

  (Source: Boston Herald)











The first 787 Dreamliner made its maiden flight in December 2009.



Source: Reuters

Comments     Threshold


By Ammohunt on 1/9/2013 9:40:15 PM , Rating: 2
Electrical Fire != to tailfin coming off in mid flight...

RE: Wow
By Samus on 1/10/2013 12:00:24 AM , Rating: 2
Yes, an electrical fire is serious, so lets just hope the batteries weren't manufactured by A123...

Boeing is on the forefront of aerospace technology here. This thing is way beyond mainstream air-frame structures (which are aluminum) and the amount of technology in the plane makes it extremely complicated. It was delayed for years because of this complication, and no matter how long you delay something, there will still be problems in the production run.

Granted, this isn't a vehicle that can be simply "recalled" because the risk is too great. The failure rate must be 0. Had this fire occurred in flight, it might have crashed, so I'm pretty sure they are taking it seriously.

RE: Wow

RE: Wow
By knutjb on 1/10/2013 10:55:44 PM , Rating: 3
You haven't worked on aircraft, it is easy to ground an aircraft or fleet of a particular type for a design or maintenance issue.

It happened years ago with the DC-10 for one airline's criminally bad maintenance practices and killed Freddy Lakes' airline. It wasn't even a design flaw, just bad mechanics.

Boeing said the area was designed with fire in mind as a safety feature. I expect they tested a mock up for that purpose. I haven't heard enough about the fuel leak to comment, too many variables. And yes there are acceptable fuel leak limits depending on location for every aircraft.

RE: Wow
By Amiga500 on 1/10/2013 10:29:09 AM , Rating: 2
True, such a catastrophic structural failure is highly unlikely.

However, it can burn through the wiring looms, leading to loss of control over the rudder/elevators.

[Yes, the looms do incorporate redundancy and the backups are not co-located, but battery fires are very persistent and current fire suppression systems (Halon or 3M Novec based) don't knockdown the fire as it is a chemical reaction rather than a conventional oxygen fed 'fire'.]

RE: Wow


RE: Wow
Losing the tailfin isn't that bad.


RE: Wow
American Airlines Flight 587...;-)

RE: Wow
Or JAL 123...

RE: Wow
By drycrust3 on 1/10/2013 4:17:26 PM , Rating: 2
While you are, in one sense, right, that the tail may not actually fall off in flight, that doesn't mean the plane wouldn't have crashed had this happened at 60,000 feet half way across the Pacific. The problem is aircraft, especially one this expensive, are designed absolutely to a spec. Every bit of it unnecessary weight is removed, which means your "over engineered" is cut to a minimum.

RE: Wow

RE: Wow
is only certified up to 45,000 feet.

Thanks for correcting me, I should have checked.

