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Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

reuters.com

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Re: Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

#51

Post by hulitu »

bityard wrote: post #43
m0llusk wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon fiber airframes are new and have displayed unanticipated failures. Maybe they should have had more testing or more should have gone into reliable inspection and repair. We as a society may come to appreciate demonstrated robustness as much as novelty and efficiency.

> Maybe they should have had more testing or more should have gone into reliable inspection and repair. Hindsight is so very easy to deploy from the comfort of the HN comments section. If everyone was this pessimistic, nobody would ever get things out of the R&D lab and into the real world.

There are other industries beside "code fast, break things often and let the user test it". In some industries a test not done on time or skipped can cost later a lot of money.

Re: Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

#52

Post by erect_mom »

1cvmask wrote: post #5

It seems that victim blaming is not something specific to just Boeing. Airbus blamed Qatar airways and the hot weather till similar issues emerged with planes of Finn Air and Air France in colder climates. Whatever happened to the customer is always right? Guess it is easier to victim blame when you operate in essence a duopoly. Competition is critical to solve these issues in the long run.

the customer is always right?

you're old school. i like that.

Re: Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

#53

Post by cowgoesmoo »

cjrp wrote: post #25
ComputerGuru wrote: post #21

> Airbus says there is no risk to the A350's safety - a point echoed by the other airlines, which have not grounded any jets and describe the issue as "cosmetic." Talk about parties with vested interest in a “nothing to see here, keep moving” conclusion. The only opinion that actually matters here is that of the regulators.

Certainly looks more than cosmetic in the photos, surely has an effect on the aerodynamics if you're flying around with mesh on show.

It might increase parasitic drag by a tiny amount, which will reduce fuel efficiency, but these planes have so much thrust that the increase in drag is negligible to the actual operations of the aircraft.

Re: Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

#54

Post by lorenzfx »

Bayart wrote: post #26
1cvmask wrote: post #5

It seems that victim blaming is not something specific to just Boeing. Airbus blamed Qatar airways and the hot weather till similar issues emerged with planes of Finn Air and Air France in colder climates. Whatever happened to the customer is always right? Guess it is easier to victim blame when you operate in essence a duopoly. Competition is critical to solve these issues in the long run.

>Whatever happened to the customer is always right? That never made it to Europe to begin with.

It did, at least as a proverb. E.g. In German there is a saying "der Kunde ist König" (customer is king)

Re: Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

#55

Post by wishawa »

m0llusk wrote: post #37
ghshephard wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read this paragraph a couple times - and what I find intriguing is how it's the sort of thing that GPT-3 can write based on the initial news statement. Every sentence in it is somewhat tautological. Maybe I'm just more suspicious, but I can envision a time (uh, maybe it's already here?) when forums like HN start to get peppered with AI commentary... This sentence, though - seems to be without any basis: "Current…

Carbon fiber airframes are new and have displayed unanticipated failures. Maybe they should have had more testing or more should have gone into reliable inspection and repair. We as a society may come to appreciate demonstrated robustness as much as novelty and efficiency.

What is today’s date?

Re: Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

#56

Post by kuschku »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #8
timw4mail wrote: post #7

I'm not sure there exists a more complex set of requirements for paint than for aircraft. Extreme cold to surface temperatures, the requirement to flex with adhered surfaces without cracking, plus the desire for a paint job to last for years. It looks like conductivity is also desired, to some degree, to help the metal surfaces dissipate lightning.

>I'm not sure there exists a more complex set of requirements for paint than for aircraft. Extreme cold to surface temperatures, the requirement to flex with adhered surfaces without cracking, plus the desire for a paint job to last for years. That's basically a walk in the park compared to anything that needs to deal with unearthly temperatures and harsh chemicals at the same time. Furthermore, air (and airborne wat…

Wouldn't e.g. landing and starting from an airport near the sea with constant saltwater droplets in the air also damage the paint?

Re: Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

#57

Post by tcskeptic »

1cvmask wrote: post #5

It seems that victim blaming is not something specific to just Boeing. Airbus blamed Qatar airways and the hot weather till similar issues emerged with planes of Finn Air and Air France in colder climates. Whatever happened to the customer is always right? Guess it is easier to victim blame when you operate in essence a duopoly. Competition is critical to solve these issues in the long run.

Whatever happened to the customer is always right?

Have you ever met a customer?

Re: Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

#58

Post by trimbo »

reaperducer wrote: post #39
1cvmask wrote: post #5

It seems that victim blaming is not something specific to just Boeing. Airbus blamed Qatar airways and the hot weather till similar issues emerged with planes of Finn Air and Air France in colder climates. Whatever happened to the customer is always right? Guess it is easier to victim blame when you operate in essence a duopoly. Competition is critical to solve these issues in the long run.

Whatever happened to the customer is always right? Marshall Field, the man who coined that phrase, went out of business. His department store got eaten by Macy's.

Marshall Field died in 1906. Marshall Field's was an independent public company from 1930 until 1982.

Re: Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

#59

Post by OldHand2018 »

Halfway through the article is this extraordinarily helpful information (given that I know nothing at all about aircraft paint):

> When Airbus 15 years ago launched the A350, it chose to follow Boeing's new 787 in using carbon-fibre instead of metal.

> Experts say the lighter jets consume less fuel but are harder to deck out in a way that makes paint stick.

> The new jets also need a layer of metallic mesh to dissipate lightning strikes because carbon-fibre is not conductive.

> Finally, unlike metal, carbon does not expand and shrink as temperatures change. Yet paint does, resulting in a tug of war between plane and paint that can cause peeling over time.

> Problems reported by Qatar Airways and some - though far from all - other A350 operators suggest this is happening earlier than expected, two people familiar with the design said.

> The problem may have been compounded by the paint's especially weak adhesion to titanium rivets, they added.

I wonder how dissimilar the paint and/or painting process is to the 787. Perhaps it will one day suffer the same issues.

Re: Costly Airbus paint flaw goes wider than the Gulf

#60

Post by slownews45 »

smnrchrds wrote: post #35
1cvmask wrote: post #5

It seems that victim blaming is not something specific to just Boeing. Airbus blamed Qatar airways and the hot weather till similar issues emerged with planes of Finn Air and Air France in colder climates. Whatever happened to the customer is always right? Guess it is easier to victim blame when you operate in essence a duopoly. Competition is critical to solve these issues in the long run.

Boeing also initially blamed pilots for 737 MAX crashes, until too many of them crashed, the regulators caught up and grounded the planes, and forced them to take responsibility. It seems like shifting the blame is the norm in the airline industry. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-11-16/are-boein...

I thought Boeing blamed it on a combination of poor maintenance practices by the relevant airlines, poor handling and response to inflight error messages and maintenance requests on previous flights that left the issue unaddressed, and then weaknesses on the pilot side during the accident flights?

I personally think they went a bit overboard with the revised procedure memory items.

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