Posted on 07/09/2008 9:38:43 AM PDT by XR7
AIRLINES are desperate. With jet fuel over $4 per gallon and still climbing, American, United and other major carriers are raising fares, cutting flights, trimming fleets and laying off pilots. They're also ordering fuel-efficient Boeing 787s and Airbus A350XWBs — the new generation of plastic planes.
These new aircraft promise 20-percent-lower fuel consumption. Replacing heavier traditional aluminum alloys, 50 percent of their skins, panels and load-bearing structures are comprised of lighter, stiffer carbon-fiber-reinforced-plastic (CFRP) composites. Then add the latest, most fuel-efficient engine technology. Sounds good.
But beneath these advantages danger lurks — novel maintenance challenges for which neither airlines nor the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are prepared. Overall, today's jetliners have reached a plateau of such aerodynamic and propulsive efficiency that individual Boeing 737s or Airbus A300 aircraft often spend two or three decades in service, as will new 787s and A350s.
Regarding fleet recapitalization, that was good news for the airlines' bottom line — and for their stockholders — until fuse pin metal fatigue allowed engines to fall off the wings of 747s and corrosion caused the 1988 explosive decompression of an Aloha 737 at 24,000 feet, as the top of the fuselage peeled back and sucked out a flight attendant.
Now, composite aircraft components have also begun to rain from the sky.
Shortly after takeoff in November 2001, the entire composite vertical fin of American Airlines' Flight 587 was ripped from the A300's fuselage; 265 people died...
(Excerpt) Read more at crosscut.com ...
Every time a new airplane, especially a revolutionary airplane is introduced into service, the doomsayers dream up scenarios where in their considered opinion, disaster will ensue. All I can say about the latest is:
If you are a retired General, no-one pays you money to write about how well a program is running. Where’s the news in that?
What's 8 hours sitting on asphalt in the summer Las Vegas sun going to do to the glue that holds the plastic together? They'll have to move their long term airplane storage yards out of the dry air desert.
Summary: Change is bad.
Blaming the AA587 crash on pilot error always stunk!
Yep. We’ve been flying plastic airplanes for quite a while now.
Nothing so gentle as commercial flight.
High load combat and training missions.
Only one loss due to mechanical failure, and that required a maintenance failure of some magnitude - not installing half the bolts needed to hold a wing on!
I knew I read this guys name before, here is his take on the 2nd amendment decision before it was made.
I would be more concerned with a plane with parts MADE IN COMMUNIST CHINA than a plane with AMERICAN made plastic parts.
Location of the factory...not the material used...is a bigger concern
What a friggin waste of bandwidth.
Yep. QC = Quality Control, we have it, they don’t.
It’s why I would never consider flying on a Chinese or Russian made plane while I would fly on a Japanese or even a Korean plane if I had to without fear.
Made in America.
Maintained in Columbia.
Using Chinese parts...
Ugh.
LOL considering they made those things out of WOOD!...
Wood. Just like Polaris missile nose cones...
Stories like this make me glad I decided some time ago to never fly again.
I feel sorry for those that have to fly every week. Putting up with all the crap must be very stressful.
Additionally, CFRP (carbon fiber reinforced plastics) are extraordinarily strong and light. I have a friend that hand makes very high performance model airplane using CFRP wings, fuselage and wing spars. The models can support 300 G's before the wing spars will permanently deform.
Also, Boeing tested the fuselage structures to failure a few weeks ago and it held firm to 200% of the ultimate design limit. Tremendously greater than it will EVER experience during its lifetime.
It's like Toyota taking a Camry to 200 Miles per hour while redlining the engine for hours on end. The car will clearly never see that kind abuse during it's lifetime but they do it to prove that it can be done and most importantly that it will hold together.
It might not fall apart but wouldn't it lose strength, in some cases permanently? The plastics in cars don't support tons of weight or get hit with 500 mph winds.
I have however, accidentally sliced or stabbed myself several times with my X-acto knife ;-)
Yes it holds up. Ever designed a plane? Ever done any materials stress analysis? No? Then trust in the engineers that do or go live in a cave.
Exactly. This guy writes like he knows what he is talking about, but put him in a room full of wing nuts like Boeing employs and they would make him look like a simpering idiot in about 30 seconds.
The 787 is an incredible machine, I would be proud to be first in line to take a maiden voyage on her anytime knowing how well she has been tested.
Man, I’m tryin’ to identify the plane...
I have lost count of how many of these “Plastic Planes?! OHNOZ!!” threads I have read over the years. Someone better not tell them that their house is held up but nothing but bits of wood and tiny slivers of metal.
Looks like a Russian Pe-8 bomber.
I suspect that time will show that the 787 is considerably ‘overbuilt’ to cover unknown material performance characteristics. The 707 was built like a tank due to lessons learned from the British Comet disaster.
Civilian aircraft are normally designed to very tight design limits to save weight. Another poster pointed out a 200 percent design limit on a fuselage component. That’s pretty hefty for an aircraft component.
You can cut a design really close if you have good data on the materials & service life. The more unknowns you have the more ‘design factor’ you add in.
Boeing designers may make a mistake here or there, but they know their business.
ping
But the rich and powerful are cutting corners to get richer and they don't care who they kill to do it. The MSM told me so, and they wouldn't lie on television. ;)
A-20 Boston/Havoc?
Watch this: Boeing 777 Wing Test
THEN tell me they're unsafe. . .
Talon DJ is correct. It's a Russian Petlyakov Pe-8.
Unbelievable ignorance here..........
Seattle Times has more than one staff writer that is known for being anti-Boeing. I’m not sure if this one of them, but I would put money on it.
Let’s just say I know from whence I speak.
Tallguy has nailed it. Boeing is overbuilding the 787 since it is the first of its kind. Future refinement of the material will be comparable to improvements made from the original 707 to current aircraft.
The recently tested fuselage section only partially failed, and was stopped because of test rig limits.
Thanks for the bit of sanity in an otherwise ‘we are doomed’ thread. I am sick and tired of know nothing, gotta say something stupid, flat out idiots that usually inhabit any tech thread. Sort of like ‘I milk cows for a living, but I have an opinin on aeronautical engineering’.
Looks like there is only provisions for 1 engine nacelle on each wing (ie. twin engine). Plus the wingspan proportions don’t look right for a Pe-8. I admit that the fuselage looks like a close match, however.
As they say in the NFL, “Upon further review...”.
I think those are the “outboard” wing sections depicted in the model. IOW’s just the portion of the wing extending from the inboard engines to the wingtip.
I bow to your expert eye(s).
The general reliablity of commercial aircraft today is remarkable considering the complexity of aircraft construction.
An aircraft is a hand-made work of industrial art. A great place to observe this is in the Air Force Museum at Dayton, Ohio. The Wright brothers’ planes were great, early works of art - beautifully made.
Unlike metal, plastics are brittle; consequently is it
possible that plastics will, at some point, crack rather
than bend.
I wouldn’t trust them as far as I can throw them! I refuse
to fly: I want to choose the way I die.
Actually the research did start at least 20 years ago. When I was at University of Dayton Research Institute back in the late 1980s some of our people had contracts with Wright Field to investigate methods for detecting delamination and other defects in composite aircraft structures. I did some of the statistical analysis for them. I have no doubt there's been a lot of progress since then, even if I haven't kept up with it.
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