Is this a sign our civilization is in technological decay and we're losing our ability to build advanced machinery?
The Airbus A380 went through a multiply-delayed process, for example, and had some pains entering into service (a pattern of engine problems revealed after a Qantas A380 had an oil leak followed by fire and disintegration of a turbine disk in one of its engines). The Boeing 777 had to have a heat exchanger in its engines redesigned. Airbus' timetable for the A350 is all out of whack. And I could go on and on...
You're hearing about "problem after problem" because new airliners are high-profile media targets, and most reporting treats delays and post-launch problems as being somehow unprecedented, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.
A modern airliner such a vastly complicated machine that it's simply not possible to create an error free design. The best you can hope for is a safe enough design and competent enough operators to be able to bring the craft safely to ground in the event of a flaw. Combined with a competent regulator in the FAA, I would say that the system is working as designed.
I might be an optimist, but I would have no qualms whatsoever about hopping on one for the first flight after they're allowed back in the air.
Being a long-term Washington resident, I've grown up hearing about Boeing's problems. In the past, though, they were supply/demand issues, like airline order demand, union negotiations, massive layoffs, etc.
2.) No.
a) Fuel economy: drove the primarily composite structure (causing much angst during development), drove using the lighter weight lithium batteries which is the current issue, etc. A 20% fuel improvement is incredibly ambitious goal (I say is because last I heard they were still falling short, although still remarkable at ~15%(?)).
b) Cost (sharing): drove the huge number of outside contractors, all or most of whom invested a substantial amount of their own money in the pieces parts that they designed and built for the 787.
c) Schedule. Total miss. The schedule was predicated on no major problems... in hindsight the (a) and (b) BHAGs guaranteed the schedule miss.
Back then before Boeing got all the trouble they had with the immense outsourcing, this approach was seen as THE way to go in supply chain management for highly complex products. Some parts of EADS still used the B787 programme as a model of suppliers and contract management last year. After Boeing was obliged to buy out a couple of there joint-ventures and suppliers.
Completely agree on the fact that the Dreamliner wanted to much things at the same time.
I only beg to differ on the "not enough QA" part. I don't exactly know how Boeings QA looks like, but assume that aerospace QA is more or less similar in the western world since everyone is dealing with the FAA and JAA in one way or the other. And from my experience it's not "not enough" QA but the wrong QA.
In some parts of supplier related QA the point was reached where people cared more about paper work and certificates (to the point where the use of ";" instead of "," in a text field blocked whole deliveries for days) than the actual part. And further assume that the paperwork of what ever part in flying piece of tech that failed was ok. Downside is, the more time QA spends on paer work the less time QA spends on assuring the parts are good.
Not that this is a probale cause for the battery issue on hand, so.
Yeah, that's probably why we (as in, humans) were able to build the largest plane ever with the A380. Talk about decay.
The A380 is in active construction with 92 delivered of 262 ordered.
Interesting for comparing. Largest has a variety of definitions though (length, wingspan, height (silly measure), capacity, passenger number etc. However that Antonov seems to be the winner.
Although they really screwed up this outsourcing thing, I find it hard to believe their engineering would have slipped so much (since e.g. the 777).
Edit: I've also wondered if the airlines are over-emphasizing issues in order to use them as a bargaining chip for more planes.
There was also an issue with the wing resonating, which they fixed by putting trim weights in the wing of the 747-100 made of depleted uranium.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/747-Creating-Worlds-Adventures-Aviatio...
Essentially, they coupled an ambitious design with untested materials and an insane plan by management to outsource far more work than they had ever outsourced before, going so far as to outsource the design and blueprints for individual pieces to external contractors, leading in the end to a clusterfuck in which nothing fit together and contractors had no incentives to perform efficiently because in the worst case Boeing would simply have to buy them wholesale to fix supply issues.