Warbird Information Exchange

A second UNITED 787 has come down with an issue concerning it's 6 fuselage mounted IDG's (Integrated Drive Generators). The IDG's provide all electrical power to the aircraft (about 500 MW ). And last week a UAL 87 diverted from HOU to MSY as a precaution following an indication of failure on the flight deck info screens.
QATAR AIRLINES had a simular issue earlier this week and the airplane is parked pending investigation/repair, if needed. Now that there are three simular indications within a week Boeing has done some in depth investigation and is looking at the main power distribution panel area immediately adjacent to the IDG's in the right side of the front end of the aft cargo area.
Aviation consultants close to the issue are confident it wil be found and corrected quickly and express complete confidence in the aircraft and consider these incidents to be 'teething issues' with an otherwise sound design.

I know some of the folks that were on the test flight when that power panel smoked. I wonder if this issue is related? Of course being primarily an electric jet is isn't surprising that your system problems would be electrical in nature.

bdk wrote:I know some of the folks that were on the test flight when that power panel smoked. I wonder if this issue is related? Of course being primarily an electric jet is isn't surprising that your system problems would be electrical in nature.

At least part of the electrical problem on RA 006 during testing involved inadequate/nonexistant F.O.D. control on the part of not only the foreign vendor but also on the part of Boeings at the time, inadequately trained QA folks on the program when the bean massagers still assumed the chunks would arrive only needing minor tweeks and they'd go down the floor like Chevy pickup trucks.
Anyone who's worked in aviation assembly could see the folly in that philosophy, it made me nervous, but being a 'contractor' and 'an outsider' I could have no inputs so I doubled my efforts in trying to instill personal responsability in my students.

Whats the deal with the FOD issue? Nonexistent FOD control would be accurate for most major airport ramp areas if not the taxiways and runways. Hope the plane isnt that delicate. Im sure its going to all work out. I look forward to its non bleed air system tech becoming the standard. My sinuses love the current dirty dry air that ill be breathing for the next 30 some odd years otherwise.

jtramo wrote:Whats the deal with the FOD issue? Nonexistent FOD control would be accurate for most major airport ramp areas if not the taxiways and runways. Hope the plane isnt that delicate. Im sure its going to all work out. I look forward to its non bleed air system tech becoming the standard. My sinuses love the current dirty dry air that ill be breathing for the next 30 some odd years otherwise.

You'd need to take that up with the people who were in charge four or five (or more) schemes ago. At the time people were being made line managers because they had been hanging around longer than anyone else, MDC, ROCKWELL, and MDCSTL cast offs were transferred in (unloaded from their old job locations) and made managers and they had never touched an airplane or showed the ability to herd ducks with a stick.
For a while, the new guy running the overall piece of the training dept. I was contracted to was a former LGB charts and graphs guy who had only been on the factory floor in LGB on 'road trips' and couldn't comprehend the overall training system we were dealing with and it was pretty simple 'drill it and fill it,' at least he was smart enough to realize that and went someplace else in the company, but 'they' were still enraptured by the 'Boeing 2016' dream propagated by the new crop of large and in charge types, who again, were brand new and had never touched an airplane but had them a skull full of book larnin bout modern bidniss techniques and expected the airplanes to float down the floor as self motivated parts lept off of carts and magically attached themselves to the 'self completing' airframe-it WAS fun watching their sun come up on cold, hard ass reality, and by then they'd shoved all the 'know how to' guys (grade 6-9's) into retirement and were left with a large herd of milling, mooing around grade 4's and a very few grade 10/11's and no one in the middle.
Instead of running basic Inspector school while the project was brand new and very incomplete, the first time I walked into the '26' building I was amazed to see FNG, know nothing, hired off the street with no background in QC or aviation, inspectors all sitting around playing 'World of Warcraft' on laptops and getting paid to do it.
I hear it's improving, but my impression then was exactly as Churchill said about Boeing 'Never, have so many done so little for so much'.

Well, you can see how we'll all the STL fighter guys did in keeping Douglas going...