Boeing’s mishaps show problems hard to predict
‘Double-checking’ expected as Bombardier readies new Cseries
Are there lessons for Bombardier Inc.’s CSeries in this week’s Dreamliner debacle?
No doubt, aviation specialists said Friday, but probably nothing Bombardier didn’t already know or can predict with any certainty — or fix problems before they surface.
All of Boeing Co.’s 787 Dreamliners were grounded Wednesday after the latest in a string of glitches and problems. The most serious was an emergency landing in Japan after the pilots detected smoke in the cabin caused by the new-technology lithium-ion batteries in the aircraft. There were no serious injuries.
A Bombardier Aerospace spokesman, Marc Duchesne, said it’s premature to draw any definitive conclusions from the recent incidents.
“We’re waiting to see the results of the FAA (U.S. Federal Aviation Administration) report. It’s a little early to determine whether we can profit from Boeing’s faux pas.”
Ray Jaworowski, an analyst with aviation firm Forecast International in Newtown, Conn., said there isn’t a direct lesson from a technical standpoint since the aircraft are very different in almost every way — size, technology and missions.
“But the event showed that (aircraft) manufacturers have to keep a very careful eye on the supply chain. Boeing had all sorts of problems” that caused the program to be more than three years late, he said, “after they devolved a lot of responsibility so they could do only the final assembly.
“But every major aircraft program runs into its own set of difficulties, and you take that into account in the industry.”
Most of the attention as a potential trouble spot for the CSeries cen- tres on its avionics suite, the electronics software package that flies the aircraft.
Analyst Douglas Royce, also of Forecast International, said that “anytime you’re going for a 15 to 20 per cent reduction in fuel (use), which seems to be the key for every aircraft manufacturer, you’re going to have some unexpected problems crop up.”
Perhaps one of the most stressinducing lessons may be that despite its “iron bird” CAST (complete assembly static test), a full-size CSeries that will never fly on which Bombardier is testing systems and components from suppliers scattered around the globe; its full-scale wooden replica of the CSeries in a Mirabel hangar; its Aircraft Zero simulating avionic, hydraulic and electrical systems; and its FTV1, the first flight test aircraft, all that redundancy testing and computer-aided simulation will not, and cannot, solve every conceivable inflight eventuality.
“Whatever your simulations tell you, there’s really no substitute for getting the aircraft flight-tested, putting it into operation and really flying it,” Royce said.
“If you want to be in a position to get better fuel efficiency like the CSeries, you have to start using technologies that you don’t have a lot of experience with. So you’re going to have developmental teething problems,” he said.
“The early customers of a new aircraft expect a certain number of issues to crop up. To be a launch cus- tomer means you’re the first to fly it in service, so you’re going to get a fuel leak or doors that don’t close quite right And no one has any experience servicing the aircraft. It’s a process of a year or two.”
Royce didn’t speculate as to whether that’s why Bombardier has yet to name the launch customer for its CSeries.
Tony Kern, a former U.S. air force pilot who flew B1 bombers, among other aircraft, and a founding partner of Convergent Performance LLC in Colorado Springs, said Bombardier has developed the CSeries in the past 4½ years “very methodically, with a definite eye toward safety.”
“I think they have a very close eye also on quality control and the supply chain and parts. But I’m sure the folks at Boeing thought they did, too.”
A strong CSeries advocate who lectures at Bombardier seminars on safety, Kern said the B1 bomber also had recurrent problems at first but has flown for decades now with “a tremendous safety record.”
“I think that maybe there will be a lot of last-minute double-checking at Bombardier and some late nights for the quality-assurance staff. But I have very little doubt that the CSeries will come out and be everything that we hope it is.”
First flight for the CSeries was scheduled for the end of last year, a target now pushed out to the end of June.