What’s Going On With The Boeing 777X?!

Visit our sponsor betterhelp.com/mentournow today to receive 10% off your first month of therapy

I've worked for Boeing the last 15 years on the 787 program. I've witness the shift away from quality for profit and am now witnessing the swing back to quality. I think a valuable lesson was learned with the max and 787 quality issues and I really hope the new attitude holds well into the future as I really can say I love working there.

As an Aerosoace engineer i understsnd the frustration of MBAs running engineering companies rather than the other way around when Boeing was a trail blazer. Now its all about stock buybacks, share prices, short cuts, and milking the most out of old designs rather than being innovtative!! Thats why i retreated back to academia

Airbus got robots doing rivets early on with A320 assembly line in late 1980s. I am quite surprised Boeing couldn't get this working in the 2010s when work on 777X was starting. The whole point of robots is to ensure consistency and if humans had to go and fix probems left by the robot, then there was something wrong Boeing was doing.

If you react to competition as soon as you see a threat... it is already too late. I like Boeing aircraft, but the company management in the last 30 years doesn't impress me.

Happened that Boeing is no more an engineering company.

Actually the folding wingtip ISN’T a new thing to the 777X. It was originally offered as an option for the 777, to enable it to use 52m pads. Ultimately no airline ordered the option.

I was a member of the engineering team that created the 777 as a young engineer just out of university and it was a formative experience in my engineering career. I'm happy to hear @MentourNow call the 777 "iconic". 🙂

From 2008 to 2017 the number of experienced enginners that was made redundant and started working at Airbus, Embraer, Bombardier, Mitsubishi and Comac is telling

Here's a funny thing. 30-odd years ago, I was a manufacturing engineer at Vought Aircraft. That company pioneered an "automatic riveter" machine that could drill, countersink if necessary, and deburr a hole, then squeeze a rivet into it, with or without sealant as needed. It could also push in interference-fit Hi-Lok fasteners but those still required manual installation of their nuts afterwards. However, all this automation was only semi-automatic. It still required an operator to help position the rather large chunk of airplane in the the right spot (which was were a red laser dot from the machine corresponded with a spray-painted dot on the part indicating where the hole should be drilled. Large parts were suspended in slings from overhead cranes that the machine operator could control to get the spray dot more or less in the right spot, then lean on the part a little to finalize the aim. This system worked quite well and Vought licensed the patents out to other manufacturers, but it only worked on relatively flat pieces, such as skin panels for wings and tails, or for curved sections no more than about 1/8 the circumference of a circle, for say fuselage skins or parts of engine nacelles. And all this work was way up the line from final assembly of the whole airframe. It was mostly for attaching stringers to skin panels and similar tasks. And it still required all these parts previously to have been loaded manually into their jigs and a few holes manually drilled and clecoed together to hold the parts in their proper places so the nascent assembly could be hung from slings and all the rest done by the auto-riveter. Still, this system saved a LOT of manual work because you have to buck manual rivets out in the middle of large skin panels with 2 people, and a varying amount of time depending on the type of fastener. But it had its limits and we at Vought put a great deal of thought into how to improve such machines so could do even more. But eventually we decided that robots could only do so much for aircraft assembly and left it where it was. So I'm surprised Boeing tried to go raise the bar as high as it did. I mean, you can reduce assembly hours by machining entire parts out of 1 block of metal rather than build them up from plates and angles riveted together, but what you save in riveting labor you lose in increased machining time and cutter wear, and make a LOT of scrap.

I'm not sure how it works in aerospace, but in car manufacturing the design process never stops. As soon as a new model is finalised, they immediately start on the design of the replacement model. There is no stop-start for the design teams and this gives excellent continuity of experience/knowledge. This 777-X just seems to full of stop-starts, and that creates havoc.

I actually work on the 777x program in everett. We have like 20 aircraft just waiting for engines and finishing. We also build the legacy and X 777’s on the same line

I loved building the 767's from 1997-99 in Everett. Whilst robots don't come in hungover to work there's things only humans can do.

The problem with the A330 wasnt per se that it was old, it was down to the fuselage diameter not being scalable enough. The A346 was the ultimate stretch of that A300 fuselage diameter and it was just never competitive in capacity to other models available, especially given how much it caused the weight to rise to almost 400t. The A330 manages to keep the weight down to under 250t, so it can efficiently transport that lower number of passengers (the A343 somewhat did too, which is why it has remained in service for a bit longer than the -600). The A350 fuselage allowed Airbus to go to 9 abreast with a reasonable seat width, which let them get within reach of the capacity of the 777 without having to make an absurdly long fuselage and it keeps their weight down to under 280t, 100t less than the 346. Overall it's basically the "peak" evolution of tuning an aircraft that fits in the 65m wing box, the 777x has needed the folding wings to be able to be heavier and have the extra capacity without sacrificing efficiency as it would have if the wing span was 65m.

I'm involved in the Part 25 certification (which is the engine/airframe combo) for the engine supplier as my day job. The GE9X is a beast of an engine!

Fun fact: Iraqi Airways had a 747 SP since the 1970s as part of its Boeing fleet, often used by its government and its head of state at that time for official and semi official flights.

The lengthening design and manufacturing process in aircraft mimics what has happened in the industrial process industries over the last 20 years or so. Projects that used to take 4 years now take 5-7 years from initiation to startup, and the costs have escalated similarly. Engineering effort has often doubled on a per unit basis, and often the industry is baffled by "why". Having been involved, there are reasons that make sense, like increasing complexity and novel parts. But I fear one of the big reasons is that the modern digital tools being used make it too easy to make changes and make it too easy to proceed with design details without making the necessary decisions earlier that will avoid rework. I would argue that these digital tools have also reduced the fundamental understanding that engineers once had, and that increase risk of all kinds.

The original 777 also had a folding wingtip option which was never ordered by any airlines so it was dropped.

A number of clarifications: 1) The static test airplane is always a write-off and was never planned for being used in-service. I had the opportunity to be in the test room for this test, but passed on the opportunity to a junior engineer to gain experience. 2) The pace for the program is really based upon the ability of the engine manufacturer to develop and test a new engine. However, the program also benefited by having more time to conduct pre-production trials on the composite wings and work-out the bugs on the wing layup automation, which was an expensive lesson learned from the 787. It is understated how much the GE9X engines is a technological leap with 3D printed (additive manufacturing) components, a overall pressure ratio of 60, and a bypass ratio of 10:1. In comparison, the Rolls Royce Trent XWB on the A350 has a pressure ratio of 50:1 and bypass ratio of 9.8:1. 3) The delays at this point are a direct fall-out from the knowledge gained from the 737Max accidents where there is new understanding of pilot human factors and the need to scrutinize system safety analysis at an airplane level rather than on a changed subsystem basis. The 737Max accidents essentially caused a reset to the entire certification timeline for flight deck and systems, with the added difficulty of the industry having to decide what the new rules should be and how to verify them as well. 4) The robotic fuselage program FAUB was introduced initially on the 777-300ER/777F production line; the 777X program was not dependent upon it.

Though I had retired from piloting for a decade now, I can still recall the sometimes stressful effort needed to maintain good airmanship which invariably would require a good restful/sleep period to be in top form for the next fight. I am say this because I am amazed, in fact very amazed, that you still have all these energy to put these video together with such a depth of information. I SALUTE YOU, for giving us old dogs the opportunity to continue keeping in touch with flying and sniff out those juicy insider info that spices your brilliant videos. Congratulations to a job well done both in the air and on YouTube!