IS IT A CASE OF CHITTY-CHITTY-BANG-BANG…
(…or rather a matter of Boeing-Boeing…Boing?)

Even in the not-so-user-friendly skies of today’s commercial aviation, Boeing has generally maintained its reputation as the premier brand for anything that flies those skies. In fact for more than a half century it has mostly been a Boeing world, with only a few others such as Douglas and Lockheed to compete against it.

The advent of jet aircraft gave it further domination over those skies…with its 707…its 747…and now its latest production of the 787 Dreamliner. A reported marvel of cutting edge aviation technologies combined to produce it. But a problem with one of these cutting edge technologies involved with producing this Dreamliner has now caused a hiccup in Boeing’s plans to launch it as the next flying darling of our skies.

The problem isn’t with the design concept of the aircraft itself. That has been up to Boeing’s historical highest standards. The problem seems mostly linked to those pesky lithium-ion batteries used to power all its onboard systems. And as is well known lithium batteries exude potentially flammable gaseous elements which can ignite with very little provocation. So, the state of the art in this kind of battery technology is not quite there… yet…especially for this kind of application.

Let’s face it, it’s one thing to have a car or truck conk out at 60mph because of a small part’s failure. It’s an entirely different proposition at 30,000ft+ altitude with a full load of jet fuel and hundreds of passengers on board to have a one of those batteries start flaming off. But this recent spate of incidents related to these batteries suggests a large problem is involved.

In today’s globalization, where many components of assembly systems depend upon multiple manufacturers to supply them, QA/QC (Quality Assurance/Quality Control) become a very critical factor in the assembly process. That’s especially true when the end product is an aircraft on which Boeing’s name and reputation will depend. Even so, no matter how tightly it dictates the specifications for those components, it doesn’t really have direct QA/QC control over such suppliers…and that’s the real problem.

Of course, Boeing isn’t the only outfit with that problem. Has anyone forgotten NASA and its former problems with –O- rings? Or those of some name brand auto makers whose vehicles equipped with computer controlled-systems often conked out because a $2 chip in those computers gave out?

Well, let’s hope Boeing will be able to fix these issues soon, so that these are just a case of chitty-chitty-bang-bang, rather than a matter of Boeing-Boeing….Boing.

CENTURION