Earlier quoted context omitted.
Certainly better than hot piss.
Is that what happens on the lower decks? :-)
Just rename it steerage, and you're resurrecting fine old nautical tradition.
Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system
131–140 of 223 posts
Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would Airbus spend 10 Billion on RD for a new plane if they can only spend 1.5 Billion on RD to modify an existing design? In their current form, Airbus and Boing don't really compete, which is bad for the customers but good for the shareholders of these companies. They already produce almost all of the passenger aircrafts and they would love this to continue. The 737 MAX fiasco threatens this arrangement.
> Why would Airbus spend 10 Billion on RD for a new plane if they can only spend 1.5 Billion on RD to modify an existing design? Because that's what manufacturers always did? If you only do iterative changes then eventually you run into a wall. Boeing engineers also knew that. The disagreement between what engineers wanted and what management wanted has been a point of contention for many years.
See, that wall is not a problem when you are in a duopoly. You will need to jump the wall only if your competitor jumps and why your competitor would jump if you can pocket the 8.5 billions and sell the regular stuff?
That was what Boeing and Airbus supposed to do: Sell the a320Neo and 737MAX for as long as possible and stay away from the wall. Now that Boeing screwed up, they may be forced to jump the wall and Airbus will have to follow. On the other side of the wall, they will sell the same number of planes.
Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Al Jazeera is in general completely biased against Israel and YES, I MENTIONED that I have issues with a lot of their reporting. At the same time watch the report and get your own conclusions before shooting it down based on YOUR biases and prejudices, that reporting is solid, it has video evidence from an employee walking inside the Charleston factory and chatting with co-workers regarding the safety of the planes a…
One ends up with the most rounded view of the world by reviewing media with many different slants and biases and assuming the truth probably lies somewhere between all the biased news stories.
That's pretty faulty logic - some biases don't have a middle ground to identify
Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Airbus is no better. Investigation report about an incident in 2018 was just released: https://avherald.com/h?article=4b57c3dd/0000&opt=0 What happened there: wrong kind of oil was used in elevator and it went unnoticed because maintenance guides did not require any inspections of affected parts. Wrong oil caused delays in sensor triggering, which led to primary computers shutting down, believing that there was a pro…
> Airbus is no better. Maybe, but the report you linked does not show that. The issue with Boeing is not that a plane crashed but that planes crashed despite earlier reports that people considered these planes unsafe. No such reports came out of Airbus about the A320 as far as I'm aware. Also the regulators did not delegate certification to Airbus.
Airbus has similar long-standing issues. On ground / airborne detection logic was broken in 1993 and is still broken in 2019, to a point that it can cause loss of flight controls.
Boeing, in contrast, uses simple radar altimeter. Whenever altitude reads 10 feet or less, the aircraft is considered to be "on ground" and things like thrust reversers become available.
I personally avoid praising or preferring Airbus when bashing Boeing. Who knows what else is under that rock too.
Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
After the demise of the a380 project i doubt airbus will ever think again that the aircraft can sell themselves.
The A380 might actually live the destiny of the 767 or 757. Sure, it was a handful for the manufacturer, luckily pulled it off, kinda broke even after some time. But it will be long gone when it will be really needed, when large hubs become even more congested or certain P2P lines heavily overgrow on themselves.
Good riddance. Despite being so big, its fuel efficiency is unimpressive. Something must be wrong with the design.
Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
A380 is an amazing business case. Ask anyone who has flown on one what their favourite commercial plane is and I would bet the majority will say it's the A380. Despite that it was still a commercial failure.
My wife surely wouldn’t. The upper deck lav leaked on our heads for half the flight from Sydney to LA. What’s worse than a 16 hour flight? A 16 hour flight where you have to stand in the aisles.
I generally spend most long haul flights standing in the aisle. It's much better for your back and butt.
Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system
#137Wow - more serious story than I first imagined. > Mr Barnett, a former quality control engineer, worked for Boeing for 32 years, until his retirement on health grounds in March 2017. From 2010 he was employed as a quality manager at Boeing's factory in North Charleston, South Carolina. This plant is one of two that are involved in building the 787 Dreamliner. In terms of credibility lent by a career, you can't do muc…
> Even if the bag does not inflate, breathe normally as oxygen is flowing. Or not.
The 787 doesn't have any accumulator bags, the big difference with that system is that its electronically pulse controlled oxygen flow rather than a mechanical/chemical constant flow system.
His claim isn't exactly true, the lab he used sent power to all systems at once, this is why he saw a failure of about 25%, in fact the system on the plane actually fires the system in a sequence because the power draw to start all systems at once is just too high. So sit closer to the front of the plane if you want oxygen faster.
Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do we know the FAA hasn’t taken no notice? Does the whistleblower present any evidence? How about the air carriers? Do they fail to test their systems during their frequent inspections? One requirement of an air carrier certificate is that they have to check this stuff and sign off on it.
What I know from how an oxygen generator works, you cannot reliably test those destruction free. So you would have to take some out and trigger them. I would be reluctant to believe that this is the procedure.
The 787 doesn't use generators, they use sealed single use oxygen cylinders. This is a newer version of the 787 system https://www.rockwellcollins.com/Products-and-Services/Commer...
Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system
#139The market would benefit massively from another entrant to the space, eliminating this Boeing + Airbus duopoly.
If there's any entity that's proven they can tackle capital intensive aerospace markets as a new player, it's SpaceX. I know they're waiting for battery energy density to improve so that they can launch supersonic electric jets, but regular jets that use jet fuel wouldn't be a horrible stopgap.
Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
John Barnett’s potential involvement with the union ought to be disclosed. There are repeated claims of “problems,” that are strangely coincidental to union opposition to right to work states. Attributing altruism when in fact there had been a concerted campaign against right to work states and factories moving there is journalistic malpractice. “Many analysts say that Boeing decided to put its second Dreamliner airc…
I think that you make a lot of interesting points until your final paragraph. If I'm reading the details properly (and I may not be; you seem to be far more informed than I am), then the particular test in question may have detected the problem about which Mr. Barnett is complaining, where other tests might not: > Mr Barnett says that when he was decommissioning systems which had suffered minor cosmetic damage, he fo…
You are reading that correctly, but as someone who worked on the system over a decade ago, I bet he didn't have it setup exactly like the plane. I bet he tried to fire all the cylinders at once, a 25% failure rate in this configuration actually isn't bad. But on the actual aircraft they don't fire all of the cylinders at once, they are staged front to back because the power draw is too big to fire all the pyrotechnic devices at once.