I have traveled few times on ANA's 787 between Narita/Tokyo and Seattle. While sitting in emergency exit row at window seat, I could feel that the floor in front of the seat was unusually hot. After seeing location of the fire in pictures of JAL's 787, I get the impression that the emergency exit row seat was just above the cargo bay where fire originated. I am glad that ANA 787 I was on didn't catch fire.
I am glad to finally see FAA making a decision to ground 787. I hope 787 don't fly until these issues are resolved.
I have a lot of experience with Lithium Polymer batteries as I fly eletric-powered radio-controlled helicopters and planes that use them. There are always reports of LiPo (as they are commonly known) packs puffing-up and sometimes catching on fire and even exploding (more like the popping of a pop-corn bag except that you have flames shooting out of it). I have personally exploded a small 3S (three cells in series) pack just to see the mechanism and the magnitude of the effect. I have to say that it took a LOT of work to explode the pack. I over-charged it to a ridiculous degree.
Now, of course, there are also reports of packs catching on fire for no apparent reason at all. There are many explanations out there. The best I came across was from a PhD Chemist who explained it something like this (paraphrasing, of course): When these batteries are assembled there's moisture in the surrounding environment. And, while moisture is kept in check, some of it stays in the pack. They can't run a super-dry environment because it could be very dangerous. One of the electrodes is lithium-oxide infused in carbon. Lithium reacts with water, which gives you hydrogen. Carbon reacts with hydrogen to give you methane. As methane is generated the cell puff-up. If thermal runaway is triggered through other mechanisms and the methane ignites: kaboom!
I keep about thirty LiPo packs in strong locked and vented steel container (heavy toolbox) in the garage away from flammable materials and flame sources. When we go to the flying field the same container is used to transport to the field. While at the field the container is always locked and, if possible, removed from the car. I have never had an incident I did not cause.
As far as the Boeing issues. Hard to say from the outside. It could boil down to quality issues at their battery supplier. It is probably impossible to perform a full inspection on these kinds of batteries on delivery. How do you determine if there's too much moisture inside a sealed package?
I think your PhD chemist needs to rethink his theory.
Lithium oxide is not the same as lithium metal. Lithium metal reactions with water to create hydrogen and heat, but lithium oxide is a salt. It generates no hydrogen when it contacts water, but it might generate some heat.
Carbon will react with hydrogen to give you methane, but not with the conditions inside the battery. You need a ton of pressure, heat and some catalyst to do that.
After reading the wikipedia article, apparently the cathode can actually produce oxygen which may explain the bursting of the cells.
Hobby RC flying is fun! If you haven't watched them doing it, go on a weekend to one of the parks near you where hobbyists gather and just watch... only be prepared to get hooked.
Back on topic: lithium-chemistry cells are known for their potential to explode for good reason. It doesn't have to happen very often before the bad press really kicks into gear. This is unfortunate, as lithium is really a pretty good foundation for green energy initiatives like electric cars.
If the bad press really gets bad enough even cell phone and laptop batteries could become significantly more bulky and less powerful, just "for safety."
Lithium cells can explode when overcharged – a tightly controlled charger is a must. (This is most likely what happened on the 787, though no official sources are out yet.)
Lithium cells can also catch fire if the cell voltage drops too low. Cell voltage is a measurement of the amount of energy stored in the cell. The wikipedia page is a good place to start, but the practical effect of this is that the cell _must_ have a good regulator at all times!
The same regulator circuit can do charging and discharging; that's how cell phones and laptops work. Hobbyists commonly use a ground-based charger/discharger for when the cells are not in use and a very small circuit on the vehicle.
The voltage on a lithium cell drops much faster as the cell approaches empty, so the protection against too deep of a discharge must be sensitive and react quickly.
There's another way to think about this. There are probably billions of Lithium-based batteries in circulation world-wide. Yet, the reports of fires are few and far between. RC use is not a measure of safety because of the extreme nature of the usage. For example, I have a high-performance glider that draws in excess of 120A for rocket-like climb to altitude. Yet, those battery packs are a few years old and have never given me any problems.
I don't know what the 787's issues might be. My money is on a quality problem at the battery manufacturer, not Boeing.
They are shooting for a 330 minute ETOPS for the 787. That means a plane can be up to 6.5 hours from the closest airport on long haul flights. ETOPS has more to do with engine reliability than fire safety, but I can't help wonder if this will affect things.
Incidentally, I flew on two United 787s in December and I thought they were fantastic planes. The electrochromic windows were a real treat.
Will this affect non-US airlines that flight to the U.S.? A 787 from a Polish airline (LOT) is about to land in Chicago. Will it be allowed to fly back to Poland with passengers on board?
Right now, it will affect all flights, including those not flying to/from the US.
Only countries that are not members of the ICAO can still fly 787s after receiving the notification. (Congo?)
ICAO defines the rules and countries can change/add some parts of it using amendments (PANS). But those about safety/certifications cannot be changed.
When a plane is certified in a country, its local safety board is responsible for its safety certifications, decisions made by this safety board are reflected to all countries.
So, in fact, NTSB has jurisdictions over boeing certifications worldwide. If a boeing airplane crashes in brazil, NTSB will also participate in the investigation. If an Airbus crashes in the US, french authorities will also be envolved.
EDIT: (as noted by binarycrusader)
This seems to be a immediate service bulletin. So, the planes can still fly, they just need to be serviced before the next flight.
>the planes can still fly, they just need to be serviced before the next flight.
Isn't that the same thing as grounding all the planes? They can still fly if they're already in the air, and they can only fly until they land. And then they need to be serviced, but Boeing doesn't yet know what needs to be done to repair the problem so they can't fly again until the problem gets solved and the plane gets serviced.
So can any national safety body of any member country of the ICAO ground an airplane model worldwide? Or can the U.S. do so in this case because Boeing is a U.S. company? What's the process a national agency goes through to ground an aircraft worldwide?
In this case it's likely because the US FAA is the certifying body for the aircraft. If it were a Canadian or Russian or Chinese aircraft I'd expect their agencies to be similarly involved.
I don't know the details but here in Poland they said in the news that European version of FAA (EASA I think) also grounded 787s; this way both LOT's 787s are grounded, one in US and one in Warsaw.
This directive will allow the airlines to have DER-type people give permission for pilots to fly them to their home. This happens a lot with airplanes with issues.
Before further flight, operators of U.S.-registered,
Boeing 787 aircraft must demonstrate to the Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) that the batteries are safe
and in compliance
So is it a "U.S.-registered" aircraft? And even if it is, it sounds like there may be a flight delay of hours at worst.
Just a random piece of pedantry; the article states that Poland's LOT is the only european airline operating the 787 right now.
I was at Heathrow maybe 90 days ago and British Airways had a brand new 787 (Painted in fancy "Dreamliner" dress and BA logo) parked at a gate as if it was in use. Might be that they were still demoing it/showing it off deliberately but I had the impression it was an active aircraft.
I'm a bit suspicious that I can't find a press release from BA about receiving delivery of a 787, and that BA's site doesn't mention it being in their fleet:
The crew haven't been trained on it yet so I don't think it was in service.
If anything it was probably a meet and greet where the executives (and staff) can walk around the cabin to get a feel for it. They run their entire operation out of T5 now so getting a an unused gate for a 787 wouldn't be impossible. Other airlines are still jockeying for gate space at T1-T4.
And it was Terminal 5, so that makes sense. It looks like they're not getting their 787s (and an order of 'superjumbo' A380s) until this year.
A training/demo aircraft makes sense. Not to mention free advertising people like me, sitting in a window seat, seeing that beautiful new aircraft with "DREAMLINER" painted across her body.
Granted, BA is the only Airline besides Virgin Atlantic/America where I have felt like I was treated like a human being... so convincing me to fly on them isn't that difficult.
Does anyone know why the 787 seems to have gone so wrong? Wasn't it tremendously delayed and then it seems like I'm hearing about problem after problem?
Is this a sign our civilization is in technological decay and we're losing our ability to build advanced machinery?
To be honest, new, from-scratch airliner designs generally are always delayed entering service and generally always have problems initially. This is not new, and is not unique to the 787.
The Airbus A380 went through a multiply-delayed process, for example, and had some pains entering into service (a pattern of engine problems revealed after a Qantas A380 had an oil leak followed by fire and disintegration of a turbine disk in one of its engines). The Boeing 777 had to have a heat exchanger in its engines redesigned. Airbus' timetable for the A350 is all out of whack. And I could go on and on...
You're hearing about "problem after problem" because new airliners are high-profile media targets, and most reporting treats delays and post-launch problems as being somehow unprecedented, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.
Excellent point. While any possibility of an onboard fire is extremely serious, a fan blade escaping engine housing containment and puncturing the wing is also extremely serious. It was only a combination of luck, skilled piloting, and sound aircraft design that kept that 380 in the air.
A modern airliner such a vastly complicated machine that it's simply not possible to create an error free design. The best you can hope for is a safe enough design and competent enough operators to be able to bring the craft safely to ground in the event of a flaw. Combined with a competent regulator in the FAA, I would say that the system is working as designed.
I might be an optimist, but I would have no qualms whatsoever about hopping on one for the first flight after they're allowed back in the air.
It's not a sign of the pending downfall of our civilization. The 787 project tried some new things and suffered some mismanagement. It uses more premade components (like dashboards and controls and seats and frames) than other Boeing aircraft, so Boeing (an engineering company) is having to solve logistical problems.
Being a long-term Washington resident, I've grown up hearing about Boeing's problems. In the past, though, they were supply/demand issues, like airline order demand, union negotiations, massive layoffs, etc.
There's also all the defense contracts they lost, plus the time where they lost a defense contract to a foreign company so they got Murray and Cantwell to press for a do-over.
a) Fuel economy: drove the primarily composite structure (causing much angst during development), drove using the lighter weight lithium batteries which is the current issue, etc. A 20% fuel improvement is incredibly ambitious goal (I say is because last I heard they were still falling short, although still remarkable at ~15%(?)).
b) Cost (sharing): drove the huge number of outside contractors, all or most of whom invested a substantial amount of their own money in the pieces parts that they designed and built for the 787.
c) Schedule. Total miss. The schedule was predicated on no major problems... in hindsight the (a) and (b) BHAGs guaranteed the schedule miss.
Back then before Boeing got all the trouble they had with the immense outsourcing, this approach was seen as THE way to go in supply chain management for highly complex products. Some parts of EADS still used the B787 programme as a model of suppliers and contract management last year. After Boeing was obliged to buy out a couple of there joint-ventures and suppliers.
Completely agree on the fact that the Dreamliner wanted to much things at the same time.
I only beg to differ on the "not enough QA" part. I don't exactly know how Boeings QA looks like, but assume that aerospace QA is more or less similar in the western world since everyone is dealing with the FAA and JAA in one way or the other. And from my experience it's not "not enough" QA but the wrong QA.
In some parts of supplier related QA the point was reached where people cared more about paper work and certificates (to the point where the use of ";" instead of "," in a text field blocked whole deliveries for days) than the actual part. And further assume that the paperwork of what ever part in flying piece of tech that failed was ok. Downside is, the more time QA spends on paer work the less time QA spends on assuring the parts are good.
Not that this is a probale cause for the battery issue on hand, so.
Interesting for comparing. Largest has a variety of definitions though (length, wingspan, height (silly measure), capacity, passenger number etc. However that Antonov seems to be the winner.
One thing I've been wondering: is it the problems or the perception that are biting us now? For example, in 1970-ish, did the 747 have all kinds of problems we just would never remember and they were not a big deal in the era? Or is it truly that the 787 plane is screwed up compared to all of the planes Boeing has ever done in the past?
Although they really screwed up this outsourcing thing, I find it hard to believe their engineering would have slipped so much (since e.g. the 777).
Edit: I've also wondered if the airlines are over-emphasizing issues in order to use them as a bargaining chip for more planes.
IIRC, they had a lot of problems with engine failures, as the 747 really pushed engine technology and size at the time. Joe Sutter's book [1] is an interesting look at the history of the 747 design (he was the lead designer).
There was also an issue with the wing resonating, which they fixed by putting trim weights in the wing of the 747-100 made of depleted uranium.
Essentially, they coupled an ambitious design with untested materials and an insane plan by management to outsource far more work than they had ever outsourced before, going so far as to outsource the design and blueprints for individual pieces to external contractors, leading in the end to a clusterfuck in which nothing fit together and contractors had no incentives to perform efficiently because in the worst case Boeing would simply have to buy them wholesale to fix supply issues.
No, this is a sign of progress. It seems like it used to be a given that there would be a few crashes for a new type. Look at the De Havilland comet, for instance. Being a test pilot really meant that you might die. It was even worse for military aircraft, 20 of 50 A-12/sr-71 aircraft were destoyed. Now planes fly for a decade before there's a catastrophic failure.
I am glad to finally see FAA making a decision to ground 787. I hope 787 don't fly until these issues are resolved.