What's new
USCHO Fan Forum

This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

  • The USCHO Fan Forum has migrated to a new plaform, xenForo. Most of the function of the forum should work in familiar ways. Please note that you can switch between light and dark modes by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right of the main menu bar. We are hoping that this new platform will prove to be faster and more reliable. Please feel free to explore its features.

Business, Economics, and Taxes: Capitalism. Yay? >=(

Status
Not open for further replies.
Yeah, this is definitely a case of an airline bowing to sensationalist media pressure.

Engines can be significantly younger than an airframe and even older airframes are still flying cargo around every day. My company has 747s flying that are older than that 777.
 
Not to mention, who cares how old the airframe was? It sure sounds like this failure initiated in a fan blade (i.e. part of the engine) and engines are changed out all the time - so how old was the engine? And even within engines, individual fan blades are replaced all the time - so how old was this particular fan blade?

It certainly wasn't from 1995!



I have a dumb question. Do they (well, you) keep redesigning engines for old airframes, or do they (you) keep building new engines of the same old design for them because they were designed as a package deal?

Are engines R&D or O&M?
 
I have a dumb question. Do they (well, you) keep redesigning engines for old airframes, or do they (you) keep building new engines of the same type for them because they were designed as a package deal?

Are engines R&D or O&M?
It’s a combination of all three AFAIK. New engines of the same type built by the same manufacturer, engines that have been rebuilt and refurbished, and new designs put on older airframes to comply with new regulations for things such as noise.

Engines definitely wear out faster than airframes and they’re more susceptible to damage from things like bird strikes and FOD.
 
It’s a combination of all three AFAIK. New engines of the same type built by the same manufacturer, engines that have been rebuilt and refurbished, and new designs put on older airframes to comply with new regulations for things such as noise.

Engines definitely wear out faster than airframes and they’re more susceptible to damage from things like bird strikes and FOD.

Yeah, it can get very complicated. Most of the time, engines for large commercial transports are "CFE" (customer-furnished equipment, as in Boeing's customer - the airlines). That is, the airline buys an airplane from Boeing, but then buys the engines directly from GE, Pratt & Whitney, CFM, Snecma, whoever. Like buying a fishing boat from one dealer and your outboard from another dealer. The airlines have tended to prefer that arrangement over the years, because then they can compete the engine suppliers against each other for every unique purchase (spares, parts, replacements, etc), rather than having a one-size-fits-all deal with Boeing as the middleman.

However, the FAA issues a "type certificate" (the license needed to fly an aircraft in US airspace) to an entire aircraft, including engines. So when the aircraft is initially designed, Boeing would certify the initial design with as many engine options as are "demanded" by the airlines, so that would be Kepler's R&D side - the airplane + engine is a package deal. Maintaining the engines and replacing them as they wear out (with new copies of those same designs) is then up to the airlines (the O&M side).

Airplanes do get "re-engined" all the time to extend life, meet new environmental/noise restrictions, better fuel economy, etc. (re-engining is industry jargon that definitely refers a new engine design, not just a 1-for-1 replacement with a new engine of the same type). Theoretically, a single airline could commission a new engine design and apply to the FAA for an "STC" (supplemental type certificate) to certify that new airframe+engine combination, but that's generally too expensive for a single airline to take on, and they don't have the same expertise (no laughing!) that Boeing does in working with the FAA. So in practice, what happens is that a group of airlines would go to Boeing and say, "we'd really like a better engine," and if there is enough market demand (i.e. we promise to buy XX more airplanes if you get this STC for us), Boeing would take on the task of obtaining the STC, which would then allow the airlines to buy new airplanes with that new engine installed (still CFE) and also install that new engine on their older airplanes.

Having said all that, the engine suppliers are incredibly incestuous, too, and there are lots of joint ventures, partnerships, etc, out there, not to mention licensing agreements to manufacture each others' designs. You may very well buy a GE design that has been re-badged as P&W or vice versa, but underneath it all, it has to be an engine of a "type" that has been certified by the FAA for use with that airframe.

Edit: military side is a little different, since in that case the "customer" (the military) owns the airplane design, the engine design, and everything else. On most programs, the military engines are "GFE" (government furnished equipment), same as CFE is for commercial, but since the military themselves is ultimately responsible for the safety of the design, they can go commission a new engine any time they like. The military is currently going through one of the most hotly contested re-engining programs in a long while, for B-52s. There are only 76 of them, but they have 8 engines each, so it's a big prize for the engine companies:

US Air Force launches contest to replace the B-52 bomber’s engine (defensenews.com)
 
Last edited:
There's also a big difference in responsibility and media exposure between flying pax and flying pallets of cargo. If a 30+ year-old 747 nosedives into the middle of the Pacific and it's full of cargo, you might feel bad for the families of the pilots, but it's barely a news story. When any passenger flight has an emergency, even if the pilots handle the situation perfectly and no one is harmed, our beloved 24/7 Disasterathon TV networks MUST cover it from every angle, interview the biggest Karen they can find on the pax manifest about her experience, etc.
 
I get what you are saying...but part of the engine fell in a dude's yard. That is kind of a big deal. And since Boeing is not that long off from having serious issues and being grounded I guess I dont see how it is being overblown.

If this was some report that got leaked which really had no basis in anything I would be with you. In this case...not so much. What if someone died from that piece hitting their house? (Donnie Darko!)
 
Donnie Darko was the first thing that popped into my mind when the plane news hit

MilkyOrganicAlaskanmalamute-size_restricted.gif


I havent watched that film in years might be time!
 
On the topic of taxes, got my docs together to drop off at accountant. Yikes.

it may be hard to meet people in a pandemic but looks like I may be getting right royally fucked by the government shortly
 
I get what you are saying...but part of the engine fell in a dude's yard. That is kind of a big deal. And since Boeing is not that long off from having serious issues and being grounded I guess I dont see how it is being overblown.

If this was some report that got leaked which really had no basis in anything I would be with you. In this case...not so much. What if someone died from that piece hitting their house? (Donnie Darko!)

Reading around a bit more, it sounds like the big concern is the PW4000 engine. Those engines are specifically on the 777 used by United and JAL. A 777 in Japan with the same engine apparently suffered a failure in December. A Dutch cargo plane with a smaller version of the same engine also had an engine failure a few days ago resulting in debris raining down. There is a pic of a fan blade stickit out of the the roof of a car allegedly. Can't say I fault anyone for grounding planes with those engines currently.
 
I’ll second the engines are separate concept with a story. My company owns a lot of jets. We don’t own many engines. Not anymore. We used to buy complete aircraft from a certain Windy company. But we apparently took it in the pants once when we didn’t realize you need meticulous records once you sell the thing. Well, we didn’t maintain the records so the aircraft were essentially worthless.

So we started buying jets and leasing the engines. Now, here’s where it’s gets funny. The jets have such a long backlog, corporations and private parties are willing to do a lot to jump the line. Oftentimes we are able to sell the jets at a profit.

So yeah, we buy the jets direct and lease the engines from one of the companies (can’t remember with 100% certainty which one). It’s a little more expensive but it completely offloads the need for us to maintain the mountain of records and preserves the value of the plane itself.
 
Last edited:
I’ll second the engines are separate concept with a story. My company owns a lot of jets. We don’t own many engines. Not anymore. We used to buy complete aircraft from a certain Windy company. But we apparently took it in the pants once when we didn’t realize you need meticulous records once you sell the thing. Well, we didn’t maintain the records so the aircraft were essentially worthless.

So we started buying jets and leasing the engines. Now, here’s where it’s gets funny. The jets have such a long backlog, corporations and private parties are willing to do a lot to jump the line. Oftentimes we are able to sell the jets at a profit.

So yeah, we buy the jets direct and lease the engines from one of the companies (can’t remember with 100% certainty which one). It’s a little more expensive but it completely offloads the need for us to maintain the mountain of records and preserves the value of the plane itself.

Makes total sense - the FAA *is* awfully nosy when it comes to engine maintenance. Picky...picky...picky. <winky emoji>
 
Reading around a bit more, it sounds like the big concern is the PW4000 engine. Those engines are specifically on the 777 used by United and JAL. A 777 in Japan with the same engine apparently suffered a failure in December. A Dutch cargo plane with a smaller version of the same engine also had an engine failure a few days ago resulting in debris raining down. There is a pic of a fan blade stickit out of the the roof of a car allegedly. Can't say I fault anyone for grounding planes with those engines currently.

Sounds like the media overblowing it to me ;^)
 
On the topic of taxes, got my docs together to drop off at accountant. Yikes.

it may be hard to meet people in a pandemic but looks like I may be getting right royally ****ed by the government shortly

I did mine...and yeah I was about to get prison raped but thanks to a screw up by my college forcing me to pay for a semester of my MBA classes I qualified for an education credit so I got saved. Owe the state though...

My parents got dinged pretty bad and they really don't have the money for it.
 
I did mine...and yeah I was about to get prison raped but thanks to a screw up by my college forcing me to pay for a semester of my MBA classes I qualified for an education credit so I got saved. Owe the state though...

My parents got dinged pretty bad and they really don't have the money for it.

So what is this the result of, the stimulus payments, unemployment, something else?
 
So what is this the result of, the stimulus payments, unemployment, something else?

Can't be the stimulus since they aren't clawing back overpayments.

Most likely culprit will be withholding issues since Trump's IRS constantly issued standard withholding tables that withheld too little to make people "feel" richer and spend more. So if you didn't manually ask your employer to withhold more, you'll have a big hit this April. The cap on state and local tax deductions also hurts since it will lower a lot of people's itemized deductions or switch many people to instead take the standard.
 
Last edited:
So what is this the result of, the stimulus payments, unemployment, something else?

Stimulus and unemployment...I was expecting it because I had been on unemployment before and knew what the Stimulus really was. I was prepared...they didn't pay attention enough to me when I told them what was coming.

I have to do the GFs soon and hers could get real interesting. (as much as taxes can be interesting)
 
Can't be the stimulus since they aren't clawing back overpayments.

Most likely culprit will be withholding issues since Trump's IRS constantly withheld too little in the standard withholding tables to make people "feel" richer and spend more. So if you didn't manually ask your employer to withhold more, you'll have a big hit this April. The cap on state and local tax deductions also hurts since it will lower a lot of people's itemized deductions or switch many people to instead take the standard.

This hurt a little bit for them as well. The tax cut my dad loved so much bit him just like I told him it was going to.

The problem is my parents are on SS and my dad works part time. (my mom can no longer work but gets unemployment because of the extensions) Lots of little things added up.

For me it was unemployment mostly.

They aren't clawing back overpayments but there was definitely a change in my return when I put in what I got for the Stimulus. I don't remember what it is because I filed it already and don't care anymore but something is baked in there.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top