Boeing 787 Dreamliner Grounded In US and EU 301
Some Bitch writes "Following previous stories that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration was to review the safety of the Boeing 787 and that Japan had already grounded their fleet, the FAA has issued an airworthiness directive which has been endorsed around the world with the fleets of all eight airlines flying the 787 now grounded. EADS (the parent company of Airbus) shares were up 3.9% at close of business." General Electric's call for more sifting of more data from more sensors might have some resonance right now within Boeing.
share movement causality questionable (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, EADS's shares are up, and since their major competitor Boeing had bad news today, perhaps we can speculate that "EADS shares up on bad news for rival Boeing", as finance journalists like to speculate. But you know who else's shares went up today? Boeing's. The stock market is weird, and a lot of factors go into price movements.
Re:share movement causality questionable (Score:5, Insightful)
missteps (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Batteries (Score:5, Insightful)
I know you are trying to be funny, but you are just showing that you are ignorant racist.
Ignorant yes; racist we don't have much evidence for. Nobody makes jokes about cheap Taiwanese batteries even though Taiwan is largely ethnically Chinese. By the time Japan had recovered to the level that China is at today it already had a reputation for quality. The reason is simple. Taiwan is a democracy with proper freedom of speech and so the quality of things made there has gone up massively. Japan mostly the same. If someone tried things like they get away with in China then someone would speak up. Things like the crap that goes on in China - deadly chemicals in baby milk - failing to buy properly made signalling equipment from Siemens to save a few euros and then trying to bury a train full of dead people - would never go on if Chinese people in China had control of their own destiny instead of a bunch of party plutocrats.
The racists are the people who say things like "democracy isn't suitable for China".
Re:Batteries (Score:5, Insightful)
How Boeing talked the FAA into allowing this on the plane (in multiple locations) is beyond me.
$$$$$
Re:Plane power, Li-ion, Colbolt Oxide batteries (Score:4, Insightful)
Once it's sealed up, how do you test it?
You could always do, you know, random sampling when accepting delivery from subcontractors. Take a few batteries, rip them open and verify they're what they're supposed to be. I'm sure a big company like Boeing working on such a large project would have a whole department of people who do nothing but testing.
Re:It is standard for Boeing (Score:3, Insightful)
How about you list some flight numbers or model numbers for such a claim.
Re:Batteries (Score:2, Insightful)
The racists are the people who say things like "democracy isn't suitable for China".
It isn't. But then it isn't suitable for the US either. The US was set up as a non-democratic republic, with voting. You vote on people who vote on people, who vote on laws. With the information age, there's no reason we couldn't vote on laws directly. We vote on electors, the electors vote on President. We don't vote for president because our vote is not one-man one-vote. Chinese people believe that professional politicians are better suited for making decisions. They are paid to have the high-level view. Giving the guy in the neighborhood that's torn down for the Olympic Village a vote on whether to do it is inappropriate. The politicians have a better view of what's best for China. At least that's how it was described to me by some Chinese people in China, when I asked (and they were certain I was not with the party or something silly like that, some didn't like it, but they understood the why).
Re:Batteries (Score:4, Insightful)
Giving the guy in the neighborhood that's torn down for the Olympic Village a vote on whether to do it is inappropriate
Given the greater stake he has in the issue, he most definitely should have a vote.
Chinese people believe that professional politicians are better suited for making decisions
By professional politicians, you mean the 'princelings' who got their positions because of who their parents are?
In western history and philosophy, a lot of time and thought went into determining how to get the best people into positions of power so as to best benefit the state. After thousands of years of experience, democracy is the most effective way we've found to avoid the worst excesses of dictatorships, and at the same time it provides ok governance in general. This is so true that most countries have switched to some kind of democracy, and even a lot of the remaining dictatorships make an effort to pretend to be democratic.
Re:It is standard for Boeing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So,swap the batteries... (Score:4, Insightful)
> Does this aircraft not have an APU?
Does it matter? If it has an APU, it would STILL need battery backup. Modern jets can't fly without electricity to power their computers. If you make the jet's ability to fly dependent upon a functioning APU, someday a failed APU will cause a crash. And even if it has redundant APUs, batteries are so cheap relative to the cost of a crash due to total power loss, Boeing would have had to be completely INSANE to make a plane without battery backup power.
Re:Safe Batteries (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep. And the customers are very, very sensitive to lifetime fuel costs and very, very serious about reducing them. Fuel is an airlines number one non labor cost, so any saving translates directly to the bottom line.
Which certainly sounds like a small number... until you multiply it by the number of passengers on an average plane, the number of flight hours per plane per day, and the number of planes in the fleet. It adds up pretty fast. There's a reason why the pocket on the back of the seat in front of you is no longer stuffed with free magazines. Cutting a pound here, cutting a pound there, it adds up to a huge sum considered on an annual basis across an entire airline. (Seriously Slashdot, you may be good at math, but you suck at accounting.)