Dr Jabadski

JerseyCityS

767 300

IAH-OIL-TRASH

The problem was a hard landing, not age of aircraft. The same thing could happen to a 737 that was delivered to UA earlier this year. I can look out the window and see 737s from the early 1970s reliably running cargo between the Islands.

JerseyCityS

I realize that. A plane 2 weeks old could be destroyed by a hard landing. But a plane from 1991 with the incredible stress on it's frame for that amount of time is far more frail. It's just common sense to me.

IAH-OIL-TRASH

Well, airlines don't just fly them until they fail. Rigorous inspections are required for older aircraft. Just seems to a stretch to avoid aircraft older aircraft (the sky is full of them) based on a fear that they're gonna fail. How many older planes have failed like this in the past 20 years? And how many times have they taken off? Multiply that incident rate times your flying and the number is going to be almost microscopic for something bad happening. Avoiding older aircraft vs the statistical odds of failure makes me not even worry about it. The odds of Harrison Ford on the wrong taxiway almost running into your plane is (or was) higher

TomMM

Will the Polaris seats be reused in another aircraft?

SPN Lifer

My son earned his Bachelor of Science in Structural Engineering, from UCSD. I recommend you discuss this with someone who has actual expertise, if airframe structural integrity is an important issue to you.

Follow the science.

Fly the Friendly Skies!

nerd

So... what's your son's opinion on the matter?

halls120

The B-52 still flying today were built in 1961-62. The Air Force intends to keep some of them flying until 2050.

Do the math.

enviroian

Will this be the FO's first and last time flying a 767?

lincolnjkc

Every commercial aircraft has a maximum number of cycles stamped on it by the manufacturer, technically known as the "Limits of Validity". This is because pressurization and depressurization do contribute to stress and fatigue -- and like (almost) everything in aviation those limits are conservative, some would say overly so. Nonetheless aircraft in the US tend to be retired (at least from commercial service with airlines you'd recognize) well before they hit the cycle limit.

For the 767-200/300 Boeing has that limit at 75,000 cycles or 150,000 flight hours (a -300F and -400ER is slightly more limited at 60,000 cycles or 150,000 flight hours) -- that's about 17 years of continuous flight. [See Boeing multi-operator message 10-0783-01B, December 19, 2010]

With a continuous airworthiness management program (CAMP) supervised by the FAA commercial airlines in the US generally maintain their aircraft better and more frequently than virtually any other piece of transportation equipment. Before NW merged with DL and retired their DC-9 fleet I had multiple rides on DC-9s that were at least as old as my mother, were older than the subject of this thread, and had I had no airworthiness concerns.

EWR764

The exact same circumstances, with virtually identical damage in the same spot, have befallen 767-300s at all stages of life, from first revenue flight (Skyservice at PUJ 2000) to one year in service (Alitalia at EWR 1997) to nine years in service (ANA at NRT 2012) to 26 years (Atlas at PSM 2018... repaired) to this most recent one at 32 years. Plenty of other examples but this is just a representative selection.

Suffice to say, age of the airframe and metal fatigue is not a substantial factor given the multiple-G forces at play here.

Not the first time (this FO has ~200h in type).

dmurphynj

So if this frame was at 19,408 cycles and 125,209 hours as of May ...

Based on my Google-Fu (https://downloads.regulations.gov/FA...tachment_1.pdf), it looks like the 767-300 LOV is 75,000 cycles and 180,000 flight hours. (Was that extended?)

Obviously it'll never come close to the cycle limit.

That would "only" leave 6 1/4 years of 24x7x365 flying left for this bird.

Assuming it flies 12 hours a day, every single day, 365 days a year, that's 12 1/2 years.

Plenty of life left in this 'ol gal.

Only question is whether the repair is economical or not.

pseudoswede

Does UA have any widebodies being stored somewhere that can be dusted off?

lincolnjkc

Seems the document I was looking at was an earlier draft and that Boeing had the engineering data to up the flight hour count (interestingly the cycle count didn't change)


Indeed. It will be interesting to see (I suspect that it will probably be called DBER but given the current fleet constraints I wonder if that will change the trajectory at all -- or if we'll just see a bit of [further] belt tightening pending deliveries of new frames.