General > General Technical Chat
And now the Boeing 777...
james_s:
Yeah there are a lot of unknowns. Previously planes sat idle occasionally for weeks or months, but we have never had such a large number of planes sitting idle for so long. Makes me wonder how well they have all actually been taken care of. Hopefully it will turn out to not be a problem.
hans:
Well, finally these 777s are allowed to fly passengers again: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/17/united-airlines-says-faa-cleared-grounded-boeing-777s-to-fly-again.html
I do wonder if failed engine blades of turbofan engines is going to be a more common theme. I also remember reading about another recent incident (Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1380) with a 737. Totally different engine mfgr though, but nonetheless, the trend for turbofan is to go big.. get the largest bypass ratio you can make fit and produce reliably. Intuitively those longer fan blades will put more strain at the connection points to the axle. For the Southwest flight, it were mini cracks that caused failure, which has seen increased inspection measures to prevent them..
SilverSolder:
--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on March 04, 2021, 06:30:56 pm ---
--- Quote from: Retep on March 04, 2021, 03:08:53 pm ---
--- Quote from: james_s on March 04, 2021, 05:09:20 am ---I do have some concerns about planes sitting idle due to the pandemic. I had quite a bit of experience working with cars that sat for extended periods, it doesn't do them any favors. Seals dry out, lubricants degrade, metals oxidize, tires get flat spots, all sorts of stuff happens. I don't think I'd want to be on the first few flights on a plane that had been mothballed if I could help it.
--- End quote ---
My understanding is (based on what was said on one of the YouTube channels - I think it was Mentour Pilot) that engines are started every 3 weeks or so and also that commercial planes have to be flown every once in a while, otherwise they would loose their airworthiness certificate and have to be re-certified when they are put back into use.
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Yes. I've heard from a couple specialists that planes sitting "idle" for weeks or even months was not that rare these days, even before the pandemic, due to large differences in trafic depending on the season for some companies. So they are normally used to take care of planes just parked for extended periods of time.
Now it'll still be interesting to know whether the Covid crisis did actually have an influence even on this routine maintenance. It's not at all unlikely. In particular, I'd really be curious to know if maintenance in general didn't significantly drop as air trafic droped... even though idle planes definitely need very regular maintenance. Whereas, as said above, this kind of maintenance was a common thing before Covid, the sheer number of parked planes has obviously increased a lot, so that increased this parked plane maintenance a lot, which companies were probably not ready for - while their revenue plumetted. So yeah. I'm curious if those incidents will at all tell us something about that.
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There has to be a business opportunity here... have a courier company fly the parked planes on rotation for light cargo, or something like that...
SiliconWizard:
Oh, I can smell the business opportunity here... new companies selling plane pooling services.
tom66:
--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on May 19, 2022, 04:50:06 pm ---Oh, I can smell the business opportunity here... new companies selling plane pooling services.
--- End quote ---
You've basically described wet leasing.
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