Odds and Ends: 787 service return; LionAir’s A320 order; race to Paris; 777X v A350

787 to fly soon: Jim McNerney, CEO of Boeing, says the 787 will be back in service soon. Tests should be completed within days and he is confident in the fix.

LionAir’s A320 order: In case you wondered what LionAir is going to do with all those Airbus A320s now on order, this story tells you. As we suspected, LionAir will follow the AirAsia Group model of setting up airlines throughout Asia. Some will obviously compete with Tony Fernandes’ airline.

The race to Paris: AirInsight won the race by three minutes over Aviation Week. AirInsight posted at 1:24pm EDT and AvWeek at 1:27pm. That might be about the result between Bombardier and Airbus.

777X v A350: Aspire Aviation has an analysis of the forthcoming Boeing 777X and A350-1000 competition.

65 Comments on “Odds and Ends: 787 service return; LionAir’s A320 order; race to Paris; 777X v A350

  1. USA Today:

    “It’s a frustrating experience,” McNerney said. “We’ve got this fabulous airplane. There is nothing about a battery that needed to be fixed that impacted the other things that make this a special plane.”

    McNerney praised the FAA and its administrator, Michael Huerta, as “champs” for working with the company to ensure that this plane is safe.

    “They have America’s best interests in mind,” McNerney said of regulators. “They have the safety of the flying public in mind, as I hope we do, which at this point means, let’s get this thing back in service.”

  2. If there is a race it is a race against time, not a race between the A350 and the CSeries. Even less a race between Airbus and Bombardier. Airbus is in a race with Boeing. And the A350 is in a race with the 787.

    • Foremost both airframers are in a race against their own timetables.
      And in style is is more like a “Zuverlässigkeitsrennen”.

    • So you are a fleet planning expert now too? How DO you find the time?

      • Ssure, from a ducks perspective you won’t see more.
        With a slightly more capable neck termination one could draw the conclusion that LOT thinks end of May might be the time their 787 can fly again.

    • You miss the amusement, Howie: same story line three minutes apart. Getting the airplanes flying before Paris (whether they are they or not) is the sideshow from the point of this post.

    • If the Cseries makes its first flight before the end of June, as it is expected, it will be the talk of the show. Whether it is there or not. But if the A350 also makes its first flight before the end of June, which is less probable but definitely possible, all the attention will be drawn towards the first all-carbon Airbus and the CSeries will be temporally forgotten.

      If the CSeries takes to the air alone, it will steel the show. Same thing for the A350, of course. But if both make it in time, the CSeries will have lost the race.

      Conclusion: Airbus only needs to have the A350 in the air on time for the show. Bombardier needs to have the CSeries in the air and the A350 on the ground.

      • I agree with your conclusion but I will add if Airbus have it in the air they just need to divert a test flight north and they can do a flyby, its not a large logistical problem to get an aircraft from Toulouse to Paris.

        If the A350 does a flyby the CSeries will be totally forgotten even if Bombardier get it flying in time.

  3. Normand Hamel :
    USA Today:
    McNerney praised the FAA and its administrator, Michael Huerta, as “champs” for working with the company to ensure that this plane is safe.
    “They have America’s best interests in mind,”

    No word on the NTSB, huh? Enthusiasm.

    • The NTSB will hold public hearings sometime in April. It’s a strategic move that can be viewed as a preemptive measure against the FAA.

  4. Q – There is nothing about a battery that needed to be fixed…
    C – Correct, the problem is with the airplane.

    Q – McNerney praised the FAA and its administrator, Michael Huerta, as “champs” for working with the company…
    C – Yes, we are aware of that.

    Q – “They have America’s best interests in mind,” McNerney said of regulators. “They have the safety of the flying public in mind, as I hope we do…
    C – We are not sure either.

    The above quotes were deliberately taken out of context. It is a humoristic reconstruction of what was actually meant by the Boeing CEO and it must be consumed with you sarcasm detector switched fully on. 🙂

    The integral content of the article can be found in the link below:
    http://s.einnews.com/fZ5YQVwDNC

    Note: “Q” stands for quote and “C” stands for comment.

      • Propaganda never says that the quotes are deliberately taken out of context. And it’s never expressed in a humoristic way either. Let alone with a smiley at the end. 🙂

  5. I wonder what will be the competitor for the A350-900 on long, heavy flights, replacing B777-200ER and A340-300 this decade. The heavier 777-8 from 2020?

  6. “It’s a frustrating experience,” I would have said that it is an embarrassment. If McNerney is frustrated that’s over the millions lost and his bonus getting threatened.
    “let’s get this thing back in service”. After putting America first before flying public safety, he does not care what the problem is.
    Pathetic.

  7. Howard :
    I doubt either plane will fly by Paris.

    The question is not whether the CSeries or the A350 will be flying before the Paris Air Show. The real question is whether the 787 will be flying before those two are. For now, all I can say is that the Dreamliner will probably be back in service before the next Farnborough Air Show. But not without restrictions. Unless Boeing comes to its senses and completely redesign the battery system. Or the aircraft… 😉

    • A good show for A350 is quite easy:
      roll-out and take off on the same day.

      • Your comment demonstrates that you know zero about modern commercial aircraft production. There are defined phases of testing that need to be accomplished. It’s all fun and games to cavalierly say “just go fly it”, but the reality is quite different.

    • Yes yes, your constant anti-Boeing cheerleading again. It really does get old. Between you Keesje and Uwe with your conspiracy theories, automatic assumption that Boeing is peopled by nothing but drooling blithering idiots who have no concept of what they are doing, oh and let’s not forget your constant forethought that the sun shines out Airbus’ ass.

  8. MHalblaub :
    A good show for A350 is quite easy: roll-out and take off on the same day.

    Normally there is a period of several weeks, if not several months, between those two events.

    First they have to fuel the aircraft outside and make sure it doesn’t leak. They have to run the engines; initially at low power and ultimately at full throttle. They also have to run the APU and test it. They have to check all the systems and flight controls one by one and together, outside on a live aircraft. They have to perform low-speed taxi tests where the brakes and the steering are tested, before taxing at high speed on the runway on simulated take-off runs. Between the various tests they have to carry out repairs, adjustments and modifications. And repeat the tests multiple times, if necessary.

    In short they have to make sure everything works perfectly before the green light is given for the maiden flight. The procedures grow in complexity with the aircraft size. Therefore it should normally take less time for the CSeries to get its ticket than for the much larger A350. But in the end what will make the difference is the level of readiness and reliability of each model. This is what will ultimately determine how long it’s going to take before they can release the aircraft.

    I would not hesitate to bet on the CSeries because Bombardier introduced an unprecedented level of integration for the ground testing phase. They tested all the aircraft systems in a fully integrated facility called CIASTA. There a complete aircraft called Aircraft 0, one that will never take to the air, was put together with real systems absolutely identical to the ones that will find their way on the initial flight test aircraft (FTV1). System wise there are no differences between Aircraft 0 and FTV1.

    A level of integration of that magnitude, a first in the industry, plus the long hours of testing it allows before first flight, should ensure a smooth transition between the assembly line and the runway.

  9. The battery improvements are not a fix or solution to the problem that has grounded the 787, according to the faa.
    Boeing should stop lying by claiming it is.

  10. The fix should be ok until B or the industry develops a safer chemical Li mix, as I understand there are now these different chemical mixes available that wern´t back when the 787 was launched.

    And as B is only one player in this industry I would be surprised if they could not find cooperation on this matter with its competitors. As they all want to have the most efficient batteries possible. No matter how mig capacity you need, every weight saved is a bonus.

    • “The fix should be ok until B or the industry develops a safer chemical Li mix, as I understand there are now these different chemical mixes available that wern´t back when the 787 was launched.”
      Various safer chemistries are available and were available in 2004. (only high current LiFePO3 are younger ) Airbus selected for less problematic properties for their A380 ( albeit for other purposes than main batteries ) and at an earlier date.
      So either Boeing was a bit careless for whatever reason and/or this is a design decission done during the Sonic Cruiser intermission.

  11. JTSB rearing its head:
    “The board also said that about 10 holes apparently caused by sparks were detected in the stainless-steel battery case, which melts at around 1,400 degrees.”
    http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/03/29/business/no-faults-found-in-ana-787-electrical-system-transport-safety-panel/#.UVVJEBkbcwU
    via:
    http://blogs.crikey.com.au/planetalking/2013/03/29/all-nippon-787-report-sparks-burned-holes-in-battery-case/

    apropos sparks don’t usually burn holes but sustained arcing can melt holes. ( and cause other havoc )

  12. en590swe :
    The fix should be ok until B or the industry develops a safer chemical Li mix, as I understand there are now these different chemical mixes available that wern´t back when the 787 was launched.

    The other chemicals, like Lithium-Phosohate, were available at the time. Only Boeing chose the one that carried the highest level of risk, just like they did for the entire aircraft electrical system.

    en590swe :
    As they all want to have the most efficient batteries possible. No matter how big capacity you need, every weight saved is a bonus.

    That’s what we would all think. But not at Boeing apparently. Weight considerations were secondary in the selection of the Li-ion technology for the Dreamliner. That is if you are to believe what Mike Sinnett said. But I don’t.

  13. Howard’s underlying sentiment (#23) is a point well taken about the constant anti-Boeing sentiment expressed by a few. I will throw in KCTopboom’s equally nauseating everything-Airbus-does-is-wrong.

    Airbus and Boeing are staffed by sincere people who are dedicated to their work and desire to produce quality products. Employees of each will defend their products and believe theirs is better than the Other Guy’s. TopBoom and Howard, Airbus builds good airplanes. Some are better than Boeing’s. Uwe and Keesje, Boeing builds good airplanes. Some are better than Airbus’.

    Any suggestion that either company deliberately builds airplanes with flaws in them–and then doesn’t want to fix them properly–is nonsense. Aviation is replete with design mistakes, as I have written and as the recent Bloomberg post points out.

    It is fair game to debate design merits. It is fair game to debate corporate strategies. I’ve set down a series of Reader Comment Rules to avoid personal attacks, attacks on integrity and more. I suggest all of you re-read these rules.

    People, this has got to tone down. There may be plenty to debate over Airbus and Boeing strategy; and how Airbus designed the A380 wings or Boeing designed the 787 battery system; and there was a lot to complain about Noel Forgeard’s leadership just as there is about McNerny, but I don’t like the direction comments are heading. In the past I’ve shut down comments for several weeks when you all got out of hand and I am nearing doing so again. So shape up, immediately.

    Hamilton

    • Scott,
      Thank you for this.
      I am an avid reader to your blog, and the comment section has the potential to add so much to debate and understanding.
      But it degenerates into juvenile “fanboy” comments (more on one side than the other, imho, but both sides are guilty), and in my opinion, all value is lost.
      There is no doubt fantastic knowledge amongst the contributors to these discussions, and it could be a really valuable thing, if some effort to remain constructive and objective was made.

    • Noel Forgeard has a lot to answer for, not least on the whole Airbus versus Boeing antagonism. Despite the, in my view, predictable issues that Boeing is having with the 787, they can at least console themselves that the executives talk to each other, and in the same language too! Which wasn’t the case at Airbus a few years ago. These things sort themselves out eventually and hopefully the comments here will too.

      • The ridiculous Airbus v Boeing corporate antagonism long pre-dates Forgeard, in fairness to him (and believe me, we are no fan of his). When we owned our previously company, Commercial Aviation Report, and staged conferences, we had Adam Brown from Airbus and Randy Baseler from Boeing as speakers and in pre-conference briefings said we didn’t want the barbs and insults that were some common in their presentations–but rather facts and strategies. The antagonism goes all the way back to the formation of Airbus and Boeing’s disdain for the company. (See any number of Rudy Hillinga’s comments for these histories.)

    • I have never once said Airbus didn’t build good planes. I know a great many people who work there, and have high regard and respect for them. I however have zero respect for fanboys, yes I know you hate that term, but it is ever so apt for some on this board.

      • Oh, and the detestation of fanboys applies to ANY, regardless of which OEM they support.

    • I’ve been reading everything (blogs and comments) here for a few weeks now, after having looked wide for a site that provides real insight into aviation issues. I think this site is it and, for the most part, I think it is excellent. The occasional tribalism though is a real dampener. So thank you Scott for this post. It follows another post I was particularly glad to see, just 4 day back, by keesje (http://leehamnews.wordpress.com/2013/03/25/787-test-flight-plan-filed-for-today/#comment-35849), standing up for non-engineers.

      As I’m writing this, I may as well introduce myself. I come from both a science and business background and can assure anyone that in my experience MBA, marketing, accounting etc types are just as likely to be competent, or incompetent, as engineer types. I have only 1 preference in type, mfr, anything, and that is for those who behave fairly and responsibly.

      Finally, my observation on the 787 issues. To me they come across as cultural, more than ‘management’ or ‘engineering’.

      Internally, one or more senior engineers must have signed off on the design flaws, and one or more senior non-engineers must have signed off while failing to ask the right questions. Why did they?

      Externally, Boeing may have suffered because of historically greater insularity compared with Airbus. From day 1 Airbus has had to operate across very different, often fractious, cultures in Europe and so will have developed an internal knowledge of what works culturally and what doesn’t, whereas Boeing is relatively fresh to this and may well have extended too quickly in the case of the 787. It is an unfortuante truth that too many US organisations have struggled or simply not accepted the need for ‘going local’ in the way organisations from smaller countires have no choice but to do.

      Anyway, thanks for all the contributions from everyone. This really does feel to me like the best in-depth aviation site around right now.

      • And I should add that in decades past this insularity would have been clear in those smaller (mainly European countries) and today also seems to be the case with China, unsurprising given its size.

  14. Pingback: McNerney on unions and other stuff; where will 777X be built? | Leeham News and Comment

  15. Aspire 777x :
    “Now that the development of the 787-10X has slowed owing to the worldwide grounding …”

    Shouldn’t that be a completely different time horizont?
    Battery issues are near term problems
    while a 787-10 derivative is quite a bit out into the future.

  16. Bloomberg:

    One lithium-ion battery caught fire while being tested at a Mitsubishi Motors Corp. factory in Japan last week and another melted in an electric car. The automaker today said faults were detected in two more vehicles.

    “This is more serious than the airplane incident,” Shoichi Arisawa, an analyst at Iwai Cosmo Securities Co., said. “It’s another crunch in GS Yuasa’s expansion plans.”

    The batteries that caught fire and melted last week were made by Lithium Energy Japan, a venture between GS Yuasa, Mitsubishi Motors and Mitsubishi Corp., which is separate from the factory where the Boeing 787 batteries were made, said Tsutomu Nishijima, a spokesman for GS Yuasa.

    U.S. and Japanese authorities are still investigating the cause of the overheated batteries on Dreamliners, and Japan said earlier this week that it had found no concrete reason why the All Nippon Airways Co.’s 787 battery failed.

    Boeing earlier this month announced safety upgrades to the 787’s battery systems, including to the lithium-ion unit and charger, and said that may allow commercial flights to restart within weeks. The Chicago-based company said the fixes cover all possible scenarios for the cause and the actual reason may never be determined.

    The company doesn’t yet have enough information on the glitches and will look into the causes of the faults before issuing any recalls, he said.

    The lithium-ion car batteries involved in the fire were made to different specifications than those for the Dreamliner battery, GS Yuasa’s Nishijima said.

    Boeing said the auto battery is “fundamentally different from the 787 battery,” according to Marc Birtel, a spokesman for the plane maker.

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-29/gs-yuasa-crisis-deepens-with-mitsubishi-car-battery-fire-3-.html

  17. If there were no commercial considerations present I believe Boeing would do what Airbus have done on XWB, and abandon Li-on.
    As it is they have no option but to continue the present road until they face a regulatory ultimatum, which may well occur.(Possibly from Japan rather than FAA)
    It has to be with some dismay that we are debating how to clean up a system that has not worked, has no defined cause and would never pass muster on a clean sheet design.

    • I don’t think according to the following press release that Airbus did abandon lithium-ion batteries.
      http://www.airbus.com/newsevents/news-events-single/detail/airbus-activates-plan-b-for-the-a350-xwb-batteries/

      A commercial consideration to let the costumer decide. Heavy but proven or light and “certified” but maybe… So additional weight is a feature a costumer can order.

      Airbus is quite lucky to have a long time till EIS of A350. Airbus said the Ni-Cd batteries will be ready then. So they have more than one year. I’m sure Boeing is working on an alternative solutions (Ni-Cd and a more stable Li-Ion) but they have to get the aircraft as soon as possible back in the air.

      The steel box can’t be the final solution but it is a good solution to find the real cause. I expect Boeing will monitor the electrical system on several aircraft in operation.

      Ni-Cd batteries can’t be the future for aircraft. Does anyone have a new device working with Ni-Cd batteries?

  18. This blog is at last reigning in the fanboys ;better later than never. A couple of people ,if they can tone down the personal rhetoric , we will have a wider view from many other experts and it could well be one of the best sites for information as well view points on commercial aviation.

  19. According to A-Net BA will schedule the 787 on the IAD run, I guess replacing the second flight of the day, which is currently a 767 (leaves LHR 2ish, IAD 9ish). I do hope they sort the issue out to some level of certainty (i.e. not just the box) before November, when I presume I’ll have a chance to choose the 787, instead of the 777 or 747. I’m quite keen to see how it compares, and I hope they do something nice to J on the new planes (does anyone know?). Of course, the cabin crew will still all be Essex housewifes (and that’s just the guys…) 😉

  20. The containment should be the short term fix, the long term a different chemical composition, all fair and square in my court.

  21. I must admit that the statement by McNearney ““They have the safety of the flying public in mind, as I hope we do…’

    raised my eyebrows quite a bit !!! He HOPES we(Boeing) have the safety of the flying public in mind ?????

    That should be JOB 1, priority 1, PERIOD !!!!

    A famous( infamous) curse comes to mind

    “May the fleas of a thousand camels infest his armpits and . . . . ”

    Most engineers, techs, and IAM people I came in contact with for over 30 years, plus many ( but not all ) managers and executives would be horrified at such a statement from a peer or superior.

    Looks and sounds like the hoof in mouth disease has gone viral in the corner offices.

    • I wanted to comment on this, but after I wrote it I did not post as I was afraid to start another A vs B war. Now with the order a bit restored again I feel more comfortable to post.

      I see the statements of McNearney to be on par with Tony Hayward’s (BP CEO after the Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent oil spill) statement of “I want my life back”. That comment also sounded horrible, but if you see the context it was made in it was more frustration and desperation.
      What I see is a man (or more likely management team) under severe pressure and potentially (most likely?) fighting to keep his job. That is actually a very poor environment for clear decision making and communication.

      • Interesting comment. The same thing happened to Fabrice Brégier when he tried to say that he had no lessons to give to Boeing. It was received at the time like if he had said that he had no lessons to take from Boeing.

        We have no idea how much stress there is on those guys. Sure they are very well paid, but from time to time they find themselves in a similar situation to that of an airline pilot who emerges from a volcanic cloud with all four engines out. In one famous case the captain’s hair turned completely white within weeks of the incident.

        With clumsy and inappropriate statements like this it is very tempting to use them against an opponent or someone we dislike. But it’s not always fair to do so. Especially when the victim had no bad intentions.

        Once it becomes obvious that a statement was not intentional it can be used only to poke fun at “our victims” and not make it appear as deliberate or malevolent.

      • Hayward/BP show more similarities to Boeing.

        Hayward succeeded Lord Brown after significant problems about “corporate and ecological cleanlyness” as a reformer to turn around the BP “ship”.
        His objective was a new more ecological friendly BP.
        Opinion on what he achieved is inhomogenous 😉

        Obviously he must have felt assasinated, a living dead.
        Every effort they had made in the past years : forfeit.

  22. en590swe :
    The containment should be the short term fix, the long term a different chemical composition, all fair and square in my court.

    The 787 should be allowed to return to service as soon as the modifications that Boeing has proposed have been approved and implemented. But conditionally and with restrictions.

    The conditions being that a programme be put in place within a reasonable timeframe to redesign the battery system and substitute a less volatile form of Li-ion or the well proven Ni-Cd. And the restrictions should be a downgrading of ETOP qualifications until the new system is certified. Of course that kind of restrictions would temporarily compromise the Dreamliner business case, but it would force Boeing to act diligently.

    That being said, I still have serious reservations about the aircraft electrical system and I believe it deserves to be thoroughly investigated.

  23. I’m shocked !- How does misleading PR sneak by ?? Answer seems to be klutzy lawyers
    http://www.bizjournals.com/wichita/news/2013/03/29/court-upholds-dismissal-of-case.html?page=all

    Court upholds dismissal of case against Boeing over 787 delay
    The 787 — after more than three years of delays from the company’s original schedule — finally made its first flight in December 2009.
    Enlarge

    The 787 — after more than three years of delays from the company’s original schedule — finally made its first flight in December 2009.

    Daniel McCoy
    Reporter- Wichita Business Journal

    The 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has rejected a claim that Boeing executives misrepresented the time line of the first flight of its 787 Dreamliner in an effort to inflate the company’s share price.

    U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo had previously dismissed the case twice. A three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit court upheld that ruling on appeal, according to a report from Courthouse News Service.

    The case had been brought as a class-action suit by attorneys at Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP.

    The story, as broken down by Courthouse News, goes like this:

    The 787 Dreamliner was supposedly going to make its first flight in June 2009. However, in April of that year, the plane failed a wing stress test.

    Despite that, Boeing said just two weeks later that all structural test required before the first flight had been completed with “positive” results, and CEO Jim McNerney said the 787 was on track for the June event.

    The plane failed another stress test in May, but Boeing did not announce the cancellation of the June flight until one week beforehand. It announced an indefinite delay in its delivery schedule at the same time.

    Shares for Boeing (NYSE: BA) fell 10 percent in the two days following those announcements, and the subsequent suit brought securities fraud charges against the company for claiming the plane would be ready to fly when it seemed Boeing knew it would not.

    *****Judge Castillo, however, did not see it that way, finding “no inference” that the company or its executives knowingly made false or misleading statements. *****

    The 787 — after more than three years of delays from the company’s original schedule — finally made its first flight in December 2009.

    That, of course, wasn’t the end of the troubles with the Dreamliner. The plane is currently grounded worldwide while Boeing tries to get modifications to the aircraft’s lithium-ion battery system approved by regulators.

    With the appeals court ruling in Boeing’s favor, it seems the company has one less thing to worry about on the Dreamliner.

    The law firm that brought the class action suit against it, however, may have a new worry.

    According to the Courthouse News report, the court noted the attorneys could be sanctioned because the “confidential source” that was the basis of much of their inside information about Boeing proved not to have been properly vetted.

    Now about the NO fire NO thermal runaway issue- I guess it depends on definition of terms.

  24. a bit old but partially on topic – as I was cleaning out some old email files I came across this article- best titled It only hurts when I laugh- since BA discovered the same thing about 5 years later . . NOTE DATES !
    +++

    Subject: Marshall Plan for Airbus ??

    SAY WHAT -???
    Germany to Subsidize Airbus With Marshall Plan, Spiegel Says
    By Dan Stets

    Berlin, June 1 (Bloomberg) — The German government plans to
    subsidize Airbus Industrie’s A380
    superjumbo with 1.8 billion marks ($778 million) from the Marshall
    Plan Fund, which was created by the
    U.S. after World War II to help rebuild Germany, Der Spiegel
    reported, without citing sources.

    The “irony” of the approach is that the U.S. government and
    Seattle-based Boeing Co., Airbus’s rival,
    have repeatedly complained about government subsidies for Airbus
    in general and for the A380 in
    particular, the German magazine said.

    The new Airbus plane, which is costing about $12 billion to
    develop, will surpass Boeing’s biggest
    passenger aircraft, the 747, when it goes into service in 2006.
    Airbus has orders for 62 of the planes
    and Boeing abandoned plans to build a larger version of the 747 as
    a competitor.

    Finance Minister Hans Eichel and Economics Minister Werner Mueller
    decided to take the money, which
    will be paid out over several years, from the Marshall fund rather
    than put the burden of the subsidies
    on the federal budget, Spiegel said. The fund has been continually
    replenished since the 1940s by
    repayment of loans used for German economic reconstruction, it said.

    (Spiegel 6/1 p. 102)
    ===

    In todays Chicago Tribune
    BATTLE FOR THE SKIES
    Arming for trade war
    Boeing sleuths seek proof of improper subsidies to Airbus
    By David Greising
    Chief business correspondent
    Published May 20, 2005

    is this extract – – –

    “One prized mound of paydirt: A midnight amendment to Germany’s 2005
    budget showed Germany plans to help the A350 with $890 million in
    government funds that originated as part of the U.S. Marshall Plan. As a
    rhetorical point, this was rich. Boeing could use it to claim
    the Europeans are using the Marshall Plan–created by the U.S. to
    rebuild Europe after World War II–to beat Boeing in the battle for
    the skies.
    “When we came across that, it was one of those moments when you said,
    `There, we’ve got one,”‘ said Stefan Ohlhoff, a lawyer who helped
    lead the research effort from his home base in Berlin “

    • A bit of a misrepresentation.
      The “Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau” was originally founded in Germany as an instrument
      to distribute liquidity that the Marshall Plan injected to facilitate buying
      american goods from Germany and keep the US economy running ( actually the Marshall Plan was paneuropean.and Germany got $1.4b from a volume of $12..16b). It is a bit diffuse about the credit and/or grant character of these contributions.

      Today it is a government tool to steer investment. Forex financing for photovoltaics
      and similar things is provided by way of KfW low interest credit.

      Read:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KfW

  25. OOPS The date of the first article was June 1, 2001 – not a typo 2001 !!

  26. Boeing seems to be working on the less public issues too. The distribution/switching panels seem to get a rework currently which obvious is nothing to nag about.
    From http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2020671693_boeingtestflightxml.html
    But then:
    “He (Sinnet) said the small spark inside the circuit boards produced no safety hazard, only a loss of function that was handled by the plane’s multiple, redundant power systems.”

    I just don’t get this sentiment.
    Redundancy works with rare and unlinked failures.
    But what is described here is neither rare nor unlinked.

  27. Uwe :
    Boeing seems to be working on the less public issues too. The distribution/switching panels seem to get a rework currently which obvious is nothing to nag about.

    a) “…to test engineering refinements of its electrical power panels…”
    b) “Boeing has been working on a solution to nagging power panel faults…”

    1- In the case of the fault on the April 7 [2012] flight, a circuit board was found to have shorted.
    2- Then on Dec. 4, another power-panel short circuit occurred on a United flight out of Houston, forcing the pilot to divert to New Orleans.
    3- A few days later, a similar fault occurred on the delivery flight of a Qatar Airways 787 from Everett to Doha.
    4- And later in December, a second United jet was grounded after another power-panel malfunction.

    To these four we must add the following case, as reported in Wikipedia:

    5- On November 9, 2010, Boeing 787, ZA002 made an emergency landing after smoke and flames were detected in the main cabin during a test flight over Texas. On November 22, 2010, Boeing announced that the in-flight fire can be primarily attributed to foreign object debris (FOD) that was present in the electrical bay. After electrical system and software changes, the 787 resumed company flight testing on December 23, 2010.

    Unaware of the Seattle Times article, I was mentioning in an earlier post (#55 above) that “I still have serious reservations about the aircraft electrical system and I believe it deserves to be thoroughly investigated”.

    I just want to add that I still don’t know if the electrical panel faults reported here have anything to do with the battery system faults, including two major incidents and over 100 battery replacements, but would not be surprised if a link was finally established further on.

    http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2020671693_boeingtestflightxml.html

    • One of the japanese customers had at least 3 ocurrences that needed repairs/replacement.

  28. toyuths, that accurately describes the Boeing 787 communication strategy during the last 6 years. And the stream of unwelcome surprises it continues to generate.

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