LADIES and gentlemen, welcome aboard. In a few moments we will be taking off. Please fasten your seatbelts.
To most passengers, the pilot’s opening spiel is a signal to start praying, bracing for takeoff discomfort, catching some shuteye, or checking out the in-flight entertainment.
VIEW of the “end of the world” from a seventh-floor room.
A few, if any, pay attention to the takeoff itself, save perhaps to make a mental note of how smooth or rough it is. Airplanes, like TV sets, computers, even mobile phones, have so become part of everyday life that we don’t really bother to figure out how they work. (About the only thing that fascinates me is how compact the seats are designed, with so many fixtures ingeniously stowed to enable passengers to dine, doze off, stretch out, read, play a video game, watch a movie or prop a laptop, all within their allotted space.)
But on my last airplane ride, I, along with a few other passengers, was more attentive at takeoff. We were returning from Penang in Malaysia, where we had just attended Singapore Airlines’ aviation seminar for journalists in the region.
No, we didn’t learn to fly a plane. We just sort of buzzed over such topics as the principles of flight, building an airplane, flight operations, airplane systems, and jet engine fundamentals, with speakers from Boeing and Pratt & Whitney (manufacturers of jet engines) navigating.
“Airplanes 101,” as the seminar was titled, was a virtual, uh, crash course on airplanes. It came complete with illustrated workbooks with lined pages for notes, plus a list of recommended books and websites on the subject.
Among the things we learned:
-- That pressure is greatest on an airplane’s engine at liftoff, when it is on 99-percent maximum thrust, and that it can maintain that speed for only two minutes. (The maximum thrust, or power, of a Boeing 777’s engine is 98,000 pounds, or roughly equivalent to 60,760 horsepower.)
-- That the pressure on the engine is lowest when the airplane is cruising, generally at an altitude of 35,000 feet.
We picked up many more flying tidbits at the seminar, some of which even this motoring moron found interesting. For example, did you know that an airplane is made up of three million parts, about 132,500 of which are engineered unique parts? And that these three million parts are held together by an almost equal number of nuts and bolts and other fasteners?
And what about this: A small single-engine aircraft has enough electricity to light up 7-10 homes, while the electrical system on jet airplanes with two, three or four engines can provide power to a small city.
All that electricity runs through 275 kilometers of wire, tied in bundles to a post in the fuselage (the airplane’s main section where the cabin is located). The wire bundles are placed as far as possible from the galleys where water could be spilled. Safety tops the list of the basic requirements of design. “Boeing design standards are more stringent than legal requirements,” said Robert H. Kelley-Wickemeyer, chief engineer of Enabling Technology and Research for the Commercial Airplanes Group. He was on the program responsible for the preliminary design on 2,000 Boeing models.
Design adheres to the principle that no single failure can cause an accident. “Airplane systems are redundant. An airplane has three independent systems, so that even if two are down, the remaining one can do the job,” Wickemeyer said.
He added, putting it another way: “An airplane is designed for an ordinary pilot having an extraordinarily bad day.”
Every possible worst-case scenario is anticipated so that solutions to problems can be devised. This is why Boeing invests heavily in test flight programs—for example, about $1.3 billion for the 777 alone.
Wickemeyer admitted during a coffee break, however, that he still received a few surprises now and then. “When I review the printout of events of the last 24 hours, sometimes I see something I never thought was possible,” he said.
Later during one of his sessions, he remembered a weird accident that occurred while they were testing a new toilet. The suction on the flushing mechanism was so powerful that the person trying out the seat was momentarily stuck to it and had to be disengaged one leg at a time.
“Generally, though, most sad circumstances happen on the ground, like the ground maintenance crew fiddling with controls,” Wickemeyer said. Pressed for specifics, he said, the human factor figured in 70 percent of accidents, the weather and airplane design in 20 percent, and the engine in 10 percent.
On the upside, Wickemeyer agreed that, yes, surprises like these only propelled them to set their goals a notch higher and keep the spirit of discovery alive.
10 months
According to Wayne McCarty, director for operations for the 767 Program, it takes about 10 months to build a plane, from the date of the order to the start of assembly.
It takes another three months, or less than 100 days, to put the airplane parts together, starting with the wings, all the way to delivery to the customer.
Boeing airplane parts come from suppliers from 37 countries and all 50 states of the United States, and are sent to the Puget Sound area in Washington, where Boeing has assembly facilities in the surrounding port cities of Everett, Bremerton and Seattle.
The nose section of all Boeing models and most of the fuselage of the new 737, for example, are built in Wichita, Kansas, and transported to Puget Sound by train. The 727s and the MD95s are built in Long Beach, California.
The Everett facility produces three 767s a month and five to seven 777s in a month, and the Bremerton plant, anywhere from 24 to 28 737s.
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