Hot on the heels of Airbus' problems with the A380s and cracks in the wings, comes Boeing with their own version of the problem:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...uter-shell.html



Makes me leery of flying either until they've been in service for a decade...

not to worry
this one is right around the corner...

Chinese airliner

Cheers,
Slug

If the quality of their airplanes is like everything else they make, they'll be falling out of the sky left and right.

Chinese quality control is at whatever level the customer (meaning the store chain purchasing agent) wants it to be. Outside of the realm of $50 microwaves and $200 computers, a surprising amount of top quality stuff is also made in China...and the buyers and factories have come to an agreement about having high QC on this product or that. For instance waterproof breathable jackets. Or high end microwaves.

The thing is, we buy so much stuff at the cheap end, that we only typically look at the Made In China label after it breaks and say "huh, figures", without considering that the steering gear in your car is ALSO made in China! And it doesn't break. Also note that despite the cheap stuff occasionally breaking, we still buy cheap stuff made in China...otherwise Walmart would have disappeared decades ago.

Airbus has an assembly plant in China. Do you really think they'd compromise the quality of an A320, just because it's being made in China!? No.

China IS the world's factory floor, not just for low quality cr@p, but for higher end stuff too. And if it's got a "Made in Germany" or Made in USA" stamp on the product, but it's made of many components, I'll bet the components are likely made in China.

I´m pretty sure all other aircrafts in the past had also some problems once in service. But back in time there wasn´t the internet spreading everything around the world within minutes.

The F-18's Canada bought as the CF-18 had cracks appearing early in service...yet nearly thirty years later we are still flying the same airframes, and hard.

Worn and cracked parts of airframes get removed and replaced, sometimes cheaply, sometimes at great expense. But some cracks appearing doesn't automatically mean a plane is doomed.

Well, if you're scared of cracks, don't EVER fly a 737 again! I have a couple of friends who are 737 mechanics, and I've visited the maintenance facility a couple of times. Like they say, "remember, everything has been made by the lowest bidder"

Agreed 100%, but then we are talking large int'l corp which have decades of top-notch engineering know-how, strict QC, and generally good anti-corruption practices applied here.
Not matter how much i "love" China, I don't get fooled with it comes to screw-up opportunities. Domestic government-owned corporations are of hotbed of problems with so many greedy & clueless fat cats.
Happened to tainted infant formula, high-speed trains, kindergarten shuttle buses and much more. Why not airliners?

Cheers,
Slug

Agree with what both Sluggish and Rick say. Given proper execution of the project, there is no reason why China should be unable to build a perfectly safe and reasonably economical short-haul airliner. That said, the dress-rehearsal in the shape of the MD-90 derived ARJ21 regional jet isn't going particularly well (delays may have come to be endemic in the industry over the past decade, but it's still very unimpressive). For comparison, the all-new (including new tooling and bespoke engines) Russian Sukhoi Superjet started final assembly of the prototype at roughly the same time, but flew half a year earlier, entered commercial service last year and has just been awarded Western (EASA) certification. Meanwhile the ARJ21 with its off-the-shelf CF34 powerplant has STILL not been cleared by its native authorities and is reportedly struggling to reach that goal, even though the Superjet didn't manage to adhere to its original schedule either.

The jury is still out on Chinese airliners, IMHO.

I remember seeing one of our 727s turn off a high speed and shed a set of outboard flaps on the taxiway. I am sure there were cracks somewhere. I had flown the same plane the day before; I hope it wasn't something I did.