FAA to loosen fuel-tank safety rules, benefiting Boeing's 78

[brent p h]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/boeingaerospace/2008719843_lightning08.html?syndication=rss
The FAA proposes to relax the safeguards for preventing sparks inside the fuel tank during a lightning strike, standards the agency now calls "impractical" and Boeing says its soon-to-fly 787 Dreamliner cannot meet.

 

[darrenf]

Re: FAA to loosen fuel-tank safety rules, benefiting Boeing'

To say it Benefit's the 78 is to imply that other aircraft have met this standard.

From your link....

"To this day, we have not had one manufacturer that has been able to demonstrate compliance with that rule," said Ali Bahrami, head of the FAA's Seattle office dealing with commercial-airplane certification. "We decided it's time to re-evaluate our approach."

 

[slushie]

Re: FAA to loosen fuel-tank safety rules, benefiting Boeing'

Very interesting...

 

[falconvalley]

Re: FAA to loosen fuel-tank safety rules, benefiting Boeing'

Manufacturers: It's too hard...:banghead:

FAA: FINE!

 

[slushie]

Re: FAA to loosen fuel-tank safety rules, benefiting Boeing'

Safety first or $$$?

 

[jynxyjoe]

Re: FAA to loosen fuel-tank safety rules, benefiting Boeing'

From first glance, this looks like a giant boner from the FAA. The rules states "No sparking or arcing inside the tank". Maybe some of my ex-certification co-workers can give me the skinny on what this means. To my knowledge, when it comes to lightning, every tank meets the requirement during the certification. That is to say, in laboratory evironments, all the testing I witnessed on tanks do prevent sparking and arcing and those that did not could not pass were not certified until such time as they could.

Edit: http://aero-news.net/index.cfm?ContentBlockID=f4d61aba-a550-4e7a-9246-485896828380&
After reading this I'm unfortunately forced to agree with both sides of the arguments. They aren't backing down from current "proven" guidelines, but they are backing down from the new safety standards.

 

[derg]

Re: FAA to loosen fuel-tank safety rules, benefiting Boeing'

Safety first or $$$?

Now, Slushie....

 

[jynxyjoe]

Re: FAA to loosen fuel-tank safety rules, benefiting Boeing'

Safety first or $$$?

:yup:

I think what you'll find is, "Safety first, or safety later*"
*proper safety guidelines will not be followed until proper number of whistleblowers or lawsuits are filed. Lawsuit cost > cost to fix plane** formula must be observed.

**Since a Part 25 Composite wing complete with composite tanks has not really been tried on this scale, we feel "cost to fix the plane" is infinately large and lawsuits are not a deciding factor at this time***.

***This airplane may be as much as 20 years ahead of the technology to implement the design safely, we will re-evaluate at such time... maybe. Probably not.

 

[Pilotforhire587]

Re: FAA to loosen fuel-tank safety rules, benefiting Boeing'

As long as we dont have another TWA 800 from arching in the fuel tanks I am cool with it.

 

[jynxyjoe]

Re: FAA to loosen fuel-tank safety rules, benefiting Boeing'

As long as we dont have another TWA 800 from arching in the fuel tanks I am cool with it.

Well... sorry. Boeing is getting a exemption on that "TWA 800" part.