Airframe Read Online Free Page A

beginning.
    "Actually," Casey said, "two months is pretty infrequent. We have three thousand aircraft in revenue service around the world. With that many birds in the air, things happen. And we're serious about customer support. So every morning we hold a conference call with the service reps around the world. They report everything that caused a dispatch delay the day before.
    Most of it's minor stuff: a lav door jammed; a cockpit light failed. But we track it in QA, do a trend analysis, and pass that on to Product Support."
    "Uh-huh . . ." He sounded bored.
    "Then," Casey said, "once in a while, we hit a problem that warrants an IRT. It has to be serious, something that affects flight safety. Apparently we've got one today. If Marder's pushed the meeting up to seven, you can bet it's not a bird strike."
    "Marder?"
    "John Marder was the program manager for the widebody, before he became chief operating officer. So it's probably an incident involving the N-22."
    She pulled over and parked in the shadow of Building 64.
    The gray hangar loomed above them, eight stories high and nearly a mile long. The asphalt in front of the building was strewn with disposable earplugs, which the mechanics wore so they wouldn't go deaf from the rivet guns.
    They walked through the side doors and entered an interior corridor that ran around the perimeter of the building. The corridor was dotted with food dispensers, in clusters a quarter of a mile apart Richman said, "We got time for a cup of coffee?" She shook her head. "Coffee's not allowed on the floor." "No coffee?" He groaned. "Why not? It's made overseas?" "Coffee's corrosive. Aluminum doesn't like it." Casey led Richman through another door, onto the production floor. "Jesus," Richman said.
    The huge, partially assembled widebody jets gleamed under halogen lights. Fifteen aircraft in various stages of construction were arranged in two long rows under the vaulted roof. Directly ahead of them, she saw mechanics installing cargo doors in the fuselage sections. The barrels 16
    of the fuselage were surrounded by scaffolding. Beyond the fuselage stood a forest of assembly jigs—immense tools, painted bright blue. Richman walked under one of the jigs and looked up, open-mouthed. It was as wide as a house and six stories tall.
    "Amazing," he said. He pointed upward at a broad flat surface. "Is that the wing?"
    "The vertical stabilizer," Casey said.
    "The what?"
    "It's the tail, Bob."
    "That's the tail' Richman said.
    Casey nodded. "The wing is over there," she said, pointing across the floor. "It's two hundred feet long—almost as long as a football field."
    A Klaxon sounded. One of the overhead cranes began to move. Richman turned to look.
    "This your first time on the floor?"
    "Yeah ..." Richman was turning around, looking in all directions. "Awesome," he said.
    "They're big," Casey said.
    "Why are they all lime green?"
    "We coat the structural elements with epoxy to prevent corrosion. And the aluminum skins are covered so they don't get dinged during assembly. The skins are highly polished and very expensive. So we leave that coating on until Paint Shed."
    "Sure doesn't look like GM," Richman said, still turning and looking.
    "That's right," Casey said. "Compared to these aircraft, cars are a joke."
    Richman turned to her, surprised. "A joke!"
    "Think about it," she said. "A Pontiac has five thousand parts, and you can build one in two shifts. Sixteen hours. That's nothing. But these things"—she gestured to the aircraft looming high above them—"are a completely different animal. The widebody has one million parts and a span time of seventy-five days. No other manufactured product in the world has the complexity of a commercial aircraft. Nothing even comes close. And nothing is built to be as durable. You take a Pontiac and run it all day every day and see what happens. It'll fall apart in a few months.
    But we design our jets to fly for twenty years of trouble-free service, and we build