787 fire at Boston Logan

Is that the before or after box? My Dr. Pepper can is thicker than that thing.

 

In situations like this, the wrench guy comes with the parts to be replaced. It's fly and fix, then it's signed off by the A&P/IA onsite. If it's really a big job, they send a team of guys.

Yes, there is a torque spec for each of the bolts on the case.

 

During assy of the first 777 there was an issue installing part of the wing TE. Of course there were a bunch of engineers standing around trying to 'help'. Mechanic lead said, "lunch time, come back in an hour". When we came back the part was installed.

 

Well, I'm not sure, but I think I've been insulted(BSEE, UCLA).

I know what you mean. The maintenance fairy sometimes visits my plane in the hanger too(no A&P cert).

 

Interesting.

Who signs off that the part was installed correctly? I wouldn't sign off on something unless I personally installed it myself.
Pete

 

QA signs it off. Us engineers were just getting in the way of the mechanics doing their job.

 

On critical installations the Quality Assurance person will witness all of the torques as they are performed and check that the tool was set correctly and is properly certified as being accurate (attached cert sticker).

This activity is performed on critical installations and structures mostly, like wing to wing box, landing gear trunnions etc.....

In the case of bolting down something like a battery or water tank, probably no witnessing of the torque but verification of the tool and settings would be performed.

This is how it is performed in the US mostly.
If you saw how it was done by the maintenance facilities used by many of the US carriers (like Southwest) in Central America you wouldn't get on another airplane.
South America and Africa even worse.

 

This says Cessna Citation had a similar problem. Didn't know that. No other news on the 787 front.

FAA sees lessons from Boeing 787 battery woes

 

Fix approved. Service Directive, 100% of the fleet(no surprise), still has some insp mandates but this is generally good news.

FAA approves Boeing Dreamliner battery system design | Reuters

 

As I mentioned in the thread in Silver, Now all we need to see is about one million flight hours (fleet) logged without any battery issues and I "might" consider flying on one.

I still harbor the published comments made by one Electrical Engineer about the poor quality issues of the power panel components.

 

During May.

After installing the new and improved batteries.

Will fly passengers in June, hopefully.


Japan's ANA to conduct up to 200 Boeing 787 test flights: sources - Yahoo! Finance

 

Indeed. ANA's plans to do up to 200 empty flights is in one way good as they demonstrate they care about their customers, but one could also believe they don't really trust BOEING's fix?

I hope nothing wrong happens again with the electrical system of the 787 in the next couple three years.

 

I assume Japan's ANA is sending the cost of those 200 flights to Boeing?

Pete

 

Why? This is ANA's call, not Boeing's...

You an Airbus shareholder???

 

No , but this expensive is caused by a Boeing fault. Just like Rolls Royce bore the brunt of the A380 engine issues, Boeing should/are liable (IMO) of the costs to ensure their 787's are actually safe.

I guess what you are saying is ANA are doing extra over and above testing, but heck I can't blame them as Boeing's solution comes across like race tape being used to hold a race car together for the rest of the meeting (IM unknowledgeable O).

Personally I think the type of battery should have been banned from aircraft until they their design has matured and they are as stable as current battery technology.
Pete

 

Question is how many passengers will accept the fix.

 

90% passengers IMO would not even be aware of the problems with the 787 ... but if a fully loaded one hits the deck they will.
Pete

 

Further I think very few passengers know what type of plane they are on until the safety announcement, at which point its too late.

 

Boeing: Cause of 787 battery fires remains mystery

So they don't know what the caused the battery fires, but they've eliminated all possible causes. Wuh??? Hopefully this is just a case of bad reporting.

 

Virtually no one listens to the safety announcement... really.

 

No, it's not just a case of bad reporting. I have heard the same from multiple news sources. They really don't know, definitively what caused the fires.
That's not to say they haven't made some educated guesses (for what that's worth) as to what the causes were.

 

PUBLIC DOMAIN SOURCE

http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2020854164_787ntsbxml.html


FAA, Boeing delegated much of 787 testing

The second day of a National Transportation and Safety Board hearing shed new light on how regulators delegated to Boeing — and Boeing in turn delegated to its hierarchy of suppliers — much of the responsibility for testing and certifying the plane’s design.

By Dominic Gates

Seattle Times aerospace reporter
Dorenda Baker, director of aircraft certification service with the Federal Aviation Administration, left, Ali Bahrami, head of the Renton-based FAA certification office, Steve Boyd, manager of airplane and flight crew interface branch with the FAA, and Mike Sinnett, vice president at Boeing Commercial Airplanes and chief project engineer of the 787 program, are sworn in to testify during a hearing at the National Traffic Safety Board in Washington, D.C.
Related

1st day of NTSB hearing: Boeing says tests of 787 battery should have been tougher

Federal regulators certifying the safety of the 787’s lithium-ion batteries never visited the battery’s manufacturer in Japan nor the company that designed the surrounding battery system in France, according to testimony at an investigative hearing Wednesday.

That was one of the jobs entrusted to Boeing employees who were handling much of the Federal Aviation Administration’s detail work on certification of the plane’s new technology, officials at the companies told the National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) hearing.

The hearing shed new light on how regulators delegated to Boeing — and Boeing in turn delegated to its hierarchy of suppliers — much of the responsibility for testing and certifying the plane’s design.

Thales of France, which designed the battery system, was responsible for providing test data and paperwork to Boeing for certification.

But lacking any experience in certifying lithium-ion batteries, Thales in turn depended on the expertise of battery maker GS Yuasa of Japan, said Thierry Queste, a 787 project manager with the French company.

Boeing officials insisted that, despite the outsourcing to Thales of the design work for the first large lithium-ion batteries on a commercial airliner, its engineers maintained control.

“Boeing was involved and had complete oversight of the suppliers throughout,” senior Boeing systems engineer Jerry Hulm told the NTSB panel.

And FAA officials were equally adamant that their technical experts were “heavily engaged” in the 787’s certification.

However, the FAA oversight role portrayed by agency officials in many respects was indirect — almost like a back-seat driver, with Boeing up front — because of an enormous disparity in resources between the jet maker and its regulator.

The head of the Renton-based FAA certification office, Ali Bahrami, said he has 20 to 25 staff working full time on the 787. The entire airplane-certification division of the federal agency has fewer than 1,300 employees nationwide to cover at least six current new airplane-certification programs as well as ongoing airworthiness issues.

So the FAA relies in large part on 950 engineers who are paid by Boeing but work as FAA “authorized representatives” to oversee and approve the certification of the 787 and other Boeing jets.

It was such authorized reps who traveled to Japan to witness and sign off on GS Yuasa’s battery-certification tests.

“It would be virtually impossible to keep up with industry” without this extensive delegation of oversight to the manufacturer, said Dorenda Baker, director of the FAA’s national aircraft-certification unit.

The revelations came on the second day of an investigative hearing in Washington, D.C. The inquiry arose out of a battery fire on a 787 parked at Boston’s Logan International Airport in January, and an incident a week later when a smoldering battery in-flight forced an emergency landing and slide evacuation in Japan.

The FAA subsequently grounded the Dreamliner — a directive lifted only this week after three months of paralyzed airplanes.

A detailed analysis of the safety risks of the new battery system was required to prepare for certification, and company officials described it as a collaborative effort.

Boeing identified the potential impact of anything going wrong at the airplane level, and the suppliers assessed the risks of their particular pieces going wrong.

“Every step of the way, safety reviews were held by all parties,” said Thales program manager Sandra Voglino.

Those efforts — “top down and bottom up,” in Hulm’s words — combined to create projections that, for example, a battery wouldn’t create a smoke hazard more than once in 10 million flight hours. Though approved by the FAA, that assessment didn’t pan out in service. Yet Hulm believes the process wasn’t flawed.

“I don’t know, except for 20/20 hindsight, what we could have done differently,” he said.

The testing needed to win certification was also developed and carried out in close collaboration. “Many of the suppliers are in-house, sitting across the row from our engineers,” Hulm said.

Queste emphasized that Thales is “in permanent contact with Boeing, GS Yuasa and Securaplane,” the maker of the battery charger.

Interviewed by phone after the hearing, NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman said that her team has recently visited Thales in France and will go to Japan to visit GS Yuasa.

She said she hopes to publish a final report by year end that will reach conclusions about whether all the parties to the 787 battery system certification — including “at the regulator, contractor and subcontractor levels” — had the necessary resources and expertise to do the job.

Hersman seems determined to push hard for answers. At one point in Wednesday’s hearing, a Boeing lawyer objected to the direction of the panel’s questioning, which he characterized as speculation that the cause of the January battery incidents was a “design defect.”

Hersman politely acknowledged his point, then resumed the line of questioning.

Dominic Gates: (206) 464-2963 or [email protected]
More Business & Technology

 

Remember the "River Dance"?

 

This is not what it seems, or reported in the article. Boeing did indeed pass on the responsibility for certification to its suppliers, but the oversight of the certification still involved FAA DER's. These would be independent consultant DER's in the current case versus (Boeing) company DER's in the past. Which means stricter oversight, in my slightly biased opinion. However Boeing also had considerable oversight on the testing, including review/approval of the test plans and in many cases witnessing of the actual tests. Also, the design and testing of supplier components were all performed to detailed Boeing specifications. Those specs all flowed up into higher order certification plans which were approved by the FAA as meeting the requirements of the CFR's. I think the reporting stating where Boeing was involved in writing the cert requirements for Li is telling. The suppliers met the specs as written by Boeing.

 

As mentioned in the article above,
Boeing officials insisted that, despite the outsourcing to Thales of the design work for the first large lithium-ion batteries on a commercial airliner, its engineers maintained control.

So there was a chain that went both ways, design specs and conformance to the specs verified. I think the issue was "design".