Over the past couple of years, several fired Boeing engineers including former phantom works and 40 year Boeing vet Vince Weldon - a man who literally played a key part in making the moon landing possible, who designed critical components on the 727, Apollo vehicles, and space shuttle- vehemently opposed the lackluster testing that has been done to the Boeing 787. He holds degrees in aerospace engineering and is a composites expert, having worked with composites for over 20 years. Weldon joined Boeing in 1960, in what was a 46-year career with the firm. He was first involved in the wing design of the Boeing 727 airliner, a design that incorporated high-lift devices such as triple-slotted flaps, which enabled the 727 to be one of the first jet aircraft capable of operating from relatively short runways.In mid 1962, he was assigned to the Apollo program, where he designed the support and release system for the lunar module. He also designed a new thrust structure for the Apollo service modules’ main engine, which would be 100% stiffer, yet not increase the weight of the service module.While working in collaboration with the RAND workshop, it was Weldon's research that showed titanium would be better than Inconel as a honeycomb structural material for building metallic Trans-Atmospheric Vehicles (TAVs) and X-33 spacecraft. Later, Weldon became the Senior Aerospace Engineer at Boeing Phantom Works research center.Part of his complaint was about a partial scale drop test of a partial 787 fuselage compared to a full scale test in 2000 done on a 737 fuselage. He and other colleagues make strong arguments that upon impact the plastics are brittle and do not bend like metal, therefore they shatter, not absorbing nearly as much of the impact as metal planes do. Weldon and others claim the 787 can shatter, and on top of that burn with extremely toxic fumes and create sharp inhalable carbon fiber slivers, and cause a calamity on the ground in what would otherwise be a survivable incident in a metal plane.To make a more direct comparison between the crash performance of a plastic fuselage versus a metal one, Weldon had called for the 787 tests to mirror the details of a drop test done in 2000 on a 737 metal fuselage section — dropping onto concrete a complete circular fuselage section with stowbins overhead and instrumented crash-test dummies in the seats."While there are merits in conducting a full-scale test, there are other approaches using tests and analysis that can actually yield more data than would a single test," the FAA responded.- This statement is manipulative and makes no sense. Let me rephrase what the FAA really ment- "While there are merits in conducting a full-scale test, there are other approaches using tests and analysis that can actually yield more data than would a full-scale test," the FAA responded.- I hope you can pick out what the FAA criminally did here in the statement, they changed “full-scale” to “single test” deceptively changing the entire sentences subject and original predicate.- What could possibly “Yield more data” than a full-scale test? Full-scale tests are the most thorough and complete tests you can possibly conduct.Other concerns about the questionable 787 include lightning vulnerability, toxic smoke, and severe impact shocks from crashing. Rather said his show doesn't determine whether Boeing or Weldon is right. But referring to the e-mails from Weldon's peers, he said, "There are others who are still within the company who are concerned ... that Boeing could be destroyed by taking the 787 to market too soon and brushing aside these safety concerns too cavalierly."Given the extraordinary credentials and work experience this American hero has, I cannot believe that Boeing is taking a huge risk on their very future and people’s lives by non chalantly waving off all of his well substantiated concerns and complaints. This is not the first time a company has cut corners for profits and fired its dissenters. Yet to do so is simply criminal negligence of the worst kind.

We will hear more on this when something bad happens. People will go back and ask why they didn't listen...

this stuff keeps coming up every few months over the last five years. it is old news. '... burn with extremely toxic fumes ..." i love this one. so we don't need to worry about the fumes from the jet fuel, plastics and fabrics in a metal, or carbon, plane?same concerns about 'new' and 'differen't said about the 707 and the 747 ... and when the when the wright brothers rolled their contraption out of their bicyle shop.this 'death and distruction' stuff is only in the news again because the press wishes to paint airbus and the A380 as a 'death trap'. same story as when the press went after the DC10 in 1979.--

The original post looks like a cut-&-paste from another source - without acknowledgement or attribution. I tend to discopunt anonymous reports like this.

[deleted] Eh, not worth it.

post your comment in a public forum Tom Norton.--

Uh Oh better take back all those Cirri, Premiers. They will explode!

This controversy has been on going for quite a while now. Maybe some of it is politically driven? I'm hoping most of it is simply fear mongering on Weldon's part but I'm no aerospace engineer, just a BS in pro. aeronautics... I'll leave the comments to the grown ups! :(

Sounds to me like someone wants to destroy a 200 million aircraft for the sake of completeness. Is it neccessary probably not, will it be done.. after every other possible test.