Stuff of Dreams

Chicago?

Reading a New York Times article last month about the Dreamliner’s troubles, something jumped out at me. Deep in the article were the words Chicago-based Boeing.

Of course I know that Boeing moved its headquarters to Chicago some years back. But still, airplanes are made at airports, else how will they fly away?

Boeing field, Seattle, where the first B-17 crashed on takeoff with the controls locked. Boeing Field, almost downtown, nestled between the freeways. Boeing Field, where I myself went in 1974 for simulator training on the new B-727-200. Everett, WA, where the mighty Whale has been put together since forever. Boeing and its people are a part of the Pacific Northwest, and nothing will ever change that.

The Dreamliner Project

On the technical front the B-787 is ambitious. Carbon-fiber construction, fly-by-wire and all that, of course, in the service of reduced weight and therefore greater economy of operation. But these technologies have been proven in the field with the B-777 and Airbus aircraft. The leap forward is the almost complete elimination of hydraulic systems, replacing them with electrically operated everything. Six huge (by aircraft standards) generators provide enough power for a small city. And infamously, two lithium-ion battery packs provide power to start the APU and to back up cockpit instruments.

It is on the business front, however, that the real leap has been made. Following business school dogma, or perhaps to be near their largest customer, Boeing management made the move to Chicago. There they hatched a plan to build the new plane by doing less than forty percent of the work. The rest they farmed out to fifty-odd “strategic partners” around the world (See James Surowiecki's Requiem for a Dreamliner? in the February 4, 2013 New Yorker).

The Problem

As everyone now knows, the B-787 has been grounded following two incidents involving the meltdown of a lithium-ion battery pack. My own experience with these batteries is limited to a lightweight portable circular saw I used last year in a roofing project. It worked beautifully, except for when I used it to rip a ten-foot length of decking and overheated its battery pack. Wisely, it shut down and refused to go further. I had to wait half a day for the pack to cool enough to be recharged.

That battery pack still works fine today, thanks to the built in sensors and software. And I have learned to appreciate the lithium-ion battery's tendency to overheat when a large current demand is placed on it, such as ripping a long board or starting an APU.

From the New York Times' coverage this last month I also learned that the lithium-ion battery produces oxygen when it overheats, leading to the possibility of an uncontrollable fire. It would seem that when it comes to using lithium-ion batteries, it would be wise to know what you are doing.

The Solution

Recently Elon Musk (PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX) wrote to Boeing to offer assistance with the battery problem. His offer was declined (Flight Global, January 29, 2013). Apparently, it is better to look like you know what you're doing than to actually know anything. Isolated in Chicago, Boeing management are doing damage control by gagging their Chief Engineer in Seattle and labelling the battery failures “maintenance issues.” (For an elucidation of this process in aviation, see the papers and speeches of Mark H. Goodrich.)

Whither the Dream?

Flying is based on confidence. We fly because it is cheap and we believe it is safe. We are lured by deals and fed statistics proving that flying is safer than it ever has been before. We understand that with today's technology aircraft usually “land themselves.”

But none of this is so.

Our single most polluting act is not driving a car or consuming coal-fired electricity, but taking an airline flight. The cost of climate change is not factored into those cheap tickets. But – perhaps closer to home – neither is the cost of non-existent pilot training or remote project oversight in aircraft manufacture. The statistics are re-assuring but mask obvious truths: a) in two recent tragedies the pilots stalled the airplane and didn't recover b) the Dreamliner is at risk of failure because of the financialization of business.

The B-787, as far as I can see, has the potential to be a winner. There are no technical obstacles that cannot be overcome with a little real work. But the danger lies in the dream, in the concentration on maintaining that flying is risk-free. Because, you see, there was something else that jumped out at me in the New York Times article. A Boeing Chief Engineer was quoted about the difficulties of building an airplane with fifty “strategic partners.” It may be my research, but I have been unable to find that quote since.