Uhm, no. The 747-400 is a derivative type of the 747-100, introduced by Boeing for the specific reason of updating the design, and it has now been superseded by the 747-8. AD based improvements make it onto the next plane in the construction process that can take it, regardless of the version - a 777-300 built today is a lot different to a 777-300 built a decade ago, it incorporates all AD changes and incremental design changes made to the baseline model in that time, but it's still a 777-300.

The 787-8 will be built for the next 25 years, the 787-9 is a stretched version already in design, and the 787-10 is a heavyweight version planned for EIS after the -9.

The difference is that the 787 is the first aircraft Boeing has attempted to build pre-stuffed fuselage sections off-site for, and assemble them into a completed aircraft at the FAL. Airbus has been doing this since the early 1980s, but Boeing still used their on-site build process for the 777 in the 1990s.

Boeings mistake was in changing the production methodology at the same time as changing the technologies involved - a switch to a higher aluminium content electrical wiring and the differing tolerances of such a move, new ways of grounding, new materials etc etc. suddenly the same assembly workers have to adjust not only their working practices but their skill set as well.

Considering all of the aircraft that have thus far had issues came from the Seattle FAL, I'd say that the union product isn't much better - the fuel system is installed by union workers, it has had several major QA issues, the electrical equipment which was at the centre of the recent issue is installed by union workers.

I'm not particularly pro or anti union, but the arguments for and against unions in this thread are ridiculous.

If your A320 comment is related to the famous crash video, that had nothing to do with the aircraft - it was the pilot which screwed up there.

Actually, several months of the original 787 delay was down to the IAM union strike in 2008 which shut down the Seattle FAL (although the strike lasted just 8 weeks, the FAL took 3 months to come back up to speed) - the SC FAL was only chosen and built after this strike.

So long as my work is available from OSM itself, it's not hidden by their license. Someone else "using DRM" doesn't automatically make your contributions vanish from the face of the earth, they are still available from the same source as they always were.

Well, if quality "went away" with the new FAL in SC, then I hate to think just what those generating the "buzz" think is acceptable quality in the first place, considering some of the atrocious rubbish that happened on the Seattle FAL during the 787s development - fires, reworking after reworking after reworking, and now all of the QA issues which can be found on Seattle originated airframes (the QR and UA related fuel system issues for example)...

Ouch, is all I can say.

It would seem you have a selective memory about the reliability, economy and safety of older vehicles :)

At which point does the fetus stop being a parasite and start being an organism capable of independent life? Before that point, I don't consider the fetus to be someone that could be put at risk, and it just so happens that most abortion laws stop allowing legal abortions for non-medical reasons at around the point where a baby is unlikely to survive outside the womb.

There is also the difference in magnitude to consider - one pregnant person could harm what, three, four "other people" maximum with an abortion (taking the most usual extreme cases, with quintuplets etc being the unusual extremes), while a nurse suffering from an infectious disease can conceivably harm hundreds during the course of a single shift.

The problem is, there are categories of problems which are acceptable to find after certification, and there are categories of problems which are not acceptable to find after certification - fatigue life issues that manifest after the initial certified inspection window (the window between certification and the first deep inspection of the first inservice airframes) are acceptable, because they do not pose an undue risk to the aircraft before they can be discovered. This is because the fatigue testing of a new airframe design continues well beyond that of the certification testing, which only tests for such things as ultimate strength etc while fatigue life, inspection periods etc are done off the basis of longer term testing.

Components causing fires are in the category of things that should have been discovered during the certification period - there should be no risk from components like that for inservice aircraft, thats the point of certifying the compoments...

Out of all the problems the Boeing 787 has suffered over its so far short life, the bulk of them have not been engineering issues - only two major issues have been linked to engineering quality, and that is the side of body join problem and the initial arcing problem which caused the first airborne 787 fire during testing.

The 787s wing, designed and built by the Japanese, has proven to be better than expected spec wise.

The 787 fuselage sections built by Spirit have proven to be bang on spec.

There have been a few QA issues with the empennage and other parts, but nothing major.

The major problems stem from the decision to roll out the 787 as an essentially mocked up CFRP model on the 7/8/07 - rather than wait for the build process to proceed in the planned stages, management pushed for the aircraft to be ready for the public reveal. This lead to non-aviation-grade materials to be used to mock it up, and the aircraft had to be essentially rebuilt in the most difficult way possible afterward. This management decision made a 3 month delay into a 18 month delay.

Every commercial plane is "one of the most sophisticated" when its first created, as no customer will accept last years technology with last years performance.

That said, there have been plenty of issues on the 787 which should not have made it to production - the QA issues that have hit over a dozen aircraft, numerous technical faults and electrical system issues etc etc etc. These are the things that the route proving part of the flight test regime are meant to find, but for some reason they haven't. If this most recent fire is due to a design fault rather than a production fault, then the FAA will be looking at their certification requirements more stringently, as they were updated for the 787s certification requirements.

The aircraft wasn't departing, it had just arrived and the passengers and crew had deplaned.

Also, no certified crew on a commercial carrier leaves the APU running after its needed - it takes up substantially more than a "tiny fraction of fuel" and leaving it on for even a short haul flight can cost the operator thousands of dollars in extra fuel costs for just that one flight.

Here's a more educated guess: faulty battery underwent thermal runaway and caught fire, causing a minor explosion and a heck of a lot of smoke.

They are more than welcome to express their right to control their own bodies, but not when that puts people in their care at risk, which makes this fundamentally different the abortion debate.

Consider this to be closer to a person of a particular religious orientation that requires them to never, ever bathe, wash any part of their body or wear gloves, who wants to work as a chef in a public restaurant... Ain't going to happen.

Right, thats it, Im fucking done with Slashdot - Troll? Seriously? Fuck the lot of you.