Boeing

[Raja Clavata]

Are Boeing on a self destruct mission? There's the high profile issue with the 737 Max 8, now the P&W issue on the 777. To the casual observer that's surely bad enough but if you look a bit deeper you can see they have two major issues with assembly of the 787 Dreamliner. It's almost like they lost the recipe on how to build aircraft. Anyone have any deep insight into all this?

[blackbird]

Just imagine if Land Rover made aircraft 😱😱😱

Edited February 22, 2021 by blackbird

[TIGHTCHOKE]

2 minutes ago, Raja Clavata said:

Are Boeing on a self destruct mission? There's the high profile issue with the 737 Max 8, now the P&W issue on the 777. To the casual observer that's surely bad enough but if you look a bit deeper you can see they have two major issues with assembly of the 787 Dreamliner. It's almost like they lost the recipe on how to build aircraft. Anyone have any deep insight into all this?

Blame the accountants.

The engine fragging will be down to either a bird ingestion or a maintenance issue.

[wymberley]

2 minutes ago, TIGHTCHOKE said:

Blame the accountants.

The engine fragging will be down to either a bird ingestion or a maintenance issue.

Watching that donk shake itself to bits one has to wonder how long it'll be before someone suggests explosive bolts.

[Raja Clavata]

3 minutes ago, TIGHTCHOKE said:

Blame the accountants.

The engine fragging will be down to either a bird ingestion or a maintenance issue.

Safety Authority trumps everything else across all sectors in our company.

[TIGHTCHOKE]

8 minutes ago, Raja Clavata said:

Safety Authority trumps everything else across all sectors in our company.

Well apparently it doesn't at Boeing!

[Raja Clavata]

1 minute ago, TIGHTCHOKE said:

Well apparently it doesn't at Boeing!

Apparently they don't look at historical data either, series of similar failures on this aircraft  model / engine specific to individual turbines causing "uncontained" failures.

24 minutes ago, blackbird said:

Just imagine if Land Rover made aircraft 😱😱😱

Never mind JLR, pray Telsa never get into "flying cars"!

[TIGHTCHOKE]

In respect of the latest engine incident, that should never have been as catastrophic, the engine is meant to be contained following failure.

[Raja Clavata]

1 minute ago, TIGHTCHOKE said:

In respect of the latest engine incident, that should never have been as catastrophic, the engine is meant to be contained following failure.

I agree, but:

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In the case of the exploding 777 engines, the recurring problem does not come out of the blue. It’s well known that as aircraft and engines age, their mechanical parts are subjected to repeated stresses and strains that can lead to microscopic cracks that grow over time. To prevent these from turning into fractures that could destroy a part and endanger an aircraft, the FAA mandates periodic inspection. **** & Whitney operates a facility in East Hartford, Connecticut, that examines PW-4000 fan blades using what’s known as non-destructive testing technology.

As expertly described in a July 2020 article by Aerossurance, the NTSB investigation into the 2018 incident found numerous faults with the inspection process. From its final report:

P&W developed [a thermal acoustic imaging] inspection process in about 2005 to be able to inspect the interior surfaces of the hollow core PW4000 fan blade. The records for the TAI inspection in July 2015 as well as an earlier TAI accomplished in March 2010 revealed a thermal indication in the same location as where the LCF crack occurred. The records for the fractured fan blade’s July 2015 TAI inspection was annotated “paint” that, according to the inspector, was consistent with him accepting the indication because he thought it was an issue with the paint.

That is to say, the individual who examined the blade that later failed saw the flaw that would later destroy the engine, but failed to recognize its significance. An earlier NTSB report noted that at the time of the inspection the workshop had a backlog of fan blades and inspectors were being asked to work overtime to deal with it.

The report observed that the facility did not have a formalized training procedure for the inspection process:

[P&W] classified the TAI as a new and emerging technology and therefore did not have to develop a formal program for initial and recurrent training … The 1st shift inspector was trained by the engineers who developed the process and the 2nd shift inspector, who was the one who last inspected the United Airlines fan blade that fractured, was trained by the 1st shift inspector. Both inspectors stated that their training on the TAI was about 40 hours of on-the-job training. In comparison, the certification requirements for the commonly used eddy current and ultrasonic inspections are 40 hours of classroom training and 1,200 and 1,600 hours of practical experience, respectively.

The NTSB report found other shortcomings in the process as well that go beyond the scope of the present article; for those interested, it’s worth a read.

At this point, it’s not definitively understood what was the root cause of the two most recent events. But in both cases, photographs of the damaged engines appear to show one whole fan blade missing, with an adjacent blade partially gone, suggesting at least a strong possibility that they had suffered a fatigue fracture similar to the one that occurred in 2018.

The 777 is not the only Boeing airliner to suffer multiple uncontained engine failures in recent years, by the way. In 2016 and again in 2018, 737s powered by CFM56 engines suffered fatigue cracks that resulted in catastrophic failure. In the 2018 case involving Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, a fragment of the engine hit and destroyed a window, causing a passenger to get partially sucked out of the aircraft and die.

------------------------

The point though is that Boeing have either lost the plot (recipe) or are on a really bad run of luck (coincidence) - I don't believe in sustained coincidence in this kind of context, do you?

[moose man]

37 minutes ago, blackbird said:

Just imagine if Land Rover made aircraft 😱😱😱

They would be dropping out of the sky like pigeons on a pea field ...you wouldn’t want to be on a flight line that’s for sure ..

[TIGHTCHOKE]

They should have used Rolls Royce engines, not P and W.

[countryman]

46 minutes ago, blackbird said:

Just imagine if Land Rover made aircraft 😱😱😱

And none of the doors would shut properly.

[sabel25]

54 minutes ago, blackbird said:

Just imagine if Land Rover made aircraft 😱😱😱

I thought they did😃 With their hill decenct. Have i been misled with my Freelander? lol

[Raja Clavata]

18 minutes ago, TIGHTCHOKE said:

They should have used Rolls Royce engines, not P and W.

I think they did in the early models with a mix of both. The RR Trent 800 did have one incident in a 777 where both engines failed. Later 777 are all running GE engines I believe.

[The Heron]

My pants would have been full I have decided never to fly again, when eventually air travel starts again the aircraft will have been laid up for so long that a lot of them will not be safe or air worthy but once again money will be the deciding factor. 

[JohnfromUK]

12 hours ago, moose man said:

They would be dropping out of the sky like pigeons on a pea field ...you wouldn’t want to be on a flight line that’s for sure ..

No, they would be 100% safe - as they would never take off.

(I'm actually a very satisfied Defender owner of 25+ years ownership!)

The initilal findings (this morning's radio) are suggesting metal fatigue.

[London Best]

3 minutes ago, JohnfromUK said:

 

(I'm actually a very satisfied Defender owner of 25+ years ownership!)

 

Same here, but 46 years. Mileage-wise I’ve been to the moon and back in Land Rovers. Not really had any major issues and never had an oil leak. It’s called, preventive maintenance.

[ditchman]

it was reported yesterday that another Boeing had the same problem of the engine breaking up whilst flying over Holland...............(sorry dont have a link ...it was reported on the BBC news as a throw-a-way remark)

[Rob85]

I work on engine nacelle structures and I can tell you it takes very little to rip them apart, all it takes is a fan blade to fracture and it will rip through the inlet, which in this case has blew off completely and then being unbalanced it will shake the thing to pieces. From the video showing a little fire I'm also thinking it may have had a blockage or a fan blade breaking severed the engine oil feed and the bearings ran dry and the engine destroyed itself.

Not Boeing's fault really, more a PW or maintenance issue

[udderlyoffroad]

3 minutes ago, Rob85 said:

Not Boeing's fault really, more a PW or maintenance issue

Quite.

 

13 hours ago, Raja Clavata said:

The point though is that Boeing have either lost the plot (recipe) or are on a really bad run of luck (coincidence)

How is this a Boeing problem - the customer (airline/leasing company) chooses the engine platform from a choice offered by Boeing and then is responsible for its maintenance.  That article you copied and pasted (but didn't cite the source) explains in poorly-written detail* how PW had shortcomings in its inspection processes - something which Boeing is unilkely to have commercial say over to commend them to correct.  PW is the design authority on the engine, not Boeing.

In any case, the aircraft was able to safely land on one engine - as it is supposed to.  Pilots, ATC and ground crews all reacted excellently - doubtless due to training but also the platform they were flying.

Take a look at this if you have the time

 

*'Stresses and strains' is just one example of journalese misusing precisely defined engineering terms...

[The Heron]

1 hour ago, London Best said:

Same here, but 46 years. Mileage-wise I’ve been to the moon and back in Land Rovers. Not really had any major issues and never had an oil leak. It’s called, preventive maintenance.

Yes me too I have been all over the UK in my defender never let me down. 

[Vince Green]

During lockdown I have been watching a lot of those Air Crash Investigation type programmes. Its scary how often it highlights maintenance not been carried out as well as it should be. Not in the UK I have to point out 

[JohnfromUK]

4 minutes ago, Vince Green said:

During lockdown I have been watching a lot of those Air Crash Investigation type programmes. Its scary how often it highlights maintenance not been carried out as well as it should be. Not in the UK I have to point out 

I had an Australian Uncle, who was quite senior in the Australian equivalent of the Air Ministry.  He was very much an engineer who worked 'within the civil service' and was Farnborough trained.  When he retired amongst other things he was an independent consultant engineer to various international air safety panels/investigations, which would have been in the 1980s.

There were only certain airlines with whom he would fly (which from memory included Quantas, BA, PanAm) - but a lot of the 'third world' local air services he would only use as an absolute last resort.  I know he was involved with an investigation of some sort in India - and refused to fly once he got there - using rail instead to get from wherever he arrived to where he needed to be.  Maintenance (or lack of it) was the whole issue as the planes themselves were much the same as the major airlines were using.

[Vince Green]

16 minutes ago, JohnfromUK said:

I had an Australian Uncle, who was quite senior in the Australian equivalent of the Air Ministry.  He was very much an engineer who worked 'within the civil service' and was Farnborough trained.  When he retired amongst other things he was an independent consultant engineer to various international air safety panels/investigations, which would have been in the 1980s.

There were only certain airlines with whom he would fly (which from memory included Quantas, BA, PanAm) - but a lot of the 'third world' local air services he would only use as an absolute last resort.  I know he was involved with an investigation of some sort in India - and refused to fly once he got there - using rail instead to get from wherever he arrived to where he needed to be.  Maintenance (or lack of it) was the whole issue as the planes themselves were much the same as the major airlines were using.

Yes a lot of the "second and third division" airlines are running older aircraft by buying secondhand parts to keep down costs.

Another interesting programme, in that respect, is the plane breakers. Literally every part from the engines down to the toilets of a scrap plane are carefully taken out and resold to somebody somewhere.

Lots of other corners get cut like re-using high tensile bolts instead of replacing them each time 

[JTaylor91]

16 minutes ago, Vince Green said:

Yes a lot of the "second and third division" airlines are running older aircraft by buying secondhand parts to keep down costs.

Another interesting programme, in that respect, is the plane breakers. Literally every part from the engines down to the toilets of a scrap plane are carefully taken out and resold to somebody somewhere.

Lots of other corners get cut like re-using high tensile bolts instead of replacing them each time 

All airlines buy used parts, they get sent through a shop where they will be overhauled or tested/inspected.