
Metal shards from Boeing 787 taking off over Rome rain down on people below - remote_phone
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/plane-debris-falls-from-sky-boeing-787-rome-norwegian-isola-sacra-a9054216.html
======
ummonk
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2019/08/12/norwegian...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2019/08/12/norwegian-
boeing-787-engine-parts-fall-from-sky-onto-italian-town/)

 _The plane in question was a 5.5-year-old Boeing 787-8 with the registration
LN-LND. The parts are believed to have come from the left engine, a Rolls-
Royce Trent 1000, a model that has been plagued with problems._

Link about the problems: [https://www.theengineer.co.uk/rolls-royce-problems-
trent-100...](https://www.theengineer.co.uk/rolls-royce-problems-trent-1000/)

 _Cracking problems in the intermediate pressure (IPT) section of the turbine
have plagued the engine since early 2016, five years after its launch.
Unscheduled groundings of Trent 1000-powered aircraft cost Rolls-Royce some
£450m last year, and Horwood said that addressing the problem was “the single
most important issue” currently facing the company.

One of Rolls-Royce’s most important potential customers for Trent 1000, Air
New Zealand, recently announced that it has opted for General Electric power-
plants for a new batch of 787-10 airliners, although its 787-9 fleets still
fly with Trent engines._

I'm reminded of all the jokes Jeremy Clarkson makes at Rolls Royce's
expense...

~~~
rjsw
> I'm reminded of all the jokes Jeremy Clarkson makes at Rolls Royce's
> expense...

Rolls-Royce Holdings only makes aero engines, the cars are made by BMW.

~~~
serf
>the cars are made by BMW.

as of 1998.

Most of Clarksons' jokes are in reference to the 70s and 80s era of Rolls
Royce -- which is known among auto enthusiasts as one of the least reliable
group of cars to have ever existed.

~~~
braythwayt
Driving a 1977 Rolls established your wealth without question. Not only could
you afford _a_ Rools, you could afford three:

One you’re driving.

One in the shop.

One in the garage in case the one you’re driving goes to the shop before the
other one is repaired.

~~~
aasasd
I guess owners graduate from Range Rovers, which drive either to a service
shop or just out of one.

------
t0mas88
Small shards (in great numbers) that according to a witness on the ground were
burning or very hot sounds a lot like (pieces of) blades from the turbine or
stator/guide vanes. In both cases it's a very significant engine failure.

~~~
krona
Given that the aircraft itself seems otherwise undamaged, and people on the
ground reported it 'rained' metal shards, I'd say these parts melted off the
turbine and fell out. Significant but not catastrophic.

~~~
jacquesm
This ended well, fortunately. But that must have been pretty scary.

A 787 that is out one engine will put extra load on the remaining engine, if
that one has gone through a similar life as the one that just dropped bits all
over the place I'd not wager on the remaining one being as safe as when it was
last inspected. That's a lot of eggs in one basket.

And they don't glide particularly well either, though there are some
interesting stories around passenger aircraft and glide landings:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider)

But that one had a good 9000 meters more height to work with and it wasn't
over densely populated area either.

~~~
dmitrygr
> And they don't glide particularly well either

Nonsense! Modern airlines glide exceptionally well. For example a 787 has a
glide ratio of over 20:1 !

[http://www.lissys.demon.co.uk/samp1/](http://www.lissys.demon.co.uk/samp1/)

[https://seekingalpha.com/article/2494925-boeing-the-
airbus-a...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/2494925-boeing-the-
airbus-a330neo-a-real-competitor-for-the-boeing-787-part-3)

~~~
jacquesm
20:1 from 3000 meters gives you 60 km to line up and land, that's not as bad
as a shuttle but not nearly as good as an actual glider. Personally I'd love
to be on the ground in that situation.

You can't just land a 787 on a bit of farmland. BTW if you _have_ to deadstick
a commercial plane then the 787 is probably the best, it has the best glide
ratio of all commercial planes in service today. But I'd hate for that to be
put to the test.

~~~
dmitrygr
That is a nonsensical comparison. Shuttle's glide ratio was 4.5:1 - barely
better than a brick

~~~
dragonwriter
> Shuttle's glide ratio was 4.5:1 - barely better than a brick

A brick has a glide ratio somewhere worse than 1:10; the shuttle (at subsonic
speeds) is closer to a sailplane (~40:1, or ~9× better than the shuttle) than
a brick (more than 50× worse).

~~~
lucisferre
I'd like to see the footage of the brick tests.

~~~
MertsA
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-9fEoeNc3I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-9fEoeNc3I)

------
tpowell
One of the pieces in her hand has the unique shape of a fan blade. There’s a
series on YouTube documenting the factories where the engines are created:
[https://youtu.be/UazsDDFsS7Q](https://youtu.be/UazsDDFsS7Q)

~~~
stronglikedan
The show _How It 's Made_ did a cool segment on turbine blades, which really
gave me a deep appreciation of the process.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnrCjVf9xuY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnrCjVf9xuY)

------
gok
Curious if this was before or after Rolls-Royce thought they'd fixed it.

------
cmurf
More info and photos.
[http://avherald.com/h?article=4cb6a09d&opt=0](http://avherald.com/h?article=4cb6a09d&opt=0)

~~~
gota
Those metal bits look big enough to kill a person. I mean, anything havier
than a marble falling from high enough will do a lot of damage, right?

~~~
dmurray
Anything with enough power to smash a hole right through a car windscreen (as
in the second picture) can kill you, definitely.

~~~
refurb
I’m being pedantic here, but there are exceptions to that rule.

In SF, it’s common for car thieves to break windows using a small chip (size
of a pencil eraser) of ceramic from a spark plug. The ceramic is super hard
but light weight and can shatter a window easily.[1] being hit by it would
barely register.

[1] [https://youtu.be/llu-ckEe5cQ](https://youtu.be/llu-ckEe5cQ)

------
valiant-comma
A British Airways 787 with the Trent 1000 engines had to make an emergency
landing in Istanbul on June 15 while en route to London:

[http://avherald.com/h?article=4c9549b4](http://avherald.com/h?article=4c9549b4)

------
mikl
2019 has been a true _annus horribilis_ for Boeing.

~~~
kakwa_
Well, engin failures are not exactly the rarest of occurrences. It's just that
given the context, every stories about Boeing will gain quite a bit of
traction. It's probably deserved given how bad the company have messed-up, but
let not overreact.

~~~
mikl
Engine failures are not rare, true, but engine failures pelting populated
areas with hot shrapnel are not that common.

------
alkonaut
Is this the same issue that has plagued the Trent 1000 since the beginning or
is it something different? It says the plane is 5.5 years but I guess that
doesn’t say whether the engine had been modernized.

On the bright side, Rolls seem to have sorted out most issues from the 1000 in
their newer engine the XWB.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-
Royce_Trent_1000](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Trent_1000)

~~~
ShorsHammer
> Boeing dispatched 737 MAX head VP Keith Leverkuhn to help Rolls-Royce
> overcome the problems

Well that really inspires confidence.

The new engines are still suffering these same problems, very good chance
Norwegian has the newer variant as the older ones are mostly grounded and I'm
quite sure Boeing agreed to replace them all years ago.

[https://simpleflying.com/singapore-airlines-787-10-engine-
is...](https://simpleflying.com/singapore-airlines-787-10-engine-issues/)

~~~
jquery
>Well that really inspires confidence.

For better or worse it appears Boeing is practicing
[https://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-
postmortems/](https://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/)

It appears to work in software, so unless demonstrated otherwise I assume it's
effective in other engineering disciplines. We can learn from the equivalents
of the FAA in other countries where blame automatically gets assigned based on
who is in charge, it leads to finger-pointing and worse safety records/poorer
investigations: watch a few seasons of Mayday: Air Crash Investigations to see
the pattern. You see it especially in more autocratic countries where
hierarchy is rigid. One especially good example is Malaysia Airlines Flight
370, there's a good chance we would've found the plane if everyone in the
government wasn't practicing CYA which led to significant delays and made the
search exponentially harder. Compare that to Air France Flight 447 where the
right information was shared with the world immediately (and it _still_ took
us two years to find the black boxes).

------
SapporoChris
Despite an update and partial retraction in this article. It seems that there
are known issues. [https://thepointsguy.com/2018/01/norwegian-787-engine-
replac...](https://thepointsguy.com/2018/01/norwegian-787-engine-replacement/)

------
NullPrefix
Videos on the site does not work, I assume because of adblocking. Related
video for those who also are too lazy to read
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvxucqNRPRg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvxucqNRPRg)

------
iooi
Who is responsible from a liability perspective: Boeing, Rolls Royce, or
Norwegian?

~~~
chx
Chain. Norwegian to the people hurt and property damaged, they will in turn
sue Boeing who in turn will sue Rolls Royce.

~~~
m000
So the big winners are the lawyers I guess...

------
aaronbrethorst
This really doesn't make me feel very confident about getting on a 787 for a
14 hour flight next week.

~~~
jcampbell1
If it has GEnx engines you have little to worry about. The easiest way to tell
the difference is the GE has metal leading edges on the fan. The Trent fans
are all cfrp.

~~~
BillSaysThis
Can you tell this when booking your tickets? It isn't a detail I've seen using
most travel websites or even an airline's own app.

~~~
SkyMarshal
You probably can figure it out with some sleuthing. For one example, SeatGuru
records every airline fleet's different plane types. Once you have airline +
plane type for each of that airline's routes, I bet you can dig up the engine
type from that info.

~~~
fnordprefect
There's often also press about it - eg [https://www.geaviation.com/press-
release/genx-engine-family/...](https://www.geaviation.com/press-release/genx-
engine-family/qantas-selects-genx-engines-power-its-new-
boeing-787-9-dreamliners)

------
torgian
Sounds like someone forgot to take the FOD out of the aircraft

------
mv4
Oh, and it's raining again

Light on your car light, bullets on tin.

~~~
paranoidrobot
For years I'd thought it was "like bullets on tin".

Most lyrics sites seem to have the lyrics you said, but there's still some
with the version I thought. I can't find any official source of lyrics either.

I've now listened to the video clip[1] a dozen times trying to figure out
which it is, and honestly I'm no closer.

[1] [https://youtu.be/NdZHZZtJacg?t=25](https://youtu.be/NdZHZZtJacg?t=25)

~~~
mv4
Hold me closer, Tony Danza!

------
Havoc
Oh man Boeing just can’t catch a break lately

------
proc0
So Rome has a science police?

~~~
sitkack
Reminds me how excited I was when I found out there was a religion based
around science.

------
andy_ppp
And this is what a culture of management bonuses causes. I don’t want to ever
fly Boeing again at this rate...

~~~
danjayh
It was a problem with the engine, not the airframe. The 787 ships with Rolls-
Royce and GE engines - the GE equipped ones are fine. Boeing manufactures the
planes, and then works with engine manufacturers to offer various options for
powering them. The airlines choose which engines they'd like to install on
their aircraft.

GE, for all of its faults as a corporation (the stock price is what,
$9-something now?), makes very good jet engines.

~~~
A2017U1
it's just plug and play hey?

