Boeing Dreamliner Safety Concerns Are Specious 402
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 (Score:4, Funny)
Where's the news? (Score:2)
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The burning argument is the one I find the most bizarre. So let me get this straight... A > 20 ton aircraft crashes, and all they can think about is the potential "toxic ch
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Hehe, no kidding. As I read it... "Boeings new Planes are not safe if they crash!"
Really? They figure that out all by themselves?
Shocked (Score:2, Funny)
And as we all know... (Score:2, Troll)
...Dan Rather is making good use of his PH. D.'s in Materials Science and Molecular Chemistry when he says these things.
Really, Dan is just cranky after being outed by CBS for his lack of thorough background information checking, so he's taking it out on Boeing, probably because he had to wait for a flight at JFK.
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Hammer, meet nail.
This is nothing but a vain attempt by Rather to become "relevant" again. It's the equivalent of Britney Spear's "comeback" at the MTV awards show, and is just as likely to succeed.
Re:And as we all know... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
TV reporters are idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Anyway, from what I understand the biggest unknown with carbon fiber is its longevity. If this stuff degrades faster over time than aluminum, you could end up with a lot more poorly maintained aircraft coming apart in the sky. Probably not a big deal in developed countries where maintenance requirements are very strict
Re:TV reporters are idiots. (Score:4, Insightful)
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:
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.
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Re:TV reporters are idiots. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Informative)
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Carbon Fiber has similar issues. It's extremely strong under some stresses, but under others it snaps easily. From what I gather, CF is very rigid, but doesn't take impact or bending well.
CF is anisotropic material (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:TV reporters are idiots. (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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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.
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. (Score:4, Informative)
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. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Trusting Dan Rather is like.... (Score:5, Interesting)
- 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.
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I have a typewriter from the 1960's that offers that, the IBM Selectric, introduced in 1961. Boughtat an rmy surplus aucton, it was the most popular typewriter for military use until the mid-70's.
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Re:Trusting Dan Rather is like.... (Score:4, Insightful)
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Curing process (Score:3, Interesting)
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Re:Curing process (Score:4, Informative)
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No. It would vaporize. (Score:2)
Composites fail differently (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Watch the sequence I avoided putting this in the first post as I don't want the poor site slashdotted.
Carbon Fiber is used often in Sail boats. Including the masts. The images don't show the break up but a small section of the mast is missing. Instead of bending it just broke, crashing everything to the ground. It could be build quailty, or a number of other factors but such things need to be sorted out. Hence why I say it can go either wa
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They have different problems but they do have problems. I assume the Boeing engineers know what they are.
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I think the waste stream of old carbon fibre composite parts will be more of a long-term problem. At least the aluminium could be recycled.
777 static wing test (Score:4, Informative)
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.)
Boats are made out of composites (Score:2)
GPR boats suffer from "Boat Pox". (Score:2)
Would you care to reassure me in some other way please?
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Delamination of the layers, or "blistering" can be completely prevented by using an appropriate barrior coat of non-absorbing osmosis resistant epoxy.
The point is, engineers have decades of experience with laminates and epoxies that see far more moisture than a plan
In all fairness (Score:2)
**My personal disclaimer - I'm not happy with airlines, so don't look at my like that!
Dan, Dan, Dan..... (Score:2)
F-16 is made of composites (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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So is the GEnx (Score:5, Informative)
If you ask me... (Score:4, Funny)
OT your sig (Score:2)
Busy man (Score:2)
Dan's a little distracted right now as he's busy SCOing CBS [cnn.com]. You see, it was their fault that he lied about the fake Bush memo and therefore they should give him $70M.
Does Rather have credibility with anyone now, or is this just an old man past his glory days that desperately wants to remain relevant and visible?
Shorter Testing Schedule? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Airbus have had problems with composite parts too (Score:2)
I hope Boeing have learned from these accidents.
Re:Airbus have had problems with composite parts t (Score:2, Interesting)
To my knowledge, they haven't because they didn't make those design decisions in the first place, knowing that there was a risk to them and deciding to avoid them in advance rather than risk learning from a bad decision the hard way.
Boeing engineers are incredibly conservative. Airbus is a bit more aggressive - brought to you by most of the same companies that brought you Ariane 5...
As an example: Different design teams made both the hardware and software
Re:Airbus have had problems with composite parts t (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Airbus have had problems with composite parts t (Score:3, Informative)
After he had been told by a pilot to NEVER do that again, and one pilot refused to ever fly with him again.
The guy, through a combination of his own inflated ego and the flawed American Airlines Advanced Aircraft Maneuvering Program (AAMP) killed everyone onboard that flight. What happened was in the AAMP one of the things taught was a "Wake Turbulence Avoidance Manuver" in a commercial flight simulator. The problem was they started with the simulation pause
The real safety concern is off-radar... (Score:3, Funny)
thus air traffic control will be unable to find them and guide traffic around them.
unsafe, huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
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"?
Counter example: (Score:2)
While I find your overall point valid, the above has an easy answer: popularity. It is obviously unsafe to mechanically force the ingestion of 100 pounds of live fire ants... However, this particular act probably accounts for no deaths at all, 0.0%.
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F1 too (Score:2)
Publicity (Score:2, Insightful)
Not as well studied? (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Boeing Dreamliner Concerns Are Spacious? (Score:2)
Composite Bicycles (Score:2)
Anyway, the aerospace people have been using composites for longer than the bicycle people, so they've developed things like X and Gamma ray machines to look for defects before they become a problem. If Boeing ca
Dan Rather's claims (Score:3, Funny)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
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.... (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Carbon Fiber Is Not Safe (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Typical Dan Rather (Score:5, Interesting)
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The story is about a former Boeing engineer who has serious concerns with the new plane's safety.
Now forget Dan Rather.
If the engineer has credible concerns, what's the worst thing that can happen?
That more testing is done on the Dreamliner?
Oh noes!
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Re:Typical Dan Rather (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Actually this is extra-insightful.
The resignation of Richard M. Nixon totally changed reporting and what reporters thought they could accomplish with an investigation. Prior to the 1970s administrations were considered inviolate even if they were poor. And that inviolability was created by the first President to be impeached, Andrew Johnson [umkc.edu]. Nixon was impeached based on information provided to the House Judiciary Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities by the press as
We're OT (was: Re:Nixon wasn't impeached) (Score:3, Informative)
No, he wasn't. But the House Judiciary Committee voted in favor of 9 articles on Saturday, July 27, 1974, 5 additional articles on Monday, July 29, 1974 and a Contempt of Congress citation, voted on Tuesday, July 30, 1974. His support in Congress had waned to the point that impeachment was a veritable certainty.
The Senate vote in Clinton's case was after a full trial, just as Andrew Johnson's was.
Nixon knew that, were a trial to occur in the Senate, he would be removed from office and would have no contro
Re:Typical Dan Rather (Score:4, Informative)
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
Re:Typical Dan Rather (Score:4, Informative)
Most of the tests are on youtube, by the way!
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Re:Typical Dan Rather (Score:5, Informative)
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
IAABE, but I don't work on the 787.
Re:Typical Dan Rather (Score:4, Informative)
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:Typical Dan Rather (Score:4, Insightful)
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
Not really (Score:2)
As to this story, do note that Weldon (with rather simply reporting) is saying that composites are NOT as safe as aluminum in a crash, which is almost certainly true. It most likely will shatter with the right impact. And Metal will be worse in certain conditions. Fox makes it worse with a supposed FAA statement (which is most likely not what was said):
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) must find the 787 to be as crashworthy as al
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Re:Typical Dan Rather (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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1- Not every plane accident has a 100% death toll, just consider the case of very rough landing.
2- Even if the plane goes fireball and burns everyone inside, you might consider not adding hundred of other people on the ground to the list of the victims.
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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.
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Argh! can't keep all these movies straight!
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the difference between bike shops and Boeing (Score:4, Informative)
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.