787 fire at Boston Logan

That's the problem. Probably too early to tell, but competition may contradict the goal to maximize safety. I don't care whether a flight is little cheaper or not, there are physical limits anyway, but I don't want to act as a guinea pig. Neither in an Airbus (350/380) nor in a Boeing (787).

 

Because you are an educated traveller.

I am afraid to the vast majority ticket price is the holy grail.


They expect absolute safety but vote with their wallet.

 

Just not possible... the 787 is necessary, and fuel economy is only one reason.

We can't just keep driving '55 Chevys... and that was a good car.

 

Precisely. The American big three took a few decades off after the 1950s/60s and look at where it got them.

 

Of course an airplane that is only a little more efficient than its competitor will kick it out of the market. But that's not the point.

Oil is finite. Air traffic is only a small portion of oil consumption. The possibility to increase an airplane's efficiency at a given speed is small.

As a result the overall transport capacity at a given amount of fuel/oil will not change that much, if technology was frozen today.

 

It's interesting to note that "performance" has been replaced by "efficiency".

Up until the 707 and DC-8, each generation of airliners was faster than the one that came before. In the 20-or-so years between the DC-3 and the DC-7, cruising speed about doubled, and with the DC-8, it increased again by about 60%. In the 50+ years since then, it hasn't gone up one bit!

(If anything, today's jetliners actually cruise slower than their 1960 counterparts - not because they can't go as fast, but rather because the slower speed is more economical. I have an Eastern Air Lines timetable from 1960 which coincided with my first-ever airline flight, San Juan (P.R.) to New York, on a DC-8, in 3 hours, 15 minutes. Check today's timetable, and the same flight is more like 4 hours!)

 

Don't forget the Convair 880... faster than the 7 and 8. ha


Now that plane to SJ is carrying twice as many pax and using half the fuel, though; there were no fans on those engines.
DEN to ABQ used to be 45-50 min gate to gate... now it's over an hour.

Fuel prices are huge on an airline's bottom line, so it's a big factor.

Speed is more and more difficult to economically achieve as you get closer to mach 1. Seems that .8+ seems most economical, maybe?

 

Of course, our time in the terminal before boarding has gotten a lot longer.

In 1960, everyone checked in at the ticket counter, and always checked their bags, since the overhead racks on board were open and designed only for coats, purses and hats. You got your seat assignment from a chart depicting the cabin interior with adhesive labels representing each seat; the agent would take the labels off the chart for your selected seats and stick them on your ticket folder, next to the luggage claim tags.

But then......you just walked to the gate, nonstop if you so chose, and boarded when the call came. No checkpoints, no security, no removing belts or shoes, no clear sandwich bags. Or you could often go upstairs to the observation deck and watch all the activity.

At at most airports, boarding still meant walking outside onto the ramp and climbing up a mobile stairway, often mounted on back of a pickup truck. On the big jets, first class used the front door and coach (or "tourist") class used the back, and everyone in each class (generally) was paying the same price for their tickets, which in today's dollars were very expensive, even in the back of the airplane. And everyone had more legroom and got a legitimate meal included.

When you arrived, at baggage claim, the bags were unloaded onto a stationary rack, and you often had to walk back and forth looking for your bags, just the opposite of today. Carousels came along a few years later. That is one change I'm very grateful for!

Boy, has flying changed......

 

Isn't that the truth...

Also, at your destination, your family could meet you AT THE GATE!





Then,

Rod Serling did his Twilight Zone show and hijackings started.

Off and running to today.

 

Are those the people who are saying the plane is flawed and Boeing needs to do a redesign?

I'm an engineer myself and I participate in a couple of other forums where there are also lots of engineers, and some who are actually working on the 787 battery problem first hand, and many more who are enjoying a very detailed discussion of the problem and solution.

Comments like "it's flawed, they need to replace with NiMH" have been absolutely nowhere to be seen in those forums. Basing major actions on anecdotal evidence or a few incidents that have not yet been completely solved is not good practice and not how engineering or design work is done, certainly not on airplanes.

Step 1 is to determine exactly what is going on and why. Then a practical solution can be arrived at. Until we have completed step 1, it's premature to move on to solutions - wouldn't you agree?

 

How did you arrive at this conclusion? And what is your experience with Lithium cobalt batteries in modern aircraft use? Boeing says 100 replacements is statistically slightly high but not massively so. You're saying that is not true, and that a publicly traded company is outright lying? I've heard nobody say that their claim is a lie - and also, the 100 number includes "bricked" cells, which very well may (probably did) get pushed below threshold voltage due to the way the planes systems are configured. It's easy to say the result proves they are configured wrongly, but again, without knowing why it happened - specifically - we can't say it proves the batteries are ill chosen for this aircraft. I'm trying to be a wiseass, I know you understand a lot more about aircraft maintenance than I do, but I understand a lot about electronics and right now we have a big question mark about what exactly happened here - and since this technology and application is so new, I don't think there are very many at all who really know all the details and can offer up much in reasonable steps to take.

As I said above, on the other forums with EE's and aerospace engineers participating (some on this actual problem), the conclusion that a battery or system flaw exists has not been reached.

Until we know with 100% certainty what caused this issue and why, we cannot reasonably propose solutions. The best are working on this now, and so much money is at stake that the solution will be found - and likely soon - and rectified. Then we'll know authoritatively what happened, why, and how they fixed it. I doubt any of us on the Internet have a more valid opinion or knowledge than the guys working on it right now.

And it may be that the batteries get swapped out... but it's too early to draw any conclusions.

 

Boeing's CEO said on the investor conf call wed that there's no reason not to stick with lithium-ion and airbus (barring any regulatory changes) will be using them on the a350.

 

I'd like to know the design differences between Airbus lithium-ion batteries and these Boeing 787 ones. Repeating that we have had an expert with this technology say the Boeing design is fundamentally unsafe:

So it would be interesting to see Airbus's solution.

And yes I'm the one that has used sayings like "Heads should roll". Maybe this is too emotional but designing something that gives this much alarm to a new aircraft should not result in a pat on the back IMO. Add the charging issue, which to me is a much smaller concern as I do not run an airline. I'm concerned about the safety issue and if what Musk is saying is true these batteries DO need to be redesigned and 787v1 is required. No program change is going to solve the pack architecture being wrong in the first place.
Pete

 

The problem with making quick judgements was illustrated when the FAA grounded the DC-10. There was an assumption that the plane was fundamentally unsafe. It turned out to be maintenance issues that caused the engine to detach on one DC-10 at takeoff and caused the airplane to crash.

As for the 787 batteries... I looked into a bit more, and of the 100+ batteries that have been replaced, Boeing says the top three reasons for the replacement are...

1) Battery fell below minimum charge level and safety circuit preventing recharge kicked in
2) Battery was incorrectly disconnected, and the safety circuit kicked in
3) Batteries were past their end-of-life date and needed replaced as per regular maintenance

It's just as likely to be a maintenance issue as a battery design issue or a circuitry issue. It could also be a software issue. We just don't know yet.

As for Elon Musk, I hugely respect the guy. But I don't take his comments as authoritative. He's not a battery engineer and isn't privy to all the requirements of the Boeing battery design. He also has a vested interest in differentiating his battery technology from Boeing, especially since they are some of the only two that use the same chemistry - and he knows there is going to be plenty of blowback about Li-Ion batteries from the 787 incident. On top of that, Elon and Tesla have a huge investment (and patent portfolio) surrounding their "use lots of tiny little cells and manage them" approach that they are actively licensing to other parties and actively pursuing manufacturing deals for.

In short, Elon's comments are not just those of an unbiased 3rd party just looking to shed some light on the situation. He has multiple reasons to take the stand he has.

That's not to say he is necessarily wrong - just that he has several vested interests in taking the position he has.

 

I can see an Airbus ad campaign for the A350 using the Energizer bunny. Very few, if any, of these airplanes have enough cycles/hours to have made it to a regularly scheduled maintenance interval. At least based on the latest generation of aircraft, e.g. 777/330. Of course batteries could be going past shelf life due to all the delivery delays that Boeing experienced.

 

PUBLIC DOMAIN INFORMATION
Rule reversal: Boeing 787 grounded, but batteries can fly | Boeing | Seattle News, Weather, Sports, Breaking News | KOMO News


Rule reversal: Boeing 787 grounded, but batteries can fly.




"WASHINGTON (AP) - At the same time the government certified Boeing's 787 Dreamliners as safe, federal rules barred the type of batteries used to power the airliner's electrical systems from being carried as cargo on passenger planes because of the fire risk.

Now the situation is reversed.

Dreamliners worldwide were grounded nearly three weeks ago after lithium ion batteries that are part of the planes led to a fire in one plane and smoke in a second. But new rules exempt aircraft batteries from the ban on large lithium ion batteries as cargo on flights by passenger planes.

In effect, that means the Dreamliner's batteries are now allowed to fly only if they're not attached to a Dreamliner.

The regulations were published on Jan. 7, the same day as a battery fire in a Japan Airlines 787 parked at Boston's Logan International Airport that took firefighters nearly 40 minutes to put out. The timing of the two events appears coincidental.

Pilots and safety advocates say the situation doesn't make sense. If the 787's battery system is too risky to allow the planes to fly, then it's too risky to ship the same batteries as cargo on airliners, they said.

"These incidents have raised the whole issue of lithium batteries and their use in aviation," said Jim Hall, a former National Transportation Safety Board chairman. "Any transport of lithium batteries on commercial aircraft for any purpose should be suspended until (an) NTSB investigation is complete and we know more about this entire issue."

Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, a former US Airways pilot famed for his precision flying that enabled passengers and crew to survive an emergency landing on the Hudson River in New York, said in an interview that he wouldn't be comfortable flying an airliner that carried lithium ion aircraft batteries in its cargo hold.

"The potential for self-ignition, for uncontained fires, is huge," he said. The new regulations "need to be looked at very hard in the cold light of day, particularly with what has happened with the 787 batteries."

The battery rules were changed in order to conform U.S. shipping requirements with international standards as required by Congress, the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said in a statement.

The International Civil Aviation Organization, a U.N. agency that sets global aviation standards, adopted the aircraft battery cargo exemption in October 2011, and it went into effect Jan. 1. The organization's standards normally aren't binding. But a provision inserted into U.S. law at the behest of the battery industry and their shippers says the rules can't be stricter than the U.N. agency's standards.

Previously, U.S. regulations prohibited the shipment of lithium ion batteries on passenger planes in packages weighing more than 11 pounds, although heavier batteries could be shipped on cargo planes.

The new rules allow the shipment of lithium ion batteries weighing as much as 77 pounds, but only if they are aircraft batteries. Shipments of other lithium ion batteries greater than 11 pounds are still prohibited. The 787's two batteries weigh 63 pounds each. It's the first airliner to make extensive use of lithium ion batteries, which weigh less and store more power than other batteries of a similar size.

The aircraft battery exemption was created for the convenience of the airline industry, which wants to be able to quickly ship replacement batteries to planes whose batteries are depleted or have failed. Sometimes it's faster to do that using a passenger plane.

The NTSB is investigating the cause of the 787 battery fire in Boston. Japanese authorities are investigating a battery failure that led to an emergency landing by an All Nippon Airways 787 on Jan. 16. All Dreamliners, which are operated by eight airlines in seven countries, have since been grounded.

The International Air Transport Association, which represents U.S. airlines and other carriers that fly internationally, asked for the aircraft battery exemption at the October 2011 meeting of the U.N. agency's dangerous goods committee.

The association argued that the exemption would give airlines "significant operational flexibility in being able to move aircraft batteries on a passenger aircraft where cargo aircraft may not be available over the route, or within the time required if a battery is required at short notice," according to a copy of the request obtained by The Associated Press.

Since the batteries have to meet special safety standards in order to be installed on planes, "it is believed that exceeding the (11-pound) limit for passenger aircraft will not compromise safety," the request said.

Some members of the committee opposed allowing shipments of lithium ion aircraft batteries on passenger planes, saying safety regulations that let the batteries be used onboard planes don't necessarily ensure they can be transported safely as cargo, according to a summary of the meeting posted online by the U.N. agency.

"One member had discussed this proposal with an engineer in their (country's) airworthiness office who was familiar with standards for batteries installed in aircraft," the summary said. "This colleague did not believe testing standards for installed aircraft batteries warranted special treatment for transport purposes." It was pointed out that the safety standards applied to batteries used in the operation of an aircraft are "narrowly tailored to performance issues and how the battery interacted with aircraft systems," the summary said.

The summary doesn't identify the committee member, but a source familiar with the deliberations said it was the U.S. representative, Janet McLaughlin. She abstained from the vote on the standards, said a federal official with knowledge of the meeting. Neither source was authorized to comment publicly and both spoke only on condition of anonymity.

The Japan Airlines fire ignited about half an hour after the plane had landed in Boston and nearly 200 passengers and crew members had disembarked. Firefighters were alerted after a cleaning crew working in the plane smelled smoke. It took nearly 40 minutes to put out the fire.

The "multiple systems" that were designed to prevent the 787's batteries from catching fire "did not work as intended," Deborah Hersman, the current NTSB chairman, told reporters recently. The "expectation in aviation is never to experience a fire on an aircraft," she said.

Concern about transport of lithium ion aircraft batteries on passenger planes isn't limited to the batteries used in the 787. The Airbus A350, expected to be ready next year, will also make extensive use of lithium ion batteries.

Aircraft manufacturers are also considering retrofitting some planes to replace their batteries with lithium ion batteries to save weight, according to the airline association. The less a plane weighs, the less fuel it burns. Fuel is the biggest operating expense of most airlines.

Cargo airline pilots long have complained about the dangers of transporting lithium batteries. The batteries are suspected of causing or contributing to the severity of an onboard fire that led to the September 2010 crash of a United Parcel Service plane near Dubai, killing both pilots. The two pilots of another UPS plane barely managed to escape the aircraft before it was consumed by fire moments after landing in Philadelphia in 2006.

Lithium-ion batteries can short circuit and ignite if they are improperly packaged, damaged or have manufacturing defects. Fires involving rechargeable lithium-ion batteries can reach 1,100 degrees, close to the melting point of aluminum, a key material in the construction of most airliners.

 

I cannot say. Literally.

I think that it is obvious to everyone that we need to determine WHY it's happening..

I also think it's prudent to err on the side of caution when dealing with an item that can incapacitate (KILL) a flight crew and it's passengers from smoke/fire, and/or burn a hole through the bottom of the aircraft.

Cargo airline pilots long have complained about the dangers of transporting lithium batteries. The batteries are suspected of causing or contributing to the severity of an onboard fire that led to the September 2010 crash of a United Parcel Service plane near Dubai, killing both pilots. The two pilots of another UPS plane barely managed to escape the aircraft before it was consumed by fire moments after landing in Philadelphia in 2006.

There are no second chances at 40,000 feet.













..........................

 

A different perspective taken by one Engineer concerning the batteries.
***************************************************************

PUBLIC DOMAIN SOURCE.

Full article here, Boeing 787’s problems blamed on outsourcing, lack of oversight | Business & Technology | The Seattle Times

"Boeing 787’s problems blamed on outsourcing, lack of oversight

Company engineers blame the 787’s outsourced supply chain, saying that poor quality components are coming from subcontractors that have operated largely out of Boeing’s view.

By Dominic Gates

Seattle Times Aerospace Reporter



Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner has suffered numerous electrical system flaws beyond the battery problems that led to its current grounding, according to engineers with knowledge of the situation.

Company engineers blame the 787’s outsourced supply chain, saying that poor quality components are coming from subcontractors that have operated largely out of Boeing’s view.

“The risk to the company is not this battery, even though this is really bad right now,” said one 787 electrical engineer, who asked not to be identified. “The real problem is the power panels.”

Unlike earlier Boeing jets, he said, the innards of the 787 power distribution panels — which control the flow of electricity to the plane’s many systems — are “like Radio Shack,” with parts that are “cheap, plastic and prone to failure.”

Any malfunction in a major system, such as the power panel fault that caused a United 787 flight to divert to New Orleans in December, must be reported to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), though the data is not public.

Another engineer said the number of such faults reported for the Dreamliner is roughly on par with those on Boeing’s previous new jet, the 777, but “on the 787, one big difference is, there’s a preponderance of electrical faults.”

A senior Boeing engineer not directly involved with the 787 said he believes the company’s early delegation of control on 787 outsourcing to multiple tiers of suppliers is now coming back to bite the jet program, though it made belated efforts to tighten up oversight of suppliers.

“The supplier management organization (at Boeing) didn’t have diddly-squat in terms of engineering capability when they sourced all that work,” he said.

Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel declined to answer specific questions for this story, citing the shortage of time, but denied that Boeing’s oversight of its 787 suppliers was insufficient.

“Our standards and expectations for design, production, quality, and performance have always been, and remain today, as high on the 787 as they are on any other commercial program,” Birtel said.

Outsourcing gone awry

Boeing faces an indefinite grounding of the Dreamliner because of a battery fire on a 787 in Boston and the smoldering of another battery on a flight in Japan a week later.

A National Transportation Safety Board update on Friday said an investigator will travel to a manufacturer in France to examine a battery contactor, which connects a wiring bundle from the airplane to the battery.

Since the battery and its monitoring system were made in Japan, and all the connected pieces were integrated by French company Thales, blaming outsourcing for that and other electrical system faults is a reflexive response among Puget Sound-area employees and observers.

Yet Boeing has never made batteries, and the electrical systems on all its jets have always been sourced from outside suppliers, just like the engines and the landing gear. In that respect, the 787 is not different from Boeing jets like the 777 and the 737, both renowned for their reliability.

However, what is very different on the 787 is the structure of the outsourcing.

On the Dreamliner, Boeing contracted with a top tier of about 50 suppliers, handing them complete control of the design of their piece of the plane.

Those major partners had to make the upfront investment, share the risk and own their design. Each was responsible for managing its own subcontractors.

“For the 787, they changed the structure” of the supply chain, said Christopher Tang, professor of business administration at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and lead author of a much-cited 2009 case study of outsourcing on the 787. “You only know what’s going on with your tier 1 supplier. You have no visibility, no coordination, no real understanding of how all the pieces fit together.

“With a brand new design and so many parts and so many players, it’s a major challenge,” Tang said. “Can the management team trace all the way down the tree to every single supplier and unit? That’s really difficult.”

On the United flight in December, a short circuit and electrical arcing were caused by a fault in a module that controls a generator and plugs into the power panel motherboard.

Tiny sparking

That sparking inside the circuit boards was tiny — Boeing vice president Mike Sinnettdescribed it in an interview last month as “a low-energy arc that lasted milliseconds, very small”— and produced no real risk to passenger safety.

But it caused the cockpit instruments to indicate that one of the plane’s six generators was down. And though the plane’s multiple alternate power systems easily handled that, the pilot diverted out of caution.

Following that in-flight problem, United in late December reported continuing “sporadic issues with our 787 generators and power distribution panels.”

Sinnett said last month that, “While we don’t have the specific exact root cause, the issues have all been traced back to a single lot of (circuit) boards manufactured at one time by a subtier supplier.”

Three years before the 787 was even launched, a paper presented internally at Boeing in 2001 by eminent airplane structures engineer John Hart-Smith predicted the problems that would arise from excessive outsourcing.

Now retired and living in Australia, Hart-Smith said that he is not an electrical systems expert but trusts Boeing’s technical experts in the systems group — “I know a few of them very well” — to resolve the latest battery problem.

Nevertheless, he said, the underlying conclusions of his outsourcing paper still apply.

On the 787, he said, Boeing management thought it could outsource risk and responsibility along with most of the work.

That’s not possible, he said, because when something goes wrong with a critical component from a supplier, “It’s Boeing that the FAA holds responsible to resolve the problem, and it’s Boeing that pays most of the associated costs.”

Outsourcing specs

Traditionally, he said, Boeing’s in-house experts created detailed specifications for every part of the plane made by suppliers, and had the in-house technical capability to closely monitor whether the work came up to spec.

“They needed complete knowledge of what was going on,” said Hart-Smith. “I warned that if they outsourced too much work, the day would eventually come when there wouldn’t be enough in-house capability to even write the specs.”

The senior Boeing engineer with indirect knowledge of the battery and electrical system troubles believes that’s what happened.

“Internally, we may not have the engineering horsepower required to understand the depths of the (battery system) problem as quickly as we prefer,” he said. “We let too much capability slip away from us.”

Nevertheless, he remains optimistic that the 787 program can be turned around.

Of the battery problem, he said, “We’ll get it fixed. That’s what Boeing does. We bet the company on our products. This is no different.”

He said he doesn’t believe the engineering union, set to vote this month to authorize a strike, will go out in the midst of the 787 crisis.

“Nobody is going to do any striking until we get this airplane fixed,” he said.

This engineer also said that management recognized the shortfall in supplier oversight a couple of years ago and has staffed up its supplier management organization since then.

Boeing spokesman Birtel echoed that.

“We have a significant effort under way with our suppliers to address reliability issues ... (and) help reduce the frequency of parts replacements,” Birtel said.

On a conference call last week, Boeing chief executive Jim McNerney said the company is “making progress” on strengthening supplier oversight.

“We have done a lot to increase the visibility down through our supply chain,” he said.

“As to our quality flow down through our supply chain, we have very robust processes,” McNerney added. “And if we miss something along the way, we’re going to fix it. But we do of course rely on our partners.”

The Boeing engineer with direct knowledge of the electrical systems is not optimistic.

“We talk to supplier management all the time,” he said. “These parts are such bad quality.”

To catch and eliminate minor system faults that he blames on persistent problems with the quality of parts, Boeing has routinely been flying nine or 10 pre-delivery flights of each 787 before it hands the plane over to a customer, he said.

On its other jets, Boeing typically makes just two pre-delivery flights, one by Boeing, then one by the customer.

Battery-system probe

The current crisis on the 787 is due to a serious electrical problem somewhere in the battery system.

Before that, in 2010, a major disaster was narrowly averted when an electrical panel shorted and a severe fire broke out on a 787 test flight.

Boeing says the specific issue that caused the 2010 short “was identified and resolved” before the plane went into passenger service.

Compared with those problems, the recurrent power panel faults that occurred last year — Boeing said there were at least four incidents — didn’t pose anything close to the same safety risk. When that United flight diverted to New Orleans in December, passengers suffered only a major inconvenience.

But the 787 electrical engineer said that when the battery problem is resolved and the Dreamliners fly again, more power panel problems will likely surface, and could lead to more diversions that would further damage the jet’s reputation.

“To the public, it’s still electrical,” he said.

He said the company has been to focused on individual, narrow fixes.

“We have not done a real redesign,” he said. “We should be examining the entire electrical system.”

 

Quite a few sitting in Narita. Some with engines covered.....
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Right now, it's the Nightmareliner......

 

Still think that with that scalloped trailing edge of the engine nacell that it screams out for a flame paint scheme.

I suppose most passengers would just not appreciate the artistry of it though.

 

Soon to be MassiveSueLiner for lost of income while sitting on the tarmac.

Pete

 

Nacelle, hell, No one would... they're worried about flames from the battery compartments.

 

I saw in the morning TV news that Boeing has applied to the FAA for flight testing permits to investigate the problem...does that mean that they know more about the issue than we may have imagined?

 

Of course Boeing knows more than we do... so does FAA, Yuasa, Thales, United, ANA, JAL, etc.. We're just reading 'after the fact' reports.

I don't think you should read 'evil intent' or conspiracy into that request.

I think it just means that they want to do controlled operational (flying) tests... to see if something's happening in flight that can't be duplicated in the lab.