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    BOEING 777, A MAINSTAY OF LONG-HAUL TRAVEL



    Boeing 777 a mainstay of long-haul travel



    JANUARY 17, 2008

    (CNN) -- The Boeing 777 is the mainstay of many airlines' long-haul fleets and has never been involved in a fatal accident during its service history.


    The aircraft first entered service on June 7, 1995, with more than 900 suppliers from 17 countries coming together to provide the more than three million parts needed in its construction, according to the Boeing Web site.

    Since its inaugural flight, Boeing has extended the 777 family to five commercial passenger models and a freighter version, collectively making more than two million flights.

    The aircraft seats between 301 and 368 passengers in a three-class configuration and can fly distances up to 17,500 kilometers.

    The 777 has also won a number of design awards, as well as setting a number of records and firsts.

    On November 9 and 10, 2005, a Boeing 777-200LR Worldliner set a new world record for distance traveled non-stop by a commercial jetliner. The 777-200LR set a record distance of 21,601 km on a route traveling eastbound from Hong Kong to London Heathrow.

    The flight lasted 22 hours and 42 minutes. The achievements was recognized by the U.S. National Aeronautics Association, The Federation Aeronautique Internationale and the Guinness Book of Records.

    The Federation eéronautique Internationale recognized the Boeing 777 in April 1997 for achieving a speed and distance record for airplanes in its size and class.

    The Boeing Web site claims the 777 set the "Great Circle Distance Without Landing" record, traveling 20,044 km, and it set the record for "Speed Around the World, Eastbound," traveling at an average speed of 889 km per hour.

    According to Boeing the aircraft reached 500 deliveries by 2005 -- faster than any other twin-aisle commercial airplane in history.

    Boeing prides itself on the 777's landing gear, which it claims is the largest ever incorporated into a commercial aircraft. Each main landing gear is fitted with six wheels, while the nose gear has two.

    http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/01 ... 7.history/

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    Boeing 777 Near-Disaster: Can Anyone On Board Fly This Thing?

    Posted by Alexander Wolfe, Jan 18, 2008 10:07 AM

    It's every passenger's worst nightmare: You're cruising along at 30,000 feet when the lights suddenly go out and the engines quit. The cockpit crew has been struck down by food poisoning. A terrified stewardess (sorry, "flight attendant") yells out: "Is there a pilot on board?" OK, that's a bad movie plot. But what happened in London on Thursday is actually scarier, and would've been a huge disaster, if not for the hero pilot.

    What happened was, a British Airways plane on final approach into London's Heathrow Airport lost both engines and all power to the on-board electronics systems. Apparently everything went south except an altimeter and air-speed indicator running on battery backup.

    Yet the pilot, Capt. Peter Burkill, was able to glide the plane in for a landing. (Go here to see a photo of the battered plane.)

    Yes, the landing gear collapsed and 13 passengers suffered minor injuries. But it could have been far, far worse. The landing is being hailed as a miracle, because the pilot was able to react in basically no time at all and bring the heavy aircraft down.)

    My point in blogging about this is to raise a couple of points I haven't seen in any of the news coverage.

    First off, I take issue with the characterization of the safe landing as a "miracle." That's a cheap and lazy description. It wasn't a miracle; it was the result of a well-trained pilot doing what a consummate professional does. Anyway, my purpose isn't so much to denigrate the people tossing about "miracle." It's rather to point out that most folks don't really know what pilots are sometimes called on to do.

    There's an added level of nuance on top of that. Namely, even when the cockpit crew performs spectacularly, things don't always work out. There's the case of the July, 2000, crash of a Concorde, shortly after takeoff in Paris. The pilot there was a hero, too, because he was able to divert the plane away from a populated area before it went down in flames, killing all 113 aboard.

    Fly-By-Wire Hazards

    My second -- and more important -- point, though, is to raise the issue of how modern planes like the Boeing 777, by their very design, are more of a problem in crisis situations than older planes.

    That's because the 777 is a so-called "fly-by-wire" aircraft. This means it essentially uses computers to control the flight surfaces (wings, rudder, etc.). Commands from the flight deck are transmitted to the physical plane through wires and computers and finally to the hydraulic actuators which operate the control surfaces. This is in contrast with older, nonelectronic designs, where you had cables directly connected to the control surfaces. (More correctly, on large aircraft, these controls were boosted by hydraulic actuators, which pretty much means they used transmission fluid running through piping, analogous to your car's brake lines.)

    Quite frankly, I wasn't aware that the 777 had a back-up mode where pilots could (directly?) operate the control surfaces in the event of a total power loss. (I couldn't find an answer to this question in my quick research this morning.) So, either the 777 does indeed have manual backup, or it didn't completely lose all power. Possibly all the control surfaces are hooked to some kind of UPS (uninterruptible power supply), which keeps them running on battery back-up in the event of an outage. (In that case, it's lucky the power loss happened during landing. If it occurred mid-flight, there'd be a question of how much time the pilot had on the backup supply before everything conked out.)

    Anyway, my main point is that many people have been concerned for a long time about the inherent weaknesses in fly-by-wire. (The benefits are a lighter, more sophisticated plane that's cheaper to operate.) These are many of the same folks who were worried when twin-engine planes were certified for over-water operation. (In the old days, you had to have four engines to fly across the Atlantic, to provide a margin of safety.)

    Consider British Airways Flight 38 to be both a close call and a warning. Just because fly-by-wire hasn't bitten anyone in the butt so far doesn't mean it won't one day.

    Here's a video of the British Airways plane on the runway at Heathrow:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpCgnfVg ... _near.html

    http://www.informationweek.com/blog/mai ... _near.html

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    G-YMMM

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    G-YMMM

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    British Airways Flight 9



    Despite the lack of time, Captain Moody made an announcement that has been described as "a masterpiece of understatement":

    “ Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress. "

    British Airways Flight 9, sometimes referred to as the Jakarta incident, was a scheduled British Airways flight from London Heathrow to Auckland, with stops in Bombay, Madras, Kuala Lumpur, Perth, and Melbourne.

    On 24 June 1982, the route was flown by City of Edinburgh, a 747-236B registered G-BDXH. The aircraft flew into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung, resulting in the failure of all four engines, although the reason for the failure was not then apparent to the crew or ground control. The aircraft was diverted to Jakarta in the hope that enough engines could be restarted to allow it to land there. The aircraft was able to glide far enough to exit the ash cloud, and all engines were restarted (although one failed again soon after), allowing the aircraft to land safely.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9



    G-BDXH

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    Phone jammers "brought down 777"

    Yet another unbelievable conspiracy theory

    By Tony Dennis: Sunday, 20 January 2008, 1:49 PM


    WE'VE HEARD of conspiracy theories but this one – taken from the Daily Telegraph – takes the biscuit. Security forces jamming mobile phones around the British Prime Minister's motorcade accidentally disrupted a Boeing 777's control systems.

    The claim comes after a British Airways flight from Beijing crashed landed as it was attempting to set down at London's Heathrow Airport.

    By an amazing co-incidence – or was it? – the stricken aircraft flew only about 25 feet above Gordon Brown's Jaguar as it headed towards the airport along the Heathrow perimeter road.

    One suggested theory is that – in an effort to protect Mr Brown – the police might have turned on phone jamming equipment.

    The INQ has long argued that mobile phones don't affect the operation of an aircraft in the first place but these phone jammers would have had to possess a range of at least two miles because that is how far away the plane was when both its engines failed.

    Even the Torygraph's own expert, John Ling, the head of transport at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, dismissed the theory.
    "I am sure other people would have noticed and more than one plane would have come down," commented Mr Ling.

    Still, we wouldn't want a few facts to get in the way of a jolly good conspiracy theory, now would we?

    http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/ ... rought-777

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    What could have caused both engines to fail?

    By David Millward Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 19/01/2008

    1. Birds

    Could birds have got into the engine? "Bird Strike" is a well-known problem in aviation. Even a few birds could break a component which would be sucked into the rest of the engine.

    Co-pilot saved stricken Heathrow airliner
    They can also interrupt the airflow, which is vital. The damage would depend on how many had been ingested.

    Accident investigators search the surrounding area for debris from the crashed jet

    The strange sound of the engine has given this theory some credence. But Heathrow is regarded as one of the safest airports in the country as far as bird strike is concerned and there have been no reports of any feathers being found.

    John Ling, the head of transport at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, advised caution: "While bird strikes can cause considerable damage, they don't normally have such a dramatic impact."

    2. Fuel contamination

    This emerged as a strong contender last night following the release of the investigators' report.

    Industry insiders have suggested that a contaminant, possibly water, may have leaked into the fuel tank and caused the engines to fail.

    Pilots believe it is possible that as the plane descended, ice on the wings thawed into slush and then seeped into the engines. It is also possible that any contamination may have occurred during fuelling.

    3. Electrical failure

    This is still a possibility and one which will be closely examined by the investigators, who will find vital clues from the flight recorder, evidence from the control tower and the pilot's own testimony.

    4. Computer failure

    Aircraft rely heavily on computer systems and a sudden failure would cause serious problems.

    This was dismissed by David Learmount, the operations and safety editor of Flight International magazine. "There is not just one computer, there are a whole series of back-ups," he said. "It is like a lift, which does not have one cable but has four. All critical systems must have back-ups."

    5. Boeing 777 design fault

    Could there be a fundamental problem with the airliner? There have been reports of about a dozen incidents of electrical systems overheating.

    But the Boeing 777 is regarded as one of the safest aircraft in the air. There are currently 667 in service and, until Thursday, the planes had not been involved in a serious incident.

    "These things have been flying for a long time, the fact that the fuselage stayed intact is a testimony to the reliability of the aircraft," said Mr Ling.

    6. Accidental jamming of onboard systems by police because the Prime Minister was nearby

    A far-fetched theory which suggests that the police may have blocked mobile phones in the area as the Prime Minister's motorcade drove past. This in turn would, it is claimed, have created a systems failure on a plane overhead. This is unlikely to the point of impossibility.

    "I am sure other people would have noticed and more than one plane would have come down," said Mr Ling.

    7. Human error

    Did the pilot make a fatal error on approach? At Kegworth in 1989, a pilot facing engine failure shut down the wrong one, leaving the plane without power.

    This seems unlikely. John Coward, the senior first officer who landed the aircraft, had 11 years' experience on Boeing 777s and 15 as a pilot. Peter Burkill, the captain, had 20 years' experience with BA. Given the length of the flight it is normal practice for the pilot, senior first officer and first officer to share duties. They were also landing at BA's home airport.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/main. ... ath419.xml

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