Welcome To The Dreamliner Nightmare

How embarrassed is the All Nippon Airways ground crew in Japan after towing the brand spankin' new, close-to-$200-million Dreamliner into a passenger boarding bridge on Thursday? Oh, I'd say that kind of a ding requires something north of a "my bad" and south of harakiri.

From what I read, the plane checked out good as new and will fly -- as scheduled -- and in the Japanese-style -- that is, fully packed -- on Wednesday from Tokyo to Nagasaki.

Remarkably, no cameras captured this nightmare-inducing boo-boo, but this is what the plane looked like on September 28, when the nearly-all-composite twin-engine airliner landed at Tokyo International Haneda Airport.

After a three-year delay in actually receiving the Dreamliner from Boeing, the first airline to take delivery of the airplane of the future should be flying sky high. Instead ANA is reassuring passengers that everything is A-OK for the second time in six weeks.

On September 6, it shook up a planeload of travelers when a pilot trying to open the cockpit door to readmit the captain after a potty break accidentally turned the wrong knob, flipping the 737 on its head.

This latest episode had the ground crew towing the plane this close to the passenger boarding gate, scraping the engine cowling. Does it get any worse? Well kinda: Underneath the cowling beats the heart of a Trent 1000 engine from Rolls Royce, another aviation company that can't seem to catch a break.

Welcome to my Dreamliner nightmare? Nah, ANA says the damage was slight and that plane is good-to-go on its charter flight next week. Just no more wasabi before bedtime between now and then, okay?

 

Follow Christine Negroni on Twitter: www.twitter.com/cnegroni

Comments

[mohair man]

02:31 AM on 10/26/2011

Boeing builds great airplanes, yes, including the tail section of every 737 built.... which are made in China. The US Navy's P-8 tails are made in communist China, too. That's right.... US Navy patrol airplanes are patrolling the China Sea in aircraft with the tail sections made in.... Xian, China! Meanwhile, 1,000 aircraft sheetmetal workers are out of work, 'cause Boeing decided that it was ok for US Navy aircraft major structures to be built in the Chinese dictatorship where the average worker manes $2 an hour.... Hello, US Congress? Here is a chance to bring jobs back to the US...

[JMB0603]

09:31 PM on 10/24/2011

The plane that had the acrobatics was a Boeing 737, not the Dreamliner. The Dreamliner is a Boeing 787.

[chrisk529]

02:09 PM on 10/24/2011

Sounds as weird as this one: In 2007, an A340-600 was destroyed during ground testing at Airbus in France. During an engine test prior to the airplane's delivery, the Arab flight crew of Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies conducted pre-delivery tests on the ground. The crew taxied the A340-600 to the run-up area and took all four engines to takeoff power. The takeoff warning horn was blaring away in the cockpit because the aircraft computers thought they were trying to take off. One of the crew pulled the circuit breaker on the Ground Proximity Sensor to silence the alarm, fooling the aircraft into thinking it is airborne. The computers automatically released the brakes, setting the aircraft rocketing forward. The crew had no idea this is a safety feature so that pilots can't land with the brakes on. Not one member of the seven-man Arab crew was smart enough to throttle back the engines from their max power setting, and the brand new $200 million aircraft collided with a concrete wall. The cockpit section broke off and fell to the ground from a significant height. The right wing, tail, and two left engines contacted the wall or ground. Four on board were seriously injured, and fire services were unable to stop one undamaged engine from running on accumulated fuel for almost seven hours. The aircraft was written off.

There was a news blackout in the major media as the story was deemed insulting to Muslim Arabs.

[Christine Negroni]

12:07 AM on 10/25/2011

Chris, some of what you are reporting is correct, some is not. In the cockpit was someone from Abu Dhabi Aircraft Technologies and someone from Airbus. The story was fully reported in many major aviation publications. http://christinenegroni.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-alarming-are-airport-ramp-accidents.html

[LostinSocialSpace]

01:39 PM on 10/24/2011

Oops, NOT THAT BUTTON!- My Bad!

[mcewenesq]

01:00 PM on 10/24/2011

If it aint Boeing, I aint going...

[Artie klein]

12:46 PM on 10/24/2011

Boeing builds great planes.

[jakenjil]

02:21 PM on 10/24/2011

So does Airbus and Bombardier. Tupolevs are another story.