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tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Sun Sep 29, 2019 12:01 pm

Saw another account today that one of the Boeing jets only had 35,000 cycles on it. While none of the jets with cracks were in service (all were being retrofitted), finding an issue like that on such a young aircraft is a different kettle of fish.

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Postby Shyster » Mon Sep 30, 2019 11:40 am

Indications are that the FAA's recommended course of action will be an inspection at 25,000 cycles (or maybe every 25,000 cycles). The inspection will supposedly take a couple of hours using borescopes. High-cycle aircraft will need a check ASAP, and I imagine lower-cycle aircraft will have the new inspection worked into their check schedule.

I wasn't implying that Airbus was unsafe. They have a great safety record. But that doesn't mean that Airbus hasn't had it fair share of unexpected incidents and design problems. It happens to every manufacturer. Aircraft are complicated machines involving complicated manufacturing, and problems happen, such as the A380 wing cracks and the ongoing problems with the RR Trent 1000 engines. Most of the issues don't get widely reported, and most people outside of the aviation message boards probably don't hear about them.

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Postby Freddy Rumsen » Mon Sep 30, 2019 10:19 pm


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Postby Shyster » Wed Oct 02, 2019 7:03 pm

Mildly interesting tidbit: with the ongoing rapid retirement of its MD-80 fleet, the average age of Delta's fleet (15.1 years) is actually now younger than United's fleet (15.6 years). This is interesting because Delta has long had a reputation for operating older aircraft and keeping its aircraft longer.

Excluding Delta's remaining Mad Dogs, for both airlines, the oldest aircraft are 767s (around 23 years), 757s (around 23 years) and A320s (around 20 years). A big difference is that United's fleet of Boeing 737s is significant older (15–20 years) than Delta's 737 fleet (around 10 years or less).

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Postby Shyster » Tue Oct 08, 2019 9:08 pm

On the Boeing "pickle fork" issue, of the 500 first inspected aircraft worldwide, approximately 5% had cracks in their pickle forks. Those aircraft are now grounded, and Boeing is expediting the production of replacement pickle forks and has set up a repair line at Victorville, CA. The first repairs will be used by Boeing to establish a Service Bulletin for performing the repair procedure, and once that Bulletin is in place additional repair lines will be set up in Europe and Asia. Boeing is also now investigating if there is the potential for a temporary repair or reinforcement that could be used on aircraft with cracks so that they could continue to fly until their next major C or D maintenance check, during which there would be plenty of time for a full replacement.

From what I understand, a cause has not yet been determined. One of the lines of investigation is whether the retrofitting of winglets to the 737NG might have changed or amplified the stresses on the wing box and led to the cracking of the forks.

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Postby Shyster » Thu Oct 10, 2019 6:05 pm

Reports are that Boeing is considering a 767 "neo" with a pair of GEnx engines. The focus would be for the cargo market. While no one has ordered a passenger 767 in years, it remains quite popular with cargo operators, and FedEx and UPS alone operate more than 140 767 freighters, with dozens more on order. Those two airlines alone also operate nearly 100 MD-11 freighters, which will be slated for replacement in the next 10 years or so. The proposal is likely aimed squarely at those two and the other remaining MD freight operators.

The Flightglobal article does mention that Boeing is also floating a passenger version, which might indicate that the numbers aren't lining up for the 797 "New Midsize Aircraft" that Boeing has been considering for a couple of years now. A re-engined 767 might attract enough orders that Boeing could skip the NMA and incorporate that sort of range/capacity into a replacement for the 737 that more capably competes with the A321.

https://www.flightglobal.com/news/artic ... pa-461386/

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Postby Shyster » Tue Oct 15, 2019 4:20 pm

Swiss earlier today had to ground its entire fleet of Airbus A220s for emergency engine inspections.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ine-faults

Swiss is currently the largest operator of the A220, with 29 in service. Pratt & Whitney has been having some pretty serious teething problems with its PW1000G family of engines (also used on the Airbus A320neo family, the E-Jets E2 family, and the Mitsubishi SpaceJet), and Swiss alone has had several significant in-flight engine failures. I haven't heard anything about Delta being affected or doing any inspections for its burgeoning A220 fleet. Swiss was the launch customer for the A220 (then the Bombardier C-Series), and it's possible that Swiss might have different, earlier variants of PW1000G on its aircraft than are being installed on the ones coming off the line now.

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Postby Shyster » Tue Oct 15, 2019 7:42 pm

Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike just released a report on Chinese hacking in support of the development of the Comac C919 airliner, which is in the 737/A320 class. According to CrowdStrike, the Chinese government engaged in a coordinated multi-year hacking campaign that systematically went after the foreign companies that supplying components for the C919, including Honeywell, Safran, Capstone Turbine, and GE. The attacks used custom-designed malware, and when the Chinese couldn't manage to infiltrate a target's networks, they would recruit a Chinese national working for the target company and use that person to plant malware on the victim's network.

https://www.rollcall.com/news/policy/ha ... eport-says
https://www.zdnet.com/article/building- ... port-says/
https://www.crowdstrike.com/resources/w ... report.pdf

tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Fri Oct 18, 2019 12:20 pm

On mobile, so link sharing be hard. But the new Captain Joe video about the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) is wonderful.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Fri Oct 18, 2019 12:23 pm


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Postby shafnutz05 » Fri Oct 18, 2019 12:23 pm


tifosi77
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Postby tifosi77 » Fri Oct 18, 2019 12:25 pm

TY, Shafinator. *high five*

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Postby shafnutz05 » Fri Oct 18, 2019 12:46 pm

TY, Shafinator. *high five*
Thank you for sharing this channel!!

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Postby NTP66 » Fri Oct 18, 2019 1:00 pm


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Postby Shyster » Wed Nov 06, 2019 10:20 pm

Aviation oopsie at Amsterdam Schiphol airport earlier today. An Air Europa trainer was apparently instructing a trainee on the use of the aircraft's transponder, and it looks like he decided to use 7500 has a sample squawk code. There are a number of special squawk codes set by the International Civil Aviation Organization. For example, 7700 is the worldwide transponder code for an aircraft that has declared an emergency. 7600 signals that an aircraft cannot communicate with ATC because its radios have failed. 7500 is the international squawk code for "Help! I'm being hijacked!" The use of that code triggered a rather vigorous police response, which shut down the airport for a while. Probably not the best idea to use the hijack code as a sample.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... erdam.html

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Postby tifosi77 » Thu Nov 07, 2019 3:27 pm

That....... seems like an avoidable error.

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Postby Shyster » Fri Nov 08, 2019 8:28 pm

There was a very serious incident at Atlanta on November 6th involving a Republic Airways Embraer ERJ-175 flying as American Eagle and performing flight AA-4439 from Atlanta to New York La Guardia. The aircraft experienced a trim runaway shortly after takeoff. The pilots reported that they were in a stalling situation and couldn’t lower their pitch, so it sounds like the runaway trim was in the nose-up direction. The pilots managed to regain control by cutting out the pitch-trim system and putting the aircraft into Direct Law mode, which turns off all forms of computer assistance for the aircraft's controls.


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Postby Shyster » Mon Nov 11, 2019 7:27 pm

Winter weather has already claimed a victim at O'Hare airport. American Eagle flight 4125, which was an Embraer ERJ-145 operated by Envoy Air, skidded off Runway 10L due to icy conditions. The aircraft's right landing gear collapsed and the right wing dug into the ground. Fortunately, there were no injuries.



The aircraft in question is 21 years old with more than 40,500 cycles, so it might be a write-off even if it could be fixed.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Tue Nov 12, 2019 6:50 am

Man....doesn't matter how slow you are going in that scenario by the time you slide off the runway, that is still terrifying.

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Postby Tomas » Wed Nov 13, 2019 12:31 pm

Roughly 30th anniversary:

Old IL-62 about to be retired from Interflug (German Democratic Republic flagship airline). Some village wanted the plane for its new museum/restaurant. But they did not want the plane to be wheeled in. They wanted it to land on one of its farm fields. With spectators and pilots' wives watching!! Interflug's response - sure, why not...


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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Wed Nov 13, 2019 7:29 pm

That's nuts.

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Postby Shyster » Thu Nov 21, 2019 7:48 pm

The Hawthorne, California factory that has been contracted for decades by Boeing to make 747 fuselage parts is being closed and liquidated by its owner, Triumph Group Inc. Triumph has already produced all of the parts for the 18 748-8Fs that are left on order by UPS Airlines. Boeing will either have to bring production of a whole lot of parts in-house, or it will have to discontinue the 747. I don't think there's any doubt that Boeing will choose the latter option, so it looks like the last 747 will go to UPS.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ed-factory

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Postby tifosi77 » Thu Nov 21, 2019 8:02 pm

That's in the same business park at the Hawthorne Airport where SpaceX HQ is located. If you remember the photo I posted a few months back of the Falcon 9 booster, that was at the intersection of Crenshaw and Northrop Ave, down the street from the Triumph/Boeing facility.

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Postby Shyster » Thu Nov 21, 2019 9:43 pm

It's unfortunate for the people who worked at that factory, but the era of jets with more than two engines is pretty obviously limited. It does raise some questions about that future freight operators will have available. The 747 freighter with its lifting nose offers the ability to straight-load large and bulky cargo, and there aren't really many other aircraft that have that ability. We might see the end of 747 production, but I think there will probably be carefully-maintained 747 freighters flying for quite a while in that niche role.

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Postby Shyster » Fri Nov 22, 2019 8:24 pm

It didn't get much fanfare for obvious reasons, but Boeing rolled out the first 737 MAX 10 today in Renton.

https://aeronewsglobal.com/boeing-737-m ... in-renton/

It's the largest but shortest range version of the aircraft, with maximum seating for about a dozen more passengers than the MAX 9. The 10 basically has the same passenger capacity (but not the same range) as the 757-200. Compared to all of the other versions, the 10 uses a special landing-gear design that telescopes the gear out as the gear lowers. The same sort of design is used to make compact gear on some fighter jets, and it gives around an extra 10 inches of gear height. The extra height is needed to avoid tail strikes on takeoff and landing. United Airlines has the most MAX 10 aircraft (100) on order, but no other US airline has ordered the type.

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