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Metal shards from Boeing 787 taking off over Rome rain down on people below
- cmurf 7y agoMore info and photos. http://avherald.com/h?article=4cb6a09d&opt=0 http://avherald.com/h?article=4cb6a09d&opt=0
- noja 7y agoThose are the same photos.
- gota 7y agoThose metal bits look big enough to kill a person. I mean, anything havier than a marble falling from high enough will do a lot of damage, right?
- gesman 7y agoIf thing is small and heavy - yes. If thing has a surface to it - it could fall significantly slower. That said anything-metal falling from the sky is dangerous.
- dmurray 7y agoAnything with enough power to smash a hole right through a car windscreen (as in the second picture) can kill you, definitely.
- refurb 7y agoI’m being pedantic here, but there are exceptions to that rule. In SF, it’s common for car thieves to break windows using a small chip (size of a pencil eraser) of ceramic from a spark plug. The ceramic is super hard but light weight and can shatter a window easily.[1] being hit by it would barely register. [1] https://youtu.be/llu-ckEe5cQ https://youtu.be/llu-ckEe5cQ
- droithomme 7y agoIt's a miracle only a handful of people were injured.
- hinkley 7y agoMy first car had a lovely, circular radiator repair job that was exactly the diameter of the bolts on the fan blade. It must have thrown a bolt at some point. The placement of the dents on all the fins reminds me a bit of that. Looks to me like something broke off, got wedged under one of those stabilizers, smacking the hell out of every single fin on the way before it was finally thrown clear.
- ctack 7y agoGreat to see the image of the turbines on the plane afterwards.
- t0mas88 7y agoSmall shards (in great numbers) that according to a witness on the ground were burning or very hot sounds a lot like (pieces of) blades from the turbine or stator/guide vanes. In both cases it's a very significant engine failure.
- krona 7y agoGiven that the aircraft itself seems otherwise undamaged, and people on the ground reported it 'rained' metal shards, I'd say these parts melted off the turbine and fell out. Significant but not catastrophic.
- drdrey 7y ago> significant but not catastrophic So... not great but not horrifying?
- rimliu 7y agoNot great, not terrible.
- droithomme 7y agoInsane comment!
- jacquesm 7y agoThis ended well, fortunately. But that must have been pretty scary. A 787 that is out one engine will put extra load on the remaining engine, if that one has gone through a similar life as the one that just dropped bits all over the place I'd not wager on the remaining one being as safe as when it was last inspected. That's a lot of eggs in one basket. And they don't glide particularly well either, though there are some interesting stories around passenger aircraft and glide landings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider But that one had a good 9000 meters more height to work with and it wasn't over densely populated area either.
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- ummonk 7y agohttps://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2019/08/12/norwegian-boeing-787-engine-parts-fall-from-sky-onto-italian-town/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2019/08/12/norwegian... The plane in question was a 5.5-year-old Boeing 787-8 with the registration LN-LND. The parts are believed to have come from the left engine, a Rolls-Royce Trent 1000, a model that has been plagued with problems. Link about the problems: https://www.theengineer.co.uk/rolls-royce-problems-trent-1000/ https://www.theengineer.co.uk/rolls-royce-problems-trent-100... Cracking problems in the intermediate pressure (IPT) section of the turbine have plagued the engine since early 2016, five years after its launch. Unscheduled groundings of Trent 1000-powered aircraft cost Rolls-Royce some £450m last year, and Horwood said that addressing the problem was “the single most important issue” currently facing the company. One of Rolls-Royce’s most important potential customers for Trent 1000, Air New Zealand, recently announced that it has opted for General Electric power-plants for a new batch of 787-10 airliners, although its 787-9 fleets still fly with Trent engines. I'm reminded of all the jokes Jeremy Clarkson makes at Rolls Royce's expense...
- rjsw 7y ago> I'm reminded of all the jokes Jeremy Clarkson makes at Rolls Royce's expense... Rolls-Royce Holdings only makes aero engines, the cars are made by BMW.
- serf 7y ago>the cars are made by BMW. as of 1998. Most of Clarksons' jokes are in reference to the 70s and 80s era of Rolls Royce -- which is known among auto enthusiasts as one of the least reliable group of cars to have ever existed.
- gok 7y agoCurious if this was before or after Rolls-Royce thought they'd fixed it.
- aaronbrethorst 7y agoThis really doesn't make me feel very confident about getting on a 787 for a 14 hour flight next week.
- jcampbell1 7y agoIf it has GEnx engines you have little to worry about. The easiest way to tell the difference is the GE has metal leading edges on the fan. The Trent fans are all cfrp.
- edoceo 7y agoCFRP = Carbon Fibre Reinforced Polymer. https://www.compositesworld.com/articles/aeroengine-composites-part-2-cfrps-expand https://www.compositesworld.com/articles/aeroengine-composit...
- BillSaysThis 7y agoCan you tell this when booking your tickets? It isn't a detail I've seen using most travel websites or even an airline's own app.
- fludlight 7y agoLast minute airplane swaps are not uncommon, so such a feature doesn't necessarily help.
- SkyMarshal 7y agoYou probably can figure it out with some sleuthing. For one example, SeatGuru records every airline fleet's different plane types. Once you have airline + plane type for each of that airline's routes, I bet you can dig up the engine type from that info.
- fnordprefect 7y agoThere's often also press about it - eg https://www.geaviation.com/press-release/genx-engine-family/qantas-selects-genx-engines-power-its-new-boeing-787-9-dreamliners https://www.geaviation.com/press-release/genx-engine-family/...
- mv4 7y agoOh, and it's raining again Light on your car light, bullets on tin.
- paranoidrobot 7y agoFor years I'd thought it was "like bullets on tin". Most lyrics sites seem to have the lyrics you said, but there's still some with the version I thought. I can't find any official source of lyrics either. I've now listened to the video clip[1] a dozen times trying to figure out which it is, and honestly I'm no closer. [1] https://youtu.be/NdZHZZtJacg?t=25 https://youtu.be/NdZHZZtJacg?t=25
- mv4 7y agoHold me closer, Tony Danza!
- iooi 7y agoWho is responsible from a liability perspective: Boeing, Rolls Royce, or Norwegian?
- chx 7y agoChain. Norwegian to the people hurt and property damaged, they will in turn sue Boeing who in turn will sue Rolls Royce.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 7y agoI don't know if there are special rules for air traffic. But generally, the immediate operator (i. e. the airline in this case) would be responsible. If any of the manufacturers (or possibly a maintenance contractor) were to be responsible, the airline would simply be able to recover whatever damages they had to pay from them.
- davidw 7y agoBeing Rome and all... I could see a bunch of people with any sort of dings in their cars or windshield chips making claims in the near future :-)
- aruggirello 7y agoBeing an Italian born in Rome, I find your comment implying bad faith offensive.
- tpowell 7y agoOne of the pieces in her hand has the unique shape of a fan blade. There’s a series on YouTube documenting the factories where the engines are created: https://youtu.be/UazsDDFsS7Q https://youtu.be/UazsDDFsS7Q
- stronglikedan 7y agoThe show How It's Made did a cool segment on turbine blades, which really gave me a deep appreciation of the process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnrCjVf9xuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnrCjVf9xuY
- alkonaut 7y agoIs this the same issue that has plagued the Trent 1000 since the beginning or is it something different? It says the plane is 5.5 years but I guess that doesn’t say whether the engine had been modernized. On the bright side, Rolls seem to have sorted out most issues from the 1000 in their newer engine the XWB. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Trent_1000 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Trent_1000
- ShorsHammer 7y ago> Boeing dispatched 737 MAX head VP Keith Leverkuhn to help Rolls-Royce overcome the problems Well that really inspires confidence. The new engines are still suffering these same problems, very good chance Norwegian has the newer variant as the older ones are mostly grounded and I'm quite sure Boeing agreed to replace them all years ago. https://simpleflying.com/singapore-airlines-787-10-engine-issues/ https://simpleflying.com/singapore-airlines-787-10-engine-is...
- jquery 7y ago>Well that really inspires confidence. For better or worse it appears Boeing is practicing https://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/ https://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/ It appears to work in software, so unless demonstrated otherwise I assume it's effective in other engineering disciplines. We can learn from the equivalents of the FAA in other countries where blame automatically gets assigned based on who is in charge, it leads to finger-pointing and worse safety records/poorer investigations: watch a few seasons of Mayday: Air Crash Investigations to see the pattern. You see it especially in more autocratic countries where hierarchy is rigid. One especially good example is Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, there's a good chance we would've found the plane if everyone in the government wasn't practicing CYA which led to significant delays and made the search exponentially harder. Compare that to Air France Flight 447 where the right information was shared with the world immediately (and it still took us two years to find the black boxes).
- mrunkel 7y agoBoeing has nothing to do with the engines. They are purchased by the end user/airline.
- mikl 7y ago2019 has been a true _annus horribilis_ for Boeing.
- kakwa_ 7y agoWell, engin failures are not exactly the rarest of occurrences. It's just that given the context, every stories about Boeing will gain quite a bit of traction. It's probably deserved given how bad the company have messed-up, but let not overreact.
- LeonM 7y agoThe title of the article should be Metal shards of Rolls-Royce Trend 1000 engine rain down on people below. It has very little to do with Boeing in this case. But blaming Boeing in the title gets you more clicks, and clicks equals money for journalism.
- A2017U1 7y agoSo why does Boeing end up paying compensation in court? Airplane parts are intertwined believe it or not, their engineers spend years working together. May as well start 26 shell companies named BoeingA to BoeingZ and pretend it was all someone else's fault.
- mikl 7y agoIf a Tesla has a fatal accident because of some 3rd party component, the headlines will blame Tesla, too. Boeing is not free of responsibility here, they chose to sell said engines as an option on their planes. They have worked together with Rolls Royce to integrate their engines with their plane. In theory, engine problems could even be caused by Boeing's software mismanaging the engines.
- SapporoChris 7y agoDespite an update and partial retraction in this article. It seems that there are known issues. https://thepointsguy.com/2018/01/norwegian-787-engine-replacement/ https://thepointsguy.com/2018/01/norwegian-787-engine-replac...
- Havoc 7y agoOh man Boeing just can’t catch a break lately
- torgian 7y agoSounds like someone forgot to take the FOD out of the aircraft
- proc0 7y agoSo Rome has a science police?
- valiant-comma 7y agoA British Airways 787 with the Trent 1000 engines had to make an emergency landing in Istanbul on June 15 while en route to London: http://avherald.com/h?article=4c9549b4 http://avherald.com/h?article=4c9549b4
- andy_ppp 7y agoAnd this is what a culture of management bonuses causes. I don’t want to ever fly Boeing again at this rate...
- danjayh 7y agoIt was a problem with the engine, not the airframe. The 787 ships with Rolls-Royce and GE engines - the GE equipped ones are fine. Boeing manufactures the planes, and then works with engine manufacturers to offer various options for powering them. The airlines choose which engines they'd like to install on their aircraft. GE, for all of its faults as a corporation (the stock price is what, $9-something now?), makes very good jet engines.
- A2017U1 7y agoit's just plug and play hey?
- mrunkel 7y agoWhat does this have to do with Boeing? Engine was from Rolls-Royce. The customer decides what engines they want to install on the plane.
- salawat 7y agoThe downside button is not meant as a disagree button. Anyway, there was likely nothing Boeing could do at the early design stage to make up for poor choices on the engine manufacturers part except a higher degree of scrutiny with regards to the actual manufacturing facility and essentially double checking all of RR's work. Considering they are questionable at certifying their own work, I'd not necessarily look to burden them with being an engine manufacturer on top of an airframe one. As irritating to me as that is that quality departments typically don't integrate vertically or even share that type of info to enable that type of analysis.
- NullPrefix 7y agoVideos on the site does not work, I assume because of adblocking. Related video for those who also are too lazy to read https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvxucqNRPRg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvxucqNRPRg
- jaremko 7y ago"It was a storm of steel and iron", said one area resident, who later identified himself as George R. R. Martin.
- dullgiulio 7y agoJust the typical Italian overstatement. We exaggerate a million times a day.