>>1987573>>1987588...and to answer your original question, it's hard to argue with the advantages on paper. The problem is Boeing has some real quality issues, and maintenance crews are filled with dumbasses, and it's a lot harder to tell defects with composite materials than it is with aluminum. When you laminate something, you can have issues where little air bubbles get trapped, this is called a void. Now they do all kinds of things to prevent that from happening in the manufacturing process, they literally bake these and use pressure to make these parts very strong. But in order to find these things you need to use ultrasound and it's a meticulous process. I've done it before and it's a motherfucker and you really need access to both sides. Air voids over time and with cycles of the airplanes pressurization could start to break layers apart where it's not visible to the eye outside, this is called delamination. It's when the resin between the layers of, in this case, carbon come apart. This sort of thing would grow over time and could potentially cause problems if the plane was not checked and maintained correctly. Aluminum, problems are much easier to find.
If I was building a spacecraft, or some high performance airplane that was going to get checked carefully, composites are a no brainer. But the 787 is basically a grayhound bus, so, I donno, this airplane concerns me. The manufacturers and airlines are really worried about getting the best fuel economy, so, there is no wonder they are using more and more composites, but, yeah it's a bit spooky to me.
