General Electric’s GE9X engines has been officially certified to power the B777X.
After some delays which had initially delayed the first flight of the B777-9, as well as reporting multiple issues with various parts of the engine, such as excessive vibration and accelerated wear in certain parts of the engine, GE has overcome those issues and had the GE9X officially certified by the FAA.
Whilst I’m personally not a big fan of Boeing, this is a step in the right direction to hopefully see them back on track, producing planes up to a good quality, devoid of issues which may arise. If there is anything, the board of directors at Boeing would be expecting to see a plane with less faults than the B787 and B737MAX which were plagued with issues right from the first delivery up to today.
If there is anything to go by, I thoroughly hope that there another aircraft manufacturer that could come onto the scene to push the other to create even better planes.
The 787 has been a pretty troubled plane. Battery fires, manufacturing problems lately, reports of tools left in parts of the aircraft after production, lots of engine problems problems. That’s just the big ones. The 787 has had its share of problems.
Engine thrust issues due to crystalisation behind engine blades (GE)
Fan blade wear (RR)
Fan unbalance resulting in engine not being able to be restarted (GE)
Erroneous airspeed indicators in certain weather situations
Aft fuselage joint issues
Horizontal stabiliser issues
I think the issues speaks for itself. The plane has been plagued with issues and I hope that there can be something that could be done to prevent any future issues. It’s sad to see planes that are brand new go through so many issues which are at many times very very dangerous (fires, for example).
My guess was that the plane would have to fly under a testing program that was pre-planned with the FAA to gain the official certification. Prior to that I am sure that the FAA would have signed it off to allow it to fly for testing, but not for officially ferrying paying passengers.
Wow. Didn’t mean it that way 😂 What I was trying to say was that hopefully the 777X doesn’t have problems and that I didn’t think the 787 had many problems because I never heard of that many listed. lol