United cut cockpit door workload with 3D software

NEW YORK: When United Airlines reinforced cockpit doors on its Boeing 747-400

airplanes after the Sept. 11 attacks, its engineers used a three-dimensional

software system to design and test the improvements and get the planes back in

the air in less than half the time it would have taken using a real-life

prototype.

UAL Corp.'s United has now implemented the Catia CAD/CAM software, made by

IBM and Dassault Systemes and used by more than two-thirds of the world's top 30

automakers to reduce costs and product-development times.

IBM said United will be the first major airline to use the CATIA 3D software

for engine overhauls and other maintenance work that would otherwise mean

significant downtime for testing and redesign.

United, which fortified cockpit doors on all its aircraft within about a

month of the Sept. 11 attacks, used the software to reinforce 44 doors on its

747-400 aircraft.

In late February, United said it would strengthen cockpit doors on its Boeing

777 and 767-300 airplanes even further, after a passenger tried to force his way

into a locked cockpit. The intruder was subdued with the blunt end of an ax, and

United said metal bars reinforcing the cockpit door kept him from endangering

the flight.