Dreamliner Test Engine Blows Apart

Another nightmare for the Dreamliner, Boeing's latest airliner

The Boeing Company pushed delivery of its first 787 to the middle of the first quarter 2011. It seems that a Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 test engine blew apart recently while being run on a ground-test stand at the engine plant in Derby, England, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. According to Bloomberg News, which has also been tracking the Dreamliner's chain of problems, Rolls-Royce spokesman Josh Rosenstock said that "limited debris [was] released into the test facility." which was then shut down for "minor repairs."

Neither Boeing nor Rolls appears to have sent out a press release or reached out to the media on this.Did they think no one would notice? Flight International, a weekly aviation trade publication in England, broke the story. Bottom line is that Boeing needs the engine for the aircraft's planned final test flight scheduled before year's end. No engine? No test flight -- and a further delivery delay.

"An uncontained failure in flight could potentially bring down an airplane," wrote LA Times reporter Dominic Gates, using almost military language. The first aircraft was originally supposed to be delivered in May 2008. Now, the final rest flight will mot likely be in February 2011. Bloomberg ticked off six delays, counting this, one on the delivery of the Dreamliner.The most recent mega-problem, before the engine issue, was "poor workmanship" the 787's horizontal tails built by Alenia of Italy that pushed delivery into early 2011. I'm not a buy-American fanatic, but perhaps outsourcing components of such a complicated aircraft to overseas "partners" wasn't such a great idea after all.