Broken Dreams: The Boeing 787

You may like to argue, I don't find it one of my great joys in life. I have no expectation of changing your mind nor do I feel the need to try. I expressed my opinion, you expressed yours, I am very sorry if that is not sufficient for you. Not only that I have experienced the closed mindedness of you and your countrymen enough for a lifetime.

Thanks for the offer.

 

I like the 787 - it is nice and quiet. My current favorite is still the 747-8 - what a plane!!

 

Brian,

I genuinely think we have got off on the wrong foot here. I'm not at all trying to argue. The only point I have is that I have found no proof yet that the 787's battery issue has been resolved sufficiently (I really am a chicken when it comes to flying and think aircraft designers should not take safety risks at all). As I am a New Zealander I would like there to be a 100% solution as I have a soft spot for my country of births airline. They have already lost one plane I don't want them to loose another.

And I work in IT and I think you and I are on the same page when it comes to computers having too much control. IMO a human should always be in control. For a long time I used to be nervous getting on an AB plane, and while the A380 dramas seem to have been resolved would not be happy getting on one at the moment. Still too early for me.

Anyway I'll do some research and post back anything useful that I find.
Pete

 

Pete,

I don't recall any 787's having the battery issue while flying, all where on the ground.

I think Boeing would be foolish to release a fix for a grounded fleet that they where not as sure as they could be that the problem was solved.

But the one thing we can all be assured of is that at some point all mechanical or electrical systems designed and built by man will at some point have an issue through mis-use or unforeseen design problems. All we can do is take all reasonable steps to stay safe.

The first step IMHO is to say off the A380 and if possible any AB product. I've said it a hundred times but I will repeat it...The reasons I wont fly AB are the same I don't drive a French car...

 

...but wait. There are many awesome French cars. Don't confuse Airbus with general "French engineering".

I have a whole list of French cars that I would LOVE to own and drive every day. In fact, I daily drove a 405 Mi16 for 7 years. Not all French cars are Citroen SMs.

 

That is a very anti-French post. They really do make great handling cars.

One 787 had to return to the airport due to smoke by the way.

Btw:

Now this very well could be out dated.
Pete
ps: I do understand the proud support of Boeing, but if you read the history of the 787 it is not exactly the same risk adverse company anymore. Talk to Bob Parks on this site.

 

Only 8 months ago ...

Never thought Boeing would have a review of the design of one of its products. Very sad.
Pete

 

I really should let Bob respond in relation to Boeing Commercial Aircraft as I am from the Space and Missile side. Design reviews are a way of life in the aerospace/aircraft world. There are so many before you go into production it's mind boggling. They are internal, external (customers, both commercial and government) and sometimes independent. You should get a warm feeling from all the different design reviews not....."very sad."

 

1) Originally Posted by Boeing 787 Dreamliner battery problems - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
On January 16, 2013, an All Nippon Airways (ANA) 787 made an emergency landing at Takamatsu Airport on Shikoku Island after the flight crew received a computer warning that there was smoke inside one of the electrical compartments.[9][10] ANA said that there was an error message in the cockpit citing a battery malfunction. Passengers and crew were evacuated using the emergency slides.[11] According to The Register, there are no fire-suppression systems in the electrical compartments holding batteries, only smoke detectors.[12]

2) Originally Posted by http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner_battery_problems
In January 2014, a battery in a Japanese Airlines 787 emitted smoke from the battery's protection exhaust and partially melted while the aircraft was undergoing pre-flight maintenance. The cause of this latest incident remains under investigation.[16][17][18] Soon after this incident, the Guardian noted that 'The agency [US Federal Aviation Administration] also launched a review of the design, manufacture and assembly of the 787 in January last year and said its report would be released last summer, but it has so far not released the report and has not responded to questions about when it will be finished.'[19]

NO NO NO. PERIOD.
Regardless of the cause, mitigation of the occurrence is NOT a solution to the problem (building a containment structure around the battery).
On the ground, or in the air, It should not happen at all, ever.

It doesn't take dead people to see that there is a problem here.

NO

 

Agreed. I'd get on one, maybe with crossed fingers, but I'd go.....

I'd also (and have), flown on Airbus'.

It seems to me that AB are somehow held to a higher standard, "if it ain't Boeing, I ain't going" etc.

They're both building airplanes that are pushing the envelope, but the 'hate' towards AB here makes no sense to me.

That's BS, and I'm sure you know it!..... My camera battery is not being constantly charged. If my laptop overheats, I unplug it. The airplane keeps flying....

OTOH, these things are critical to the airplanes systems. They get into a runaway situation and *very* bad things can happen. Further, my understanding at least is they're constantly being what we'd call 'trickle charged', and that's been shown to lead to problems. They go tits up and it *could* be a lot more serious than me not being able to watch a movie on my iPad or receive a text message....

+1000 right there!

And it does seem that's what they've done. [mitigate it, not solve it I mean.]

Again, I'd fly one, but then I'd fly AB too..... Chances remain, even on the TUV I referred to earlier, that it will make it to the other end..... Still more likely to get killed in the shower.

Cheers,
Ian

 

Thanks; our government should then write your name on the waiting list for an official award. We also have great trains...and some of the french aeroplanes were not / are not that bad, and customers are satisfied: Dassault comes to mind, but there are others.

As for cars, I'm prejudicied towards italian ones; but Citroën is "different", as, precisely, they have always wanted to be. This is still considered as a dividing line here: either you like these, or you don't. I don't: back in the sixties when I was a child, the DS was the only thing on wheels that made me sick.

And, as Fast-Ian was writing, should one want to live adventure in an aeroplane, he should have tried the russian aeroflot on their "inside network" until the nineties; I have fond memories of a Moscow to Astrakhan flight on a Ty-124 (or was it 134?) with a group of drunk russian fishermen...

Rgds

 

Also meant to note that said batteries aren't all wired together...... In the scheme of things, they're all teeny little power supplies.

The batteries in the guts of the plane OTOH.....

Cheers,
Ian

 

Bon jour, nerofer, et merci. I've owned two Peugeots, a 403 when I was doing graduate law studies in Paris in the early 1960's and a 505S station wagon that I got in 1983 and ran for ten years and 250,000 km, both of which were trouble-free. I also had the pleasure of flying in a Caravelle back in the late 60's, entirely comfortable from passenger viewpoint and I recollect trouble-free from airlines' viewpoint. So why the francophobia? I dunno.

 

Thanks for the kind words, but no worry, I’m not hurt by “francophobia”, it is his right and privilege, no problem. And if he was thinking of Citroën, well frankly I’m not overly fond of these either.
I see that you followed the example of the late, great Phil Hill, who always had Peugeots for Daily Drivers during his time in Maranello…
I did fly in the “Caravelle” also, but only briefly, as I began to travel for my job in 1986 and these were on the verge of retirement by “Air Inter”; but I recall the extraordinary gray haze the Air Conditioning was venting in the cabin when the aeroplane was still on the ground.
I do like to fly in “exotic” aeroplanes whenever I can, and was very sorry when Aeroflot finished to replace all those glorious Tupolevs and Illyushins with bland western aeroplanes which doesn’t have, for instance, a glazed nose. The only place where I am rather lukewarm towards some elderly airliners are some countries in Africa where not only the airplanes are rather antiquated, but their maintenance is “somewhat deferred” also...

Rgds

 

I wouldn't put much weight in anything aero which comes out of any of the countries in the ME.

Here is the flight crew from the UAE demonstrating what happens when you throttle up a brand spanky new fly-by-wire AirBus when in a taxi area. The computer thinks the pilot is an idiot (good assumption) and releases the brakes.
Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Sure. But there's a *world* of difference between a pallet-load of them in the cargo hold that haven't been packaged properly and a few hundred passengers individual cell phones.

Sure. And simple physics, let alone the evidence, tells us they're a lot more likely to overheat when being used, cycled & charged deep in the guts of the plane. Which AFAIK don't even have fire suppression systems in most cases(?)

My iPad overheats in the passenger compartment, we can pour the gin & tonic on it. OTOH, if these things go crazy *inside* their little battery bunkers, we won't even know until the box melts!

As Spasso noted, all they've done is try and mitigate the problem, not solve it.

And how many resulted in the airplane crashing? (I'm talking about in the passenger compartment, not 100's of them in the hold of course.)

Cheers,
Ian

 

Was the root cause of the fire in the UPS 747 crash ever established? Just wondering, I've never read anything specific.

 

Good question. I thought I read 'they' decided that was the root cause, but could be wrong(?)

I still maintain that using & charging them, even inside little metal boxes, is much more dangerous than having them simply 'idle' in the hold.

I'm also certain that if it were AB in the same situation, the howls of 'mitigation, they should solve the problem' would be much louder.......

Cheers,
Ian

 

Just to be clear my query was in regards to how the batteries that caught fire were packed as being the root cause.

I recall that JAL had issues with the batteries prior to the fire incident, as in an abnormally high replacement problem. I also recall that maybe non-standard usage, at least in regards to the how the designers thought they would be used, may have been a contributor (deep cycling followed by immediate high rate charging). Likely that Boeing revised the procedures for running off the batteries.

 

Really an "anti French post" from and Englishman...better get a support group going...LOL

Nothing to do with being "anti French"

I've been there hundreds of times, lovely place, and I have lots of French friends, just an issue with their engineering and work practices in general that's all.

I wouldn't drive a British car from the 70's or 80's for same reason....I guess I just don't like anyone....

 

True, but it's only fair to note that the article you quote also mentioned a 1 in 200,000 failure rate.... And they've improved since then too.... May not be sufficient for use in critical aircraft systems, but in a laptop? No big deal IMO.

Oh come on! Even I know not to pour alcohol on a fire! I was being a little facetious, my apologies you didn't get it. My point was that even with hundreds of passengers carrying these devices they're not constantly catching fire. And certainly not on airplanes. If they're in the hold they're not being charged either.

OTOH, that these things are buried deep inside the plane, now in metal bunkers while still being charged/discharged, in some cases I presume *hard* is *much* more likely to cause failure than some random laptop overheating. And they're running the airplane. My laptop isn't!

Again, that's true, but seems more out of luck than good engineering solutions to me so far. I don't know the stats, but I do know "more than a handful" at least have diverted and/or been lucky on the ground.

I'm with Spasso on this one - They've mitigated the problem, not solved it. And that's worrying. As I said before, I'd fly one, but again, this 'Boeing can do no wrong' attitude, particularly when coupled with 'all AB planes are an accident waiting to happen' attitude I find somewhat silly.

Would never have happened in Bobs time!

As always, my 02c,
Cheers,
Ian

 

We *love* each other really! [I'm heading there next year for my youngest's wedding. Should be great!]

Hey! I grew up with those cars! (Quite a few older than that! ). Other than that they tended to rust into the ground, they didn't often catch fire or shed wheels! (I've had both! )

Seriously, were American cars of the same era any better? [Edit; I mean, we know they didn't have brakes or turn corners after all. ]

Cheers,
Ian