With the recent announcement from Boeing that the first flight of their 787 was to be delayed due to structural issues in the wing box area,many of us knew right away it was a major show-stopper issue. Boeing made the announcement only a few days before people were expecting the first flight,catching many by surprise. With so much riding on this project and so many delays already experienced,Boeing were pushing hard to get the 787 in the air as soon as possible. That Boeing couldn’t start the test flights while addressing this problem in parallel showed us it was a big issue,something that would either lead to a structural failure in flight or would require so many changes that testing would have to start again after the modifications were made.
Subsequent to their announcement of a delay,it was confirmed that the issue involves wing flexing travelling into the fuselage leading to delamination of wing panels. This report and others do not paint a very pretty picture with many predicting that the 787 won’t fly until next year (2010).
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Read More:Is the Boeing 787 the new Comet?
