Nightmareliner Fire Closes LHR

[Garry Russell]

Did you work on 787's Joe???

[airboatr]

Obviously not!

[NigelC]

This is the ELT fitted to the 787

http://www51.honeywell.com/aero/common/ ... FN_ELT.pdf

[NigelC]

Firefighters summoned to the 787 sprayed the aircraft with water and foam, and unplugged the umbilical cables as a precaution. They entered through a forward left-hand passenger door, encountering thick smoke, and saw signs of fire above rear ceiling panels in the cabin.

Attempts to tackle it with a handheld halon extinguisher were unsuccessful, so a ceiling panel was moved and the fire was put out with water hoses.

Firemen aren't happy without a hose in their hand......

[Chris Trott]

I wonder if part of the issue is the non-conductivity of the CFRP causing issues with these batteries? Boeing has interwoven metal into the CFRP to try and ensure proper conduction of electricity to ground, but with all these shorts on otherwise properly performing batteries, it makes me wonder if there's not some yet undiagnosed issue where the grounding straps being used are not properly dissipating static charge into the fuselage for dissipation into the air via the static wicks and this is allowing for the heat generation via static buildup and eventual shorting.

I also find it odd that the 787 went through as many years of live testing as it did and none of these issues cropped up but almost immediately after introduction into service they're having them. It makes you wonder what they were doing in testing that may or may not be a "recommended item" that some operators may have chosen to not do as a cost saving measure and is highlighting this problem. We have to remember that the 787 (and the A350) represent a new kind of airplane that will have to be handled differently. There will be operators who will resist this, even subconsciously, and it will have bad results because there are things you MUST do with a CFRP airplane that you don't have to do with other airplanes. This is the same kind of transition that has occurred multiple times in the last 100 years of aviation from the transition from wood to metal, pressurization, complex systems (retractable landing gear, big engines with constant speed props, etc), jets, computers, and now large use of Carbon Fiber.

I fear Boeing will take the brunt of this teething, but most likely Airbus will find some of the same problems Boeing is already experiencing once they put the A350 in service because some of these issues are simply with the material, not with the manufacturer. People don't talk about it, but the Beech Starship had a lot of teething problems when it first entered service. Many of those problems came from the fact that Beech was forced to build the plane twice as heavy and thick as was required, but some of it was just that the operators had to get used to operating a CFRP aircraft.

[TSR2]

I used to have a Lotus Excel and it didn't like electrics either, or electrics didn't like it

[speedbird591]

I used to have a Lotus Excel and it didn't like electrics either, or electrics didn't like it

Was it ruled by 'Lucas - Prince of Darkness' like many of my older British vehicles?

Ian

[cstorey]

Nothing infuriates me more than the Prince of Darkness joke . The first 40% or so of my motoring career ( now about 1.3 million miles ) was spent exclusively travelling courtesy of Lucas electrics, and apart from the well known fuel delivery pump problems on the Triumph 2.5 PI , I never had a single failure . I wish my more recent ( admittedly more complex ) German electrics had been as reliable . Why do we, as a nation, so love to run our products down ?

[speedbird591]

Nothing infuriates me more than the Prince of Darkness joke

Nothing, Chris?

Well, I can't be the only one who wouldn't go out on my bikes without my belstaff pockets stuffed full of wires, tools and bulbs. Otherwise the joke wouldn't be so universally amusing. The only thing I remember having a worse reputation was the Italian one - what was that? Magneti Marelli - or something like that.

Happiest day of my life - my first Japanese bike. (Happiest, Ian? )

Well, we all had different experiences but I''m glad yours turned out well, Chris, That's a pretty impressive amount of motoring you did and does give you the authority of experience. Where on earth did you drive to - doing all that? There must be some interesting stories for us, there!

Ian

[cstorey]

Ian : Well, nothing is a bit of an exaggeration ! My motoring career actually ( fortunately ) has not been very dramatic . From age 17 to about 25 I did about 20,000 miles a year what with work and social activities - a lot of going to London for weekends . Then for the next 12 years I did more like 30,000 a year , mostly for work, so that accounted for about 500,000 up to 1982 - those were my Lucas years ! Then it started in earnest when I started to commute daily anything between 185 miles round trip and about 320 . In those years which lasted from 1982 to 2007 I was regularly doing up to 40,000 miles a year , although it tailed off for the last 5 years or so. I was regarded as a complete lunatic but I found the drive home in the evening a good time for unwinding and thinking . I have had 73 cars, the best of which was my 500SEC Mercedes on which I did 300,000 miles in 7 years, and which had 1 unscheduled repair in that time which cost me precisely £ 2.35 to have a nut on the electric window tightened up . The worst was my Porsche 996 Carrera ( the male menopause showing ) which had its first total breakdown at 1800 miles and kept on causing expensive troubles thereafter, eventually costing me £ 1 a mile in depreciation . My favourite car is still the Brabham tuned Austin Healey Sprite which I had in 1967-8 but which came to a rather sad end when a van did a U turn in front of me

PS I hope that your pain can be treated next week. Your bravery is an inspiration to us all