Any Thoughts On This?

[Tomliner]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/news/a ... ntary.html
Could this be just sensationalist journalism or maybe a case of no smoke
Without fire? Oh dear perhaps not the best way to phrase it! EricT

[cstorey]

My own view is that it is a bit of both. Factory gossip is not usually a very reliable source of information and I would discount the idea of being over-reliant on it . But then of course I'm not one of that well known group of cognoscenti, the Daily Mail journalists . On the other hand, however, I am very unhappy about travelling with sizeable lithium ion batteries . There have been far too many incidents with even the small ones in laptops etc causing really quite nasty fires, to the extent that ICAO have just given graphic guidance on how to deal with appliance fires, and of course 2 cargo 747s have suffered fatal accidents as a result of such fires in the cargo hold. Boeing seem to hope that encapsulating their big batteries in steel cases will prevent any catastrophic consequences, but I just do not fancy being 3 hours or more ( or even 5 hours is postulated ) from a diversion field if a fire should occur

[Airspeed]

Thought provoking, Eric.
Disgruntled employees will often bad-mouth the workplace, no matter what industry or service they are in.
Having heard the truth that eventually comes out of investigations into big business, James Hardy, Coles, to name a pair, I would not doubt for a minute that standards were lowered.
I remember an astronaut commenting on the fact that at launch, he was sitting on top of a pile of technology, every part of which was supplied by the cheapest manufacturer.

Nevertheless, everyone seems to accept that "It'll be alright on the night", and most of the time it is. If a few hundred or thousand suffer along the way, there's the rash of TRAGEDY headlines, then we move on. Well, there are billions of us left.

That's my immediate "thoughts on this." Now we'll hear from those who actually know something about it all.

[Dev One]

The Dreamliner also operates at a lower cabin pressure and uses LED lighting, both of which help reduce jetlag and tiredness.

Lower cabin pressure????? Not sure thats good for passengers, let alone crew!
Keith

[dodger]

After watching that program on Al Jazeera i did have the feeling that although Boeing have had problems in the past building their aircraft i don't think they have been as worrying as this 787,

I think that the interview at the end of the program did not help at all because if they did not have any worries why did that chap stop the interview?

Now i'm showing my ignorance here but why are Boeing using lithium ion batteries in the 787? all their other aircraft run ok.

Just my opinion of the program.

Roger.

[cstorey]

The 787 is revolutionary in that its braking systems are electrically powered, and this requires more current than normal nicad , lead-acid , or sodium/sulphur cells can provide without grossly excessive weight. Hence they have gone for a solution ( as have most if not all the electric car manufacturers ) of using linked lithium ion cells to provide the current . The problems seem to arise either if there is mechanical damage to the cells ( unlikely in an aircraft's permanent installation , although this is what is thought to have happened to the computer power cells carried as cargo in the 747s ) ) or if there is a malfunction of the very critical charging regime which can cause a thermal runaway . I believe this is thought to be what happened in the Japanese incidents . The real danger is that if one cell runs away, the heat generated transmits itself to adjacent cells thus causing a chain reaction

[Chris Trott]

While the results of the investigations of the Japan Airlines incidents haven't been fully released, those I've talked to and the speculation from both outside and inside the industry (notably from Elon Musk, who's Tesla cars also use Lithium-Ion batteries and have high capacity chargers like Boeing installed) was that the cause was 2-fold. 1) JAL pilots were not following the correct procedure when transitioning from external power to APU power which requires the batteries to be isolated from the external power (i.e. removed from the charging system) prior to APU start and 2) There were some manufacturing QC issues with the chargers and batteries that only showed itself when procedures weren't followed. Boeing resolved their end by introducing additional shielding and increasing the spacing between the plates inside the cells and between the cells themselves (as Musk among others had suggested) to reduce the chance of one cell running away being transmitted to the adjacent battery.

Also, claims of shoddy QC at Boeing has been going on for decades. I had quite a conversation from a now passed ex-Boeing employee who related some of the QC "problems" that would be thrown out by the union from time to time. 99% of them were simply a negotiating tactic to try and protect the employees and work being done at a given location by creating "QC problems" that were being experienced from contractors and thus explaining why the employees at the assembly line were unable to meet performance goals. While there are several well known situations with the 787 and other programs where this was the case, they were limited to 1 supplier and were rectified fairly quickly with minimum delay. The rest were just "sour grapes".