The other Qantas calamity

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The other Qantas calamity; Dreamliners in limboNovember 18, 2010 ± 12:07 pm, by Ben Sandilands

While the grounded A380s are the headline issue for Qantas, the continued grounding of

the Boeing 787 test fleet after a fire emergency in ZA002 is cause for real concern.

The Dreamliner 787 order Qantas placed in December 2005 was the key to the retiring of

old and increasingly unreliable jets in its fleet, from August 2008.

That infamously didn¶t happen as delay after delay hit the program to build a super light

ultra efficient plastic airliner.

Overnight, Bloomberg reported this analyst assessment which sees the certification

and delivery of the first 787s being pushed back as far as 2012. Even before the in flight

fire emergency occurred in the second of the test fleet 787s, on November 9, there were

authoritative reports pointing to a further delay in what remains the current promise,

that the first jets will be delivered, service legal and service ready, to All Nippon Airways

in the first quarter of next year.

The story needs to be considered in parallel with this most recent Boeing statement on

the incident.

EVERETT, Wash., Nov. 16, 2010 /PRNewswire/ ² While the investigation into the incident

onboard 787 Dreamliner ZA002 continues, Boeing has established a plan to fly two other

aircraft, ZA001 and ZA005, back to Seattle from Rapid City, S.D., and Victorville, Calif.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has reviewed and approved the plans.

ZA001 was undergoing refueling in South Dakota when the incident on ZA002 occurred

and the company decided to forgo additional flights. ZA005 was on r emote deployment

for testing in California.

The flights follow a series of inspections on the airplanes¶ aft electronics bays. No testing

will be performed on the flights.

The team investigating the incident in Laredo has developed a detailed understanding of

the ZA002 incident, though more work remains to complete the investigation. In addition

to the information already released about the incident, data show that:

* The total duration of the incident was less than 90 seconds.

* The fire lasted less than 30 seconds.

* The airplane concluded the event in a configuration that could have been sustained for

the time required to return to an airport suitable for landing from any point in a typical

787 mission profile.



The team in Texas has completed inspection of ZA002 and has begun to prepare to

install a new power panel and new insulation material. The team also is repairing minor

structural damage that occurred during the event. This damage will be addressed with

standard repair techniques in the airplane structural repair manual. The team is currently

evaluating the timeline for completion of the repair work.

The incident on ZA002 demonstrated many aspects of the safety and redundancy in the

787 design, which ensure that if events such as these occur, the airplane can continue

safe flight and landing.

No decision has been reached on when flight testing of the 787 will resume. Before that

decision can be made, we must complete the investigation and assess whether any

design changes are necessary. Until that time, Boeing cannot comment on the potential

impact of this incident on the overall program schedule.

As Bloomberg andFlightblogger note, the devil is in the detail-or its careful avoidance-

in the Boeing statement.

It doesn¶t say that all of the required systems or structural redundancies required for

certification for service entry performed to those standards during the emergency. Why

doesn¶t it say so?

The very mention by Boeing of possible design changes in its meticulously crafted

statement is alarming. Design changes take time, not just to make, model, draw, specify

and build, but to apply, especially if this requires sections of the jets which no longer

conform to certification standards to be removed from all completed and partially

completed 787s.

A delay of a year would mean Qantas subsidiary Jetstar wouldn¶t receive the first of eight

787-8s until June 2013 (not counting other rumoured delays), and that the 787-9s which

make up 35 of the 50 Dreamliners still on firm order from Qantas would not begin

arriving until 2015.

That is a full seven years later than Qantas planned for in terms of developing Jetstar¶s

international routes, and replacing Cityflyer 767s, which like the airline¶s older 747s, are

becoming liabilities in terms of aged airframe maintenance costs and scheduling

reliability.

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The Anatomy of the Airbus A380 QF32 near disaster November 17, 2010 ± 7:56 pm, by Ben Sandilands



The Airbus presentation to accident investigators of the damage done to QF32 on

November 4 gives new technical insights into this near disaster involving a Qantas A380with 466 persons on board.

The examination of the damage is far from complete, as the presentation makes clear. It

doesn¶t deal with the other dimensions of this serious incident, which are the loss or

impairment of various systems on the giant airliner, and the emerging difficulties the

crew faced from fuel load imbalance caused by some of those failures.

The diagrams need to be compared to the photos shown later in this report



One thing needs to be kept firmly in mind. Rolls-Royce the maker of the Trent 900

engine which disintegrated knew about the faults that the current airworthiness directive



concerning these engines says are likely to have caused an intense oil fire in a structural

cavity in the intermediate pressure turbine area of the engine.

Rolls-Royce had designed and was introducing a fix for the oil leak issues for this into the

engines at its own speed. Qantas was left in the dark. It is fair to suggest that Qantas

needs to review relationships with engine manufacturers in which it pays for power by-

the-hour and leaves much of the maintenance and oversight of those engines to the

designer and manufacturer.

To emphasise the obvious. The interests of the engine maker and holder of the

service agreements are not the same as those of the airline. A carrier might

want to correct and replace inadequate design features to a different, more

urgent timetable that the party that benefits from the support contract, and has

its own brand image to protect.





Some impact damage was done to underbelly and side of the A380



The set of graphics shown above were accompanied by a brief written and photographic



overview of the damage as currently assessed.







Reviewing these images makes it clear why Qantas was quick, and correct, in grounding

its A380 fleet.

The wing of the jet shows remarkable structural strength in sustaining damage that

might have destroyed the airliners of earlier decades, but the questions as to whethercontrol system revisions are necessary to deal with some of the consequences in terms of

failed hydraulics and fuel imbalance are said to be very actively under consideration.

And the questions concerning the timeliness of the Rolls-Royce responses to a known

problem, and its capacity and willingness to share them with the airlines concerned will

not go away. If the engine maker doesn¶t address them its customers will.

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The other Qantas calamity