And the fact that they have those new battery packs means they should have tested them a bit more before installing them on aircraft, common failure rate aside.Vitaphone Racing wrote:Northern Dominus wrote:I don't have to imply anything. Look at the failure rate of Dreamliners and try to tell me that they were as extensively tested and not sub-contracted out into oblivion. I know new aircraft have a higher failure rate than average, but the kinds of things that are going wrong with Dreamliners should have been worked out in early testing.
And I agree, the F-22, while an amazing feat of engineering, also had a few issues as well that should have been worked out in prototyping. Chief among them was the NBC filter that gave pilots the infamous "Raptor Cough", as well as stupid bean-counting methods of fixing problems like re-installing a crappy valve for high-altitude maneuvers that didn't work in the F-15 or F-16. And don't get me started on the JSF either.
As NEMT put it, aircraft design and engineering has been infecetd with Bean Counting to an intolerable level know, and it will get people killed one day soon. Budget and profits should be their only concerns, not executive meddling in engineering.
I still have a problem that you seemingly think Boeing deliberately cut corners on the 787 yet Airbus decided out of nothing more than goodwill to engineer their aircraft properly. The 787 is not the first aircraft in the world to experience problems coming into service. The 737 and the 747, two of Boeing's most successful aircraft to date, had problems early on and they were fixed.
The failure rate for Dreamliners isn't out of the ordinary, battery pack aside.
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/01/16/trave ... index.html
Like the article says; leaks and cracked windscreens happen all the time. If the 787 wasn't under such intense scrutiny then nobody would bat an eyelid. The 787 is the first aircraft to receive a vastly different battery pack to what the previous norm was and li-ion battery packs are known to have problems with temperature. Boeing has been professional and responsible about the whole issue. This is media sensationalism at it's finest, nothing more.
You keep talking about Boeing always looking for new ways to cut costs and that, but haven't offered any proof apart from saying MBE's and not engineers are running the show. I can't imagine Boeing is any more concerned about developing aircraft at the lowest cost possible than what they were in years gone by, nor any other company regardless of what they produce. It isn't good business to release flawed products, certainly not airliners, and I'm guessing Boeing knows this.
Either way, expecting products to be flawless and without fault is ridiculous. More often than not, a new line in any industry will be plagued with problems. Would you rather Boeing accepted the accusations on the chin and dealt with the battery pack issue (like they're doing) or pass it off as an isolated incident and let things work themselves out?
Again, as I said new aircraft always have teething problems, and perhaps you're right, this isn't out of the norm as far as the Dreamliner is concerned. But given the hype around the aircraft in general, you would think that Boeing would go to extraordinary lengths to do as much as possible in-house and over-engineer the aircraft to negate this sort of bad publicity in the first place.
Hah, got you beat. I've flown on a genuine DC-3 in Hawaii. Yes it was just as exhilarating and terrifying as it sounds.
