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Old 11th October 2013 | 14:21
  #898 (permalink)  
FullWings
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Joined: Dec 2003
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From: Tring, UK
Given that it costs around $1.1M in leasing, $150K in parking charges and several $M in lost revenue every month, one would have thought that if it were that straightforward work would have commenced by now. Must be $10M+ and counting, not including the repair.

The fuselage is made of a continuous spiral of automatically tensioned pre-preg carbon, cured in a hangar-sized autoclave. Recreating the original mechanical properties by scarfing and hand layup in the damaged areas is a pretty challenging prospect, unless you go significantly thicker/bulkier/heavier. Then you have the problem of the internal and/or external dimensions not matching the blueprint, so stuff might need re-routing or re-designing.

If I was a betting man, my money would still be on a "bodge" then fly it back somewhere warm and dry where they can chop the burnt section out and attach a new one, which they know how to do as it's part of the manufacturing process. The risk of a repair that goes into service and then fails is far too high, IMHO.
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