Washington on the move for new aerospace business

Washington State is showing signs of some real life in a slow ramp up to gain new aerospace business.

For years, nay, for decades, state politicians took Boeing for granted. Boeing officials complained and complained and complained about the need for better education, for smoother permitting processes, an onerous business climate and more. Officials warned over and over that they might move operations out of the state if things didn’t change.

When Boeing decided to move its corporate headquarters from Seattle to Chicago–with no notice to state officials it was even contemplating a move–politicians were shocked and called it a wake-up call.

Nothing happened. Officials hit the snooze button, turned over and went back to sleep.

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Svalbard Trip Report, Part 3

Here’s our final trip report for our Svalbard adventure. We tacked on four days in Oslo and five in Stockholm, since we were “in the neighborhood.” This was our first trip to Scandinavia, with Norway and Sweden being our 32nd and 33rd countries visited.

The prime purpose of the trip was to go to Svalbard. We previously posted some photos taken with our handy-dandy Blackberry.

Below is just a small sampling of the hundreds of photos we took.

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Questions to answer in the Ethiopian 787 fire

Note: we refer Readers to this analysis with diagrams.

Note: The Wall Street Journal has this in-depth piece (found via Google News, so Readers should be able to access it) that says:

  1. The fire was in the overhead area over the last rows of the airplane;
  2. “Boeing has been reviewing systems in that area of the jet that would remain powered by the attached ground power supplied by the airport, the person said.

    “What those systems are couldn’t immediately be determined. So-called remote-power distribution units, which act as substations for the 787’s electrical system, and remote-data concentrators, which help distribute data signals to systems from the jet’s central computer, are installed throughout the aircraft—including units next to one another in the ceiling of the jet near the last set of doors on the Dreamliner, where the fire damage appears;” and

  3. “The back area of the 787 also includes a galley behind the last row of seats on Ethiopian’s 787s. One person familiar with the analysis of the fire said the galley is also a focus for investigators. Galleys have various heat-producing equipment, such as ovens and coffee makers. Problems with such equipment in the past have caused fires on parked planes.”

There are a myriad of questions to answer in the July 12 fire of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787. Some probably are already known to investigators but most are not, and as yet the public hasn’t been informed by the British Air Accident Investigation Board (AAIB).

What we, the public, knows (or think we know) at this point is (in no particular order):

  1. The 787 was parked for eight or more hours on a remote ramp;
  2. The airplane, according to the New York Times, was hooked up to ground power;
  3. Also according to the NYT, the flight was 4 1/2 hours from departure;
  4. The lithium-ion batteries aren’t involved, according to the AAIB;
  5. According to the Financial Times, quoting an unidentified airline person, sparks were observed from the air conditioning unit about eight hours before the fire, but we have some skepticism over the accuracy of this report (we don’t doubt the Times accurately reported what it was told but we are skeptical of what it was told);
  6. The fire obviously burned through the skin crown.

Here are the speculative rumors so far (that we have seen), (in no particular order):

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Ethiopian 787 fire: the day after

Update, 12n PDT: The British Air Accident Investigation Board has issued its first press release. No apparent connection to the APU or batteries, but otherwise a standard we’re-working-on-it statement.

Unrelated to Ethiopian: Fascinating animations of the Asiana Flt 214 crash.

Original Post:

The origin of the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787 fire remains unclear the day after the event.

The New York Times has a recap that’s the best we found early Saturday.

As could be expected, we received a lot of media calls asking about the impact to the 787, to Boeing and some even about aviation safety in general.

We urged media to be cautious about drawing conclusions, other than from the photos it certainly doesn’t appear to have any connection to the previous battery fires because of the location of the fire burn-through on the Ethiopian airplane. The batteries are located far away from the burn area.

The possibility of the fire originating in the aft crew rest area was debunked when The Wall Street Journal reported Ethiopian didn’t configure its 787s with a crew rest area in this location.

Other areas quickly circulating: the aft galley, the air conditioning unit (the Financial Times reported a problem with this aircraft’s AC unit, complete with sparks, had been observed eight hours previously), a general electrical system fault, human error of some kind, and more.

It’s all speculation at this stage. And none of it leads anywhere.

Boeing stock was off $8 in the immediate wake of the news and closed down $5. In after-hours trading it was up 3 cents. Wall Street clearly feared another battery fire at first. But as the day went on and initial facts became clear, analysts seemed unfazed.

We urge media to proceed cautiously in its reporting.

This will clearly be a test for Boeing’s Commercial Aviation Services unit, known as CAS. We reported for CNN how CAS prepared to fan out to install the batter fix and to repair the fire-damaged JAL 787. This fire damage is far worse, and it puts to the test not only CAS’s ability to repair this airplane but the entire Boeing claim that a composite fuselage can be repaired from major damage.

Being first is sometimes a bitch.

Boeing has paid dearly for being first with the innovations associated with the 787, both in design and in production. The entire industry will learn these lessons, and Airbus with the A350 isn’t far behind with its composite airplane. Although Airbus has taken a more conservative approach with the A350 in a number of areas, one has to wonder what unknown unknowns will lurk over this airplane.

Some people, including us, have been mildly critical of Boeing for not proceeding with new, composite airplanes to replace the 737 and the 777. Boeing says it wants to “harvest” the technologies of the 787 before taking the next step of all-new airplanes. Perhaps harvesting lessons learned is equally important.

Did Boeing try to do too much too soon with the 787? Perhaps. But this latest incident may be little more than some human-induced fire or something originating with a vendor-supplier component that has nothing to do with the design or the systems of the 787.

Still, it’s Boeing’s name on the side of the airplane and undoubtedly some segment of the flying public will see the headlines and avoid the airplane. The public relations damage is real and, having been in the communications business, we feel for Boeing’s Corp Com department.

Ethiopian 787 fire at LHR doesn’t look like it’s battery-related

Fire damage of the Ethiopian 787 via Twitter

Here’s a link to some photos.

Here’s a link to a Boeing document showing flammable areas on the 787.

New high-resolution image shows greater detail of fire damage, ribbing. via NYCAviation.

Odds and Ends: easyJet’s ‘neutral’ engine; Airbus, Boeing futures in Puget Sound

easyJet’s ‘neutral’ engine: We were amused at the Airbus photo release concerning easyJet firming up its orders for 100 A320neos, announced at the Paris Air Show. In the past, aviation geeks scrutinized the photos to see what engines were depicted to gain a clue if an engine order wasn’t announced with the airframe order. With the easyJet photo release, Airbus entitled it, Airbus “A320neo easyJet Neutral engines.”

EASYJET A320neo_NEUTRAL ENGINE_

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Airbus in Puget Sound: Next week the Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance and the Washington Department of Commerce are hosting the first Airbus suppliers fair here in the State.

  • This is something near to our heart. We’ve been working on getting Airbus here for a suppliers fair since 2009 as part of the “Beyond Boeing” strategy we outlined in an October 2009 speech at a conference in Spokane (WA). When we began consulting to the Washington Department of Commerce the following year, Commerce (which previously had expressed interest) also took up the cause. The whole thing fell apart at the height of the vitriolic USAF tanker competition, when the Washington Congressional delegation became so political about the affair. Since then, Commerce and the Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance took up the cause and next week is the culmination of this effort. According to the State, 40 percent of the Washington suppliers it surveyed already serve Airbus, and the State is the Number 2 supplier in the US to Airbus by company count. Airbus wants to increase its US dollar-based footprint and is even talking about opening an engineering center in Washington during the next 10 years.
  • The Puget Sound Business Journal article linked above has several links within it with more background.

Boeing in Puget Sound: Meantime, the Puget Sound Business Journal has several articles about Boeing’s future here:

The South is Winning: Why Puget Sound keeps losing jobs

The South is Winning: New composites could hasten drift

The south is Winning: Could Washington become a Right-to-Work State?

  • In this one, we note that the unions “saved Boeing’s ass” during the 747-8 and 787 debacles but if Washington wants to truly be competitive with the South, it needs to become a right-to-work state. Fat chance.

There is also this editorial comment from The Everett Herald.

More on Asiana 777

With a little free time, we’re catching up on the Asiana accident.’

Ernie Arvai sent us this link from The Atlantic which references several postings on a professional pilot forum, PPrune.

Several readers linked or sent us this article which is thorough enough that we’re elevating it to a prime position in a posting.

This article details some of the debrise found in the water and some more key facts about the final 1.20 minutes of the flight.

This article outlines some of the spinal and neck injuries incurred. These may be studied for future seat designs to increase safety.

The outcome-only two dead (as yet) and several still in critical condition is being hailed as testimony to aircraft safety and luck. There is no question aircraft accidents are more survivable today because of the safety advances. But if the 777 had come down on the seawall any further forward than it did, the outcome could have been far worse. This is the luck part. Professional flight attendants and passenger heroics also played a role in survivability. Itäs tragic that one of the two deaths appears to have come from a rescue vehicle accident.

 

Asiana 777 crashes in SFO

An Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 crash-landed at San Francisco Airport Saturday, killing at least two. This is the first fatal crash involving a 777.

Investigators will certainly look at whether fuel line icing may be a factor, which was traced to be the cause of the only other 777 accident, British Airways at London several years ago, also a crash-landing situation. Early news reports seem to reflect a similarity in the flight profile between the two flights. As readers know, we’re traveling and we don’t have access to our files to determine if Asiana uses Rolls-Royce engines, which are those used on BA and which were susceptible to icing.

GE engines on the 777-300ER have more recently come under some scrutiny for issues, and we’d expect investigators to consider whether there is any connection if Asiana uses GE on its 777-200s. This would be a natural course of considering all possible factors.

Other factors that will be looked at: human error, mechanical problems and controlled flight into terrain (CFIT).

Update, 5pm GMT: With the knowledge now that the engines are PW, fuel icing as a cause seems pretty unlikely, but CVR and FDR readouts will indicate engine performance parameters. Although weather doesn’t appear to be a factor, it will be evaluated for the prospect of any clear air windshear or other conditions that could be a contributing cause.

Statements by the airline officials at this point that there wasn’t any pilot error or mechanical issues are entirely premature, given when the statements were made the data recorders hadn’t been recovered much less read.

Closely looking at a photo seems to indicate the aft pressure bulkhead in place, meaning the tail severed aft it it.

Svalbard Trip, Part 2: the Realm of the Polar Bear–sort of

(Photos still to come.)

The tour in and around Svalbard was concentrated on the island of Spitsbergen. We were on a small ship, the M/S Expedition, owned by the tour group known simply as G. Capable of carrying 100 passengers, this is the sort of small boat I like because it has a shallow draft and get get into shallow waters, and it doesn’t have the mass of people of larger ships. The atmosphere is far more casual as well.

The tour was called the Realm of the Polar Bear. It should have been called the Polar Experience. The name implies we’d see a large number of polar bears; we saw just five and the cruise before us only one. It certainly did not compare favorably with the up close and personal experience of our Kaktovik, Alaska, trip in October 2010 when we were within feet of yearling polar bears and a short distance for the adults, with large numbers nearby. We had no idea just how special an experience that was.

That’s not to say Spitsbergen wasn’t worth going-it was. But we quickly had to adjust expectations.  Seeing the polar bears in the ice park environment was special. We saw one bear chowing down on a kill and two bear walking the ice pack, testing the ice as they went. The Expedition’s skipper put the put into the ice pack to get closer to the bear, a procedure that also was interesting to watch. (We also overnighted with an ice pack where it was too deep to anchor. Getting out was also an interesting experience.)

Perhaps more interesting was getting close to beached walruses doing what they do best: sleeping. Although ‘action’ was a walrus yawning or stretching (sort of like the saying, Watching grass grow), being within 25 yards of this huge, gentle beasts was a thrill. One of the tour guides ‘barked’ at incoming walruses (sort of a walrus whisperer), which further attracted them. Lumbering on land, they are graceful in the water.

Birds, birds, birds. In addition to what we saw in the course of being in nature, we went to a series of cliffs where 100,000 birds nest and congregate. The comparison with Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds immediately came to mind, though strictly from quantity and not from aggression. The guide did caution, however, against looking up with an open mouth to say ‘wow.’ Photos will have to illustrate-words cannot.

One of the more interesting stops was visiting a closed Russian minining operation. Once populated by 1,000, there are now just 22 living there dismantling the site. At the pace they are going, a few generations will pass before it’s is dismantled. I’ll have more about this when I post photos. This was one of two ghost towns we visited, the other being the marble mining site I previously referenced.

This is my third trip to the polar region. Antarctic is on the Bucket List as well.

Given the over-sold hype about polar bears, am I glad I went? You bet, especially given the opportunity to be in the ice cap and see the bear there. But Svalbard falls within the category, been there, done that, while we want to go back to Kaktovik for another polar bear fix.

Getting there

Getting to Svalbard isn’t easy. Fly into Oslo and take SAS to Longyearbyen. There are limited flights and only one is non-stop: an 8:40pm departure that gets to Longyearbyen at 11:30pm, if on time (ours was an hour late). Otherwise you have to route via Tromso. For reasons that defy logic, even though Svalbard is part of Norway, it is treated as an international destination with all the hassles that go into that: passport control, customs check. If you’re on the non-stop, this is all handled at Oslo. If you go through Tromso, you have to deplane and go through all this there. Coming back was a real pain in the ass. We returned through Tromso (the non-stop is in the 4am hour to make international connections out of Oslo). We had to deplane at Tromso through ground-level ramp boarding, walk through and wait in the open air and the rain as the passport control line backed up. We had to reclaim our luggage and go through the Nothing to Declare/Declare lines (what in the world can you get in Longyearbyen that you would have to declare???) and then go outside security to recheck the backs and be rescreened prior to reboarding.

This all followed disembarking the ship at 8am and being deposited at the Raddison Blu hotel in Longyearbyen until our 1pm pick up to the airport. The Raddison has few chairs for the 100 people waiting and ‘downtown’ Longyearbyen can be ‘experienced’ in about five minutes. This last day of the excursion was easily, as several remarked, an ‘ordeal.’ Really took the edge off the trip.

Food

The food on the Expedition was plentiful and the staff superb. But Norwegian food (both there and in Oslo) has no flavor–it’s totally bland. I kidded some new British friends that the Norwegians must be taking Bland cooking lessons from the British, but this does the Brits a disservice. The food on our first day in Stockholm had flavor. What a concept.

And the food on SAS. I’ll never complain about buy-on-board on US airlines again. We all know US airline cuisine is really bad. SAS charged 20 dollars for one-half sandwich consisting of one slice of cheese and one lettuce leaf, plus a small can of Pringles. Awful doesn’t describe it.

More to come.

 

Fuel burn A320 v 737

While on our SAS flight from Longyearbyen to Oslo, we browsed the SAS magazine airplane descriptions and it contained fuel burn per seat in litres for each fleet type.

SAS operates the 319/320/321 and 737-600/700/800. Seating is as follows:

A319: 141

737-700: 141

A320: 168

738: 186

SAS reports a mere 0.001 difference in fuel burn per seat per kilometer in litres in favor of Boeing in each case–despite the 738 having 18 more seats, in which case the difference could be expected to be much greater.

We found the data to be quite illuminating.

Fuel burn per seat per km, in litres:

A319: 0.033

737-700: 0.032

A320: 0.029

738: 0.028