January 15, 2013 - 7:53 pm
I really wanted to fly on one of these things too.
A Boeing 787 Dreamliner operated by All Nippon Airways Co. made an emergency landing at Takamatsu airport in southern Japan on Wednesday morning, the airline and government agencies said, in the latest incident to hit the aircraft.
A spokesman for ANA said the landing was made after an alarm indicated a problem with batteries used in the plane. An official at Takamatsu airport said smoke was detected, but had no further details.
It has been such an inauspicious debut for the luxury liner that the FAA has decided to review the manufacturing process.
I would not be surprised if these problems don;t lead back to Boeing opening another plant in SC to (non union ) to produce this .
One of Boeing’s challenges with the 787 is the degree of outsourcing. Those lithium-ion batteries are made by the French company Thales. A high degree of the plane’s components are made by companies from around the world. Getting all of those pieces to work together properly was one of the big causes for the plane’s 3 year delay entering service. Maintaining quality control over dozens (if not hundreds) of suppliers will be a continuing challenge.
The contrast between the 787 and how SpaceX built their Falcon 9 booster couldn’t be sharper. When SpaceX was designing their rocket, they went to the conventional industry suppliers. When they proved unreasonable (in SpaceX’s opinion), the company decided to design and build almost everything the rocket needed in house. The result was lower costs and higher quality. When they had problems, it was a SpaceX problem. There was little time for finger pointing. They worked together and resolved the problem.
For expensive products being sold internationally like the 787, outsourcing serves political goals as much as technical and business goals. It’s easier to sell a $200 million airliner when some of the pieces are made in that airline’s home country. The same goes for major weapons systems like the F-35. It often ends up costing more and taking longer than doing things in house but that seems the price that the major aerospace companies have to pay.