Tag Archives: Boeing

United Boeing 767 Gets Hosed

Now I know the rest of the story.

This week one of our friendly airline geeks on a list I am on sent out some disturbing pictures in which it appeared someone at United AIrlines decided to take a pressure washer to one of the airline’s Boeing 767s — knocking out windows and generally making a huge expensive mess.

But that wasn’t a pressure washing. It was from fire hoses.

Kieran Daly wrote on his blog, Unusual Attitude this week that he was told that United took a Boeing 767-300, and gave it the full customer-facing treatment. New seats, interior fittings, and best of all,”Panasonic’s all-singing, all-dancing in-flight entertainment.” All of this was done at its Chicago maintenance base.

That’s when all hell broke loose.

If you would like to read the official MX write-up of the damage, you can access it at Kieran’s blog. It runs for pages and pages. And pages.

Airbus Ditch Button

Okay, if you are a pilot, you already know this.

But I didn’t know that the Airbus aircraft apparently have a “ditch” button in the cockpit that automatically closes any vent, air outlet, opening, whatever, to the outside, in preparation for a potential water landing.

Just listening to Greg Fieth, former NTSB investigator, on NBC talking about how this works.

Pretty interesting. I was not aware of this. Clearly today that might have been helpful, as the aircraft stayed above water long enough for everyone to get off.

All you Boeing fans out there — do they have something similar on Boeing aircraft?

Airbus Leaked Document Skewers Boeing 787 Program

Score another one for Jon Ostower, better known as Flightblogger.

Jon, who in my opinion is the source for all things Boeing, published a document this afternoon that appears to be a copy of a legitimate Airbus presentation entitled, “Boeing 787 Lessons Learnt.”

The 46-page document says that it was presented by Burkhard Domke, Head of Engineering Intelligence for Airbus and it has a date on it of October 2008. You can download a copy by clicking here.

The report outlines a list of problems that Boeing has had and continues to have with the 787 production process under a number of headings:

• Design Issues

• Weight Issues

• Engine Issues

• Certification Issues

• Production Issues

• Schedule Issues

Makes for some interesting reading.