Wet runway landings and an assessment of how the aircraft copes with the massive spray of water kicked up by the landing gear are part of a raft of procedures that have been carried out on Boeing’s 737 MAX to assure that, among other things, its engines do not ingest water. The trials were also seeking to determine whether the APU inlet gets doused with water spray, too.
Boeing recently conducted runway tests in Glasgow, Montana, in the northeastern part of the state, which involved gluing foam barriers to the runway to create a pool containing approximately 3,000 gallons (13,638 liters) of water. Then the 737 MAX was run at close to take-off speeds through the trough.
The new element in the runway test was Boeing’s use of a drone to film the runs and the splash pattern created, and for use in later analysis to check that the critical parts (engines and APU inlet) of the aircraft were not subject to water.
January 25, 2017
