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Metal shards from Boeing 787 taking off over Rome rain down on people below

independent.co.uk

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Re: Metal shards from Boeing 787 taking off over Rome rain down on people below

#111

Post by salawat »

wahern wrote: post #80
inferiorhuman wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about when they were first released? If memory serves Rolls placed the blame on the initial problems with the Trent 1000 on air quality in SE Asia (high sulfur content specifically). Which is to say, I don't get the impression that certification was done sloppily. Are planes required to have one old-reliable engine? Reliability is (theoretically) improved. From following threads on a.net and pprune it seems like…

They are much more reliable, but also much more costly to build and maintain. There was an argument that the A380 wasn't less fuel efficient simply because it had four engines. When you only have two engines they need to be much more reliable, have much higher peak output, and the costs of maintenance are greater. Whereas when you have four engines each engine is cheaper to build, can have more efficient power profil…

I thought A380 was doomed because of lack of configurability for a freight option, and the fact that some narrow bodies were starting to eat it's lunch as direct flights started to become more common instead of hub and spoke.

What you've posted though seems way more plausible though I've gotta admit.

Re: Metal shards from Boeing 787 taking off over Rome rain down on people below

#112

Post by dreamcompiler »

mikl wrote: post #38

2019 has been a true _annus horribilis_ for Boeing.

This failure is likely the engine, which is not Boeing's fault. The engines have made it a bad year for Norwegian and other 787 customers, who have had to cut back their schedules to accommodate unplanned engine maintenance. And of course it's been a terrible 18 months for Rolls-Royce.

Re: Metal shards from Boeing 787 taking off over Rome rain down on people below

#113

Post by salawat »

krona wrote: post #14
t0mas88 wrote: post #3

Small shards (in great numbers) that according to a witness on the ground were burning or very hot sounds a lot like (pieces of) blades from the turbine or stator/guide vanes. In both cases it's a very significant engine failure.

Given that the aircraft itself seems otherwise undamaged, and people on the ground reported it 'rained' metal shards, I'd say these parts melted off the turbine and fell out. Significant but not catastrophic.

>Significant but not catastrophic

Keep in mind, "catastrophic" is a loaded word in aviation safety parlance. It specifically means that failure of a system or component threatens total unrecoverable loss of the aircraft; and is the point where redundancy and fail-safe become required by law in order to certify.

The regulation specifies no single point of failure should result in catastrophic loss.

Any failure is news worthy, but this poster is on point. Chernobyl meme opportunity aside.

Re: Metal shards from Boeing 787 taking off over Rome rain down on people below

#114

Post by salawat »

andy_ppp wrote: post #79

And this is what a culture of management bonuses causes. I don’t want to ever fly Boeing again at this rate...

The downside button is not meant as a disagree button.

Anyway, there was likely nothing Boeing could do at the early design stage to make up for poor choices on the engine manufacturers part except a higher degree of scrutiny with regards to the actual manufacturing facility and essentially double checking all of RR's work.

Considering they are questionable at certifying their own work, I'd not necessarily look to burden them with being an engine manufacturer on top of an airframe one. As irritating to me as that is that quality departments typically don't integrate vertically or even share that type of info to enable that type of analysis.

Re: Metal shards from Boeing 787 taking off over Rome rain down on people below

#115

Post by Xixi »

mikl wrote: post #106
LeonM wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title of the article should be Metal shards of Rolls-Royce Trend 1000 engine rain down on people below . It has very little to do with Boeing in this case. But blaming Boeing in the title gets you more clicks, and clicks equals money for journalism.

If a Tesla has a fatal accident because of some 3rd party component, the headlines will blame Tesla, too. Boeing is not free of responsibility here, they chose to sell said engines as an option on their planes. They have worked together with Rolls Royce to integrate their engines with their plane. In theory, engine problems could even be caused by Boeing's software mismanaging the engines.

The comparison with Tesla is not valid: when you buy a Tesla, you buy a Tesla from Tesla. When you buy a Boeing 787, you chose the engines (GE or Rolls Royce) and buy them directly from the engine maker. You would also sign a maintenance/support contract with the engine maker directly.

It is not rare for plane contracts and engine contracts to not be signed simultaneously: the engine maker might be decided months after the contract for the 787 is firmed. Aircraft engines do not qualify as "some 3rd party component".

A slightly better comparison (but not perfect) would be if you buy a server from Dell with an Intel microprocessor, and there's an issue with that Intel chip: will you blame Intel or Dell? After all you could have picked a Dell server with an AMD processor.

Re: Metal shards from Boeing 787 taking off over Rome rain down on people below

#116

Post by stronglikedan »

tpowell wrote: post #23

One of the pieces in her hand has the unique shape of a fan blade. There’s a series on YouTube documenting the factories where the engines are created: https://youtu.be/UazsDDFsS7Q

The show How It's Made did a cool segment on turbine blades, which really gave me a deep appreciation of the process.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnrCjVf9xuY

Re: Metal shards from Boeing 787 taking off over Rome rain down on people below

#117

Post by apexalpha »

Xixi wrote: post #115
mikl wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a Tesla has a fatal accident because of some 3rd party component, the headlines will blame Tesla, too. Boeing is not free of responsibility here, they chose to sell said engines as an option on their planes. They have worked together with Rolls Royce to integrate their engines with their plane. In theory, engine problems could even be caused by Boeing's software mismanaging the engines.

The comparison with Tesla is not valid: when you buy a Tesla, you buy a Tesla from Tesla. When you buy a Boeing 787, you chose the engines (GE or Rolls Royce) and buy them directly from the engine maker. You would also sign a maintenance/support contract with the engine maker directly. It is not rare for plane contracts and engine contracts to not be signed simultaneously: the engine maker might be decided months aft…

Are you telling me airlines have to order and directly buy the engines themselves? Surely not?

Re: Metal shards from Boeing 787 taking off over Rome rain down on people below

#118

Post by Xixi »

apexalpha wrote: post #117
Xixi wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comparison with Tesla is not valid: when you buy a Tesla, you buy a Tesla from Tesla. When you buy a Boeing 787, you chose the engines (GE or Rolls Royce) and buy them directly from the engine maker. You would also sign a maintenance/support contract with the engine maker directly. It is not rare for plane contracts and engine contracts to not be signed simultaneously: the engine maker might be decided months aft…

Are you telling me airlines have to order and directly buy the engines themselves? Surely not?

Why wouldn't they? Engines are by far the most expensive and critical parts of an airliner. So airlines issue RFPs to engine makers to extract the best possible price/conditions. The result of these RFPs is usually a matter of public announcement, see for instance the choice of CFM (a joint venture between GE and Safran) to power IndiGo A320NEO: https://www.ft.com/content/d1c20f9e-9119-11e9-aea1-2b1d33ac3....

The contract is signed directly between the airline and the engine maker. Of course the engines are installed by the OEM (Boeing, Airbus, etc.), as otherwise delivering the plane would be problematic to say the least...

EDIT: another, more relevant example: Norwegian ordered 19 Boeing 787-9 in October 2015, and selected Rolls-Royce to power them in February 2016 (https://atwonline.com/engines/norwegian-selects-rolls-royce-...)

Re: Metal shards from Boeing 787 taking off over Rome rain down on people below

#119

Post by refurb »

dmurray wrote: post #13
gota wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those metal bits look big enough to kill a person. I mean, anything havier than a marble falling from high enough will do a lot of damage, right?

Anything with enough power to smash a hole right through a car windscreen (as in the second picture) can kill you, definitely.

I’m being pedantic here, but there are exceptions to that rule.

In SF, it’s common for car thieves to break windows using a small chip (size of a pencil eraser) of ceramic from a spark plug. The ceramic is super hard but light weight and can shatter a window easily.[1] being hit by it would barely register.

[1] https://youtu.be/llu-ckEe5cQ

Re: Metal shards from Boeing 787 taking off over Rome rain down on people below

#120

Post by the_seraphim »

sgt101 wrote: post #100
serf wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the cars are made by BMW. as of 1998. Most of Clarksons' jokes are in reference to the 70s and 80s era of Rolls Royce -- which is known among auto enthusiasts as one of the least reliable group of cars to have ever existed.

Sold to vickers in 1980. The 70s rollers were of their era... All cars were unreliable then!

as were the children's television entertainers...
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