Beyond economic repair?
 

Qantas'll have her... :ouch:

FAA Orders Inspections of Honeywell Emergency Locator Transmitters
 

FAA to issue AD:

Actually Glare is certified to be fireproof. It outperforms aluminum by several orders of magnitude. It even outperforms steel depending on the exact test setup. It is used as firewall and as cargo liner fire barrier. It´s a shame that Airbus did abandon it on the A350.

Will the aircraft become flyable and return to normal flying or will be grounded :ugh:

Status
 

Has anyone got news on the repair status of this grounded Ethiopian aircraft? Would like to hear about the progress - just curious.:ouch:

I am led to believe she had had her engines removed and parts of the interior. As far as the repair is concernee no one really knows. I run a website that catalogues the dreamliner airframes and incidents etc (b787register) and I have tried to contact Ethiopian but they never respond.
I wouldn't at all be surprised to see her broken up

But until I do, here it is:
Ethiopian 787 'Queen of Sheba' | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

b787register
 

b787register.co.uk for the curious

And it certainly hasn't had its engines removed in the two weeks since that photo was taken.

It's currently occupying Stand 616 at LHR (western side of the Cargo cul-de-sac) while its fate is being considered.

I wonder if she had the engines removed for some knida maintenance or even if I had been fed some duff info.
It looks like from the photo she has the inlets covered for her engines. Perhaps thats where the confusion was someone saw people putting these covers on and assumed the engines where being removed?

OTHO why would you leave engines sitting idle for several weeks when they should be located in a spares location in case somebody needs one immediately ?

If somebody needed one immediately, that would only help if they had conveniently gone u/s at wherever you had chosen to locate the spares. :O

I suspect there are enough spare GEnx engines already to support the fleet, anyway.

There is also the issue of perception - while ETH and Boeing are trying to maintain the impression (whether true or not) that the aircraft isn't a write-off, it wouldn't be good PR to have the aircraft start to look like a Christmas tree.

I would presume that until the lawyers/insurance underwriters have fully established the cause/liabilty, the a/c would remain intact until the time a descision is made about what will happen to it.

Let's be hones if they could repair it they would have started working on it and not prepared it for what looks like long term storage or worse

:ugh: Depends if they have fuel filters is one guess. :ugh:

Other than wheel covers and engine blanks (both readily removable) I can't see any evidence of preparation for long-term storage. The doors haven't been taped, the transparencies haven't been blanked, etc, and even if it were destined for storage that clearly wouldn't be in situ, where it must be clocking up a fortune in airport parking charges.

If the decision had been made to scrap it, I'd expect the engines and other high value LRUs would already be removed.

Without knowing the extent of the (non-structural) fire damage to the interior, I'd think the easiest repair would be to simply replace the aft fuselage tail section. The 787 fuselage is manufactured as sections - nose, a few constant diameter pieces, and tail - based on the pieces I see sitting around at Boeing waiting for final assembly, the tail section would have most if not all of the structural damage.

A bigger issue might the interior - I suspect most of the interior suffered smoke damage and would need to be replaced (that smell simply does not go away).

It's also possible that if the air safety investigation is still open, it may be quarantined in case the authorities want to do further inspections.

Nail hit on head.

No way,

none of this "just in case" stuff when it comes to million dollar resources.

The investigators will be happy to continue a leisurely investigation only if the owner is not actively using the plane for anything else.

I take it you've never been involved in an air safety investigation. Getting an asset back into service is pretty low on their priority scale.