JAL Replaced 787 Batteries Many Times
 

At least 100 batteries failed on 787 fleet
 

http://seattletimes.com/html/busines...teriesxml.html

Boeing had numerous reliability issues with the main batteries on its 787 Dreamliner long before the two battery incidents this month grounded the entire fleet.

More than 100 of the lithium-ion batteries have failed and had to be returned to the Japanese manufacturer, according to a person inside the 787 program with direct knowledge.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/art...unsafe-381627/

Unfortunately, the pack architecture supplied to Boeing is inherently unsafe,"

further along....


I design a cell to not fail and then assume it will and the ask the next 'what-if' questions," Sinnett said. "And then I design the batteries that if there is a failure of one cell it won't propagate to another. And then I assume that I am wrong and that it will propagate to antoher and then I design the enclosure and the redundancy of the equipment to assume that all the cells are involved and the airplane needs to be able to play through that."

now, sinnett is a materials scientist, and a Li battery specialist?

Poor Bird
 

Saw this while flying out of ORD last night. Covered partially in snow and all lonely at the edge of the Airport. Spotted it from the highway on the way in.

http://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...28510034_n.jpg

Yup,its a real bummer. Hopefully they are making headway on getting something done. Sadly, I don't think they will be flying anytime in the very near future. It would be nice to see them back up by summer.

Poor Bird
 

Saw the JAL 787 sitting all alone in BOS last week. Sad.

If they're not flying until the summer, that's 6 months. I know I wouldn't want my car sitting outside in the elements for 6 months, and you'd likely have to do some preparations to start it up and get it going again. I wonder what sort of effects being parked this long will have on those planes.

You do know that all these 787 were supposed to be delivered several years ago right ? Because of all those problems, all of them were actually parked at PAE for several years, it just parked outside of the factory, no hangar no nothing. So 6 months is basically nothing for a plane. I don't even know why you use a plane compare to a car, as would your car work at the extreme like a plane does ? -100 degrees fahrenheit to 140 degrees fahrenheit in less than 24 hours ?

cars are cheap stuff. they are not happy sitting or operating below zero F, or over 120F or so. their behavior cannot b compared to airplanes.

military aircraft are designed to sit at -40 f/c, be fired up, run immediately at full throttle, with parts exceeding 1000 f, and then drop immediately to -150f.

that is the temp profile when a fighter takes off in alaska goes straight up to 50,000 feet and then shuts down and cruises.

As ORD and slawecki have noted, planes do this all the time. I did think the tires get flat spots from sitting in one spot too long. For those that know, will they have to change the tires?

Serious crap going down on this plane's electrical system--I'm not convinced it's just a battery design problem, though clearly that's part of it. I don't think it's going to be a quick resolution. Though it's currently a moot point, I wouldn't set foot in on a 787 until the issues are found, clearly explained, and fixed. The more I read (sources from qualified engineers that have reason to know what they're talking about), the more I think Boeing and these airlines were darn lucky this grounding happened before they had a full-blown, in-flight fire disaster.

Reminds me of flying out of LHR about 12 years ago and seeing about half a dozen Concordes all parked up when they were grounded after the Paris crash.

They still haven't found it. Boeing has received limited permission to fly them for testing (no, not we the beta again). As suggested before in FT, it sounds like they're now looking for a downrange problem that shows up after hours of flying, involving more than one component. Or they wouldn't be spending the resources to fly them thus to hunt for the problem.

The apologists work to keep the A380 as the comp, saying that the public forgot its "teething troubles" soon enough. But the events that summarily grounded the 787 were as near-misses as you can get. I suggest that the public more likely will compare it to the MD-11. (To be sure, there are MD-11s still flying - thousands of cycles since the incidents that penetrated the public's psyche - for the couriers.)

Boeing has millions to spend on paid media and word-of-mouth-marketing - even here in FlyerTalk. (Did anyone notice how quickly our Community Director's poll re the situation was pulled?) But the climate in Japan is particularly intolerant of coverups at the moment, and the high bar there may create a longer tail in Boeing's backyard.

If you look back at the history of new airliners, the 787 really isn't much different than any other, state of the art airplane fresh out of the gate. The media coverage and expectations of this airplane was very high. Of course its a serious problem, there is no doubt about that. However, I have complete faith that Boeing will resolve it as quickly as possible. They wont put a single passenger on one until they are 100% convinced its good to go. Here is a decent article about it. http://www.letsflycheaper.com/blog/t...87-isnt-alone/

Sometimes, new aircraft are radically different.

I have lived long enough to see what can happen.

De Havilland Comet I - first commercial jet aircraft - poor design allowed compression cycle stress cracks to originate at square window corners, causing explosive decompression. Whoops. (I did fly Comet IV-Cs many times.)

Lockheed L-188 Electra - first American large commercial turboprop (AA flew these) - inadequate design allowed parasitic oscillations at certain configurations causing "whirl mode" - causing wings to shake off in flight. Whoops. I did fly many Electras after the grounding and the "big fix".

Boeing 747 - early models were underpowered and not extremely reliable. A PAA pilot friend of mine flew one NYC-LON and had all four engines shut down in mid-air; he glided into a UK air force base and the passengers were bussed into LON. Ken said that was his scariest flight ever.

Douglas DC-10 - an inadequately designed baggage door mechanism allowed several DC-10s to crash due to explosive decompression and control inactivation due to baggage door blowout (and improper maintenance procedures caused one or two, iirc, to shed an engine and lose control).

Boeing 787 - new technology carbon fiber composite and many other innovations, such as using Lithium Ion batteries (otherwise largely prohibited in aircraft). Boeing was allowed self-certification on their Yuasa-designed batteries and said if one cell among the 8 in their battery overheated, it would be contained and no cell walls would be breached and allow other cells to overheat. Really? They also said they expected a "smoke event" no more often than one in 10 million flight hours - they have had 2 or 3 in 100,000 hours. Whoops.

The FAA allowed a large amount of what was basically self-certification the NTSB has made some comments implying that was not a good idea.


I've been flying - a lot- since the 1940s, DC-3s to Concordes, and even a DH-89 Rapide Dragon and Ford TriMotor, and flown some aircraft myself. I think I'll wait this one out, friends. It will be fixed - but I think it might take a bit more time than some of us might expect.

(Yeah, I know, it can't happen to me, I am safer in the air than on the roads - but I lost a good friend and colleague in one aircraft accident, and another good friend and cousin in another.)

That said, the "teething problems" on most of those earlier aircraft also caused a lot of deaths. Nobody's died after an in-flight fire on a 787.

The "gentlemen's agreement" between Douglas and the FAA to avoid a grounding over the DC-10 cargo door is what really shook people up, and why a fault that appears systemic is more likely to result in an urgent air directive or grounding.

The 747-100 also had a cargo door issue where the locks weren't strong enough. If a short circuit engaged the "open" motor, it would break the locks and open anyway. Although it didn't crash, a number of passengers were sucked out of a UA 747 near Hawaii when a cargo door popped open.

And the 727 had a rash of controlled flight into terrain crashes after its introduction. The large flaps for short field operations also allowed it to develop a much greater sink rate than the 707 which the pilots weren't used to.

All this is not to say the 787 issue isn't serious. An in-flight fire is no joke and the FAA is right to keep the 787 grounded until it's figured out.