Boeing's Folding Wingtips Get the FAA Green Light (engadget.com) 83
Boeing received FAA approval today for its folding wingtips, which will let the planes stop at airport gates big enough to accommodate typical 777 models. "Once the 777X lands, the wingtips will rotate until they point upwards," reports Engadget. "Bloomberg notes that the plane will be the only commercial model in widespread use to have such a feature." From the report: The 777X's wingtips are so novel that U.S. regulators had to draw up new standards for them. The agency was concerned that the wingtips could cause safety issues -- some plane crashes occurred after pilots did not secure flaps on wings before takeoff. The FAA required Boeing to have several warning systems to make sure pilots won't attempt a takeoff before the wingtips are locked in the correct position. The FAA also wanted assurances that there was no way the tips would rotate during flight, and that the wings could handle winds of up to 75 miles per hour while on the ground.
The new wings are made from carbon-fiber composites that are stronger and lighter than the metal Boeing uses in other wings. That lets the company increase the wings' width by 23 feet to 235 feet, which makes flying more efficient. These are the widest wings Boeing has attached to a plane, surpassing the 747-8's 224 feet. However, it doesn't hold the record for a commercial plane: the Airbus A380 has a 262-foot-wide wing, which forced some airports to install gates specifically to accommodate it.
The new wings are made from carbon-fiber composites that are stronger and lighter than the metal Boeing uses in other wings. That lets the company increase the wings' width by 23 feet to 235 feet, which makes flying more efficient. These are the widest wings Boeing has attached to a plane, surpassing the 747-8's 224 feet. However, it doesn't hold the record for a commercial plane: the Airbus A380 has a 262-foot-wide wing, which forced some airports to install gates specifically to accommodate it.
Re: (Score:1)
I found a moron.
The Navy Has Been Doing This for Decades (Score:3)
I'm unaware of any accidents involving the folding wings on US Navy aircraft, or at least, not in the last 3 decades. The airlines primarily get their pilots from the military, so having some airline pilots who are already familiar with the checklist step of making sure that the wings are unfolded and locked won't be an enormous training issue.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not an issue any more than flap deployment. Hence the FAA approval.
Re: (Score:2)
It will just be another checklist item and another button they press or lever they pull.
Re:The Navy Has Been Doing This for Decades (Score:5, Funny)
...another button they press or lever they pull...
Why doesn't the chap who swings the propeller around to start the motor just sort the wings out?
Admittedly it is quite some time since I last flew.
Re: The Navy Has Been Doing This for Decades (Score:1)
Yea ir seem to be, nsnual start even on snall sibgle engine ga craft gas iirc not been a thing for decades, not to ention jets, but of course ypu where jokinggave a nice day
Re: (Score:2)
Uhhhh ... since your engines are running when you enter the gate and when you leave, presumably you'd want your wing tips folded _before_ entering the gate, ne? And unfolded after you leave.
Incidentally, the Japanese A6M Zero had folding wingtips (albeit very small) in its early models. Later removed for simplicity, but there they were.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IDeZ... [blogspot.com]
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... [wikimedia.org]
Again, it hardly seems worth the effort, but Boeing should know what they're doing.
Re: (Score:1)
Whoosh!
Re:The Navy Has Been Doing This for Decades (Score:4, Interesting)
I question your claim that airlines primarily get pilots from the military. A great many come through private pilot training followed by working for regional airlines. I expect that ex-military pilots would be a minority, although a sizeable one. Feel free to try to find an authoritative source to prove me wrong.
Even of the military pilots, a minority of them will have dealt with folding wings.
But I do agree that ensuring wings are unfolded should not be a big deal. It would be simple to implement either a warning or override to prevent more than taxiing thrust to be used when wings are folded.
Re: (Score:2)
In 2012, two E-2C Hawkeye aircraft were involved in an incident where one unfolded it's wings into the spinning propellers of the other.
Folding wing aircraft accidents like this are unusual, but they do happen and are representative of what would probably happen at an airport.
I should point out that airlines *haven't* been getting their pilots primarily from the military for more than twenty years - most of them come from the aviation colleges and then through regionals/cargo carriers.
Re: (Score:2)
"In 2012, two E-2C Hawkeye aircraft were involved in an incident where one unfolded it's wings into the spinning propellers of the other."
But that isn't a safety issue with the folding wings, any more than last week's Asiana/TurkAir ground mishap (the Asiana airliner broke off the vertical stabilizer of the TurkAir jet while taxiing) was.
Re: (Score:2)
You don't consider a big piece of metal being chewed up by a propeller powered by a 4,500 hp turbine on the deck of a ship (or even on a tarmac) to be a safety issue?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Rotation is an accurate description of the motion when the wings tips fold. They rotate on a powered axis. Aircraft design terminology is not bound by the expectations of laymen.
Re: (Score:2)
Someone thought they should dumb down the application linked in the summary so that members of Congress could understand it, so much so that it ended up in the official document.
This is how accidents happen. The PowerPoint axiom.
Commenter 3
One commenter expressed concern that the special conditions may be confusing to the
United States Congress. The FAA responds that special conditions are part of the Executive
Branch rulemaking process, which is independent of the United States Congress lawmaking
process. Sp
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The summary says the wings "ROTATE". Rotating wings!!! Man, there is a safety issue.
Rotating wings? So, propellers then?
Re: (Score:2)
The big trick is making sure there's an obvious visual cue that the wings are locked.
The F-4 had a big red pin that stuck up out of the wing if the lock wasn't in place, and dropped down automatically when it DID lock.
Do the same for the Boeing, but put a little LED right next to it so they won't miss it in the dark.
False indicator (Score:2)
Do the same for the Boeing, but put a little LED right next to it so they won't miss it in the dark.
Not a bad idea but it creates a new issue. Namely how do you tell the indicator is working if the LED malfunctions? Instruments are generally quite reliable but not 100%. That's a fundamental issue with any status indicator - false positives or worse, false negatives. The problem can be with the device or the indicator and it can be difficult to tell which is the problem. The indicators are still worth doing if the failure modes are severe enough but it doesn't completely eliminate the risk.
Re: (Score:2)
Do the same for the Boeing, but put a little LED right next to it so they won't miss it in the dark.
Not a bad idea but it creates a new issue. Namely how do you tell the indicator is working if the LED malfunctions? Instruments are generally quite reliable but not 100%. That's a fundamental issue with any status indicator - false positives or worse, false negatives. The problem can be with the device or the indicator and it can be difficult to tell which is the problem. The indicators are still worth doing if the failure modes are severe enough but it doesn't completely eliminate the risk.
You just need an indicator that shows that the first indicator is working.
Re: (Score:1)
There were enough accidents with flaps down indicators being incorrect that a lot of airlines now put the flaps down on planes before taxiing so ground crew can confirm that they are down.
A plane does not take off well with the flaps up and once in the air there is no recovery from this mistake except to hit the ground, so good news that they are pushing the regulation of this as I am sure you could get a plane in the air with the wingtips folded but it also wont stay there for long.
Re: (Score:3)
How much you want to bet that when "some plane crashes occurred after pilots did not secure flaps on wings before takeoff", it was because they told the test pilot, "Okay, now try one with the flaps unsecured."
Re: (Score:2)
winglets reduce drag, wings provide lift.
Re: (Score:2)
Longer wings create less drag for a given lift, everything else being equal.
Easy fail-safe (Score:1)
Make it so you can't turn the engines on unless the wings are down and locked. Seems like a no-brainer feature.
Re: (Score:2)
That would defeat the purpose, since engines are started while planes are still sitting at the gate.
After (Score:3)
They start the engines after they push the plane away from the gate. There's usually too much stuff near the gate to safely start them up.
The noise you hear when you're at the gate is the APU running. It's *really* loud 'cause it's usually mounted on top of the cabin in the back of the plane. Once they use it to start up the main engines they shut it off and the cabin gets quieter.
Re: (Score:2)
Lots of no-brainer features got designed in and often got turned off to save time.
A lot of work had to be done to ensure warnings and no-brainer features did not get turned off.
Defeat (Score:2)
That's the point. It's an integral kill-switch for the engines. If the wing-lock isn't engaged, you can't run the starter for the engines. There's no breaker or bypass.
Sure a mechanic could probably hot-wire the kill-switch or something. This is what FAA audits are supposed to catch. But at that point you might as well not build planes at all, because all a pilot has to do is ram the yoke forward on takeoff to crash. You can't build a plane completely idiot-proof.
Re: (Score:2)
The list of task to do was too long.
The alarms too loud and constant to allow the rest of the tasks to be done.
The needed taxi checklist could be done quickly and the flight would be ready in time for its take off slot.
Everything works well until the alarm that should have prevented the lack of a task been done was turned off.
That word...doesn't mean what you think it means (Score:5, Informative)
The FAA rubber-stamped those measures Friday. (emphasis added)
"Rubber-stamped" is an idiomatic expression meaning roughly "to approve without review," which is not at all how the FAA works.
I know that it is a bit pedantic but I find that more and more people speak and write using phrases that are not appropriate for the context and it makes communication more difficult than it needs to be.
Re: (Score:1)
Me, I was confused by the wings being "wide".
The word is "wingspan".
Hell, I would've accepted "long". But "wide" is the wrong dimension.
Re: (Score:1)
I know that it is a bit pedantic but I find that more and more people speak and write using phrases that are not appropriate
I could care less what you find.
Re: (Score:1)
"Rubber-stamped"? The summary contradicts itself. (Score:4, Informative)
The summary said the FAA "rubber-stamped" the folding wingtips. However, the FAA made Boeing put in several warnings on the planes on whether the tips were in the right place, withstand 75mph winds on the ground, and could not rotate during flight.
Doesn't seem like a "rubber-stamp" to me.
--PM
Re: (Score:2)
>"Doesn't seem like a "rubber-stamp" to me."
It looks like someone corrected the summary, since "rubber stamped" is not current there...
Re: (Score:1)
That means that Slashdot has been hacked, since we know Slashdot editors don't actually edit the summaries - ever.
Maybe that means we'll get Unicode support sometime soon!
Folding 777 wings proposed and failed before (Score:2)
A folding wing option was offered when the 777 was first being developed. No airline wanted to pay for it, so it never happened.
Here [stackexchange.com] is a discussion on why that was, and how the new 777x folding wing differs from the old rejected folding wing plan. The new folding wing section is much smaller and lighter than the old proposal. The old plan required flight controls on the folding section, which the new plan does not.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks. So by "design was tested" you mean they built part of a wing with the folding tip?
Re: (Score:2)
I seem to recall that some of the first Boeing 777's manufactured with the standard (non-folding) wings actually had a seam in their internal wing structure so that they could easily be converted to having folding wing-tips at a later date. It also meant that most of the main wing structure was the same between the two versions.
Thing will still fly... (Score:2)
Re:Thing will still fly... (Score:5, Informative)
One-wing F-15, landed safely...
https://theaviationgeekclub.co... [theaviationgeekclub.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Still, probably worse than the small loss of lift on the 777X with folded wings.
Re: (Score:2)
True. Although the F-15 does have a reasonable amount of body lift.
And a metric shit ton more thrust.
Re: (Score:2)
One-wing F-15, landed safely...
I wish we could avoid this usage of the word "safely" - the plane may have landed without loss of life, but the landing was certainly dangerous. If I drive a car with my eyes closed, and happen not to crash, no-one would say that I was driving "safely".
I often read that a plane suffered incident "X" in flight, and then landed safely. I can't tell whether the writer means that incident "X" did not make the landing hazardous, or whether the landing was actually hazardous but resulted in no death or injury.
In this case: Safe (Score:3)
I can't tell whether the writer means that incident "X" did not make the landing hazardous,
In the F-15's case that the former :
- The plane has body lift too. Thus there are some safety margins (even with missing bits it can generate enough lift).
- The onboard avionics(*) are able to compensate for quite a lot of situations.
So even with a wing missing, although it couldn't probably perform complex acrobatic maneuvers, could still land safely provided that the pilot is experienced and know how to handle the plane too.
TL;DR: brilliant pilot + bad-ass airplane = can still fly "almost
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Where things get really interesting is when you try to fly the plane with one wingtip folded, and the other one extended.
Multiple Navy aircraft have flown with folded wing (Score:3)
Not saying it's recommended, or particularly safe.
https://theaviationist.com/201... [theaviationist.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Video of a prototype folding and unfolding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
It's actually not that large a section of the wing.
Standards not too hard (Score:2)
It shouldn't've been too hard to come up with standards. The Navy flies aircraft with folding wings daily, and we're talking the entire wing folds so the hinge and locking mechanism have to handle the full load of high-G combat maneuvers, I'd imagine the FAA could simply grab the Navy's standards and edit them down to remove the parts only relevant to combat aircraft. That'd cover the wingtip lock status indicator too, all naval folding-wing aircraft have them so the pilot knows if his wings are safe to lau
Re: (Score:1)
wing width of 235 feet? (Score:2)
"That lets the company increase the wings' width by 23 feet to 235 feet, which makes flying more efficient."
Pretty fat wings on this bird! Perhaps 'span' would be a better term.
Only green? (Score:2)
Does the other wingtip get the red light?
Re: (Score:2)
They are folding the wrong way! (Score:2)
"Wingtips! You barbarians!!!" (Score:3)