problem with their structures once they left plywood.
And the 787 is the Dreamliner. But it's a beancounter's dream, not an engineer's, not an operator's, not even an insurer's.
Today's MBA-schooled management beancounters don't seem willing or able or well-informed enough to learn much from well-documented history, especially if the history is incompatible with the Fad of the Week.
Good job it's their jobs and pensions (and occasionally lives) that are at stake.
What, they're not carrying the can, because they're not accountable and management never are ? Well fancy that.
But these are all interpretations with perfect hindsight.
When looking into the future, things are not at all clear and clear-cut.
Several engineers will queue at the door and say that there is a problem with this and that.
Sure there is. But what do? Maybe make a bad call. Maybe launch the Shuttle. Maybe leave it on pad. Maybe fix this nagging problem with the foam coming off. Maybe not. Maybe the risk analysis is good and you will just be unlucky.
If things go wrong, finger-pointing and the blame game will start. Then the prepared engineer has a copy of his "letter to management" in the drawer that he wrote two years ago...
@DijitulSupport I assume your comment refers to the fact that the runways were closed. That's nothing to do with health and safety culture gone mad, but very sensible rules and regs. When the fire crews are otherwise occupied takeoffs and landings are suspended. Imagine what would happen if a plane full of passengers crash landed and there were no emergency crews available. And don't tell me it doesn't happen. What happened in San Francisco the other day?
Who cares what the original cause of the fire was? All we know at the moment is that these fires CAN happen, and that the body of a Dreamliner is made of carbon composite...
People will be watching the cost, duration and techniques involved in repairing this with considerable interest. Assuming that it can be repaired...
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The chosen people, the people of the Battery, travelled to the holy place where the Heath meets the Row, and there on the vast and beloved tarmac, the anointed one, Pilot Jones, knelt before the Burning Boeing, which spoke unto him, and through him handed down the Manual of Boeingology which our people have followed ever since.
"it is clear that this heat damage is remote from the area in which the aircraft main and APU (Auxiliary Power Unit) batteries are located, and, at this stage, there is no evidence of a direct causal relationship. "
http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/Boeing%20787-8%20ET-AOP%20Press%20Release.pdf
El Reg has a tariff somewhere.
How much is an apology for being wrong worth?
"but the blaze caused air traffic controllers to shut both runways as a precaution until the fire was brought under control with flame-retardant chemicals."
this would be because they don't keep enough fire crews and appliances around to provide proper cover for the airport while they're dealing with an incident.
Just imagine how much money was lost because all the runways were closed while this was being dealt with.
It'll be a tiny fraction of the cost of providing permanent round-the-clock cover sufficient to deal with two fires breaking out at the same airport at the same time -- which is, after all, pretty bloody unlikely. And it's not as if there's no backup from local non-airport fire stations.
Choosing not to pay to guard against every single possible thing that could go wrong, no matter how rare or unlikely, is not penny-pinching; it's reasoned allocation of limited resources.
"how much money was lost because all the runways were closed"
It'll be a tiny fraction of the cost of [two incident] permanent round-the-clock cover sufficient to deal"
In the case of the latest Dreamliner incident, LHR reportedly already were dealing with two incidents, one of which has had very little coverage (a PIA incident?). Details hard to find.
That aside, who picks up the consequential costs such as passengers in the wrong airport at the wrong time, aircraft in the wrong airport at the wrong time, etc?
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ET-AOP
All
This has been caused not by the apu batteries or anyone smoking in the crew rest area. Its impossible for the latter as rhe Ethiopian birds dont have a crew rest area.
its been caused far from the apu and batteriew in the galley area of the aircraft probably by a coffee machine that was left on to boil dry and catch fire.
the plane is also written off due to extensive damage to the tail plane attachment area where the elevator controls are situated.
Seriously? There are airliner galley component manufacturers who still make kettles without thermal cut-outs that add less than a couple of pennies to the manufacturing cost? What idiot thought that was a good idea?
And which bean-counter is about to be fired with extreme prejudice for recommending its purchase for Ethopian?
Also: did the errant device burn for eight hours without anybody noticing? If so, that's actually a pretty good demonstration of the quality of the fuselage's construction. Surviving a spreading conflagration that nobody is bothering to put out for that long is an excellent result and Boeing should be proud if this was the case. Yes, it's a write-off, but passenger aircraft are designed on the assumption that fire alarms will be responded to and fires will be put out. No other plane would do any better.
Re. fire-fighting crew capabilities: how many simultaneous burning plane incidents should Heathrow Airport allow for? Two? Five? Ten? You have to draw the line somewhere, and it's not as if Heathrow sees plane fires and crashes multiple times a day, despite the temptation to do so at the mere thought of having to deal with Heathrow's notorious baggage-misplacement facilities.
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