Boeing 787 Dreamliner - Mark Wagner [98]
Against this gloomy outlook there was one significant bright spot. On October 15, American Airlines announced orders for forty-two 787-9s, plus purchase rights on up to fifty-eight additional aircraft. The firm aircraft were scheduled for delivery from September 2012 to 2018, and the options from 2015 to 2020. The deal pushed overall 787 orders right up to the nine-hundred barrier—a testament to the continuing appeal of the design despite the development delays and problems.
More good news followed on November 1 when, to the relief of Boeing, the suppliers, and the airlines, the IAM agreed new terms and ended the fifty-eight-day strike. The big question now was how soon the 787 would actually fly.
Chapter 10
TAKING FLIGHT
ON MAY 12, 2009, CAME ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT MOMENTS yet on the road to the aircraft’s first flight: the first start of the Hamilton Sundstrand APS 5000 APU. Although this was only a brief run of around fifteen minutes, the aircraft was by now truly coming to life. In an ironic twist, the moment came almost exactly two years after Hamilton Sundstrand formally handed over the first flight-test unit to Boeing from its power-system facility in San Diego, California. By now all eyes were on ZA001 for the start of main engine tests, and this magic moment for the program finally came at 9:30 a.m. on May 21, heralded as usual with a puff of white cloud caused by the burning of lubrication oil within the engines.
Outwardly all seemed to be accelerating to a first flight in June 2009, possibly around the time of the Paris air show. Boeing maintained that its first-flight target date remained by June 30, as had been publicly stated, though the company cautioned that safety would not be jeopardized by rushing to meet an arbitrary deadline. Internally, however, a very different story was slowly emerging.
Finally, after years of planning, development, and delays, the moment of truth arrived at 10:27 a.m. on December 15, 2009, as ZA001 lifted off for its maiden flight. Within moments of takeoff, the Dreamliner vanished into the overcast. Mike Carriker, who commanded the first flight, later recalled, “Three minutes after departure we went IFR [instrument flight rules]!”
Side-of-body reinforcement work on ZA001 was completed inside one of Boeing’s paint hangars throughout October and early November 2009. The work was complicated by simply getting access to the wing root in the already completed aircraft. In spite of the cramped working area, the Boeing team developed techniques for retrofitting the new support by “match drilling,” or using the existing fastener holes.
Unknown to virtually anyone outside a small group within Boeing at the time, strain-gauge readings from the next phase of more aggressive tests on the static airframe had raised red flags about specific structural problems where the wing joined the fuselage. Alerted by strain-gauge readings, engineers inspected the area and, to their utmost dismay, discovered that small sections of the stringers had “disbonded” from the upper wing skins to which they were originally cocured. The issues were focused on the side-of-body join between the Mitsubishi-made Section 12 wing box and the complex, Fuji-built center wing box Section 45/11. The problems centered on the eighteen stringer caps on the upper section of the side of the body, at the junction between the wings and fuselage, where the center wing box joins to the main wing sections, and these problems meant that strengthening would be needed. There was no question; more delays would be incurred. Yet right up to the end of the Paris air show, Boeing still hoped that a limited flight-test exercise might still be possible while the longer-term fixes were being perfected.
Flanked by Boeing’s T-33 chase planes, ZA001 weaved through solid cloud layers in search of clearer skies.