B787 Dreamliner: Preparing for the Type Rating

The 787 is a twin-engine widebody from Boeing, with its first flight in 2009 and entry into service in 2011. It comes in 787-8, 787-9 and 787-10 variants, fitted with GEnx or Trent 1000 engines depending on the airline. Its structure makes extensive use of composite materials.

This design allows for cabin pressurization at a lower altitude than on older aircraft, a comfort benefit for passengers that has no direct bearing on handling but does shed light on the systems architecture.

On most airliners, some of the air bled from the engines is used for pressurization and anti-icing. The 787 does without this: pressurization is provided by electric compressors, and wing anti-icing is also electric. The brakes, too, are electric.

As a result, the electrical chapter becomes the heart of the aircraft. You need to understand the role of the engine and APU generators, the lithium-ion batteries, the distribution system and the backup source, and what remains powered when a source is lost.

The 787 has fly-by-wire flight controls and is flown using a control column and wheel, in keeping with Boeing's philosophy. Its control surfaces are actuated by three hydraulic systems — left, center and right: remember what each one powers and how the aircraft compensates for the loss of one of them.

As with any modern aircraft, learn the flight control degradation modes and their effects on protections and maneuverability.

The 787's alerts are displayed on the EICAS, and checklists are consulted on screen. The underlying principle remains the same for any failure procedure: identify, action, assess the consequences, decide on the continuation of the flight.

For an aircraft so dependent on electrical power, generation, distribution and battery failures are priority topics: think through the cascading consequences and the resulting limitations.

Start with electrics, since it underpins everything else, then move on to pressurization and air, anti-icing, hydraulics, flight controls, fuel and the landing gear. Work through question sets chapter by chapter, read the explanations, and go back over your mistakes.

Set aside time for limitations and memory items, then do a mixed-chapter question set: it resembles an actual check and reveals which links between systems you have or haven't understood.

If you're preparing for a check with a specific operator, ask them for their list of topics: airlines each place their own emphasis on their own procedures and their own aircraft versions, and it's better to devote part of your time to that than to revise everything at the same level of detail.

On the 787, questions often start from the electrical system: which source powers what, what happens to pressurization when a generator is lost, which loads are shed first. Examiners expect you to connect the chapters, since many functions depend on the same sources.

As always, it helps to answer in a fixed order: what I observe, what I action, what this changes for the rest of the flight, and what I decide.

Plan for thirty to forty minutes. Spend ten minutes reviewing a chapter, say electrics, then do a question set on that chapter alone and read all the explanations. Finish by redrawing the architecture of the sources and the distribution system, and noting the three points that gave you trouble.

Once a week, do a mixed-chapter question set: on an aircraft this integrated, it's the errors in the links between systems that reveal what still needs consolidating.

The first pitfall is revising air and pressurization as you would on a conventional aircraft: on the 787, these functions run through the electrical system, and the failure logic follows from that. When answering a question about a pressurization failure, think first about the electrical source involved, then about the knock-on effects.

The second is learning the systems separately: on this aircraft, an electrical distribution failure affects several functions at once, and check questions readily combine them. The third is neglecting the batteries and the backup source, which are nonetheless central to the system's safety logic.

In the ATPL's Type Rating tab, the 787 has question sets organized by chapter, in English as its documentation is, along with illustrated courses that follow the aircraft's systems.

These question sets are training tools: they replace neither your aircraft's manuals (FCOM, FCTM, QRH) nor your airline's documentation, which alone are authoritative. ForAllPilots is an independent site, with no affiliation to manufacturers, airlines or authorities.