AP Exclusive: 3 Boeing 777s have suffered windshield cracks; wiring problem blamed

SFGate ^ | October 6, 2003 | LESLIE MILLER

[Larry Lucido]

Alitalia Flight 610 was over the Atlantic on its Rome-to-New York flight last July when the Boeing 777 seemed to shudder. Passengers smelled smoke.

The cabin crew ran up to the flight deck as passengers screamed, said Bruce Northrup, a New York City banker returning from a wedding with his wife and 15-year-old son. "People were yelling, `Tell us what's going on,"' he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

[Archangelsk]

I think assembly is still done at Boeing Field.

[Larry Lucido]

I did 10 hours once on an Ilyushin 62M that was older than its pilots, that is a scary plane, ditto for Tu154 and Tu134.

I flew an Ilyushin or Tupolev from Moscow to Aktau. I really don't know which one it was, but a fellow passenger told me it was an Ilyushin. The tires were visibly worn, the seats kind of flopped backward and forward, and there were no "overhead compartments" to speak of, just a shelf with a rope. Didn't dare use the bathroom. It was scary, but it beat walking.

[Archangelsk]

Nope, icing is also a major component for testing. Chickens and ice are mixed together.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Yes. Sharp inside corners are a naturally high stress area and aluminum is much more susceptable to stress fractures than steel. The plane in the test fixture they rigged up to test the airframe failed after only a day or so of testing. The engineers were expecting the airframe to last at least a week and were called up in the first night with the news.

The fix was easy. Remove all those big beautiful, rectangular windows and replace them with aluminum plates with little oblong windows in the middle.

[Central Scrutiniser]

The airline I worked for had the sister ships of the Aloha 737 that popped, sometimes knowledge is not a good thing! We had a 737-100 that was the last one flying in the US, there were always small airleaks around the doors, the noise was a bit concerning, but not too much of a problem.

In its later days, it was a real hangar queen, lots of cancelled flights, we used to jokingly refer to it as 'Deathjet 708". After retirement in Dec. 1999, it was sent to Opa-Locka to be put to a better use: beer cans.

[Howlin]

That is one beautiful airplane. It's suppose to be the safest ever built.

There's a great documentry they run on Discovery about how it was designed and built.

[Central Scrutiniser]

The IL64 had 4 engines on the tail, it was a ripoff of the VC10. Luckily for me, I was on a good airline (Czech) that had no accidents in over 50 years of flying Russian built planes. The airline was embarassed because we were supposed to be on the new airbus, so they served the entire plane beer as we boarded, and the attendants were still serving with the carts as the plane took off from JFK! You should have seen them running back as we were rolling!

[Archangelsk]

We had a 737-100

Wow. I start ground school for either the CRJ-200 or 737-800 on 10/20 (training still hasn't decided which one yet because the sim for the CRJ may or may not be ready). The 100 must have been a real pilot's airplane.

[July 4th]

Hopefully the problem has been correctly isolated, and it's something Boeing can take care of. I don't think any passenger jet would take to kindly to losing its windshield.

[Central Scrutiniser]

My first flight on a 777 was on EgyptAir from JFK-Cairo, about 3 months before a 767-300 took a swim on the same route....

[Archangelsk]

Nope, thankfully, you can't turn the aural warning off for a fire, which is what started the whole emergency process. IMO the crew was well trained because they immediately descended to 10,000 feet and returned for an emergency landing.

Does anyone know whether the 77 has been certified for 300 minutes on Extended Operations (ETOPS) yet?

[Central Scrutiniser]

Aside from its dispatch problems, the pilots liked it because it had the 737-200 advanced engines on it, and it had a lot more oomph. Whenever I flew it out of Oakland (provided it was working and I didn't have to nonrev on Southwest), I always noticed little things, like overspeed on landing, odd landing gear noises, flap noises.

Thankfully Stage 3 restrictions made the plane not worth the upgrade.

[Axenolith]

Is that because, in part, they look like they'd handle like a DJart after engine failure?

[Archangelsk]

I always noticed little things, like overspeed on landing

Guess they had to really bleed off the airspeed on flare with a really high pitch attitude. I just went through Flight Technique Analysis and it was a bear to get it right at 122 knots to prevent a balloon and float down the (sim) runway.

[Central Scrutiniser]

Who you working for, CO?

BTW, here is old 708 in its better days:

[Archangelsk]

No, not yet. I'm part of an outfit that's standing up a training program and I'll be doing that for the next two years. Hopefully, I'll get picked up by a regional afterwards.

Beautiful plane incidentally. Also I saw that Sky West just purchased 30 CRJ-700s.

[Central Scrutiniser]

They painted it all up nice for its final years, the Suns used it as a charter with 60 or so seats, which was nice to fly on during the season if they weren't using it. The Suns didn't renew the contract as they hated the plane.

I flew on a CRJ-700 for the first time 2 weeks ago to Guadalajara, nice plane for an RJ, but I was in FC! The 700's are leaving America West and more 900's are coming in. As for the 200, I hate the 'lawn dart', gotta fly on one for UA next month, then transfer to a nice EVA 747-400.

[KansasCanadian]

I used to pretend I "worked" for PanAm Airlines and "dead-head" in the cockpit quite a bit. I really didn't know a whole lot about flying at first, but watching the pilots, and being observant, I actually picked up the basics of flying commercial airlines, and even filled in occasionally when the pilots wanted to chat with the passengers in flight. Since PanAm had no idea that i was doing this, and actually was trying to put and stop to it and even involved the FBI to catch me if they could. They finally did, but not until after I forged PanAm paychecks and cashed them to the tune of $1.5 million. When things got too hot, I went to work as a doctor...

[Last Dakotan]

Boeing also is developing circuit breakers....

You'd think they would have already had them. What does $200 million buy anyways?

[Archangelsk]

then transfer to a nice EVA 747-400

Great plane. Along with Flight Technique Analysis, I got a chance to completely dissect and learn how to program the 744's FMC and do an entire overview on the systems (the only thing lacking from a type rating course is we didn't have to worry about numbers).

The 900 is a sweet plane and the profitability is just amazing (26 pax to start turning a profit). Not bad for a ninety seat airplane.