Whistleblower Sounds Alarm on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner Oxygen System

With the iconic plane-maker’s still unresolved problems with its widely flown 737 Max, is the Boeing 787 Dreamliner’s oxygen system problematic enough to raise a whistleblower’s concern?

By: Ringo Bones

Two days ago, a Boeing whistleblower had raised doubts and alarm over the 787 Dreamliner’s oxygen system claiming that the passengers flying on board the 787 Dreamliner could be left without life-saving oxygen in a case of sudden cabin depressurization. A former quality control engineer from Boeing named John Barnett says tests suggesting that up to a quarter of the oxygen systems could be faulty and might not work when needed. He also claimed faulty parts were deliberately fitted to planes on the production line at one Boeing factory. Boeing denies his accusations and says all its aircraft are built to the highest levels of safely and quality. With the “faulty” automatic anti-stall system of their top-selling Boeing 737 Max, is this another unresolved engineering problem that could become a catastrophic failure of the 787 Dreamliner?

Back in 2016, John Barnett told the BBC that he uncovered problems with the emergency oxygen systems. These are supposed to keep passengers and crew alive if the cabin pressurization fails for any reason at altitude. Breathing masks are meant to drop down from the ceiling, which then supply oxygen from a gas cylinder. Without such systems, the occupants of a plane would rapidly be incapacitated. At 35,000-feet (10,600-meters) they would be unconscious in less than a minute. At 40,000-feet, it could happen within 20 seconds. Brain damage and even death could follow.

Although sudden decompression events are rare, they do happen. In April 2018, for example, a window blew out of a Southwest Airlines aircraft after being hit by debris from a damaged engine. One passenger sitting beside the window suffered serious injuries and later died as a result – but others were able to draw on the emergency oxygen supplies and survived unharmed.

Lithium Ion Batteries: Not Airworthy?

With the recent fire that grounded fleets of Boeing 787 Dreamliner passenger planes due to their auxiliary power unit batteries being a fire hazard, are lithium ion batteries not airworthy?

By: Ringo Bones

Believe it or not, the world’s first all-electric powered propeller plane that has successfully flown – Calin Gologan’s Elektra One – uses lithium ion batteries as its primary power source and there are already large-scale all-electric passenger planes intended aimed for airline company use already in the works of Bauhaus Luftfahrt that will be powered with 40-megawatt-hour lithium ion batteries. Given their allegedly inherent fire hazard, why are lithium ion batteries got airworthy credentials despite the ones supplying the auxiliary power unit of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner that entered service with JAL and ANA were recently deemed a “fire hazard” in a recent Federal Aviation Administration inquiry?

As a fruit of our continuously galloping technology, lithium ion batteries are a notch above nickel cadmium and nickel metal hydride storage batteries that are a few rungs below it on the battery technology evolutionary scale. While lead acid / lead calcium storage batteries – which might work just fine for golf carts and short-range all electric cars – are deemed too heavy for aviation use. Even the nickel cadmium and those nickel metal hydride batteries used in hybrid cars just don’t have the power-to-weight-ratio requisite for general aviation applications.

The secret of the lithium ion batteries high power-to-weight ratio is its inherently low internal resistance compared to nickel cadmium or nickel metal hydride batteries of similar watt-hour ratings. Although, at the moment, lithium ion batteries seems like the ideal battery – the inherent fire hazard of its design was first noted in the remote controlled model plane hobbyist world and in Airsoft electric gun gaming world because less than ideal charging and discharging cycles in its applications always lead to the cause of hydrogen gas build-up which can be highly inflammable when it leaks and ignited by a stray electrical spark. Given its inherent fire hazard, aircraft manufacturer Airbus are already finding alternatives of the lithium ion battery planned to be used on the auxiliary power plant of its upcoming A350 plane due to the recent battery fire on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Will the next generation of lithium ion batteries intended for aviation use should be made more fire resistant or have a built-in fire suppression system? 

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner: A Flying Nightmare?

With a Japan Air Lines Boeing 787 Dreamliner recently having its auxiliary power unit’s batteries catching fire, is the new jumbo jet a “flying nightmare”?

By: Ringo Bones

Maybe its just due to the inevitable technical “teething problems” of a new product being introduced into a rather “technically conservative” market of the currently financially austere airline industry, but probably all frequent flyers still hope that the glitches currently plaguing the recently introduced Boeing 787 Dreamliner won’t result in a rather tragic crash in a near future. Unfortunately as of late, certain shaken passengers and JAL executives back in Tokyo now harbor the impression that Boeing’s latest headlining product – the Boeing 787 Dreamliner – could be a “flying nightmare”.

With a much delayed rollout that its maiden flight only happened near the tail end of 2011, Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner had been plagued by a recent spate of technical difficulties that now endanger the plane’s long-term economic viability in the currently financially austere global airline industry. There had been only 46 Dreamliners had been delivered by Boeing to its customers so far, and now, 5 of them had been grounded for thorough preventive maintenance due to the recent problems experienced by a couple Japan Air Lines owned 787 Dreamliners.

Back in Monday, January 7, 2013, a Japan Air Lines operated Boeing 787 Dreamliner’s auxiliary power unit’s batteries caught fire while waiting for its scheduled flight in Boston which resulted in an emergency evacuation of passengers and crew. A few days before, another JAL owned 787 Dreamliner’s scheduled flight was cancelled due to a fuel leak. Fortunately, both harrowing incidences never resulted in a single loss of life, but will it tarnish the image of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner as a “flying nightmare”?

It seems that every relatively newly rolled-out plane tends to experience technical teething problems during the first few years of regular service. Back in November 4, 2010, Qantas had experienced problems with the Rolls Royce Trent 900 turbofan engines used in their then newly acquired Airbus A380 Superjumbo – i.e. the Qantas Flight 32 incident. Fortunately, the problem too was resolved by the plane’s heroic flight-crew with no loss of life. Maybe the Boeing 787 Dreamliner needs new “fireproof” batteries to prevent another battery fire. 

Can the Boeing 787 Dreamliner Make Civil Aviation

Given that the recent 2009 Dubai Air Show had proved that the Eurofighter Typhoon as the fastest selling military aviation gear around, can the Boeing 787 Dreamliner make civil aviation profitable again?


By: Ringo Bones


Boeing builds bombers, a slogan that straddled both World War II and the Cold War. But in our post- 9 / 11 world, it seems like huge strategic bomber fleets are fast becoming the technological dinosaurs of the aviation world, despite of their technological sophistication. And while the recent 2009 Dubai Air Show had surprised everyone with the rather brisk sales of the Eurofighter Typhoon – probably sold with the enhanced ground attack capability upgrade as a value-for-money weapons system to neutralize “newfangled” 21st Century threats like the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Although one needs not to fly faster than 400 mph when “neutralizing” threats like Taliban and Al Qaeda. Which makes the Eurofighter Typhoon in danger of being superseded by an OV-10A Bronco type counter-insurgency plane if ever an aviation manufacturing firm successfully manages to retrofit a 1.8 metric ton GAU-8 AVENGER into one. Given that our world has drastically changed since the September 11, 2009 terror attacks on the World Trade Center Towers, is there a need for a paradigm shift in the aviation industry in order to make civil aviation profitable again?

Enter the much-awaited Boeing 787 Dreamliner, which finally made its maiden flight in December 14, 2009 after two years of delays due to machinists’ strikes over wage disputes. Touted to be 20% more fuel-efficient with 15% less maintenance costs due to the extensive use of advanced aerospace grade composites in the fuselage and wings. The Boeing 787 Dreamliner is indeed civil aviation’s latest technological tour de force that has a much longer range while burning the same amount of fuel than it’s similarly-sized aluminum alloy-based predecessors. Thus keeping ticket prices lower in comparison to inflation trends.

According to the top brass at Boeing’s main headquarters in Seattle, Washington, the 787 Dreamliner was primarily designed to service the intermediate range routes that are deemed to uneconomic for the much larger Airbus A380 Super Jumbo. With its British made Rolls Royce jet engines, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner is probably the last best hope for Boeing to get out of the company’s economic slump brought about by last year’s global recession. Though the maiden flight of the 787 Dreamliner didn’t make as much fanfare as the launch of the Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet back in 1969, which was then the largest plane in the world. Sporting four Pratt & Whitney turbofan jet engines with a large bypass ratio deemed state of the art 40 years ago, the 747 Jumbo Jet did revolutionized civil air travel to its familiar high-capacity subsonic shape of today. Boeing’s top executives still hopes that the 787 Dreamliner is the civil aviation product that could make the firm profitable again.