Leeham News and Analysis
There's more to real news than a news release.
Leeham News and Analysis
- Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 28. June 27, 2025
- Parent agency, FAA often at odds as politics outweighs safety June 26, 2025
- Electric Flight and the Ugly Duckling June 25, 2025
- Engine makers tout “Plan A” but have “Plan B” backups in R&D June 23, 2025
- Bjorn’s Corner: Air Transport’s route to 2050. Part 27. June 20, 2025
Odds and Ends: 777-8 “Lite”; group backs WA 777X effort; Asiana crash photos; a new 787 theory
Note: This Reuters article has some good detail about how Boeing gets the 777-9X to its advertised 20% economic gains over 777-300ER.
777-8 “Lite:” Boeing’s plan to launch the 777X in two versions, the ultra-long range 8X at 9,500nm and the 407-seat 9X at 8,400nm, is well known. Launch is widely expected at the Dubai Air Show, where home-town airline Emirates is expected to be the launch customer for both versions, with perhaps as many as 100 airplanes.
We’ve reported previously there will be a third version, a reduced gross weight 777-8X, but other media haven’t followed our lead on this (nor have aerospace analysts). No, some have said, there will be just the two versions, the 8LX and the 9X.
Well, we have it on tape.
Mike Bair, vice president of marketing and business development for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, is responsible for strategy, planning and marketing of the company’s commercial product and services. At Boeing’s Paris Air Show briefing in May, we were part of a press gaggle and here’s how the conversation went.
Leeham News: The 8X is the same size as the A350-1000, but the 9,500 mile 8X will probably be quite a bit heavier. Do you see a reduced MTOW for the 8X that will be more directly competitive?
Bair: Absolutely. We’ll paper the weight, whatever we need to paper the weight.
That’s all it took: Bair confirmed the plan for the 8X “lite.” The press gaggle continued.
Leeham: Why does it take seven years now to do a derivative airplane?
Bair: It’s the engines. That’s the pacing item.
Guy Norris of Aviation Week asked about why the 777X wouldn’t be an electric airplane, as is the 787.
Bair: The all electric system on the 787 was driven by deicing the wing. It’s a very thin wing and we couldn’t figure out how to get the duct work into the wing for pneumatic deicing, so the big power draw is deicing. On a Triple 7X, while the wing will look very similar, because it is a bigger wing, there is plenty of space on it.
Bair was also asked where the 777X’s composite wing will be built, a topic of keen interest to the State of Washington.
Bair: We don’t know yet (where wing will be built). All we know is that a brand new composite wing will need a brand new composite wing factory somewhere.
To that end, the Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance has endorsed the designation of the 777X as a project of Statewide Significance. Here is the press release: PNAA_Supports_Statewide_Significance
Separately, Washington State’s director of the Governor’s Office of Aerospace says Boeing might build an assembly plant outside the US.
Asiana photos: A reader sent us a PDF of 33 photos of the Asiana Boeing 777 crash, many showing the interior. These are rather eye-opening and photos like these are rarely seen. We can’t tell from the photos how much of the interior damage, exclusive of the fire, was from impact that dislodged the interior walls and seats, but this falls into the Holy Smokes category. It makes you wonder how there were as few casualties as there were.No doubt these will be studied for further safety improvements.
Here are the Asiana crash photos.
Another Ethiopian 787 theory: See this piece from Christine Negroni, an aviation writer and an author of a book on the crash of TWA 800.
Honeywell says it will remove the Electronic Locator Transmitter from the 787 if asked by the Brits. The Wall Street Journal first reported the Air Accident Investigation Board might recommend this.
Latest on Ethiopian 787
The media frenzy over the cause of the fire of the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787 last Friday seems to be slowing.
The New York Times has this report from late last night that says Japan Air Lines and ANA conducted checks on their Boeing 787 fleet and found everything OK.
The NYT also has some new detail about what’s near the burned out area of the 787 and what’s not, and what else investigators are checking (some of which was previously reported by the Wall Street Journal).
Bloomberg has this report saying it doesn’t appear grounding the airplane is in the cards–and we believe it should not be. The first two battery incidents justified grounding but we don’t have the same concerns with this fire as we did with the JAL fire and the ANA near-fire.
Nothing we’ve yet read nor heard suggests anything systemic about the airplane that contributed to the fire. We still have to wait and see what investigators come up with.
Unlike the Asiana Airlines crash the previous week, there are no flight data recorders or cockpit voice recorders or witnesses to provide a near-instant conclusion. This investigation is a detective story that will take some time to reach answers.
As we know from the JAL fire, evidence is often destroyed in a fire and news reports indicate the Electronic Locator Transmitter was pretty well destroyed. The underlying question is whether the ELT was the origin of the fire or merely a victim itself that propagated the fire with its lithium battery. What other factors contributor to the fire?
It’s time to move on and let investigators do their work.
Update: via Twitter: Jon Ostrower @jonostrower
WSJ BREAKING: AAIB to issue interim 787 report in dys. Unclear if ELT started fire. May suggest ELT removal from 787s during probe –Source
Odds and Ends: Repairing the Ethiopian 787; the ELT theory
Repairing the 787: The prospect of repairing or writing off the 787 has gained fodder almost on the same level as speculation over the cause of the fire. There have been several articles, including this one yesterday in the Puget Sound Business Journal and this one today from a former NTSB member, writing in Forbes.
Throughout development of the 787, Boeing said repairing the composites was not something they were worried about. But most context related to ramp damage or other minor issues. Clearly, though, Boeing being Boeing, we are confident that engineering took a look at major fuselage damage potential.
In the extreme, Boeing can simply replace the entire aft end, which is depicted in this illustration.
Boeing famously replaced the nose section of a TWA 707 in 1969. The nose section of a BOAC 707 was undamaged and later grafted onto TWA 707-331 N776TW, which had been hijacked as flight 840. The nose was blown off in a Jordanian desert. The repaired aircraft flew for 10 years with TWA. The cost to repair was $4m, according to Wikipedia information (about $20m today).
Update, 9am PDT: Jon Proctor, in Reader Comments, says this BOAC angle is incorrect. He supplied the following photos that demonstrate the replacement nose was fresh from Boeing’s factory.
Jon Proctor photo.
Jon Proctor photo.
Qantas is famous for never having a hull loss, repairing damaged aircraft that others might scrap as beyond economical repair. The Airbus A380 involved in the high-profile QF34 engine explosion was out of service for a couple of years and cost something like $180m to fix, but it flies on today.
A Google search of damaged aircraft that have been repaired and returned to service shows a long list of aircraft that suffered what appears to be far greater damage than the Ethiopian aircraft. The difference, of course, is that the other aircraft were metal and this is composite.
The cost will go beyond the fuselage crown and related structure. The interior, with smoke damage, is toast. Who knows at this stage what damage has been done to systems, either from the fire, the fire-fighting or the knock-on effects.
ELT: Yesterday’s news that the Electronic Locator Transmitter is being looked at as a possible cause of the Heathrow Airport 787 fire predictably created a flurry of media activity over the implications of this prospect. The Wall Street Journal broke the news and a media frenzy ensued. WSJ posted an update late yesterday. We accessed through our subscription; Readers may try Google News to see if it is passed the pay-wall today.
The New York Times has this piece on the ELT and the potential role it may have had in the fire, either as a source or a propagator.
Flight Global has a piece that puts some good perspective on this prospect.
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.
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:
- The fire was in the overhead area over the last rows of the airplane;
- “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
- “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):
- The 787 was parked for eight or more hours on a remote ramp;
- The airplane, according to the New York Times, was hooked up to ground power;
- Also according to the NYT, the flight was 4 1/2 hours from departure;
- The lithium-ion batteries aren’t involved, according to the AAIB;
- 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);
- The fire obviously burned through the skin crown.
Here are the speculative rumors so far (that we have seen), (in no particular order):
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.”
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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.