Starting in the fall of 2020, Boeing found previous quality defects at multiple joins inside 787 fuselages that stopped almost all deliveries of the jet through August 2022, racking up more than $6.3 billion in additional “abnormal costs.”
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The 787's latest problem mirrors production issues discovered over 2020 and 2021 that included improperly fitted shimming that led to paper-thin gaps between surfaces on the Dreamliner's fuselage.
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.
The latest issue affects a fitting assembly in horizontal stabilizers built by a Boeing facility in Salt Lake City. The fittings come from an external supplier, and each unit is assembled and installed onto stabilizers in Salt Lake, a Boeing source said.
While the 787 Dreamliners have not been grounded, the FAA had ordered a halt to deliveries of the widebody jet between May of 2021 and July of 2022 as it looked into questions about quality control during its assembly process.
The 787 was designed to be the first production airliner with the fuselage comprising one-piece composite barrel sections instead of the multiple aluminum sheets and some 50,000 fasteners used on existing aircraft. Boeing selected two new engines to power the 787, the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 and General Electric GEnx.
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.
The typical lifespan of airlinersThe 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.
Aviation. Yes, it's extramly safe and an excellent ride for the passengers and crew. Because of its composite fuselage, Boeing was able to pressurize the cabin to maintain an altitude of 6,000 ft.
The more-electric architecture of the 787 Dreamliner family eliminates the pneumatic and bleed-air system. The electric system improves efficiency by extracting only the power actually needed during each phase of flight.
To start the Boeing 777 vs 787 comparison, we must say that the 787 is a more fuel efficient aircraft than the 777 thanks to its use of composite wings and more aerodynamically efficient design.
A five-year fatigue test simulated more than 160,000 take-offs and landings, more than the design life of 44,000 cycles, says a report in Aviation Week and Space Technology.
The seats are so cramped in economy that the legroom of a similar seat on a 777 or a 747 feels like a business-class seat. Intelligent engineering allows for seat-backs to recline but to compensate, the seat bottom lunges forward — thereby only providing an illusion of a recline.
Now, a pair of ten-year-old Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners once operated by budget airline Norwegian Air Shuttle are being scrapped. Delivered in 2013, the fuel-efficient widebody jets built of advanced composites were capable of flying 248 passengers up to 7300 miles.
Designed for optimized fuel efficiencyBoeing states that the Dreamliner's fly-by-wire technology: ... optimizes the shape (or 'camber') of the wing automatically to save the most fuel.
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.
The Dreamliner has been a phenomenally expensive airplane to build. In its decade of deliveries, Boeing has earned back about half of the more than $28 billion in 787 production costs it has consistently reassured Wall Street it will recover.
The Boeing 787 Dreamliner has revolutionized flying for both passengers and pilots. Taking a leap into the future from its predecessors, the designers incorporated a number of new features that make the Dreamliner one of the most fuel efficient and comfortable aircraft in the skies.