Some cool 787 images:

787 Dreamliner

Image by marada
The 787 made it’s first successful flight 12/15/2009, congrats to all the Boeing 787 Team!

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The new Dreamliner, Boeing 787, landed at Keflavík International Airport on September 1st in the  morning for test flights in side wind. According to the airport’s information officer Fridthór Eydal, the airplane will be in Iceland for test flights for about a week.

Keflavík Airport is known for strong winds. Runways extend in all directions, so it is possible to conduct test landings in side wind no matter which direction the wind blows, Morgunbladid reports.

The flight to Iceland was the Dreamliner’s first real test flight outside the US. In December a Dreamliner airplane was supposed to be tested in Iceland in side winds but it wasn’t windy enough and so testing took place in Roswell, New Mexico.

Both Boeing and Airbus have used Keflavík Airport for testing before, including Boeing 777 and Airbus A380.

Airbus A380 Testing

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Boeing has delayed the delivery of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner once more.  Boeing  said today that it now expects delivery of the first 787 in the middle of the first quarter 2011.

The delivery date revision follows an assessment of the availability of an engine needed for the final phases of flight test this fall.

While Boeing works closely with Rolls-Royce to expedite engine availability, flight testing across the test fleet continues as planned.

Boeing said last month that the cumulative impact of a series of issues, including supplier workmanship issues related to the horizontal stabilizer and instrumentation delays, could push first delivery of the 787 a few weeks into 2011. The delay in engine availability has extended that estimate to mid-first quarter 2011.

Rolls-Royce Group said a Trent 1000 engine built for Boeing Co.’s 787 Dreamliner failed during testing and that a probe into the incident has begun.

Rolls doesn’t anticipate that the failure on a test bed at its main manufacturing site in Derby, England, will have any impact on the development of the engine or the 787’s entry into service, company spokesman Craig Taylor said in an e-mail.

“We are now investigating in detail and have made good progress in understanding the issue,” Taylor said. He declined to comment on the nature of the incident.

The engine failure hasn’t affected the Dreamliner flight- test program “to date,” Lori Gunter, a spokeswoman for Chicago-based Boeing, said today in an e-mail. The company is “actively participating” in the investigation, she said.

The Dreamliner’s debut has been pushed back more than two years because of parts shortages, redesigns, problems with new materials and heavier reliance on suppliers, and Boeing said on Aug. 11 that it’s re-inspecting flight-test and production planes to ensure tail assemblies built by Finmeccanica SpA of Italy meet standards. Service entry may slide into 2011 from late this year in part because of the flaws with horizontal stabilizers that keep the 787 steady in flight, Boeing has said.

The Flight Global website said earlier that the engine failure at London-based Rolls may have been “uncontained,” meaning that pieces would have been flung out at high speed, piercing the housing.

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The first delivery of Boeing’s new 787 jetliner may slip into early 2011 because of inspections and instrument changes on the flight test aircraft, the head of the program said Thursday.

Scott Fancher, general manager of the program for Boeing Commercial Airliners, told reporters in a teleconference that Boeing still intends to deliver its first 787 to Japan’s ANA by the end of the year. He said that “as a cautionary note,” Boeing is warning that the delivery might be extended a few weeks into 2011.

If so, it would be another in a long series of delays on the 787 program, many due to problems with components built by suppliers around the globe that ship huge sections of the plane to be assembled at Boeing’s Everett, Washington, plant. Boeing, which has orders for 863 of the twin-aisle jets, originally planned to deliver the first 787 in 2008.

Boeing’s fifth flight-test  787 Dreamliner and  the first with GEnx-1B engines  took off on its first flight from Everett’s Paine Field at 2:40 p.m. on June 16th.

Currently despite the 787 Dreamliner delays, the engines are not yet quite at its fuel-burn specifications.   The engines are currently about 2% off specifications.

A planned improvement package next year will bring the engines very close to specs and then we have a second package coming on (in 2012) and we will bring the engines above speck.

Jon Ostrower (Flightblogger) from Flight International magazine reported that the prime reason for the production halt was not just for suppliers to catch up with production work but also to allow Boeing and it’s suppliers to fix a design flaw. The flaw can potentially compromise the structural integrity of the airplane.Flightblogger reported that the flaw was discovered in December, 5 months ago.

The Problem

The flaw involves shear ties which attaches the fuselage skin to the fuselage structure in section 48 and 48 aft. When there are repeated changes in the thermal condition of the rear fuselage, the shear ties can detach from the aircraft skin thus creating the structural issue.

The Fix

Flightblogger reports that the situation does not represent an immediate safety of flight issue to the test flight fleet and that a fix is identified. The fix involves using thicker shear ties and radius filler alongside the existing shear ties. Boeing says that all airplanes will meet FAA requirements.
Production

Boeing said that the issue will not effect first delivery or continued production of the 787.

As Boeing pushes through flight test on its flagship development programme, the company says it plans to have more than 30 Boeing 787s at various stages of completion by year’s end.

By the end of 2010 Boeing “will have a number of 787s that are either completed or will be work in process, something north of 30,” says Randy Tinseth, Boeing VP of marketing.

Tinseth says the 787  flight test program is on track for first delivery to All Nippon Airways (ANA) late this year.

ANA said recently that it will take delivery of eight 787-8s between late 2010 and the conclusion of its fiscal year in March 2011.

Currently, 17 787s are in various stages of completion at Boeing’s Washington state facilities, including the six flight test aircraft, two of which are flying.

Boeing forecasts delivery of 460 to 465 aircraft in 2010, a handful of which will be 747-8s and 787s, says Tinseth.

The FAA is now saying that “passenger networking may result in security vulnerabilities” exposing flight systems to hackers. But, how serious is this danger? The FAA says that their airworthiness tests “do not contain adequate or appropriate safety standards for these design features.” So basically, it seems that there’s a grey area for now, leaving the responsibility to the airplane manufacturers. They gave these guidelines to Boeing, but that’s about it:

1. Boeing must ensure electronic system security protection for the aircraft control domain and airline information domain from access by unauthorized sources external to the airplane, including those possibly caused by maintenance activity.

2. Boeing must ensure that electronic system security threats from external sources are identified and assessed, and that effective electronic system security protection strategies are implemented to protect the airplane from all adverse impacts on safety, functionality, and continued airworthiness.

In theory, the flight systems and passenger networks on the Boeing 747-8 and the ever-delayed Dreamliner are separated.

Boeing broke ground in North Charleston, South Carolina for the second 787 final assembly line today, marking the first all-new commercial jetliner assembly plant in the US since then-Lockheed built its L-1011 final assembly line in Palmdale, California in 1968.

The groundbreaking at the North Charleston site comes just weeks after Boeing announced on 28 October that it had selected the city for the second 787 line.

The estimated $750 million investment in the North Charleston facility also includes the capability to support the testing and delivery of aircraft.