Boeing 777X fuselage split during September stress test

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

BUSINESS NEWS NOVEMBER 27, 2019 / 11:23 AM / UPDATED 5 HOURS AGO

Boeing 777X fuselage split during September stress test

SEATTLE (Reuters) - The fuselage of Boeing Co’s (BA.N) upcoming 777X aircraft was split by a high-pressure rupture just as it approached its target stress level during a test in early September, Boeing said on Wednesday.

The world’s largest planemaker suspended load testing of the new widebody in September when media reports said a cargo door failed a ground stress test. There have also been issues with General Electric Co’s (GE.N) new GE9X turbine engine that will power the jet.

The Seattle Times, which first reported new details on the testing issue, said photos it had obtained of the test on the 777X showed that the extent of the damage was greater than previously disclosed and earlier reports were wrong about crucial details.

During the final load testing of a 777X test airplane, engineers ran a test that involved flexing the aircraft’s wings beyond what is expected during normal commercial service, Boeing said.

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Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-777/boeing-777x-fuselage-split-during-september-stress-test-idUSKBN1Y120W

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Related: Boeing 777X’s fuselage split dramatically during September stress test (Seattle Times)

[WhiteTara]

1. I wish trains were a realistic form of travel

If I were to leave the continent, I think I'd like sea travel.

[BuffaloJackalope]

2. That doesn't sound like a software problem

[pecosbob]

8. Not to make light of what is a serious problem for the project, but

that's pretty freaking funny.

[Stuart G]

3. I am so glad this was a "test" and no one was killed. Boeing used to be the very best.

After their planes killed lots of people, now they are the very worst.

[Eugene]

4. The Atlantic has a recent article detailing how Boeing got this way.

The Long-Forgotten Flight That Sent Boeing Off Course

-snip-

On the tarmac, Condit stepped out of the jet, made a brief speech, then boarded a helicopter for an aerial tour of Boeing’s new corporate home: the Morton Salt building, a skyscraper sitting just out of the Loop in downtown Chicago. Boeing’s top management plus staff—roughly 500 people in all—would work here. They could see the boats plying the Chicago River and the trains rumbling over it. Condit, an opera lover, would have an easy walk to the Lyric Opera building. But the nearest Boeing commercial-airplane assembly facility would be 1,700 miles away.

The isolation was deliberate. “When the headquarters is located in proximity to a principal business—as ours was in Seattle—the corporate center is inevitably drawn into day-to-day business operations,” Condit explained at the time. And that statement, more than anything, captures a cardinal truth about the aerospace giant. The present 737 Max disaster can be traced back two decades—to the moment Boeing’s leadership decided to divorce itself from the firm’s own culture.

For about 80 years, Boeing basically functioned as an association of engineers. Its executives held patents, designed wings, spoke the language of engineering and safety as a mother tongue. Finance wasn’t a primary language. Even Boeing’s bean counters didn’t act the part. As late as the mid-’90s, the company’s chief financial officer had minimal contact with Wall Street and answered colleagues’ requests for basic financial data with a curt “Tell them not to worry.”

By the time I visited the company—for Fortune, in 2000—that had begun to change. In Condit’s office, overlooking Boeing Field, were 54 white roses to celebrate the day’s closing stock price. The shift had started three years earlier, with Boeing’s “reverse takeover” of McDonnell Douglas—so-called because it was McDonnell executives who perversely ended up in charge of the combined entity, and it was McDonnell’s culture that became ascendant. “McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing’s money,” went the joke around Seattle. Condit was still in charge, yes, and told me to ignore the talk that somebody had “captured” him and was holding him “hostage” in his own office. But Stonecipher was cutting a Dick Cheney–like figure, blasting the company’s engineers as “arrogant” and spouting Harry Trumanisms (“I don’t give ’em hell; I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell”) when they shot back that he was the problem.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing-lost-its-bearings/602188/

[KT2000]

7. This is so freaking sad.

My Dad was an engineer there - took one of the maiden flights of the Yankee Clipper. Spent many years on the KC-135 and other military aircraft. He was deemed excellent on safety. His nickname was "Good Stuff" by the other engineers. When there were crashes, the whole company grieved - and their families too. At least with my Dad - you would not even talk to him when something like that happened. He had to attend a few post mortems. They were given responsibilities and they accepted. I recall a comment in the book about Boeing where the author was surprised by the seriousness and dedication of the engineering teams.

When I think of the ways trump has cheapened everything he can in this country, I am glad my Dad is not around to see it. Now to see his beloved Boeing (he had our house built so he had a perfect view across the lake of Plant 1) I know he would have seen the sleaze coming for years (since the McDonnel-Douglas merger and shareholder value) his heart would have been broken. But I know he oversaw an aircraft that is still in service today, after 65 years. Shareholder value though gets an aircraft that nosedives so fast into the ground there is not even any debris around the incinerated jet - now totally underground.

The values he taught me may not fit into the world the way it is now, but he was right.

[LeftInTX]

9. When I think of McDonnell Douglas, I think of this

I did not know they brought McDonnell Douglas's culture into Boeing

[TheBlackAdder]

12. My sister was supposed to be a flight attendant on that flight, a weird twist of fate removed her.

.

She was sexually propositioned by a passenger on an earlier flight and the man said he would file a complaint on her, when she repeatedly turned down his advances, both verbal and physical. Back then, flight attendants had to take it.

She was called in to HR and the meeting turned so bad, as passengers always right, that she just quit on the spot.

The next week, the plane crashed.

.

[LeftInTX]

13. OMG!!

[USALiberal]

6. Still much much safer than driving. nt

[SonofDonald]

5. Luckily they flex aircraft wings in testing

Also with the fuel tanks full to see if they leak during the tests

I cleaned/ remediated up tons of soil from the wing test facility at the northern end of Boeing Field in Seattle over 20 years ago

[Sewa]

10. Where is the 777x fuselage assembled

Washington or South Carolina?

[SonofDonald]

14. I'm not sure

I've worked at all the Boeing facility's in Washington as a contractor cleaning up waste but that was 20 some years ago

Should be able to google it

[TheBlackAdder]

11. Hence the renaming to X-777

[DFW]

15. They're getting better

THIS time, they decided to find out BEFORE putting the plane into service.