Originally Posted by
glad rag
Boeing has dispatched a prominent executive to help..
LMFAO!
Glad, I know you're being somewhat sarcastic (at least I hope so), but aside from knowing Keith Leverkuhn personally (and having a great deal of respect for his abilities), this is SOP - my biggest surprise is it's taken this long. Keith isn't on his own - he's leading a team (I also know at least one of the people on that team).
This may seem silly to have aircraft people oversee what the engine experts are doing, but you'd be amazed at what people who are too close to the issue can miss. ~30 years ago I was on a similar team sent to Rolls because of a problem with the RB211-524G/H Pump and Governor (PAG) that had caused several shutdowns soon after EIS on the 747-400 (coincidently Keith L was on that team as well, although as a worker bee like me, not the leader). We did a design review and some of the issues were along the line of 'what were you thinking'? One issue that I remember distinctly was they had a room where they did computer inspections of some of the components - the measurements in question being to 0.00001 inches. Not only was it not a 'clean room', the room was in fact filthy - to the point where they'd created a special computer routine to detect when the measurement was corrupted by dust/dirt
. When we told them you need to be doing that inspection in a 'clean room' - they looked flabbergasted
.
At about the same time, we had issues on another engine type due to bad Electro Hydraulic Servo Valves (EHSV) in the fuel control. The problem was traced to built-in contamination - turned out they'd assemble the EHSV in a 'clean room', took it to 'dirty' room to solder the electrical connections, then take it back to the 'clean room' and seal it
You could almost hear the heads hitting walls when the report came out...
In short, it never hurts to get a new set of eyes looking at a problem.