You can repair composites. The issue that Boeing had to solve for the 787 wasachace wrote:Well at least a bit of old fashioned sheetmetal work should fix most of the problem.
Good job it isnt a 787. What then?
1) Detection of damage in the field rather than having to bring it to a service hangar
2) Damage tolerance - minimize crack propagation until it can be detected. Supposedly they solved that with some nifty new chemical invention.
Of course, I don't think they need to look very hard to assess whether this 747 was damaged.
