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Fact or fiction....... All 787 Dreamliners should be grounded, Boeing whistleblower says By Kathryn Mannie Global News Posted April 17, 2024 10:02 am 4 min read A Boeing whistleblower is urging the planemaker to ground all 787 Dreamliners currently in operation around the world after warning that the long-haul jets could “fall apart at the joints.” Sam Salehpour, a quality engineer at Boeing, went public with his concerns about the Boeing 787 and 777 jets last week. In an exclusive TV interview with NBC Nightly News, Salehpour doubled down on his allegations and called for all Dreamliners to be pulled from service and checked for small gaps in the fuselage. “It’s as serious as I have ever seen in my lifetime,” Salehpour told NBC’s Lester Holt, adding that he would not put his family on a 787 jet. “The entire fleet worldwide, as far as I’m concerned right now, needs attention. And the attention is, you need to check your gaps and make sure that you don’t have potential for premature failure.” Salehpour claims that Boeing took shortcuts while building the 787 and 777 jets to save money and reduce bottlenecks during the assembly process. He says sections of the main body, or fuselage, of the 787 Dreamliner are not fastened together properly and that little gaps exist where the parts are joined. Under the stress of repeated flying, the fuselage could break apart mid-air, he warned. “The plane will fall apart at the joints,” he told Holt on Tuesday. When Salehpour initially went public with his concerns, he said he saw Boeing mechanics using excessive force to push sections of the fuselage together “to make it appear like the gaps didn’t exist,” during 787 assembly. Under normal manufacturing procedures, small pieces of metal, called shims, are inserted into gaps to fill space. But Boeing allegedly cut corners by not always inserting these shims. Allowing such gaps to be unfilled could, over time, allow sections of the fuselage to move relative to one another — drastically reducing the lifespan of the plane. As the aircraft undergoes thousands of trips, the stress on the joints could one day “cause a catastrophic failure,” Salehpour said. The engineer claims that when he raised these issues internally with Boeing, they retaliated against him and moved him out of the 787 program to work on 777 jets. There, he says he witnessed similar unsafe assembly practices that he claims also jeopardize the safety of the 777. “I literally saw people jumping on the pieces of the airplane to get them to align,” Salehpour said at the time. Salehpour filed a formal whistleblower complaint to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in January, around the time Boeing came under intense public scrutiny when a door plug blew off a Boeing 737 Max 9 plane mid-air during an Alaska Airlines flight. The FAA said it is investigating his claims, as the agency does with all whistleblower complaints.nes plane mid-flight found in Oregon backyard Boeing says it is fully confident in the 787 Dreamliner, adding that the claims “are inaccurate and do not represent the comprehensive work Boeing has done to ensure the quality and long-term safety of the aircraft.” The company is also “fully confident in the safety and durability of the 777 family.” Boeing held a media tour at its South Carolina manufacturing plant on Monday, where reporters heard from two top Boeing engineers who defended the structural integrity of its aircraft. Production of the 787 had previously been halted by the FAA for nearly two years, starting in 2021, after this exact problem of small gaps existing where plane parts had been joined was raised to the agency. In order to regain FAA approval to deliver new 787 planes to customers, Boeing stress-tested the jet for 165,000 takeoffs and landings, far beyond the recommended lifespan of the plane, and found no evidence it would fail. The company says it also inspected 689 of the more than 1,100 787s in service worldwide, NBC reports. 2:57Business Matters: FAA says Boeing can’t increase 737 Max production until quality, safety culture improved But Salehpour contends that Boeing never fixed the fuselage issue, and instead concealed it from the FAA. Eventually, in 2022, the FAA allowed Boeing to continue delivering new 787s. Lisa Banks, one of Salehpour’s lawyers, says she’s heard from half a dozen other potential whistleblowers who have similar concerns with Boeing’s safety practices. “I think some of them will come forward, but frankly, they’re terrified,” she told NBC News. As for Salehpour, he says he’s “at peace” with himself “because this is going to save a lot of people’s lives.” Salehpour is set to address a U.S. Senate subcommittee on Wednesday to discuss his concerns about Boeing’s safety practices.
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some use diesel, others JP8 and jp5. In addition, 68-ton tanks require a lot of fuel. US Deputy Defense Secretary Laura Cooper called Abrams a "gasoline guzzler." It travels only about a kilometer on almost 4 liters of fuel. The US Army fuels its M1s with jet fuel, while other countriesʼ militaries put cheaper diesel into their Abrams.Nov 30, 2023
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Skip to main content BREAKING NEWS: 9 suspects arrested in Toronto airport gold heist TORONTO Nine suspects arrested in $24M gold heist at Toronto Pearson International Airport: Peel police Published April 17, 2024 4:01 a.m. MDT Pearson airport gold heist: Police announce 9 arrests | CTV News Nine people have been arrested in connection with the gold heist at Pearson International Airport(opens in a new tab) last year, Peel Regional Police said Wednesday. The arrests were announced at a news conference on the one-year anniversary of the heist. Download our app to get alerts on your device(opens in a new tab) Get the latest local updates right to your inbox(opens in a new tab) Police said the suspects face a combined 19 charges and Canada-wide warrants have been issued for the arrest of three other suspects. RELATED STORIES Suspect used fraudulent document to steal $20M in gold during heist at Toronto airport: lawsuit What we know and don't know about the $20M heist at Toronto Pearson Police to announce arrests in Toronto Pearson airport gold heist During a news conference on Wednesday morning, police said 6,600 gold bars were stolen from Air Canada’s cargo facility on the evening of April 17, 2023 by a suspect who arrived to the warehouse in a five-tonne truck. The gold had been shipped to Toronto from Zurich in the hull of an Air Canada plane and was offloaded to an Air Canada cargo facility shortly after landing at Pearson Airport that afternoon. Six pure gold bracelets worth an estimated $89,000 were recovered as part of an investigation into a gold heist at Toronto Pearson airport and are displayed in this image from Peel police. (Handout) Police allege that the suspect came into possession of the stolen gold after presenting Air Canada personnel with a fraudulent air waybill. “The air waybill was for a legitimate shipment of seafood that was picked up the day before,” Det.-Sgt. Mike Mavity, the major case manager for the joint investigation, dubbed Project 24K, told reporters on Wednesday. “This duplicate air waybill was printed off from a printer within Air Canada cargo.” Mavity said a forklift arrived a short time later and loaded the stolen gold and foreign currency into the back of the truck.
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Also, don't all U.S. military vehicles use the same fuel for simplified operations?
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Yes, because if it was a SeaKing and it landed, it would probably be unserviceable
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I’ve refueled a helicopter from the deck of a ship while it was hovering over me… believe me, you cast a glance upwards occasionally!
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Yes and no. Yes, it’s fake. No, they wouldn’t be looking up. The dust storm a helicopter that size would create would have everyone trying to bury there head somewhere where the Sun doesn’t shine.
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Do you share Kip an Seeker's pov or ?????
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Arrests made in $24M gold and cash heist at Pearson, Peel Regional Police announce Police will provide details about the arrests on the one-year anniversary of the case that saw 400 kilograms of gold and $1.95 million US in cash stolen from a warehouse at Pearson airport Tue Apr 16, 2024 - The Toronto Star By Andy-Takagi - Staff Reporter On the one-year anniversary of the robbery of $24 million in gold and cash from an Air Canada warehouse at Pearson International Airport, Peel Regional Police and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms will announce the details of arrests made from their joint task force, Project 24K. Officers from the joint task force will hold a press conference at 8:30 a.m. in Brampton to “announce details and arrests made concerning the theft of gold from Pearson International Airport,” according to a press release. One year ago, on the evening of April 17, a man presented a phoney waybill to Air Canada staff at a warehouse off to the side of Pearson International Airport. That person, according to court documents filed by Brink’s, then walked out with 400 kilograms of gold and $1.95 million USD cash. Since then, police have made scant statements, the whereabouts of the money and gold have remained a mystery and a multimillion lawsuit over responsibility for a lapse in security is before the courts. It’s not the first gold theft at Pearson nor the strangest robbery in Canada. How did it all happen and what happens now? Here’s what you need to know on the one-year anniversary of the infamous Pearson airport gold heist What happened in the Pearson airport heist? It took Peel Regional Police three days before holding a press conference to announce its investigation into the $24 million worth of gold and cash that was quietly carted away from Toronto’s Pearson Airport. The Greater Toronto Airports Authority, which runs Pearson airport, was quick to distance themselves from the incident. A spokesperson told the Star that the thieves had accessed the public side of a warehouse leased out to a third party, later revealed to be Air Canada, and that the heist did not involve Pearson airport besides the theft’s geographic proximity to the robbery. “Our investigators have got their eyes open to all avenues,” Insp. Stephen Duivesteyn of Peel police told reporters at the time. “We really don’t want to make an error and sort of focus on one particular area. We’re kind of keeping a broad outlook on it.” Experts later told the Star that the heist was likely a methodically planned out professional job that may have had inside help, and that if police did not recover the stolen gold and cash quickly, it could be gone forever. Brink’s sues Air Canada for the gold heist Most of the details of the heist come from the Brink’s lawsuit against Air Canada, which it filed in October 2023, alleging the airline was “reckless” and failed to properly secure the company’s precious cargo. The company’s Oct. 6 claim has not been tested in court. According to the claim, Valcambi SA, a Swiss precious metal refinery, and Raiffeisen Schweiz, a Swiss retail bank, contracted Delaware-based Brink’s to transport the gold and cash from Zurich to Toronto. Brink’s booked the shipment on board flight AC881 using AC Secure, a special service for handling valuable cargo for which the airline charges higher fees. The flight landed at Pearson shortly before 4 p.m., and the shipments, which police have said were in a container about five to six square feet in size, was deposited at an Air Canada bonded warehouse at the airport about two hours later. According to the statement of claim, at around 6:32 p.m., “an unidentified individual gained access to AC’s cargo storage facilities.” That person allegedly presented Air Canada personnel with a “fraudulent waybill,” and the airline employees released the gold and banknotes to them. In a statement of defence, Air Canada fired back, denying the allegations made by Brink’s and claiming that the company had not taken out insurance on the valuable cargo. “Brink’s Switzerland Ltd. elected for its own reasons not to declare a value for carriage and to pay the standard rate for the AC Secure services product and, to Air Canada’s knowledge, elected not to insure these shipments,” the airline said in its statement of defence. “Brink’s Switzerland Ltd. did so of its own volition and while fully aware the consequences.”
- Yesterday
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As Kip says - totally fake. No downdraft and, I don't care who you are, if there's a helicopter hovering 6 feet above you - YOU'RE LOOKING UP!
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Malcolm, that initial photo is pure FAKE.......I may be retired but not without some left-over aerodynamic knowledge...not a breath of wind evident .......courtesy helo or weather
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why would they be looking up? more important to keep an eye on the fueling hose Fake or perhaps just something beyond retired personal experience?
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Seeker started following Air to Ground Refueling,
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That and the fact that not a single one of 6 dudes is looking up at the massive helicopter hovering 6 feet above their heads!
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The "Capture" above is very misleading. Choppers DO NOT hover while refueling tanks. Not a real big deal as the helos land, the tanks drive up and are fueled . It is actually called ADGF (Air Delivered Ground Refueling) The give away in the photo is that there doesn't appear to be any downwash....
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Its obvious they don't have a carbon tax!