Boeing Dreamliner Safety Concerns Are Specious

SoyChemist writes in to note his article at Wired Science on the uproar Dan Rather has stirred up with his claim that Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner aircraft may be unsafe. "Dozens of news agencies have jumped on the bandwagon. Most of them are reporting that the carbon fiber frame may not be as sturdy as aluminum. Few have bothered to question Rather's claims that the composite materials are brittle, more likely to shatter on impact, and prone to emit poisonous chemicals when ignited. While there is a lot of weight behind the argument that composite materials are not as well-studied as aircraft aluminum, the reasoning behind the flurry of recent articles may be faulty. The very title of Rather's story, Plastic Planes, indicates a lack of grounding in science. Perhaps the greatest concern should be how well the plane will hold up to water. Because they are vulnerable to slow and steady degradation by moisture, the new materials may not last as long as aluminum. Testing them for wear and tear will be more difficult too."

I don't know

[stoolpigeon (454276)]

I heard he has an email from Pres. Bush that he sent Boeing in 1945 proving that they knew the plane was unsafe.

TV reporters are idiots.

[SatanicPuppy (611928)]

Carbon fiber more brittle than Aluminum? So's diamond...What's your point? Carbon fiber is also a lot more flexible than aluminum and it's lighter. There are pros and cons of every material. It produces chemicals when it burns? Like inhaling toxic smoke is going to be your big worry if the PLANE is ON FIRE.

This kind of crap is infuriating for airline companies...It doesn't take much at all to kill a whole line of planes, just the vague reputation for being unsafe. A report like this, based on a flawed understanding of Carbon vs Aluminum where the "reporter" doesn't even grasp the real issue, could do real harm.

Re:

[fnj (64210)]

Carbon fiber is also a lot more flexible than aluminum and it's lighter.

Flexibility is defined by Young's Modulus, "E". Carbon fiber has a much higher ratio of Young's Modulus to weight, and a higher outright value of Young's Modulus, than aluminum.

Like inhaling toxic smoke is going to be your big worry if the PLANE is ON FIRE.

Actually, yes, it is. Carbon monoxide and cyanide gas in smoke is the biggest killer in fires, including aircraft fires.

Re:TV reporters are idiots.

[deacon (40533)]

He said: "Carbon fiber is also a lot more flexible than aluminum and it's lighter."
You said: "Flexibility is defined by Young's Modulus, "E". Carbon fiber has a much higher ratio of Young's Modulus to weight, and a higher outright value of Young's Modulus, than aluminum."
Not quite. Young's Modulus is the stiffness of a material. Flexibility is a non-technical term, but it implies amount of strain a material can withstand before beginning to yield. And for an aircraft, the strength to weight ratio should be the most important. For the non-MEs: strain, stress, yield all have very, very specific meanings in mechanical or materials engineering. Also, aluminium has no lower fatigue limit: It will eventually develop cracks no matter how low the cyclic stresses are. And since airplanes constantly vibrate in operation...

Re:TV reporters are idiots.

[ScentCone (795499)]

This kind of crap is infuriating for airline companies...It doesn't take much at all to kill a whole line of planes, just the vague reputation for being unsafe

Yup. Michael Crichton's "Airframe" was actually a pretty good read on this very subject. Well, it INVOLVED this sort of subject. Most people also don't understand that the airframe ain't the same as the engines, and ain't the same as the particular airline's choice about all sorts of other things (from avionics packages, to training programs/frequency, etc). But it shouldn't just be infuriating to airlines, it should be infuriating to ANYONE who manufactures anything, works for someone who does, likes buying from anyone who does, has some of their Mom's 401k invested in someone who does, likes the fact that we get tax revenue from someone who does, who would rather buy from Boeing than ship the cash consortium manufacturer, and more.

I'm way more worried about the corrosion of national critical thinking skills and basic science education (which allows this sort of stuff to be written and passively consumed) than I am about the prospects of water-based corrosion to a CF airframe 20 years from now. We can fix/replace an airframe, but we can't fix some teenager that's been trained to not think, and who finds the trouble of actually grokking issues like this to be unfashionable and too much work. That Dan Rather is pandering to that cultural flaw (while suing CBS for $70 million for getting busted having done it before!) isn't just embarassing, it's Actually Evil(tm). And not just for Boeing's upper management bonuses.

Re:TV reporters are idiots.

[Splab (574204)]

Probably not a big deal in developed countries where maintenance requirements are very strict, but it could be an issue in the third world where regulations may be more spotty

Yeah because here in the first world we didn't just have 3 plane crashing during landing due to poor maintenance. (Look up Bombadier 8Q-400).

And GP said:

It produces chemicals when it burns? Like inhaling toxic smoke is going to be your big worry if the PLANE is ON FIRE.

This is a very big issue, if you inhale smoke from a grill you don't drop dead within seconds, if you keep doing it you will of course die from lack of oxygen. The problem they have been talking about with the carbon fiber is the smoke can contain toxins that will kill you a heck of a lot faster, making escape from the fire a moot point because you are dead trying to find the exit.

Re:TV reporters are idiots.

[Bluesman (104513)]

I'm not a materials scientist either, but I did take a structural engineering class and sleep in a Holiday Inn express last night.

There are many classifications of materials that could be interpreted as "brittle." Brittle is much too general a term to be used in engineering, so you have to be suspicious of the news article.

You can measure tensile strength, which is a measure of how much something can bend until it break. There's another measurement where you find how much something can bend until it permanently deforms, so that it won't go back to its original state. Each of these could be called "flexibility" but that doesn't tell you the whole story.

Carbon fiber when it fails may fail explosively and shatter, while a soft metal would simply deform slowly when bent far enough. This could be called "brittleness" but it really has little to do with the actual engineering problem, since if you design the carbon fiber component to high enough tolerances, you're not worried about it breaking, since the force required to break it would be so huge you'd have other, much bigger problems besides the breaking of the part. (Like, how do we get the people out of the broken plane when Godzilla is about to eat it?)

It would be easy to criticize the engineering of the plane on the news, because nobody is going to sit there for three months to check everything out -- they'll watch the demo of a small piece of carbon fiber breaking and think, "Oh my god, that could be the wing of my plane!"

Re:TV reporters are idiots.

[wikdwarlock (570969)]

IAAME (I am a mechanical engineer) I hate to be pedantic, but if you're going to give people technical words like tensile strength, give it to them correctly. Tensile strength refers to the amount of stress a material can handle, before failure, when loaded in axial tension. While bending does involve loading that is 50% tensile, it also contains an equal, compressive, component. In fact, many materials have a different compressive strength, and may fail at a loading that does not exceed tensile strength due to buckling or other problems on the compressive side.

CF is anisotropic material

[TheAxeMaster (762000)]

It only works that way in different load directions. You can take a sheet of CF in a typical layer configuration (say a 45/90/135) and bend it 45 degrees or more and it won't break or even look like it was bent when you return it to its former shape. But if you pull on it it doesn't stretch like aluminum. What people misunderstand is that because it doesn't stretch, they think it is more prone to failure which just isn't true. It is absorbing the same (or more) energy but it doesn't exhibit the same behavior while doing so. Aluminum will fail and snap also, but people are more comfortable with it stretching first because that's what they are used to seeing. It doesn't make it better, just different.

The types of CF composite that degrade faster are the ones where the resin doesn't have a UV inhibitor in it. UV degrades the resin just like it does to any plastic but with proper protection that isn't a problem. Once this was understood companies developed UV inhibitors for the resins to make them resistant to UV degradation. And you can bet the farm on a $150+ million dollar plane being adequately protected. There is no reason to think that they won't last just as long as an aluminum plane. Never mind that the resin only carries a tiny fraction of the load, in the directions the fibers aren't laid up for. Meaning the resin is mainly there to keep the material from delaminating.

Though some may not know it, but as aluminum oxidizes over time it becomes aluminum oxide which is more brittle and prone to fracture. So you face the same problem with aluminum, but it is adequately protected and hasn't been a problem for the many many years that commercial aircraft have been flying. Just like fiberglass boats, adequately protected and maintained they last a long time.

But what do I know, I'm just an aerospace engineer with some composite materials training. I should leave the science to Dan Rather.

Re:CF is anisotropic material

[Shotgun (30919)]

Your analysis is dead on, but I'd like to add just one point. The nature of aluminum corrosion, pitting, creates stress risers. That is a point where a crack starts easily. Build an airplane and you will soon understand that once a crack starts in aluminum it needs to be repaired or thrown away post-haste, for it will soon be two pieces of aluminum. Composites are somewhat more forgiving.

Re:TV reporters are idiots.

[SatanicPuppy (611928)]

Not at all. Aluminum won't shatter without being super-cooled or absorbing some kind of catastrophic strike...It'll bend, warp, tear, deform. Carbon fiber will bend, hell, there is theory (not yet tested to my knowledge) that carbon fiber wings could bend to the point of touching above or below the plane.

The difference is, if aluminum bent like that it wouldn't return to it's original shape, whereas carbon fiber might. Carbon fiber is very flexible, but when it bends too far it effectively explodes...Shatters into a zillion pieces. So it's brittle.

Put the two materials side by side, and carbon fiber can absorb a hell of a lot more energy without failing than aluminum, but aluminum isn't brittle, so it might be better at dealing with certain types of impacts.

Trusting Dan Rather is like....

[Ancient_Hacker (751168)]

Trusting Dan Rather is like....

• Buying Madonna's book: Screwing for Virginity.
• Buying MS Vista for it's speed and congeniality.

Seriously folks, Dan Rather has about as much common sense as a Bugby.

This is the guy that went on the airwaves with a "memo" supposedly typed in the 1970's, with proportional fonts and different-font sized superscripts! I would not trust someone like that to tell me it's raining.

Carbon-fiber composite construction has been around for going on forty years now. It's been accellerator tested in hot humid ovens and passed with darn good results. Boeing doesn't make junk. And airframes are warranted for tens of thousands of Hobbs clock hours, so the airlines are not at risk, they're voting with their checkbooks.

Re:Trusting Dan Rather is like....

[gad_zuki! (70830)]

>Seriously folks, Dan Rather has about as much common sense as a Bugby.

Why Dan Rather specifically? This week I watched regular tv for the first time in years. I usually just tivo stuff. The "news" I saw at the hotel is the most ignorant, consumerist, and alarmist crap I have ever seen. Rather, from what I remember years ago, seems a step above the always OJ, always Arabs-Want-to-kill-us, etc crowd.

I think the problem is that "news" in the US is just crap. Americans now prefer crap over facts. Picking on one reporter or one network isnt helping. Theyre all like this.

Ahh the wonders of politics.

[jellomizer (103300)]

If you go "this is unsafe!" and you were right, and you can go I told you so, and score a political victory.

If you go "this is unsafe!" and you were wrong, you can go well my conserns were addressed and score a political victory.

If you go "this is safe!" and it is safe. Nothing really happends no creditability loss or gained.

If you go "this is safe!" and it was found unsafe. You get fired, invistagations, rumors you were in colution with with contrators....

So if you were trying to run or stay in office what will you demmand.

Government is a failure driven buisness it is what you do wrong that hurts you and if enough people above you were fired then you finally get promoted. So Screamming and yelling and making false accuasations and make the world seem like an unbarable place to live is the best thing you can do for your job.

Curing process

[Capt James McCarthy (860294)]

Isn't the curing process for carbon fiber a few thousand degrees? Wouldn't fire have to be hotter then the curing process before carbon fiber would burn or smolder?

Re:Curing process

[UDGags (756537)]

Carbon fiber will burn in air around 500-600F. Air has oxygen which attacks the carbon...this is why almost all composites on an airplane undergo TOS (thermal oxidative stability) studies. If the plane has crash landed and is on fire the fumes are from the resin used not the carbon. The FAA requires rigorous fire testing of materials. Usually, flame retardant additives are used on structures that could burn or they use a phenolic resin.

Composites fail differently

[peragrin (659227)]

Carbon fiber can fail, but when it does fail it tends to do so suddenly and violently. Where metals bend Carbon fiber tends to explode. Though i have also seen the films of boeing stress testing the 787's wing bend. With far more bend than a metal wing could handle. As others have pointed out weathering may also limit the useful life of the parts.

In the End CArbon fiber isn't better or worse than a metal plane. It's just different with different things that can go wrong.

777 static wing test

[Jaeger (2722)]

For the 777, one test Boeing performed was bending the wing to 150% of its maximum rated load to make sure the wing was structurally sound. The all-aluminum wing shattered at 153%, which makes for a great video: Boeing 777 Wing Ultimate Load Test [youtube.com]. (The video is from the PBS documentary miniseries Twenty-First Century Jet.)

When I'm flying and I see the wing bobbing up and down outside my window, I try not to think about seeing this video. (Of course, I know the loads are different, but then I have to convince my reptile brain.)

F-16 is made of composites

[chiph (523845)]

And it was built in the early 1980's. You would think that in a plane whose computers limit turns to 9g's -- not because of the airframe, but because of the stresses on the pilot -- they would have concerns over strength. But that is not so.

One concern the USAF had with the F-16 was that in the event of a crash, a cloud of electrically conductive carbon fibers would settle over the base, shorting out anything electrical. Judging by the F-16 we had burn on the taxiway at Hahn AB in 1985, that wasn't the case.

Chip H.

Re:

[tgd (2822)]

And so are F1 cars -- which crash at speeds equivalent to a plane landing and takeoff all the time. They're much SAFER because of their CF construction...

Re:

[Guysmiley777 (880063)]

The F-16 is made from aluminum. Production started in 1976. In the block 30, 40 and 50 F-16Cs some composite materials are used, but not in any great quantity. Carbon fiber composites emit very toxic fumes when burned, but then so do a lot of other materials used in aerospace.

So is the GEnx

[Z_A_Commando (991404)]

General Electric's GEnx is going to be used on the Dreamliner. It has a composite fan case and composite fan blades with a titanium leading edge. As part of the FAA certification for the engine to be certified to fly, it must withstand several tests: endurance, icing, foreign object ingestion, crosswind, and blade-out. -Endurance runs the engine at take-off power for over a week straight. -Icing involves shooting ice into the engine until it stalls or until you can't shoot a larger amount of ice. This is also done with water. The GEnx did not stall on this test. -Foreign Object Ingestion is where organic objects are shot into the engine (birds of various sizes). Think meat grinder. -Crosswind involves applying winds from non-standard directions. Fairly straight forward. -Blade-out is where an explosive charge is placed in the forward fan and detonated causing a blade to shoot out and get sucked into the engine. By FAA regulations the forward fan case and engine must completely contain the failure. The end result is a destroyed engine. For the GEnx, I have personally seen the fan case from the blade-out, and the carbon-fibre fan case withstood the blade-out on its first run. This truly attests to the strength of composites. Just my 2 cents.

If you ask me...

[maniac/dev/null (170211)]

If you ask me, Dan's gotten himself in more trouble than a chipmunk in a tire factory.

Shorter Testing Schedule?

[necro81 (917438)]

From the Fox News article:

The first 787 is due to be delivered to Japan's All Nippon Airways in May next year, meaning it will have at most six months of flight tests, much shorter than previous jetliner programs.

What they don't mention is that, while the testing schedule is shorter in terms of calendar days, Boeing is logging just as many, if not more, flight hours with the 787 test aircraft as they have with earlier projects. The accelerated schedule is to meet their delivery deadline, but all the requisite tests are still being done.

Boeing knows that the health of the company for the next 10-20 years rests with this aircraft. Airbus, despite its problems with the A380, isn't going to cease being a fierce competitor. If Boeing screws this project up, and gets a lot of bad PR from an aircraft failure, they'll be lucky to survive. With so much at stake, I trust them to do their jobs right.

The real safety concern is off-radar...

[aapold (753705)]

As we know from Battlestar Galactica, making the hull from composites will make it invisible to Radar [battlestarwiki.org]..

thus air traffic control will be unable to find them and guide traffic around them.

unsafe, huh?

[Connie_Lingus (317691)]

I hate articles like this...doesn't anyone actually use, you know, MATH to quantify terms like "safe" and "unsafe", without just throwing around FUD like this? BY FAR, the most dangerous thing we all do everyday is drive our cars around, which account for 44.3% of all accidental deaths in this country. This is followed by "Unspecified non-transport accidents" at 17.6%, and Falls at 13.6%.

Death stats found here http://www.the-eggman.com/writings/death_stats.html [the-eggman.com].

Aircraft deaths do not even make the list. How can something that accounts for less then 0.1% of all accidental deaths be called "unsafe"?

Not as well studied?

[vogon jeltz (257131)]

Oh Dear, here we go again ...
Carbon fibre, Aramid and glass fiber are the predominant construction materials in sailplanes. They all have a long, proven track record of reliability and endurance.
When a plane crashes, toxic fumes (emitted mostly by the material's matrix, usually epoxy raisin) will probably be the least of your problems.
Carbon fibre will burn to C02, because, as the name implies, it consists of carbon.

PS: I know what I'm talking about, because we build sailplane prototypes at the University of Darmstadt (the kind where you can actually sit in and fly).

Dan Rather's claims

[leereyno (32197)]

Dan Rather's claims are based on a report he received from 1972 detailing the flaws and dangers of carbon fiber airframes. The report used proportional fonts, kerning, and a typeface that was not available until much later.

When questioned about these inconsistencies, Rather declared "I believe this story is true! I believe it in my heart! I stand by my pres.. errr, I mean Boeing, but I feel this story is true!"

Boeing was not available for comment.

oh how much misinformation

[cbc1920 (730236)]

The comments in this thread are just more evidence for why we should leave the aircraft construction up to the engineers and not try to figure things out here.

Carbon fiber is a VERY active area of research, and it is definitely true that more is known about aluminum than CF structures, but this is for the simple fact that aluminum is about 10x simpler to understand and model than CF. You are talking about a metal that is isotropic (material properties the same no matter what direction you measure them) versus two different polymers, bonded together. Composite mechanics are incredibly complex, but that doesn't mean we don't understand them enough to make them safe. It only means that we have to use larger safety margins in our designs. As research continues, you will not see airplanes get safer, only cheaper and lighter. Safety is driven by FAA regs, and performance that is driven by material knowledge.

In general, carbon fiber is stiffer and stronger than aluminum. This means that you can make the plane weigh less and flex more. Good, right? It also will have better fatigue properties than Aluminum, since it does not have to deal with crack propagation. Aluminum will fail catastrophically, while CF will go gradually. Chances are that you will detect a CF failure long before it becomes a safety problem, as long as you use those fancy infrared/X-ray/gamma ray inspection devices. For those concerned about "water fatigue", there are a number of industry standard tests to measure this degredation, and it is included with every roll of CF that you order. It's definitely not something they haven't thought of.

The FAA has some of the most stringent regulations of any government agency when it comes to airplanes. The chances of an unsafe product making it to market are very low, simply because of the maintenance required and number of test hours needed. If you remember scandals of the past, they all come from companies either cheating the regulations or the regs failing to be applied. Please don't get riled up unless one of these two things is happening.

Misleading picture in the article....

[petaflop (682818)]

If you go to the article on WIRED, you are presented with the text accompanied by a picture of a shiny new boeing airliner. Presumably we are supposed to infer that the picture shows the aircraft concerned, perhaps rendered using CGI? In fact, mouseover the image and a balloon help pops up saying 'dreamliner', and the file is called "dreamliner.jpg".

However if I'm not very much mistaken, the picture is not a 787/dreamliner, but rather a Boeing 737/700 - a much smaller jet made mostly from more conventional materials. In fact, it's the same image used on the 737 wikipedia page [wikipedia.org]. Careless journalism from WIRED too, perhaps?

Re:Typical Dan Rather

[Zocalo (252965)]

Actually, Dan Rather is probably not making this up - he's more likely (mis)reporting some allegations made by a now sacked Boeing engineer, Vince Weldon. The Register has a write up [theregister.co.uk] based on what was said by the engineer and the rebuttals made by Boeing and the FAA.

Re:

[stoolpigeon (454276)]

Engineers who want to hang people on meat hooks are the kind of engineers you can trust. Passionate - that's what that is.

Re:Typical Dan Rather

[by Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Dan Rather is probably not making this up

True, it's not about if Dan Rather made it up or not, it's about if he did proper investigative journalism to determine if the allegations have merit out side of a disgruntled employee trying to stir up some FUD.

Or maybe Dan's just gone of the deep end [cnn.com]. Of course, should a jumbo jet fall from the sky and crash, I don't think it's going to matter it it's made of, it's going to be destroyed. Now, in situations such as crashes on the runway [www.cbc.ca], that might has some merit.

Courage.

Cheers,
Fozzy

Re:Typical Dan Rather

[jcr (53032)]

The documents were not only forged, they were incompetently forged. Rather blew it, and whether he did so because he hated GWB, or just wanted to be Woodward and Bernstein so bad he could taste it, doesn't change his guilt.

-jcr

Re:Typical Dan Rather

[jcr (53032)]

The story is about a former Boeing engineer who has serious concerns with the new plane's safety.

Nope, it's about a guy who got canned for making racist remarks on the job, looking for some way to lash out at Boeing and get some revenge. Fuck him.

-jcr

Re:Typical Dan Rather

[Sunburnt (890890)]

it's about a guy who got canned for making racist remarks on the job, looking for some way to lash out at Boeing and get some revenge. Fuck him.

Fired engineer: This plane is unsafe for the following reasons.

Boeing and government agencies: This plane is in complete compliance with FCC requirements, and this engineer is a racist.

Seems like it would be pretty premature to rush to some judgment on this issue without knowing:

1. The FAA's requirements for this new material, and their soundness.

2. Specific rebuttals of the claims, perhaps something more substantive than "it meets [unspecified] requirements" and vague, contextless mentions of future computer modeling.

I mean, fuck the guy if he's a racist prick. I doubt Boeing would allege something like that without a documented history, but I look forward to the release of the documentation when this goes to court. Still, I want to see some actual figures in response to his specific claims, and I don't understand why so many posters are in such a rush to judgmen...

Oh. Ah.

Re:Typical Dan Rather

[jcr (53032)]

Yeah, because if he is racist/personality challenged, he can't be any good in engineering either.

This isn't Shockley we're talking about, it's someone who was fired for cause, who didn't raise these issues before he was fired. If his former colleagues refuse to get on that plane, then I might give some credence to his claims, but until and unless that happens, I think he's full of shit.

-jcr

Re:Typical Dan Rather

[wytcld (179112)]

Rather didn't single-source this. He has confirmation from a number of other, currently-employed Boeing engineers of doubts about the composite materials. And if you look at the resume of his main source, it's impressive - the man was one of the top engineers at Boeing, and had done high-level work on NASA projects. Does that mean he's perfect? No engineer is. Does that mean his doubts should be considered seriously? Of course, especially when other engineers do agree about them.

There' also the very plain fact that Boeing is rushing this plane to market with far less testing than was used for recent generations of more conventional passenger jets. That gives Boeing every incentive not to listen to doubts. Boeing is betting that this can finally allow them to pull decisively ahead of Airbus, who has caused Boeing serious hurt over the last decade. Maybe it can, in the short run. Orders are coming in. But what happens if there's a spectacular crash or three? Will Boeing take the reputation hit that, say, Ford took about the Pinto? Maybe not. The public expects there to be no survivors from jetliner crashes. On the other hand, the sheer number of people these things will carry means the first such crash will be the most fatal - not counting people in buildings crashed into - ever. There will be weeks of international media scrutiny.

Boeing, we should be relieved to know, has tested the fuselage by dropping a section of it ... from 15 feet up.

Re:Typical Dan Rather

[WhiplashII (542766)]

Of course, they also tested it in many other ways - the drop test is simply one of the many tests the FAA requires. They have even done testing not really required by the FAA - for example, they bent the wings back to see how strong they were until they touched over the cabin!

Most of the tests are on youtube, by the way!

Re:Typical Dan Rather

[AeroIllini (726211)]

You have several things confused.

The 787 has not yet had wing tests conducted. The "touch over the cabin" part of your statement comes from the fact that many of the engineers at Boeing believe that to be possible; carbon fiber is so much more flexible than aluminum that it is, in theory, possible to bend the wings up over the fuselage until the two wingtips touch. Boeing will not perform the stress test to that extreme, however. Boeing will test the wings to the design maximum and then stop. They will not test to failure.

The reason for this is twofold: first, it doesn't matter after the design max. If the plane actually experienced design max stresses in flight, several other components (like the fuselage, or the vertical stabilizer) would fail first, so as long as the wing reaches that maximum without a problem, there's no need to test further. It doesn't matter how strong your wings are if your fuselage snaps in half first. Second, carbon fiber does not have a plastic strain region; it's all elastic strain before failure. That means that it will just continue to bend farther and farther without damage to the wing right up until failure (contrast with metal... when you bend far enough, it doesn't return to it's original shape anymore, but it has not yet failed). But, when it does finally fail, it doesn't snap, it shatters. That means clouds of hazardous carbon fiber dust and shards would be sent flying around in the factory. Not good.

The video on YouTube is of the 777 wing stress test conducted in the 90s. It was designed to reach 150% of max in-flight loading before snapping. It actually snapped at 154% (which is impressive ... if it breaks too far beyond the design limit, it means you made it too heavy).

IAABE, but I don't work on the 787.

Re:Typical Dan Rather

[AeroIllini (726211)]

On the other hand, the sheer number of people these things will carry means the first such crash will be the most fatal - not counting people in buildings crashed into - ever.

You are confusing the Boeing 787 with the Airbus A380.

A380: 525 seats. Two levels. Frikkin' huge. [news.com]
B787: 210-330 seats, depending on dash number. 767 replacement. [flightstory.net]

Boeing is not developing the 787 to compete with the A380. It is a smaller plane with a long, long range. Airbus bet that the industry wanted to focus more on hub-to-hub travel, and developed a plane that carries a whole lot of people from one major airport to another. Boeing took the opposite track, and bet that the industry wanted to focus more on point-to-point travel. This led them to develop a small plane with a long range that can go from minor airport to minor airport without a stop at a hub in between.

Re:

[countyroad265 (647177)]

A couple of points here: 1) Rather did not do the investigative work on the Bush story that blew up in CBS's face. It was a producer and her staff, and he delivered it on the air. Turns out that they were defrauded, under circumstances that have yet to come out. He was basically railroaded, and I wish him well in his lawsuit against his old bosses. 2) It's been noted elsewhere that all of this alarming information will either be invalidated or confirmed during the certification process. Well, as the

Re:Typical Dan Rather

[WhiplashII (542766)]

BS - the FAA does not examine the plane and "decide" if it is airworthy.

The FAA has set some tests that must be completed by all aircraft manufacturers - and the tests have extremely simple, impossible to fake criteria. For example, the fully loaded plane must go at full throttle on the runway up to the no return line, and slam on the brakes. The plane must stop before the end of the runway, sit for 5 minutes (worst case overheating of the brakes), and then taxi to the terminal. The tires are expected to blow, and the brakes may catch on fire, but other than that no damage is allowed.

There are many tests like this. They have to pass them all. If you build a plane from glass and it passes these tests, it is just as safe as a solid steel one - it would just be a lot harder to design.

Materials do not give a plane safety. Engineering is what gives a plane safety.

Aluminum

[goombah99 (560566)]

My dad worked for boeing and used to tell me stories of how airplane safety came to be. Basically an giant engnineering system to learn from every crash. One of the first stories he told me was about how they learned about metal fatigue when the early aluminum planes started dropping wings. At the time everyone though alumiunm would be a great airlpane construction material just like they think carbon fiber is now. No one anticipated what a disaster it turned out to be. Of course that was then. And now Aluminum is a great material, once they got the material science figured out.

Likewise the biggest single boon to aircraft safety was World War 2. There they had many plane designs (any given plane might have many different configurations) and they learned all sorts of fun things. Like for example that you had to not route all the electrical system through a single junction box (A washer got loose and shorted out a plane during turbulence that then crashed in SF bay). Or how you need to run both the main and backup fuel pumps up to full pressure during takeoff because if the mains fail then there is not enough time to spin up the backups to speed before the engines lose power. Or how you have to make the fuel pumps big enough to dump the tanks fast for an emergency landing. All of those discovered by "accident".

Some may recall the crash in NY where the composite tail ripped off when the pilot whipped the rudder too and fro in a non-standard maneuver.

THe good news is that the military uses composites and so they have had enough accidents to work things out for the commerical jets.

Re:Typical Dan Rather

[AeroIllini (726211)]

BS - the FAA does not examine the plane and "decide" if it is airworthy.

Well, they do, but not only while the plane is sitting on the tarmac, fully built. Certification happens all through the design process.

The FAA has a number of Airworthiness Representatives (ARs) who work for Boeing and report directly to the FAA. Each of the ARs has a different area of specialization, and is in charge of signing off on the designs the engineers release to make sure they conform directly to the Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs). They also witness tests to ensure they are conducted properly, and work with the engineers to make good design decisions and ensure a safe aircraft.

These ARs report directly to the FAA (not Boeing), and they take their jobs very seriously. Their signature is right there on a piece of paper that says "safe to fly", and if there is a failure, their careers are essentially over. An engineer can only become an AR after completing an FAA training period and getting licensed by the FAA.

Once the plane has been built, the FAA collects all the signatures from all the ARs and all the completed test data that has been signed acceptable by the ARs, and when everyone involved is satisfied that the airplane was built in conformance with the FARs, the FAA "tickets" the plane, and certifies it for flight. (Some of those tests are conducted in isolation, like flammability tests of materials or electromagnetic interference tests; others are conducted after rollout, such as your brake test example, or avionics tests).

As a result of this rigorous signoff process, absolutely every single nut, bolt, and part on the airplane satisfies the FARs. Modification and repair shops have similar methods of ensuring compliance with the regulations.

In the case of the 787, the ARs would be signing off against Part 25 of the Federal Aviation Regulations, which governs large commercial passenger aircraft.

IAABE, but I don't work on the 787 program.

Re:

[stoolpigeon (454276)]

If his 70 million dollar suit against CBS fails - he needs to stay in the public eye to pick up another job.

Re:And as we all know...

[hedwards (940851)]

I take it you don't actually understand how the TV news business works. Rather was the anchor for the news, he wasn't the one doing all of the investigation, research and fact checking on the stories that appeared. There just aren't that many hours in the day. Which is why news outlets will have producers, copywriters, fact checkers and a whole support staff that handles huge portions of the news end of things.

When it comes to the news, there are these very strict deadlines, and if you miss a key deadline by 20 minutes to fact check, you may as well just wait for the next day. And yes that's a big deal with a huge story, it could be the difference between breaking a story and being a me too response.

Using hindsight as a measure of how well an investigation was done is a practice with its sole root in ignorance. One would just assume that Nixon would be outed for the plumbers.

I think that it is amazing that people are genuinely OK with the lack of hard reporting on any of the presidents activities or the huge number of changes of course which were justified as not being changes at all, but totally against an honest mistake.

If the press had been really on their job instead of pussy footing around all the potentially huge stories without investigating them, I seriously doubt that the W fans would be complaining about this one instance rather than how the "liberal media" is out to get an honest politician.

Re:

[fnj (64210)]

"Oh crap! The plane is on fire! Make sure not to breathe in case you get poisoned!"
Is that really the biggest concern at that point? Seriously?

Actually, poisonous fumes are a prime killer in any fire, including aircraft fires. Cyanide gas, released from burning seat material, has been the agent of death in many cases.

Re:Airbus have had problems with composite parts t

[Richard_at_work (517087)]

The American Airlines flight crash had nothing to do with the fact the tail was composite - the NTSB report (Press Release [ntsb.gov]) found that the fin failed beyond the ultimate load that the fin was approved to:

The Board found that the composite material used in constructing the vertical stabilizer was not a factor in the accident because the tail failed well beyond its certificated and design limits.

The Air Transat incident is looking more and more likely that it was caused by leaking hydraulic fluid causing delamination in the composites to the point of failure.

the difference between bike shops and Boeing

[bellers (254327)]

Is that bike shops dont have neutron backscatter machines and x-rays to do non-destructive tests on carbon fiber parts.

Seriously, if you did preventative maintenance and checks on those carbon fiber parts you'd know when they had exceeded their service life long before they snapped.