Its kinda sad, really. They put tremendous effort in trying to reduce cost and "spread risk" by outsourcing and it ends up coming back to bite them. Needless to say, Boeing has taken a hit to their pocketbooks, credibility, and reputation.

To those who carped on and on about the Airbus and how you would never travel on one - "gimme good ol' Boeing every time" you said - well, it's time to enjoy eating some humble pie!!

When I had the temerity to suggest in previous articles that ALL new technologies, no matter who made the aircraft, were fraught - that previously untried stresses, speeds, altitudes, pressures, etc. all posed risks, I got "slammed" by Boeing devotees - but I was never trying to criticise Boeing - I was merely drawing a parallel between the super-jumbo and the first-ever commercial jetcraft, the DeHavilland Comet, which, after a brilliant start to its career, suddenly experienced one disaster after another because of unimagined "metal fatigue" - new technology ALWAYS poses risks!!

Guess what - even Homer nods - I am confident that both both Boeing and Airbus will overcome these teething difficulties and I wish every success in the future!!

Eamonn, Dublin, Ireland

"The company added, "There is no short-term safety concern."

Whaddyamean? You just delivered the first one yesterday.

The lamination process does so in horizontal layers (X,Y) with fiber carbon and resins of many types. The lamination process itself does not allow for vertical fixing (Z) or interweaving of the fibers with the resins being the only fixing material between the layers. When you have large surfaces such as wings and skins flexing in and out or up and down what you end up with are stress layers of pure resin in between the fiber lamination which will eventually loosen. This problem is a well documented problem with carbon fiber composites.

In laymen terms, msnbc’s dumbing down of America

I would start with the freeze–thaw cycles and the testing of coefficient of thermal expansion of carbon fiber reinforced polymers. The delamination accurse between the fiber layers and saturating epoxy polymer for many reasons, blistering, bubbles to name a few. Reagent grade raw materials help in many cases as h2o of any kind is your biggest concern! Something tells me the deterioration is as much internally not just at the skin surface.

Just an observation coming from my 25 years of formulating and manufacturing lamination’s only to witness outsourcing to China and the loss of my job.

Thanks for the addendum. You said it much better than I did. What little exposure I have had with the process worries me for wings made out of carbon fiber. It may be that it is stronger than steel in fiber form but the composition itself when delamination occurs could eventually render the entire structure unstable and unable to carry the loads it was projected for. Carbon fiber is not flexible friendly. Bedbug, I hope you have found a new job in the mean time and are able to make ends meet.

A fairly complex choreography of vendors,

compositesworld.com/articles/boeing-787-update

Personally, I'd rather have had them get a few million air miles on cargo carriers before passenger carriers took them. Eamonn, this subject does bring a bit of a haunting memory of de Havilland, but hopefully Boeing's $15 billion overrun worked through most major issues. While on Boeing, and reflecting on Peter Jacobs statement above, here's one of Boeing senior technical fellow L.J. Hart-Smith's papers critical of blind outsourcing,

documentcloud.org/documents/69746-hart-smith-on-outsourcing.html

'...Second Law of Thermodynamics states that "perfect efficiency can be achieved only when no work is being done." It seems strange that, in the most hi-tech of industries, it is not appreciated that this same inescapable law of nature applies equally to busines s activities as well. Yet the traditional implementation of head-count limits, either on the assumption that all skills are interchangeable, or the belief that none are involved, flies in the face of such realities...'

what happens to carbon fiber structure when struck by lighting? i know with aluminum the metal become pitted but doesn't lose strength

InfoTech, you have a valid point. Carbon Fiber wings should be tested long term to see actual results. I have seen abd flown fiber wings on gliders and experimental DIY kits, etc. These types of aircraft have a total different operational reality then would a 787. The cycles and loads on a commercial liner are much greater.

@bedbug, so sorry to hear your experience. And much the same plight in the multinational I'm in. I've lost a lot of brilliant friends.

@Peter, yes, the constant pressure changes of 0 to 30,000 ft are quite significant.

Quality control has always been a problem for outsourced components

@cheetah

"The company added, "There is no short-term safety concern."

Whaddyamean? You just delivered the first one yesterday.

The article states:

"Boeing has delivered five Dreamliners since September of last year, when All Nippon Airways took the inaugural delivery. The 60th Dreamliner is currently on the assembly line at Boeing's plant in Everett, Washington."

I think most of you are writing the epitath to a story that will turn out much different.

New products always go through unforseen problems before they become stable and relaible.

What will you say once Boeing figures out this delamination problem and other airline manufacturers begin to realize that they need to begin making carbon-fiber products as well?

For all of you that are so quick to blame outsourcing, the article states Boeing said it "..has found that incorrect shimming was performed on support structure on the aft fuselage of some 787s.", The aft fuselage is not from any other company but Boeing, it is one of the parts they do make themselves.

Also every single Boeing airplane being built today is assembled from outsourced parts.In fact the same company that makes every forward fuselage section for Boeing, also makes the composite centre fuselage for the Airbus A350, and section of the A380, and A320.

Hauser.....it doesn't even have to be outsourced components. I know a company that wanted to jump on the cheap labor-no union bandwagon back in the 70's. They opened a plant in Tijuana, Mexico. They still operate to this day, but it never came close to the goals they hoped it would attain. They aren't able to produce any of the components they manufacture with the consistent quality of their US operations. The high dollar components simply cannot be built there, too many failures. Don't ask me why...I don't know, but that's the way it is. They have judged the operation to be a low-end manufacturer and there doesn't seem to be any indication that the company is willing to try to move the operation into its aerospace program again.

Scott, it should and will be sorted out. People need to talk about the problem in order to fix it. What is the problem with talking about the problem... Until then, I hope the wings stay on, the skin stays on, and that nobody gets killed.

“””New products always go through unforeseen problems before they become stable and reliable.”””

Not at 30k feet with paying passengers!

@ Peter Jacobs and InfoTechnology, I thank you very much for your kind wishes. But 50 and older with no degree only experience of owning and running a business I have no hope. The fact history will repeat itself with all the outsourcing and newbies.

But how do you handle a recall on planes that have a flaw? Freeze–thaw cycles, I worked in R&D for years did the testing for years and it kinda matters with composites as in a no brainier!

Good day sir.

Delam can ruin your whole day.

Ask any rotorwing pilot.

.

A six sigma process is one in which 99.99966% of the products manufactured are statistically expected to be free of defects (3.4 defects per million). Motorola set a goal of "six sigma" for all of its manufacturing operations, and this goal became a byword for the management and engineering practices used to achieve it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Sigma

I hope that 6 sigma is a minimum requirement for Boeing when outsourcing anything on an airplane. Still when it comes to commercial air travel 3.4 defects per million is too many lives lost.

As a process engineer I have utilized 6 sigma in many of the complex business processes under my responsibility. With 150 employees and 1B per year in recuperated losses due to both internal and external fraud, inefficient revenue assurance processes and broken IT routines.

@Scott, it is not the embrace of new technology which concerns some - technology and science within R&D is my life. Rather, it is the fact that some know firsthand how corporation's internals can frequently work (or not work, as the case may be).

Scotty, Scotty, Scotty, in the career of a commercial plane, six months is yesterday and nobody's going to figure out how to continually flex two dissimilar bonded materials.

@bedbug007. Great analysis. Don't forget that any impact will also have an adverse effect on carbon fiber laminate material. Just look at what a piece of foam impacting the leading edge wing of a Space Shuttle did. Can you imagine what a flock of large, or even small birds might do to that material. Or let alone even a single strike. Makes one wonder. Thermal Imaging inspections were implemented to inspect the material after each flight after the loss of Columbia.

Cancel comment #1.23 duplicate effort.

Delete.

@InfoTechnology

@Scott, it is not the embrace of new technology which concerns some - technology and science within R&D is my life. Rather, it is the fact that some know firsthand how corporation's internals can frequently work (or not work, as the case may be).

What is your point exactly? "Some" companies experiences aren't what we are discussing.

@cheetah-822547

Scotty, Scotty, Scotty, in the career of a commercial plane, six months is yesterday and nobody's going to figure out how to continually flex two dissimilar bonded materials.

Cheetahy, Cheetahy, Cheetahy:

In the world of reality yesterday does not equal six months ago nor does yesterday equal the years of design and testing before that.

@Dick-1345097

I once manufactured the """adhesives""" for the Space Shuttle; we made the change to clean room and urethane grade raw materials for the tile GLUE!

But thanks from a business owner now on the street!

Eau contraire .... this is marketing gold. The seats in back will no longer be coach. They'll cost more than 1st Class because of the view.

It's au contraire. Eau is water.

Baldanerio:

Thanks for the link.

As you may know, carbon-fiber delamination is the big unknown and the big gamble here. The responses from Boeing have been filled with VERY carefully-chosen euphemisms, to the point that those responses seem somewhat bland and meaningless.

However, let's hope that the delaminations did indeed result from initial manufacturing defects (which can be corrected), rather than from the freeze/thaw cycles that the aircraft encounters during normal operations.

The reference article said that it was done in Everett. Not that it matters - it is not a union versus right to work state as a couple of tinybrains above suggested. True, it's an oops moment for Boeing, but there's also a cost involved and I wonder what this is going to cost the company. And the stock.

The planes are being assembled in Everett WA. The parts come from many places including South Carolina.

About that learning curve.....I hope me or any of my family are not on one those planes if they learn the wings fail when one gets caught in a thunderstorm.

In this instance, the flawed work appears to have been done in the US at the South Carolina manufacturing facility

funny what happens when you have underpaid workers on the job.

Lol, I'd still like to fly on both someday. But that was kind of funny.

You are right on with your post. It's still the same way today. My wife worked for an aerospace contractor as a machinist and she has to certify and stamp every part she works on. She works with very close co-operation with the engineers, especially with prototype designs. The engineers have the finial say about design and any worker not following design protocols find themselves in big trouble fast.

One correction Brian, Puget sound engineers are union (SPEEA). Otherwise that is largely true (speaking as a Boeing MRB engineer).

Unions exist and are necessary for the same reasons that the CIA, FBI, NSA, FDIC, SEC, FAA, FDA, FTC, GAO, and so forth exist, which basically is that there are so many sneaky weasel "suits" like Bernie Madoff, Kenneth Lay, Jeffery Skilling, et al. that the folks who do the vastly important physical work would be screwed so often that nothing would ever get done, really . . .

Really! :-o

FC,CO Heavan......You forgot one simpleminded issue......If your members keep demanding higher wages and have wildcat strikes then there is a threshold that will be reached. It's called NAFTA and offshoring.

FC, CO Heaven

If you like a living wage and 40 hour work week, it is Henry Ford you should thank, not a union. Ford gave his workers both of those more than 20 years before they ever had a union, he done it so he could get the best workers and keep them.

edward,, wrong. Ford paid his workers at a level he carefully calculated so that the workers could afford to buy the very cars they were making. Find me ANY CEO anywhere who thinks like this today. Non-existent.

.

UnitedStates1776

Ford paid $5 a day which was double the wage of the day, back then every model was its own company, and workers often moved from job to job, so Ford doubled the wage to keep them.

A fact that is well recorded, he also opened the first Ford plants outside of the US, and sales centers in over 16 countries.

Ford paid $5 a day which was double the wage of the day, back then every model was its own company, and workers often moved from job to job, so Ford doubled the wage to keep them

as opposed to the recently revealed agreements between high-tech companies to NOT hire each other's workers in order to keep wages lower.

THAT is what our country is devolving to, keep the workers underpaid so the CEOS can get extra fat bonuses.

Sorry, FC Co Heaven 40 hour works weeks were not invented by the Unions.

Safe work place? How safe is it for worker who cross a picket line to work when Union Workers are striking? How About Jimmy Hoffa? How safe is he? (pretty safe, now).

Working wage? I've never worked for a union. My technical expertise demands a 6 figure working wage.

Looks as if the idiot you may be pointing at is yourself.

If you are making six figures then you really don't need a union.My tech experience is hvac,and we get less than half of that,without a union it would be lower,so you see your situation does not allow you to comment on this issue intelligently,because you have no firsthand knowledge,only what you hear.

Saint Ronald is the worst thing that ever happened to this country.I think his brain was scrambled long before he left office.

thisguy:

If you think that unions are no longer needed merely because there are "laws in place", you are naive indeed. Union power supports the interests of workers and acts as a balance to the power of corporate owners. Without that balance, workers have little power to uphold their interests, which will result in a decline in both working conditions and wages.

The essence here is balance: corporate and union interests must maintain a balance between them so that neither side will take advantage of the other. Maintaining that balance is not easy.

Unions had their place a hundred years ago but now they're not as needed with all the laws in place.

You've obviously never worked in a "right to work" state like Florida.

I think of 11 oil workers from a certain gulf oil rig and 29 miners buried in West Virginia who probably wish they had a union before the "laws" protecting them were ignored. Perhaps unions ARE still needed.

It was mainly unions that got all those laws "in place," as you put it. If unions were to vanish, you'd quickly see how eager corporations are to repeal many of those laws.

Quit your whining. As a worker (union or not) you get paid to do a job and not make management decisions. Management's first reponsibility is to the shareholders who invested in the company to keep your sorry asses working.

They didn't invest in the company to keep "sorry asses working"...they invested to make money. Labor is part of the cost of doing business just like any other commodity the company must purchase to run it's product line. Unions protect the fair value of that commodity in a balance measured against the owners and investors profits, just like the NFL players union does.

Culheath............You just made Franks point......Labor is part of the cost of doing business and when unions demand too much, labor costs will reach a threshold. Management has a responsibility to keep ALL costs to a minimum to make the product competitive. That includes labor which can be 40-65% of the cost of a product so thats why NAFTA outsourcing and Offshoring became popular.

Management's first reponsibility is to the shareholders who invested in the company" Really? me thinks that maybe safety and the consumers would be first.

trilliondollar

Culheath............You just made Franks point......Labor is part of the cost of doing business and when unions demand too much, labor costs will reach a threshold. Management has a responsibility to keep ALL costs to a minimum to make the product competitive. That includes labor which can be 40-65% of the cost of a product so thats why NAFTA outsourcing and Offshoring became popular.

No I didn't make Frank's point. He was asserting that labor was lucky to have the opportunity to work at company's and inve4stors largess. The point is that labor is a cost like any other item. The fact that companies off-shored their labor expense by using near or literally slave labor had nothing to do with union wages, since unions affect very little of the labor market as a whole and it had more to do with company and investors greed and demand for immediate short term rapid profit.

The only people NAFTA and outsourcing became popular with was the profit takers. It screwed everyone else and that's the mess we're in right now.

Well Mark, you just happen to be wrong about that.

Well Mark, you just happen to be wrong about that.

and as a shareholder, I demand that those sorry-ass workers shut up and work harder for less so I can get more money for nothing!!!

Well, it's not getting money for nothing. Anybody who takes a risk, and invests money in a company justifiably expects to earn a profit on that investment. Otherwise, they might as well leave their money in a risk-free, government-insured savings account.

Reminds me of the era when they discovered plastic for making toys.

The whole motivation of making Airline jets bigger and lighter is to make them cheaper to fly. It has less to do with creating a better aircraft.

Don, as you said "years ago" technology is always on the move with resins that were impossible to make then and techniques that were not even thought of. That's why we don't use rivets to join parts any more because of metal fatigue.

Ok two things.. first, composite repairs are very well known and very reliable. It's not difficult to repair plies and rebuild a delaminated portion using vacuum technology. This has been used in military applications for decades.

second, the composites have various metal mesh and other technologies for lighting strikes and such.

johnbarker this is more like a post manufacturing adjustment than a repair of damaged parts and even if is was a repair years later there are many techniques for composite repair. I repair carbon fiber bicycle frames and built custom carbon fiber aluminum or carbon fiber steel hybrids. On a repair I am doing right now rebonding and relaminating a failed joint. I laid up the repair process to be one step, and controlled the stress distribution to allow a one step bonding proccess. The pressure I used to increase the carbon fiber to resin ratio and decrease voids left an external groove. I anticipated this effect but will still fill in the groove which may or may not reduce the possiblity of a stress related failure after many cycles, either way the repair is actually stronger than new right now, and with additional preparation will have increased resitance to fatigue failure than original joint. Craig Calfee of California typically repairs Carbon fiber bicycles to better than new, I have one of his complete frames, these are extreme stress zero safety factor applications. I very seriously doubt any comercial arliners will be built to zero safty factor. Aluminum does fatigue even within it's design limit, whereas carbon does not if the stresses are proberly distributed and the limits are not exceeded. So if anything a properly designed Carbon fiber structure should have a longer service life not shorter.

So Greg, was it stiffeners or shims they are having a problem with? If it is stiffeners, it is pretty much an easy fix. If it is shims, they're going to have a much bigger problem.

In aerospace there is little tolerance for voids in a composite build. As with bikes, aircraft under go tremendous stresses. Not only that, those stresses can go from minimal to extreme in less than a second. So, yes they do give aircraft structures an extra bit of strength compared to a bike. The consequences of a catastrophic structural failure in an aircraft can be much greater than in a bike.

What really interests me is what will the carbon fiber aircraft structures look like in 25 or 30 years. In my aircraft career I have rebuilt many commercial aircraft that were over 30 years old. That is a lot of fixing, or replacing, cracked structural members. From skins to wings, and everything between, I've seen a lot of failed metal parts. It will be interesting to see how the new carbon fiber structures compare over time.

Most middle sized companies I worked for are gone. Most always the reason was excessive profit pulling and minimal to zero reinvestment in the future. Greed is good! How much profit is too much though. You see, they don't care. This even happenned to a small pub I went to.

I agree with the comments on Carbon Fiber and the scalability. Now I do know that the aircraft are zapped with lighting during flight test to see what happens. Flight test programs are a torture test to see what breaks, but sometimes even the shape of a window will crash you years down the sky.

Right, Pilots?

Yeah, because a domestically made plane like say the DC10 would never fall out of the sky!

"Cheap labor always has really bad consequences"....................So do cheap libtard minds

Okay Brian, here we go! The Chicago DC-10 crash was the result of faulty maintenance practices used while reinstalling an engine. They caused the structural failure due to shortcutting procedures and they are guilty of murder! I saw a DC-10 wing in flight test after the crash and the pylon was vibrated, jammed, pulled and twisted, the result was the wing structure bending. The pylon stayed intact.

As a result of these maintenance yahoos, the 10 line pretty much died except for the Air Force buy of the KC-10 Extender refueler. The higher seniority 10 line replaced our younger DC-9 workers, many of us veterans, and eventually killed McDonnell Douglas which was bought by Boeing. The Long Beach, Ca. plant is half gone and when the C-17 runs its course will be closed. Think how many people lost their jobs due to misinformation like you are putting out.

The crash in France when the cargo door blew off was a result of management signing off a job they had no right to due. They circumvented the safeguards.

So Brian, there you go. Feel free to factcheck my post!

The DC-10 pylon problem was caused by a worked turning off his electric drill before removing it from the engine- pylon junction hole causing a spiral score in the metal that lead to a metal fatigue failure.

This is a thread dominated by liberals. They don't like Boeing. Simple.

These planes have been flying for more than 2 years, they have flown millions of miles in tests, been to the coldest, hottest, driest, and wettest places you can fly, and bent up and down by giant machines.

I'm a liberal and am all for Boeing-- what's your point blamo?

That company was Boeing.

One problem is that some fasteners are counterfeit cheap knockoffs which can't handle the stress loads.

Counterfeit components are a problem in every industry and 100% testing is not an option That's the real scary part.

In many cases 100% testing is the norm, that's why there are the complaints about $300 toilet seats.

You must be one of the union thug somewhere in the country preaching for Obama, the positives attributes by Union is by far outweighted by its negativity.

I hope you won't find you Detroit-made cars unsafe/undrivable after 2 years of service!

Airbus has had several crashes already and their reputation is not ruined.

No technology is ever perfect. This is not yet a negative thing at all. It shows that Boeing is paying close attention to the life-cycle maintenance requirements of their aircraft.