Slightly more complex than a sheet of aluminium and a rivet gun.:eek:

Cows

Agree and a lot more expensive.

Presume there is going to be need to control internal and external temp and humidity if a composite repair is done too (hence the scaffolding frames going up?) that ain't gonna be cheap through the UK winter!

Looks like forward scaffold is for staging internal components in and out of the aircraft.
The aft scaffold is for conducting structural repairs.

They are building a regular tent city there behind the aircraft.

I suspect that once the repair gets under way, the Met Police will be leant on not to publish any more photos taken by their helicopter pilots.

Fenland787
 

You could not be more wrong about the control of the temp & humidity for the final stages of the repaires. I would put the cost of doing so at £1500-2500.

The big tent is about keeping the workers dry and walm during the preparation work.

I rather suspect they have blown that budget already...

No figures in here but it is interesting to consider some of the prior commentary.

Boeing Switches To Repair Mode After 787 Fire

Nice article, and recommended reading - even if it only summarises the questions rather than providing answers. The possibility of performing a patch repair to allow for a ferry flight to Boeing's facilities for a more permanent solution is an intriguing one.

Romulus
 

You will note that I said that was for the final post cure part of the repair and adressing the temp & humidity issues, as with all things composite the real work is in the preparation...........and you won't be doing that on the cheap !!

I believe that somewhere in the process that the aircraft is going to return to PAE. Whether it be for some type of re-certification or to do a final structural analysis on the repair. Then clean and replace heat and smoke damaged interior parts. Just a guess.

Cost, I suspect there is some negotiations between Honeywell, Boeing, Ethiopian and the insurance company with Ethiopian getting some kind of guarantee of performance of the aircraft after the Boeing repair. I would doubt that Ethiopian would accept flying around a multi-thousand pound weight penalty for doubled panels to repair the damage on a new aircraft for the rest of its life.

So far other than the external pictures we have no real idea of the actual structural damage to the fuselage and the heat damage to the rest of the aircraft. We can guess from the number of containers, tents and scaffolding that this is going to be a major time consuming and costly repair.

There were a couple 787 tail barrel sections parked outside the office building today. Comparing those to the published pictures of the Ethiopian airplane, notice forward of the aft door, there are a few windows and then a 'missing' window? The 'missing' window is the break where the fuselage pieces are joined. At least externally, the worst of the fire damage appears to be aft of that joint.

Again, not knowing what the internal damage looks like - I'm leaning towards the most cost effective fix being to replace that tail barrel section. Either on site at Heathrow, or if the GSE is too complex, a temp fix to get it back to Everett or Charleston where the tooling is available.

Even if it's a $100+ million price tag, compared to a new 787 it would still likely make economic sense (recall the A380 $150 million/18 month repair bill after the Qantas turbine failure)

I think this is going to be a complete repair with a fully airworthy aircraft the result and it will occur where it sits now.

Everyone is agonizing over the structural repair feasibility and some are speculating that the aircraft will be made ferryable and flown elsewhere.

If they were going to ferry the aircraft, you would see a much smaller operation. It doesn't have to be pretty to ferry an aircraft. A ferryable aircraft does not have to meet full airworthiness standards. It merely needs to be demonstrated to the applicable airworthiness authorities that it is capable of the ferry mission.

The interior of the aircraft is going to be stripped from the aircraft and processed in those tents or in an industrial setting as appropriate to the component. Actual fire damaged components are going to be scrapped and replaced, not overhauled. Same for interior furnishings that are not recoverable due to smoke damage. Part of the delay in starting the repairs had to be the process of gathering the known replacement items.

When the interior is out, and the exterior preparations made, the structural repair will commence. There will be sufficient design engineering staff on site to advise and coordinate on any unexpected discoveries.

I would be personally surprised if the structural repair lasts more than 60 days, and by ~90 days the aircraft should be back together and ready for flight, but I wouldn't claim to be an expert on the subject. I've only been involved in aviation for half a century.

Fire doesn't care about manufacturing joints, so it might be premature to rule out significant damage forward of the tail break. I wouldn't be surprised if not only Section 48, but also Section 47 is deemed unrepairable and is replaced.

http://i.bnet.com/blogs/787-sections.jpg

I would agree that it's not going to fly out of Heathrow in a factory-fresh state. I can't see a permanent repair being carried out, whether or not it involves replacing major parts of the structure, al fresco during the British autumn and winter.

Not that economics is the sole consideration, any more than it was for the Qantas A380.

1 Lump or 2 ?
 

tdracer


Just looking back at the original photos of the incident and what tdracer has confirmed, that the missing window was a join. It does appear that the area of damage extends forward of this joint, and you can see a 'band' of where the charring hasn't penetrated the outer layer - presumably where either the reinforcement ring is. Given this is a highly stressed area, could they be looking at 2 sections "if" they end up replacing rather than repairing....?

Either way, it should be fun (not) for them working under canvas if the hard winter forcasts are correct. :sad:

A lot of negativity !
 

I'm very glad that most of the people posting above don't work for me, the negative attitude is remarkable.

It will be interesting to see the course of action that Boeing take with the aircraft, I fear that the metalcentric lobby has won the day if the whole fuselage section is going to be replaced but I guess we will never know if this is driven by political or technical reasons.

As to working in a "tent" that is no problem as long as you double skin it and have the appropriate heating rigged up.........done that...... No drama.

Reliably informed that the tail was removed from ET-AOP today in the first part of the repair work.

Yes - the vertical stabilizer, to be precise.

Photo here: ET-AOP EGLL 18-10-13 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

I take it as given this exercise is more than just a repair/return to service to ET-AOP.

It is also Boeing's experiment in major structural repair of composites. As such, the first objective may see some overkill.

Apparently Boeing has a tech team who goes around and does major repairs in the field. National Geographic had a show which documented the replacement of an aft pressure bulkhead on a 767 by removing the aft sections. I found it pretty interesting. Course, on this one you can't use 5,000,000 rivets on this to put it all back together, but generically it wouldn't be the first time that they'd split a hull at a seam, done work, and put it all back together somewhere other than at the factory.