apparently, the french press is now reporting that a tool mistakenly left int he electrical cabinet caused the short circuit/fire.

http://nyc787.blogspot.com/

If true, this is very good news for Boeing and the 787 program. IMHO, that is a quality control problem and not a design problem. If true, no redesign of the electrical system would be required.

Roger, Kicking in progress…:eek:

I forgot about the DC-8 program,:o but the 135s don’t count because they were never civil certified.

Okay…aside from the fuel/noise abatement programs, anyone know if anyone switched a P&W or Rolls 707 airframe to another make…
or if a widebody with P&W/GE/Rolls was converted because a new owner preferred a different brand of engines?

Probably a bit different from DC-3s where airframes were switched from P&W to Wrights or vice versa…but even then, I really don’t know if it was legal for commercial use…at least not without a lot of paperwork.

I don’t know if it has ever been done for the reason that it would not be economic to do so. It is clearly technically feasible, and does involve a “mountain of paperwork” as mentioned.

The nearest I can think of is when Northwest (then Northwest Orient) bought DC-10’s. Everyone else got GE, but NWA loved PW, so Douglas built them some DC-10’s with PW. I think only one or two other carriers got PW on the DC-10’s, but it might have been none. IIRC, the sole difference between the DC-10-30 and DC-10-40 was the engines, but they were installed at the factory and not a re-engine.

And then there was the 2707:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_2707

Cking….so if the crew that refused the A380 doesn’t get disciplined, we can assume airline management feels their refusal was justified.

I wonder how much you can tell about composite structure that has been exposed to high heat/fire by looking at it? Might it not be possible that some molecular rearrangement (my own, not technical, term but I think you get the point) occurred that is inivisible to the naked eye? At what point do you stop removing damaged structure and splice new stuff in?

This is a real good opportunity for Boeing to learn a lot….about what caused the incident, how to keep it from happening again, how to repair the airplane, etc., etc.

Having said all that, this is exactly the kind of thing that worried a lot of people from the beginning, including myself. The 787 is not just a composite airplane, its a composite airplane with virtually all new systems. For example, a 777 has one 120 kva generator on each engine, the 787 has two 250 kva generators on each engine. Thats a huge amount of power to manage and distribute. The air conditioning and pressurization system is virtually a clean sheet design with no real operational experience. Many other systems are also new. Its an extremely risky venture IMHO, and the initial timeline, which now appears to be some kind of cruel joke, bespeaks a serious lack of institutional control.

There should have been an entire research and development program over a number of years, leading to pilot production, and then a ramp up. Isn’t that how high risk programs are normally done? How long has the JSF program taken, by way of comparison? One gets the impression that Boeing so wanted to beat Airbus to market and lock up this segment, that they took enormous risks and set schedules they knew they couldn’t make.

It’s not uncommon to charter a civil C-130/L100 or even 747 freighter to move a widebody engine when/if it needs to be moved nowadays.

Regarding the crew refusing to fly the airplane, its a rather sad statement imho. The crew felt the bureaucratic inertia was so great that it (the regulators/manufacturers/airline) were not taking the incident seriously enough and that they (the crew) had to intervene. And now, an emergency AD has been issued……I can hear it now, “The crew were right, the airline wanted to force us to fly, but we saved the passengers.” Thereby emboldening every future crew whenever any little thing ever happens.

I’ll bet Elliot Carver is behind it!