Video Transcript of Tim Neale
LISA: Ok, well thank you very much for meeting with us. I sent you a list of areas that
were going to discuss but maybe you could tell us who you are, what you do and how
long you’ve been there?
TIM: Yea, so I work for Boeing and I’ve been there for almost 17 years this summer.
I’m in the communications function for them. My current job is here in Washington so I
follow a lot of the public policy issues and speak for the company on those issues and
write about them and so forth.
LISA: Ok, great. So, our project is about mostly composite aircraft and we know that
composites have been in aircraft for a long time but you know they’ve gone from being
five percent of an aircraft to now more than 50 percent, in aircraft such as the Boeing
787. Could you talk a little bit about the advanced usage of it, in general, and then we’ll
get more specific?
TIM: Sure, yea so we’ve actually been using composites for several decades. We’ve
been using them for various parts of airplanes. For example, in the tail, the empennage,
which is the horizontal and vertical stabilizer. We’ve used them in military aircraft as
well. The 787, is a big leap forward in the sense that literally the entire fuselage, the
wings, and the tail surfaces are all composite. So by weight, it’s about 50 percent of the
airplane. The rest of the structure is made of things like aluminum, steel, titanium, but in
terms of surface area, it’s, people call it an all composite airplane because it literally is all
the surfaces that a person would see looking at an airplane.
LISA: Ok, great. Could you actually explain to us what composites are in layman’s
terms?
TIM: Yea, so there called composites because they’re a combination of materials. In the
case of, there are different kinds of composites. In the case of the 787, what they are is
carbon fibers and these carbon fibers are woven together, in various forms and then they
are lined with resin and they become very hard, as a result. But, at the same time, they are
very very light.
LISA: And, could you now kind of compare that to aluminum or titanium; the other
materials that have been used?
TIM: Yea, well composites are lighter than metals. And, um, we have found, to be very
very durable and robust and strong. And, that has allowed us to do a lot of things. Not
just save weight in the airplane. It’s for example, allowed us to cut bigger windows out,
which is nice for the passengers. They don’t corrode like metals do and that really is an
advantage for airlines because they have less maintenance to do over the years,
especially, as a plane gets older. From the passenger’s standpoint, besides bigger
windows, you can, with a stronger fuselage; you can increase the amount of pressure
inside the cabin. So that compared to an aluminum fuselage, when you’re flying at
altitude, the atmosphere inside the plane is roughly the equivalent of the atmosphere in
Aspen, CO. So, it’s high in the mountains, which makes it a little bit harder for people to
breathe. And, what we can do with the new composite structure is lower that cabin
altitude. The pressure is higher but the cabin altitude is lower so you feel like you’re a
few thousand feet closer to the ground inside the plane. That really should make you feel
better over long distance flights. We can introduce additional humidity into the cabin too
so you don’t get as dried out during the flight. And again, that’s because you don’t have
the corrosion problem that you have with metal. So, lots and lots of advantages from the
passenger standpoint. The big thing for the airline is less maintenance and fuel savings
because it’s so light.
LISA: So speaking of fuel savings, we’ve been doing a lot of research, and a lot of the
research says a big driver in not only in the manufacturers creating, mostly using more
composites in an aircraft, but also in the airliners and military purchasing them. What role
did cost savings play versus environmental pressures?
TIM: Actually, from the very beginning of aviation, airlines have always wanted better
fuel efficiency. That’s become even more important for them in recent years because fuel
has gotten more and more expensive. Now it represents 40 percent of their operating
costs and its something they can’t really control. You know, they can renegotiate labor
contracts, um; they can play off manufacturers, like Boeing and Airbus, to get a better
deal on a plane. But, fuel cost is something they have very little control over. So, today
it’s more important to them than ever. The good news is that the track aligns perfectly
with what environmentalists would like to see over emissions; and not just
environmental, the general public. The better miles, mileage per gallon you get with your
jet, means you’re burning less fuel and therefore emitting fewer carbons into the
atmosphere. So, it really is a win win situation. The 787 will save about 20 percent on
fuel burn compared to the planes it’s replacing. That’s a big leap, not totally due to the
composites, there’s also more efficient engines on the plane but composites play a big
role. And, that also means 20 percent; it’s a one to one correlation. Twenty percent
reduction in emissions, as well. So, going from point A to point B, you burn 20 percent
less fuel and emit 20 percent less carbon into the atmosphere.
LISA: That’s very interesting…You talked a little bit about how the 787 has the
composite fuselage. What kind of problems and dilemmas did you face in creating the
aircraft?
TIM: Well, we had a lot of experience with composites so we had a very good
understanding of the various characteristics of the composites. Their strength. Their
weight. Their durability. Their weight, of course, things like that. I’d say the thing that
probably needed to mature before we could do the 787 was, how do you efficiently build
such large structures out of composites? And, I think that’s finally what has come
together in recent years; that has allowed us to do what we’re doing. You always have to
be conscientious to what a transformation like this is going to do to the cost of building
an airplane and therefore the price you have to charge. Because, if it’s too high, no one is
going to buy it even though it provides fuel savings. You have to have a really, good
strong value proposition for the airlines at the end of the day.
You know, when you’re building small structures it’s a lot different than building these
huge barrel sections. The 787 is a twin aisle airplane so it basically is taking the place of
the 767. What we do basically, is we take these carbon based materials and they are
mixed with resin and they are actually woven over a giant metal tube that is the size of
the fuselage and then they are baked in a giant oven to get very hard. All of this tooling,
as you can imagine, is very expensive. We had to close the business case and figure out
the procedures that would allow us to economically manufacture the airplane and make
multiple copies, month after month and year after year for years to come. So that was the
chief challenge.
LISA: Having the business plan to be able to afford the cost and sell the plane?
TIM: It was really…the challenge was figuring out the manufacturing part of the
equation. We knew that once it was built the carbon fuselage would be terrific and have a
lot of advantages. The question was how do we build these giant composite structures in
a cost effective way and in a way that allows us to keep reproducing it over and over
again efficiently.
LISA: We’ve also read that composite structures are self -healing. They are self healing, which is a benefit, but could you expand upon what that means? Also, if you
could touch upon whether it’s hard to detect when there is damage and if this is a safety
issue? We are not sure how accurate this is or if our readings are referring specifically to
certain aircraft, like military aircraft or commercial. Could you just speak to this a little
bit?
TIM: I had never heard the term self-healing before used with these composites, with the
787, but knowing you were going to ask about that, I also double-checked with people
who are involved with the manufacturing of the plane and they had never heard of it
either.
I’m not sure who is using that term. What we know is that the materials are very very
robust and very tolerant of damage, more so than an aluminum fuselage. So they really
do very well with the normal kind of dings and bumps, those don’t cause any damage that
would be of concern. You can literally hit these things with a hammer and you will see
zero damage, and hit it hard with a hammer and see no damage. So they are very, very
robust. Having said that, with every airplane we deliver, design and deliver, design and
deliver, it comes with a big maintenance manual and that includes a lot of periodic
inspections and information on how to repair things, etc. And so this plane is no different
in that sense. The airlines will do visual inspections. They will also do what they call
non-destructive testing and those are technologies that have been around a long time.
Things like ultrasound, so they can peer down into the materials. So if you did have some
damage, which typically occurs on the ramp with a catering truck. Occasionally, it’s not a
common occurrence, but occasionally airplanes that are taxiing will bump into each
other. For that kind of damage, you know the tools exist to fully assess how extensive it
is and then based on that there are repair techniques that are recommended.
LISA: So you said, if you hit it with a hammer, you won’t see anything. Does that mean
there is no damage if you don’t see anything? Say two planes in the process of towing do
bump, would that damage be visible or is that a time when you would use the ultrasound?
TIM: Well, it depends on how hard they bump. The airlines, typically if something like
that happened, where you had some kind of collision with a gate, or a truck or some other
plane, even if it wasn’t visible, I think they would be employing other inspection methods
just to make sure. Because that’s an incident where you know something has happened so
you have a reason to go look, visually, but also to use other tools, if you feel that it was a
significant enough of a bump or a collision. With an aluminum structure, just as part of
normal maintenance, because of corrosion and very very tiny cracks that you may not see
with the human eye, these non-destructive inspection techniques are employed regularly
during those type of inspections. With the composite fuselage, because it’s so tolerant of
damage and because it doesn’t have the corrosion problems, you actually, airlines will
actually be able to do less maintenance than they do on an aluminum structure. That was
of great interest to the airlines too because besides the 20 percent fuel savings, we
estimate they are going to save about 30 percent on maintenance throughout the life of
the plane, which is huge.
LISA: Before I forget, you mentioned military aircraft. Do you all have any mostly
composite aircraft from the military? Does that make sense?
TIM: Yes, we do build military aircraft in St. Louis. We build the F18 and the F15.
Those were programs that were originally McDonald Douglass and then when the
companies merged they became Boeing programs. We also build helicopters, military
helicopters and various others. The C17, which is a military plane that is used to carry
troops and materials, so actually we have a lot of military products and composites have
been used in them in various ways. None of them have a completely composite fuselage,
so that’s the big difference with the 787.
LISA: So my question, which you answered in the process, was did the development of
the 787 come from any of your testing with your military aircraft? But, like you said, this
does not seem like the case.
TIM: Although I would say, probably because we’ve been using composites in the 757,
767 and especially in the triple 7 [777], that experience with commercial airplanes was
probably the most significant learning’s for the 787. The 787, I don’t remember the exact
percentage, but it had quite a bit of composite structure.
LISA: Could you talk a little bit about the certification process of getting new aircraft,
such as the 787 made of mostly composite material approved, compared to the 737 or an
aircraft that has been out for a while?
TIM: So you know the basic certification process doesn’t really change because the way
it works is the FAA determines requirements that you have to meet. So, just as an
example, a twin-engine airplane, we have to demonstrate that if one engine goes out on
takeoff, that the plane can still fly on the other engine and do a circle and come back and
land safely. So they establish requirements like that. So in the materials world, it would
be requirements that relate to its strength. We do things like bend the wings up when we
build the first prototype. There’s a lot computer simulation that goes on in the design
process and we are always pretty confident that the design is so good that the wing isn’t
going to break until you put X amount of pressure on it. But then, we actually do break it,
we bend them and they bend way, way, way up almost until they are touching before they
break. So the FAA establishes those requirements that you have to demonstrate, strength
or ability, etc. Now, there are sometimes special conditions that apply to the sur process
and there were some with the 787 because we were making a lot of changes. A lot more
electrical systems on the plane, not just the composites. They will look at what you are
planning to build and they will say, “well here’s a special condition that requires a
requirement you didn’t see before and you have to meet that.” It’s a well thought out
process.
LISA: Can you think of the specific requirements that were related to the composites of
the 787 that were added to the certification process?
TIM: I don’t know what they were.
LISA: Do you know where we might find this. We could probably find it online
somewhere, I am just curious.
TIM: The FAA certainly would know.
LISA: Yes, we have been in touch with them too.
TIM: And, what kind of limitation they are going to have and all that kind of stuff but
there’s basic codes they want them to meet. So, if the skyscraper needs to be structurally
sound, in 100 mile and hour wind, or it’s probably greater than that. It’s the same thing
with airplanes, and they um, that’s why they do all these tests. We have to prove that it
can land in a heavy crosswind safely. We have to prove, we go out and we flood
runways, with an enormous amount of water and show that you can still land in that and
still stop before you get to the end of the runway. Those are the requirements and that’s
what we test for.
LISA: How do the test pilots feel about that?
TIM: That’s why test pilots have the reputation that they have.
LISA: How do test pilots wives feel about that – or husbands?! I don’t know about that.
YU: How much does it cost to run tests? It seems that it costs a lot with everything.
TIM: Yea, um, I don’t know. I mean its million of dollars to do in the certification
process. We fly the planes all over the world, we find special conditions, we take them to
high altitude airports, we take them to airports where the temperatures are really low, we
go to places like Montana where there are really strong winds and Iceland, you know,
Peru. We are literally flying the planes all over the place to prove that there safe even in
extreme conditions.
LISA: And, don’t you have a certain number of hours an aircraft can fly before an
aircraft can get put into service?
TIM: You know, I’m not sure.
LISA: I read an article that said, um, the Airbus A350 XWB, am I getting that right, ok,
they are in the process of testing. One of the articles I read recently, now they have, this
many aircraft with this many hours and they have to meet this many hours in order to fly.
But, I assume it’s the same for Boeing, for any commercial airliner.
TIM: Well because our plane has to be certified by the FAA but it also has to be certified
by EASA [European Aviation Safety Agency], which is the European equivalent and vice
versa. The agencies through the years have tried to harmonize their rules to make it more
efficient.
LISA: Which is helpful…So I just have three more questions. In 2012, the government
accountability office sent out a report identifying for concerned areas of mostly
composite aircraft. “Standardization of repair materials and techniques”, “Training and
awareness”, “Technical issues related to the unique properties of composite materials and
limited information on the behavior of airplane composite structures.” Could you discuss
that a little bit?
TIM: Sure.
LISA: How many factors?
TIM: So the GAO, first they also look at the certification process, agree and it occurs at
certain process, and they give FAA and aid for that. They did raise some issues and they
all relate to the in-service maintenance and repair. And the good news is that Boeing and
the rest of the industry and our customers and the FAA, we are actually already working
on that. It's the same kind of issue that we would be concerned with, and so we’ve got a
formal group that involves not only manufacturers and airlines, but also the FAA, and
also people from repair stations, independent repair stations. Cause some airlines do all
their own maintenance, and others, they contracted it out to repair stations. So this group
is meeting, and its basically identifying best practices. As I said, when we deliver the
airplane, we deliver it with a maintenance manual. But then all of the airlines and the
maintenance shops, they customize that to their own operation. So we’ve got a new type
of airplane in the system, and there will be more and more out there, in the years ahead,
of a lot more people working on them. So we totally agree that you want standardized
practices, you want to inject best practices in the system. So all that has been worked.
LISA: So as there is such a broad concern about the lack of knowledge of behavior of
composites and not enough people trained, I assumed that each airline, the purchase of
the airplane, takes care of the training. What about the lack of knowledge on behaviors?
TIM: Yes, so we actually do have really good knowledge of composites, but they have
been panels and tailpieces, etc. until this point. So we don’t have until very recently, inservice knowledge of an all-composite airplane, or one that is mostly composite; the
entire fuselage and wings being composite. So that’s new, although what is not new here
is that we always know that we’re going to learn things when planes are in service, and
that has been true from the earliest stage of aviation. So we never leave the airplane. We
know wherever our plane is, it, wherever it’s sold, it is still in service, even if it changes
owners through the years. And there is a terrific reporting system in place, anything
happens, it comes back to us and we analyze to see if there is something unique to that
airplane or if it is something that has implications for the broader fleet which we then
addresses with service bulletins. We also share with the regulators, who in turn do their
own analysis and if they decide they need to mandate the action, that they do that through
an airworthy instructive. So it’s a tried and true system that works very well through the
years, because we all recognize that despite all of the testing analysis you do up front,
when they get in service they are flying day in and day out, making landing and taking
off in all kinds of weathers and stuff, we are going to learn more about the airplane. We,
the manufacturers not only want to help our customers, but as we learn things, we crank
the mean to designs and production. We call that continuance and improvement of
product, because unlike a lot of electronic products where they become obsolete in two
years, an airplane is out there for 25, 30, 35 years. So you are producing it for a long
time, and we don’t want to say well, we built our new airplane in 1985 and we are done.
You know in the years that follow, we want to keep improving it.
LISA: So it is always evolving.
TIM: Yes, it is evolving.
LISA: On the phone you mentioned, we talked about a fire in the Ethiopian aircraft, and
we also talked a little bit about the grounding of the fleet. I was wondering if you could
discuss the Ethiopian flight, and if you could explain the 787 grounding and whether or
not some of the articles we read, is all speculation. So people commenting, but I was
curious. I know it is mainly electrical; people are concerned about the composites. I’m
not sure if it was involved, could you please speak to that?
TIM: So Ethiopian, which was the first flight in Africa to get the 787, and actually one of
the first airlines anyplace to get the 787. They had an incident at the Heathrow airport. It
was on the ground, nobody was on the plane. And basically it was a component, and I
don’t remember who supplies the component. It’s an emergency locator. And it's been
manufactured for years without problems, but for some reason and I don’t know if it’s
been determined exactly what caused it to short circuit and start a little fire, but it did.
The fire did damage the crown of the airplane towards rear, and the airplane throughout
the tail. So the incident wasn’t a composite incident in that sense but it became a
composite repair issue because this was the first time, the first 787, where we had some
significant damage to the composite material. So it is a good test how well this can be
repaired. So Boeing sent a team to Heathrow, and over a period of weeks, they basically
made the plane like new again. It was a good, we were talking about learning experiences
in service, well, this was one. We were confident that even major damage to the fuselage
could be successfully repaired and this proved the case.
The battery incident got an immense amount of publicity. There were two incidents, one
in Boston and one in Japan. That had nothing to do with the use of composites. That was
related to the use of lithium ion batteries, which were chosen for the airplane because
they compared to other types of batteries, they give us a lot more power. And the two
incidents involve batteries from different parts of the plane, one was down the cargo hold,
the other was more towards the flight deck. In neither incident, was it a threat to the
airplane, when we design an airplane, we of course want all the components to be perfect
that never fail. But we always say to ourselves what if it fails, and then what.
So we always design so that with component failures or even structure failures, the
damage would be contained and wouldn’t be threatening the whole airplane. So in the
structural world, their designed with a lot of structures and strainers and other types of
structures that will hold the fuselage together, even if you’ve got a hole in it. In the
battery world, we did the design so there’s nothing around it, so if it did catch on fire that
would also catch on fire. Uh, but having said that, we recognize that people are not
comfortable with the idea that there is going to be a fire on the plane, and that will safely
burn itself out and will land safely. Even thought that’s true, we know that people are not
comfortable with that. We don’t want people smelling fumes or anything like that. So we
came up with a very very good design. The fleet was grounded for a few months and the
planes didn’t start to fly again until a new design is incorporated. Kind of a brief
explanation of that is, we did a number of thing, improvements, with our battery supplier
that makes it even less likely to get the kind of venting, short-circuiting and venting that
we had. But in the event that you did get that, it’s in an air-tight container, steel, which
means, you know, if were ever in Girl Scouts, you know that you need oxygen for heat
and fuel for fire, right? So you don’t have the air inside this box to sustain a fire. That’s a
good thing. So you can still get a venting of gases but not an actual fire. And then there is
a duct that will take the gases outside the airplane. So, a lot of improvements to make it
less likely, even including the quality insurance at the battery factory in Japan, that makes
it less likely to even get a failure of the battery. And then if that happens, things will
prevent a fire. And then if that happens, you know, the gases are safely evacuated out of
the plane. These batteries, by the way, have nothing to do with the operation of the plane
while it’s in flight. Yeah, you know, the main purpose of the battery that caught on fire in
Boston is actually to run the APU, which is a little jet engine that run up when the plane
is on the ground and give power to the plane. And the battery in the front of the plane is
just part of a back-up system. Most of the electrical power in the plane is generated from
the engines. So it’s that engine-power that has been converted into the electricity in the
plane. So…
LISA: I think most of the articles we read about composites are kind of addressing what
you spoke about with the Ethiopian example, you know, if there is a fire, you know, the
plane, the composites, you know, how would they repair that, so, that makes sense.
TIM: Yea, and the repair abilities is a huge issue for the airlines, so that we had to
convince them that this new material was very strong; and we had to convince them too
that it’s very repairable. I mean, we’ve sold hundreds of hundreds of these planes, so I
think they are very convinced. But they, they are spending a lot of money when they buy
planes so they want to make sure that if you are saying it’s going to be 20% more fuelefficient, that in fact it is going to be 20% more fuel-efficient. And not gonna have repair
issues. We work hard to analyze all those things, and we make our case to the airlines.
All of these things too, have to be certified. So even the new battery design we came up
with has to go through the certification process with the FAA and they were very
satisfied. It is a good design and we’re not seeing that kind of thing anymore.
LISA: So my final question is, if you could just tell us what’s next. What is this
technology, what Boeing has in store if you’re allowed to share?
TIM: Well, I think, I think composites are here to stay. I think we will continue to use
them more and more. Again, it gets back to the business case. So, we have two new
versions of airplanes coming out. One is the new version of 737, which is the single lineup, which will be the first one out. And then the new version of triple 7 [777]. So the 737
was already extremely efficient and there has some new engine technology, so we are
basically playing new engines inside, but we are not really changing the structure. The
triple 7 we are going to put all composite wings, and will be the biggest wing we ever
made, and will be made in composites. The fuselage will still be aluminum and its
because, to do an entirely new airplane would have cost a lot more money. And uh, it gets
to a price point where people wouldn’t buy it. So…
LISA: Would that be the ideal?
TIM: To not having more…
LISA: No no no, to have all wings in composite and the fuselage.
TIM: Well, there would be advantages to making the fuselage all composite too. Uh, but
the investment required to do a plane of that size is… is you just can’t close a business
case right now. With the wings alone, it requires a very big investment. It gives a, it gives
such a nice leap in terms of fuel efficiency for the airlines that we will be able to re-coup
that cost through what they would pay for it. You know, we just launched that last
November, and we record orders from airlines around the world for it. It’s gonna be a
very successful airplane. But as you look, in other words, in the near term we are making
so new versions of the 787 with an all-composite fuselage. We are gonna convert the
triple 7 into a slightly bigger plane with an all-composite wing. Beyond that, I think it’s
very possible that someday when we are doing a new airplane, replacing the triple 7, it
might be all composite. Same thing with the 737. The considerations are the kind of the
practical ones, again on how you manufacture it, and what it does to the overall
investment cost. You know, we, the big twin aisle jets are made usually in single digit
numbers per month. We are currently making 787 at ten a month. We’ve never made a
twin aisle airplane at that rate of production before. The 737, by contrast, I mean, we
make well over 40, at some point we may make over 50 per month. So now you are
talking about a lot of, uh, huge amount of capital investment, a lot of ovens for example,
a lot of these giant machines for laying the tape up, the composite tape and all that kind
of stuff. And then, lighter planes, the advantage of a light plane, on a short distance hop is
not as great as a long distance hop. So you know, those are the things that would be
looked at. At the end to the day, we don’t just kind of decide this on our own; we talk to a
lot of our airline customers. I mean really in-depth discussions; to make sure that will
come out something that will work for them.
LISA: Great, well, thank you so much, and ah…
TIM: I do appreciate the chance to come in and talk to you guys. The love to talk about
the company and its products and I like being here at Georgetown to talk because I went
to college here a long time ago. So, it’s been a pleasure.
YU: Thank you very much.