Was this your AOG job Higgins?

[BRPORSCHE]

Truly spectacular photos. Knew it was a lot of work, but holy cow! That is a lot of work! Amazing tooling.

www.imgur.com/a/LucEz

[GH85Carrera]

I wonder how much that little whoops cost?

[Seahawk]

Thanks, Tom. Very cool.

I love stuff like that. I hope Jeff chimes in.

When I see accidents like this, I always wonder what the pilots were thinking as they shut the big bird down, unstrapped and went to face a very different world.

[VINMAN]

[Neilk]

Nope, not his, asked the same question in this post. Motion, You Left Just in Time.... Amazing what that crew did.

[Jeff Higgins]

Nope, not mine. Not this particular repair. This is what we do, though, although this one represents some of the very "best" of our efforts, and is well beyond our run of the mill. I do recognize many of the guys in the pics; most have retired, but a couple are still around.

[rattlsnak]

leftover parts. nice.. lol..

[Jeff Higgins]

"Leftover parts"? Uh, no... salvageable, reusable parts maybe, or discarded parts, but no "leftovers".

Repairs are very, very tightly controlled. Every part removed is tagged and identified, then sorted into "reuse" or "discard". Every single part. Down to the washers. Plus, they are entered into the permanent history of that tail number by way of an "FRR" - Field Rework Record, which will record the disposition of every individual part. These FRR's will follow that airplane for the rest of its service life and beyond; when it's scrapped, any salvaged parts will have those FRR's, detailing their history, follow them onto their next aircraft.

Imagine buying a refurbished alternator for your 911 and getting the full history of the last three VIN's on which it was installed. We are that thorough.

[fred cook]

Looks like it made a better airplane than it did a plow! What a jigsaw puzzle!

[speeder]

Amazing photos and work. I have a friend who used to repair jetliners that had "hard landings", which he said was their euphemism for crashing.

He made an unusual career switch and became a successful comic, his name is Alonzo Bodden. Quite the gear head as well. Working on that beast 747 is beyond my comprehension.

[Holger]

I will never fly with a Boeing again!

Amazing work, indeed!


To be honest, if I knew a plane was repaired like this I would definitely refuse to travel with it.
I thought planes are scrapped after such crashes and structural damages!
Looking at the airplane-cemeteries shows planes in better condition than that one!
I just saw the wiring and thought only this will cause trouble in the future!
Good not to know everything!

[zelrik911]

Originally Posted by Holger

To be honest, if I knew a plane was repaired like this I would definitely refuse to travel with it.
I thought planes are scrapped after such crashes and structural damages!
Looking at the airplane-cemeteries shows planes in better condition than that one!
I just saw the wiring and thought only this will cause trouble in the future!
Good not to know everything!

This 747 would have been scrapped in normal circumstances.
But Qantas had its 'never crashed' reputation to protect so they spent as much as it took to get it back in the air. Then Qantas could keep on saying that

I remember the discussion/controversy at the time.
I think the Pilots had been instructed to save fuel! Penny wise Pound foolish.

[onewhippedpuppy]

Originally Posted by Holger

I will never fly with a Boeing again!

Amazing work, indeed!


To be honest, if I knew a plane was repaired like this I would definitely refuse to travel with it.
I thought planes are scrapped after such crashes and structural damages!
Looking at the airplane-cemeteries shows planes in better condition than that one!
I just saw the wiring and thought only this will cause trouble in the future!
Good not to know everything!

Jeff could better comment, but I suspect that the repair cost was still substantially less than the purchase cost of a brand new 747. Anything can be repaired if there is enough financial motivation, and there is certainly nothing unsafe about such a repair project. Just like a car, if the repair cost is less than the replacement cost, insurance will fix it.

[porsche4life]

Was just watching that video of the 787 going vertical. Got me to thinking, how will you guys repair one of those in an AOG incident. Won't the carbon fiber be much more difficult to repair, and more likely to have hidden cracks?

[flipper35]

Bondo is a "composite".

[flipper35]

Actually I am sure they thought of that in the design. The replacement pieces may be larger than if it were a metal plane but the process should be similar. They aren't made in a single mold.

[gordner]

Actually porsche4life is correct, composite repair is a big issue facing the industry. Some huge parts are made in one piece, such as business aviation category aircraft having their entire fuselage be one layup. Some pieces are such that any kind of repair weakens the composite more than the damage did, such as fibre wind lay ups like the original Hawker 4000 prototype fuselage. Stronger than anything you can imagine, but they did not produce the fibre wind because it cannot be repaired.
Designers tend not to keep an eye to how the product will be maintained believe it or not. On the original Challenger 600, the first time you burned out a strobe light pack, you had to cut an access hole in the wing skin to change it....that is a high consumption item to boot.

[gordner]

and many of these parts are bonded in place during construction making it even harder.
Not unusual these days to have damage on an aircraft that you are the first guy to design a repair for....can be quite a challenge.

[john70t]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

"Leftover parts"? Uh, no... salvageable, reusable parts maybe, or discarded parts, but no "leftovers".

One Piece At A Time. -Johnny Cash

[onewhippedpuppy]

Originally Posted by gordner

Actually porsche4life is correct, composite repair is a big issue facing the industry. Some huge parts are made in one piece, such as business aviation category aircraft having their entire fuselage be one layup. Some pieces are such that any kind of repair weakens the composite more than the damage did, such as fibre wind lay ups like the original Hawker 4000 prototype fuselage. Stronger than anything you can imagine, but they did not produce the fibre wind because it cannot be repaired.
Designers tend not to keep an eye to how the product will be maintained believe it or not. On the original Challenger 600, the first time you burned out a strobe light pack, you had to cut an access hole in the wing skin to change it....that is a high consumption item to boot.

I've seen a lot of repaired Hawker 4000s. Brand new ones.

Structural repair with composites is doable but substantially more challenging and more expensive. Detection of damage is also far more difficult, for instance inspecting for internal core damage even when there is no visible damage to the skin. There's also a much lower threshold before you simply scrap the piece, very little opportunity to rework.