Category: FlightBlogger

There’s only one fitting choice for Movie Monday, on this, the 40th anniversary of the first landing on the Moon.

This week’s comes from one my absolute favorite programs ever produced for television. From the Earth to the Moon was a 10-part HBO miniseries from 1998 about the Apollo program. Each episode tracked a different element of the program beginning with the Mercury 7 astronauts, through the technology proving missions of the Gemini flights, all the way through Apollo 17, the final mission to the Moon in December 1972.

Make sure to check out the related multimedia I’ve added in the bottom section the clips. There’s some original archive footage from CBS news and the original Saturn V rocket reference manual from NASA. These clips, running about 15 minutes, show Armstrong and Aldrin’s landing on the Moon on July 20, 1969.

PART TWO AFTER THE JUMP

With Boeing and Airbus’s hands full with their respective composite widebody aircraft, Embraer has begun to publicly discuss its options for entry into the narrowbody market.

This week’s exclusive report by Mary Kirby, looks at what Embraer executive vice president airline market Mauro Kern had to say about the possibility of an all-new design larger than the E-195 .

In what is perhaps the Brazilian airframer’s strongest indication yet
that it may bring to market a clean-sheet competitor to Bombardier’s
P&W geared turbofan-powered CSeries, Embraer executive vice
president airline market Mauro Kern says that Embraer is studying “some
possible work with a little bigger [aircraft] than the current 195, not
only in terms of using the current platform, but also in terms of
actually a new design”.

Kern said clarity on a decision is 18 to 24 months away and an entry in to service wouldn’t be until the second half of the next decade. However, that timing puts Embraer in an interesting position to potentially be the initial launch customer for the CFM LEAP-X platform, slated for certification by 2016.

Embraer is talking with General Electric, Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce, however Kern pointed out his company’s special relationship with GE, which makes the CF34 engines that power the family of E-Jets. The report says that the thrust requirements for a potentially 130-140-seat aircraft would exceed “the nominal 20,000lb (89kN) upper threshold agreed by CFM International partners GE and Snecma for unilateral engine development, meaning that any offering would likely come from CFM.”

Kern did not elaborate on what the configuration of a clean-sheet design may take, but its future competitor, Bombardier’s CSeries, has opted for 3-2 seating up to 145 seats with its larger CS300 aircraft. The 3-2 seating arrangement is also shared by the currently flying DC-9, MD-80 and 717.

The Brazillian company now potentially expands the narrowbody competition to five parties with China and Canada actively vying for a piece of the market against Boeing and Airbus. Perhaps distantly, keep an eye on the result of the upcoming first ruling in the Boeing/Airbus WTO case, expected by the close of summer. The preliminary ruling could set the stage for how launch aid funds are handled for future commercial aircraft development programs.

Even with the grounding of the 787 fleet, Boeing is making room in the factory for production standard aircraft.

The company has said that production would roll on as normal to limit disruption to the slow production ramp up as the fix for the wing root is being developed for installation at all phases of completion.

The progress on the wing reinforcement will be the topic of a dedicated report.

Boeing received its 10th set of 787 wings (8th flying set) from Japan on Monday. The wings for the second production 787, ZA101, will eventually be delivered to ANA.

Last Thursday night, Boeing moved ZA005 and ZA006 out of the 787 final assembly line. The move opens up two assembly locations inside building 40-26 for production standard aircraft.

ZA005 was moved to Paint Hangar 45-03 and ZA006 relocated to Building 40-24 on the 767 line. No word yet on what colors ZA005, the first GEnx-powered 787, will wear after the six flight test aircraft were no longer assigned to customers.

ZA100 remains at position one inside Building 40-26 with ZA004 sitting at the head of the line closest to the football-field sized doors.

Out on the flight line ZA002 will be fired up again as early as Thursday for systems checks. According to Aviation Week:

Chief amongst these will be a high-lift system ground test using
engine-supplied electrical power as well as flight deck checks of the
crew alerting audio system.

Another
key system due for checks on ZA002 is the gross weight center of
gravity processor, originally set for tests on July 12. This is also
now scheduled for tests on Thursday and will be an important tool for
flight test work in the coming months on ZA002 which will verify 787
stability and control along with ZA001. The processor will allow flight
test personnel to precisely monitor and alter cg positions in-flight to
enable tests of several conditions in a single sortie.

In other 787 news, the fourth LCF, when it becomes operational, will be registered N718BA.

Video shot by Matt Cawby

Yesterday afternoon, a 737-300 (N387SW) operating as Southwest 2294 made a safe emergency landing at Yeager Airport near Charleston, West Virgina after depressurizing due to  an apparent hole in the upper fuselage of the aircraft.

The incident has caused Southwest to inspect its 737-300 fleet, and according to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, Boeing is sending personnel to provide technical assistance to the NTSB.

This week’s Movie Monday explores Air Transat Flight 236. The flight, a transatlantic A330-200 crossing from Toronto to Lisbon, took place on August 24, 2001. The cause of the accident, which resulted in 18 minor injuries and no fatalities amongst the 306 on board, was traced to a fuel leak on the right hand side of the aircraft, resulting from improper maintenance conducted five days prior to the flight. Once the aircraft ran out fuel over the Atlantic Ocean, the A330 was forced to make a dead stick landing with 200 knot approach speed into the Azores. 

***Editors Note – This is the first time I’ve tried to incorporate Movie Monday with Apture, please let me know if it displays alright.

On July 9, 2007, ZA001, or what was later to become ZA001 wrapped up
one final photo op for the morning television news shows. The aircraft sat at
the head of the 747 line gleaming brand new. Once the camera lights
dimmed, the 787 was rolled back to Building 40-26 and the real work to prepare for flight had begun, a task that continues two years later. White
plastic decals were removed from the wings, painted foil covering
unfilled fastener holes were removed, the full extent of the show N787BA
had been prepared for the day prior could no longer remain unreconciled
against the work that would be required to make it fly.

Those working directly with the airplane knew full well that the
first 787 was far from its maiden sortie, but why pronouncements like
this from program vice president Mike Bair at the Paris Air Show in
June 2007?

“The aircraft will be structurally complete at
rollout but will still have systems, ducting, wiring and similar work
to be done before first flight. When those tasks are completed, it will
be powered up and proceed to ground test before it flies.”

Vought would confirm publicly a year later that the first aft fuselage
barrel was only 16% structurally complete at the time of shipment to
Everett.

At the time the roll out festivities came to a close, August 27th
was the target for first flight, one month and 18 days later. What
followed is well documented.

Almost exactly two years later, Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Scott
Carson said assuredly (June 15) to the gathered crowd of reporters at the Paris
Air Show: “We remain absolutely committed to our forecast that it will
fly in the second quarter of this year. If you count the way I do, that
means within the next two weeks roughly.”

Carson would also later tell CNN at the show, “The technical issues are largely all behind us.”

Just over a week later, Boeing revealed the extent of the weakness in the wing to body join.

Yet, in that statement, there lies a question of how it got to that
point? How could an executive near the head of a Fortune 50 company make such a statement? Was it just a breakdown in communication? Or something
more telling about the state of the program? The information, or the gravity of the information, didn’t
flow where and when it needed to.

Mr. Carson, in responding to questions on the delay announcement said:

When we were at Paris last week we had been through the preliminary analysis of the data and were of a mind that the airplane could enter flight test with a credible flight test envelope as we worked relatively minor modifications. The work done by the team through the week last week narrowed the envelope to the point where on Friday we determined that to fly would be such a small envelope for us that it would be an interesting exercise in having the airplane in the air but not particularly useful in terms of preparing the airplane for certification. So at that point is when we made the call to delay the process, identify the fix, test the fix, install the fix, and then enter a flight test program that is fully robust.

A program built on global transparency did not live up to its own early
expectation and the lessons continue to be manifested in changes like
the 50% acquisition of Global Aeronautica in March 2008 and the
establishment of the Production Integration Center, a mission control nervous
system for the global supply chain that became operational in December
2008, and most recently this week with the Vought South Carolina buy
out.

Many program sources have suggested privately that as Boeing has
improved its visibility outward, it still struggles with communicating
with itself. Good news flows freely to the top, yet the bad news is not
elevated to an appropriate level. They talk of a ‘kill the messenger’
culture has established itself inside the program, where the push to
move ahead and show marked progress is often in conflict with requiring
the often uncomfortable task of ensuring that ‘power’ has ‘truth’ in
its hands to make good decisions and communicate progress outwardly.

During my time in Paris, I received a message from South Carolina on Tuesday morning (June 16) that told of “emergent first flight
issues” with no other details available. Another message from
Washington, just a day later (June 17) suggested a rumor about possible
delamination in the wingbox stringers, but the source added, “it is
just a rumor to my knowledge.”

From the point of view of covering the program, those rumors were
almost impossible to substantiate. Separating the wheat from the chaff,
takes a fine tooth comb that appears much more difficult when nine time zones away.

Yet, if this outside observer could know of these two hints a week
before the delay announcement, how was this information flowing inside
the company?

The story is far from unfamiliar and Boeing is far from the first aerospace company to face such a challenge.

At the height of the A380 delays facing Airbus, broken communication,
both internal and external, drew the ire of airline customers, Wall
Street and the media. On June 20, 2006, Flight International weighed in
on the situation:

[Airbus Chief Operating Officer John] Leahy says it was the “low-tech stuff” that got them – the wiring harnesses
– but this will hardly reassure the customers. More
worrying is how Airbus management was apparently unable to hear the timebomb ticking in the A380’s Jean-Luc Lagardère
assembly plant a few kilometres from its Toulouse
headquarters. Especially given that the join-up of
sub-assemblies for new aircraft had been on hold for two months and working
parties were furiously trying to rectify problems on completed aircraft.

The
problem of communication not only impacts the outward credibility of
the company’s leadership, but how Boeing’s own employees view those
running the ship of state. If information isn’t able to flow freely to
the top without perception of fear of reprisal or penalty, then any
report of information being disseminated from the top down may lack the
credibility that the leadership needs to motivate employees to solve
the challenges facing the program.

A 2006 speech by Boeing CEO James McNerney given in the wake of the US Air Force tanker scandal tackled this culture head on:

So then we had to ask ourselves some really tough questions: Were these
lapses symptomatic of a larger issue with our corporate culture?…Did our people feel
confident enough to speak up about ethical concerns without fear of
retaliation?

McNerney discussed the solution to the problem:

To make sure everyone understands this, I think that you have to create
a work environment that encourages people to talk about the tough
issues–business- or ethics-related–and to make the right decisions
when they find themselves at the crossroads between hitting their
numbers for the quarter and stepping forward when there’s a problem.

Boeing should ask itself if McNerney’s vision has yet to become a reality.

Yesterday brought the first taxi tests for ZA001, the latest major step on its way to the sky. Chief project pilot Mike Carriker (left seat) and test pilot Randy Neville (right seat) took N787BA out of Stall 105 starting around 10:00 AM PT and had the first 787 back by 4:30 PM PT.

The tests looked at the low speed handling characteristics of the aircraft by exploring of the anti-skid system, steering, nose gear shimmy and ground loads validation, says a program source.

Boeing says that the testing brought Dreamliner One to a top speed of just over 100 knots on runway 16R, still within the low speed range. The company adds that the high speed taxi range is between 120 and 130 knots, with Vr (takeoff) speed closer to 150 knots. Yesterday also saw the first rejected takeoff (RTO) test which was executed using manual toe braking, not the autobrake function.

The autobrake setting, which is located just below the landing gear lever, has seven settings (plus an off setting) that automatically specifies the braking power required. Five of those settings (1, 2, 3, 4 and MAX AUTO) provide a specific rate of deceleration upon landing, while the sixth, DISARM, disengages the autobrake system and releases the brake pressure. The final setting, RTO, which is the standard takeoff setting, automatically applies maximum braking when the throttles are retarded above a certain speed. For the 777, this speed is 85 knots.

P.S. Make sure you watch that video with your speakers ON.

SEVEN GREAT PHOTOS FROM YESTERDAY AFTER THE JUMP

Video Courtesy of KOMO News in Seattle.

This morning, ZA001 conducted its first slow lap around Paine Field. Taxi tests began a little past 10 AM in Everett.  The fleet of 787’s remains grounded until a remedial fix is applied to the side of body before the aircraft can be cleared for its maiden flight, however Boeing can still proceed with these taxi tests on N787BA. A very special thanks to the person who sent these to me.