T8191

Not "Dream Liners" but …

1. SS Cavina from Southampton to Kingston via Trinidad and Tobago (both) in '53. Took ages. Only 12 pax, though, so basically a very ancient CW experience.

2. SS Uganda in '83 from Ascension to Port Stanley. Now that WAS a voyage. Storm Force 10 in the 'Roaring Forties', shipping it green over the foredeck while we were reduced to just making steerage way. A scheduled 10 day trip took 12 days. The RAF officer element (4-5 of us, IIRC) drank the Officers Mess dry as far as Harvey Wallbangers were concerned. Kind ships' officers noticed our plight, and offered us the use of their Wardroom bar. We drank that dry as well, at least a day out from Stanley. Ahhh, happy days!

BOH

I've been on that - it was a school cruise ship in the 70s. With me going to an all boys school at the time and there being lots of pupils from co-eds on the ship on our cruise, I too have very happy memories of the SS Uganda. But I'll bet not for the same reasons as you......

T8191

Indeed a different experience. Mine was definitely 100% alcohol related.

However ... Back to the B787. Aka Plastic crap
No, that's unfair. It's just a new aircraft with teething problems. Quite a few teething problems. But they will be resolved. "I have faith in Boingggg".

greg5

Perhaps it's not unfair. Boeing laid off an entire generation of engineers in the 90s. There's a lot of knowledge that should have been handed down that perhaps wasn't.

Jimmie76

Stop teasing the poor man.

kanderson1965

Unfortunately this is a commonly recurring event in the engineering industry.

grahampros

Excessive outsourcing and loosing the expertise is coming back to bite Boeing in the A$$ ultimately i think. Will they in the end get issues resolved yes, but it's just all part of that problem they have been having for a while with the 787 program. i'm not particularly surprised by this stage issues are coming up on delivered frames.

Jimmie76

One of the train companies that services south of London laid off a, load of old British Rail drivers because they figured they could do without them and their salaries. This same firm then ran out of drivers because they didn't have enough qualified people to teach new staff. It They then had to cancel trains as a result, the person who told me this was one of those who had left.

BOH

Perfectly true. Another rail parallel is the old Railtrack let swathes of experienced engineering people go post privatisation to save money and they also sub-contracted the entire infrastructure maintenance, safety investigations, engineering change processes etc.

The result: Ladbroke Grove in 1999 and Hatfield in 2000 and a core reason in the inquiries for both was lack of experienced engineering staff in Railtrack and a culture of performance and bonus targets rather than safety first. Effectively Railtrack had lost control of it's own processes, quality and engineering because of excessive outsourcing - and on a scale never attempted before.

Now the 787 is revolutionary not just because of new technology, also the sheer scale of the sub-contracting of whole areas of design and manufacture that has never been attempted on this scale before for an airliner. Boeing encouraged sub-contractors to risk share and pretty much fund the whole design of major sub-assemblies that would be delivered to the FAL factory and the plane almost be "snapped together" in a matter of a few days.

As we all know, the 787 suffered huge delays during design and development with a good proportion of that being due to Boeing finally realising they had lost control of far too much of critical design and production processes. The extent of this meant they even resorted to outright buying of a number of their major risk sharing partner companies to bring things back in-house. The parallel is this is exactly as Network Rail (who superceded the old Railtrack) quickly did with all infrastructure maintenance work....but it took 2 incidents and circa 40 deaths to get that change

Maybe this seems easy to say with hindsight - but in reality many, many experienced aerospace engineers were saying (actually no, shouting it from the rooftops) this when the 787 design and manufacturing strategy was originally unveiled back in 2005. To engineers it was blindingly obvious that it was too much change, too quickly and to introduce such massive technology advancements AND a wholly new design and manufacturing process at the same was ridiculous....and this in a safety critical industry too

But back then (as with Railtrack) the accountants won and the experienced engineers dismissed as resistant to change "old-timers" and overpaid. But it is coming back to bite Boeing and their accountants quite spectacularly now.

Food for thought eh?.....

kered

Wow

I didn't know about any of the outsourcing / messing that took place with the 787

As I've stated up thread, I vowed not to set foot on an A380 for a very long time, but I think it may even be longer before I get on a 787

kanderson1965

Looks like another one has sprung a leak at NRT today, no further details but is believed to be the same JAL one that sprung a leak at BOS last week.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2261723/More-nightmares-Boeing-787-Dreamliner-plane-suffers-second-fuel-leak--FIFTH-reported-problem-just-week.html.

Sorry it's from the Daily Mail

greg5

It's been awhile since Boeing and in particular BCAG have been led by engineers. It's been MBA types for awhile. And that's probably the biggest problem. However, on the positive side, there are still a lot of good engineers there. So, there is hope.

darthlemsip

I'm somewhat of a nervous flyer, despite the amount I do, and applaud the approach that BA take in ensuring that they only have aircraft that are after number 100 off the production line.

However, in these days of stringent testing, pro-active maintenance, regular inspection etc, I can't see a reason not to vow not to set foot on a modern jet liner once it's been in service for a number of years. The A380 in particular has been in passenger service for 6 years soon (in fact, it won't be too long until Emirates will be moving some of theirs on to keep to their commitment of fleet age - 8 years I seem to recall reading), issues have been identified and fixed, and none have plummeted from the sky.

I'd be (and if pre-flight nerves do kick in, am) more worried about flying on planes that have been in service for 15 years plus

BOH

It certainly does look a very, very sound strategyby BA ^

Remember BA had their fingers burnt with the 777 as they were a very early customer and IIRC took the first deliveries of the GE90 powered frames. These had gearbox problems early on and BA were sufficently concerned to pull them off the ETOPS NA routes for a while and deploy them on Middle-East routes where there are diversion airports pretty much all the way. So maybe once bitten and all that...

zafiragirl

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21038128