What are the defects of the 787 Dreamliner?

It's the latest in a long and very expensive litany of 787 quality woes. The affected attachment fitting is provided by a supplier and installed on the horizontal tail at Boeing's manufacturing facility in Salt Lake City. The defect is a small, paper-thin gap in the attachment, Boeing said.



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The problem involves a fitting for the 787's horizontal stabilizer installed by a Boeing production facility in Salt Lake City, Utah, the company said. The horizontal stabilizer, located at the base of an aircraft's tail, allows a plane to maintain longitudinal balance while flying.

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Excellent design choices all around. Better sleep on long flights. Because the 787 is pressurized at about 6,000 feet rather than 8,000 feet, you'll breathe easier. More oxygen in your lungs means better sleep, less chance of headache, no difficulty breathing (flying at altitude is like sleeping at a ski resort).

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The typical lifespan of airliners The composite-driven Boeing 787 Dreamliner is designed for 44,000 flight cycles. These jets can theoretically last several decades with an average of two flight cycles a day. Unlike commercial airliners, fighter jets are unique due to their mission requirements.

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The Boeing 787 has similar safety features to the 777, but also features improvements such as a wider and longer aisle space for passengers and smoother engine takeoff capability which can reduce air turbulence and improve safety during takeoffs.

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The FAA said the leaks could damage critical equipment and lead to a “loss of continued safe flight and landing.” The agency said one airline found wet carpet in the cockpit of a plane and, when it inspected its entire fleet of 787s, found “multiple” planes with leaking faucets.

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Current 787 deliveries have been mostly suspended over the last year because of quality control programs involving microscopic tolerances of fasteners joining fuselage barrels together, and additional issues with electrical systems and windscreens.

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How long can a 787 fly without engines? Can a plane fly if all its engines have failed? A passenger aircraft will glide perfectly well even if all its engines have failed, it won't simply fall out the sky. Infact it can fly for around 60 miles if it loses its engines at a typical cruise altitude of 36,000ft.

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Boeing continued to build the 787 even while it was prevented from making deliveries in late 2021 and much of 2022. It was able to deliver much of that backlog once it was given clearance to resume deliveries, as it delivered 34 Dreamliners between August of last year and January of this year.

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The Dreamliner is a successful aircraft, still in production with more than 1600 delivered or on order. The list price for a new Boeing 787-8 is $239 million dollars. Yet even as international travel opens again for these long-range aircraft, two Dreamliners barely ten years old are waiting for the wrecker's ball.

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As with every Boeing airplane, the 787 includes many layers of redundancy for continued safe operation, and the electrical system is no exception. For example, Boeing has demonstrated that the 787 can fly for more than 330 minutes on only one engine and one of the six generators and land safely.

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Absolutely. That is what they are designed to do.

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While passengers love the experience in the back, it's also a great place for the pilots to work. A number of features on the aircraft set it apart from other aircraft types. So, even when your working day can be 19 hours long, I'd much rather be doing it in a Dreamliner than any other type.

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On January 17th, 2013, the FAA ordered the entire 787 fleet across all airlines to be grounded, and the NTSB launched an investigation. The culprit was eventually identified as a lithium-ion battery. A cell within the battery was believed to have short-circuited, causing what is known as a thermal runaway.

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Incredibly safe. The 787–8, —9 & —10 are as safe as it's going to get in aviation. The issue with the 787 spacing issues — where gaps are larger than 0.005 inches — is a fatigue and cycles related issue. In normal manufacturing, their are manufacturing tolerances to account for slight differences in part builds.

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The 787 was the first major commercial aircraft to use carbon fiber composite components in the fuselage and wing construction. These make the aircraft lighter but still offer high strength. New, more efficient engines. The 787 is designed to take either the General Electric GEnx or the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engine.

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