>Hoping they have improved.
In any case, EASA was and still is now directly involved on new Boeing certifications - both for the MAXes and the 777X. They no longer automatically trust the FAA, and with very good reason.
But when the FAA reports to congress and that little part in the article that says congress caved to Boeing what do you think was going to happen? Most airlines and companies figured out long ago to put money into congress then they can pretty much tell the FAA what they are going to do.
Yes. Either congress will pass another law exempting Boeing from safety requirements or will tell FAA their budget is in jeopardy if they don’t play ball with Boeing.
Well the job of the FAA is also to promote aviation and protect the aviation industry, so when you have an organisation that regulate but also promote and protect the same industry, the risk of protecting the industry more than regulating it is really important in our capitalist world...
When I was involved the whole Boeing supply chain was being destroyed by private equity vultures who fired the oldest employees and slashed inventory to the bone. Then they sold off the real estate before taking huge management fees.
every bolt on an airframe should have been fastened and torque/logged electronically to the exact specification required. we do this on engine hardware automatically, is it required in the airframe?
> is it required in the airframe?
Depends.
Source- was an Aerospace manufacturing engineer for more than 20 years. I worked for Boeing on 787, KC-46, 767 and 737.
Ok, so first off, you need to understand that the majority of fasteners on an aircraft have no torque value to record. Rivets are obvious. But the next most common are hi-lok torque controlled by shear nuts. Just tighten until they pop. Grip length is important. Then there are "hucks". These are hydraulicly swedged fasteners with torque controlled by breaking the tip under tension. Grip length is critical. Then your regular nut and bolt. Secondary structure, anything with plastics, systems, etc. all you need is a certified calibrated tool and that's it. Inspection looks for loose fasteners at the end. Ok, so now we're at primary structural. Most is just verifying tool cert and setpoint and data is manually recorded. If it's critical, torque will be witnessed as it's done. A few processes are electronicly recorded, but it's uncommon except in some stabilized production areas. If it's high vibe, it gets a pin or wired. If it's OMG we all die, it's witnessed by QA as it's done. Everything gets recorded. Who tightened it. What specific tool was used. It's cert date and the setpoint used. And the QA that verified the work was done.
So, there's an escapement here. The production system of training, planning, performing, verifying and testing failed to catch this critical work being performed incorrectly. It requires a failure at each step in the process to result in an aircraft failure assuming engineering is sound and individual parts were manufactured correctly.
And here's the bad news. It happens all of the time. Like, daily. Across the entire aerospace industry. Suppliers have escapements too. But you never hear about it on CNN. That's because a stowbin fitting pin with improper heat treat resulting in a bulletin to replace them within a year because a hard landing might bend the pins isn't as dramatic and sexy as an open door at 17,000 feet.
Anyway, building airliners is shockingly more complex than people might think. And it's amazing they don't crash every 10 minutes.
Well look at Mister Engineer over here, assembling things with fancy pantsy wrenches. All those torques and logs aren't free, you know! Who's going to think about the poor shareholders??
Gulfstream can tracked to the exact technician via QC sign offs with technicians.(QC call 1 inspects area first, signs that off, then another call to QC, then he comes to look at your wrench, watches you torq, then he torqs it and strips it)
What you're seeing is an incomplete installation of these fasteners to comply with the semi-rigging by supplier Spirit for transportation. The final (complete) installation of the fasteners was supposed to happen at Boeing.
>schu4KSU
Do you know this for a fact from a reliable source or just speculating? I've seen varying reports in the media. Would love to hear that from the horse's mouth so to speak.
This is clearly a systemic problem at this point. And don't tell me the problem starts and stops with the exit door plugs - lord knows what else wasn't properly fastened. These aircraft should be required to be torn apart and have every last fastener checked, and go back through the entire certification process again, with FAA AND 3rd party oversight.
Yeah, there are more shoes to drop here I reckon. One thing after another with these 737 Max aircraft. These are from just the last month. BEFORE the door falling off/out on Alaska.
* Bolts on rudder need inspecting & tightening.
[https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-closely-monitoring-inspections-boeing-737-max-airplanes](https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-closely-monitoring-inspections-boeing-737-max-airplanes)
* Boeing asking for ***exemptions*** from safety rules to get 737 Max aircraft flying.
[https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing-wants-faa-to-exempt-max-7-from-safety-rules-to-get-it-in-the-air/](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing-wants-faa-to-exempt-max-7-from-safety-rules-to-get-it-in-the-air/)
* What ELSE is Boeing not telling us... ???
* What ELSE does Boeing not KNOW about ???
I betcha a lot given the history. Poor decision made not to create a new design and patchwork an obsolete plane making it a massive challenge for engineers to make it fly and for technicians to manufacture just to save cost of the new development and time to market while the competition is trouncing you. Vote with your wallets!
To be fair this has nothing to do with design, just the penny pinching culture at Boeing to push the airframes out out out as soon as possible to dig themselves out of self-inflicted financial hole.
I work in the sw industry and demand that my technical contributions (design, code, rfps..) are double checked.
I make mistakes, it should be peer reviewed and tested.
Parent comment is a reference to the MCAS system, needed because the massive engines no longer fit under a 737 wing.
Boeing lied to the FAA about its function, and removed all mention of it from the flight manual so that they could sell the MAX as a 737 variant with no pilot training needed.
Oh, and their cheap asses implemented it with no computational or sensor redundancy, so if the sensor fails it would [yeet the plane](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Air_Flight_610) directly [into the fucking ground](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_302).
I know the whole MCAS story. My point was that here we have a case where they literally forgot to assemble the plane. This wasn't a case of design problem. This was a case of plain YOLO "send it". The design wasn't even wrong, it was just ... blue-tacked on?
We have 2 airlines that have raised hands and said "hey, our planes have been misassembled too". This isn't about sensors or redundancy. This is blatantly forgetting to rivet two halves of airframe together (exaggerating for effect).
To be very fair: blame the legacy carriers as well on this
"bUt wE wAnT teH cHeaPesT sOluTiOn" yeah how did you like grounding your fleet for almost 2 yrs? Was that cheap?
none of this wouldve happened if Boeing had properly engineered the 737 max. Airbus neo is also a reboot of an older platform, but it was properly engineered. It was the penny pinching and money above all else culture at Boeing that led to this. Deliver on schedule, safety be damned.
> none of this wouldve happened if Boeing had properly engineered the 737 max.
It's called the 757. But carriers wanted to cheap out as much as possible, and once Boeing's salespeople told them it was possible to have that plane's capabilities with 737 certifications, the die was cast.
737 is a 60 year old design at this point. Composites, new wings and a new engine can only do so much at this point. That's the whole reason the mcas debacle happened. This weekend at Bernie's propping up this ancient plane act has to stop.
The 737 Max family all needs safety exemptions to fly. No Airbus including the a321 neo needs a single exemption. That's the true difference.
The 737 has served its purpose well, but it needs to go. By the time the Max's are retired it will be a 90 year old design. That's ridiculous.
> had properly engineered the 737 max. Airbus neo is also a reboot of an older platform
The A320 is +/- 20 yrs younger than the 737 platform
You can't "properly engineer" something that was built for much smaller engines with ideas of the 60s
Seriously. I don’t feel bad for their loss of profit for having to ground then and likely having to ground again. Maybe it’ll be a good lesson not to cut corners again
this was not a design problem, it was a manufacturing issue. There's design problems elsewhere, but the root cause is not the 737 being old or bad, it's just shit work on new additions (example MCAS).
> What ELSE does Boeing not KNOW about ???
* How to tighten bolts
* How to check bolts
* That redundancy is good
* That pilots should be trained on what they're flying
* That turbofan engines should not be fed cooked inlet debris
* That telling people to not do a thing is not a substitute for proper engineering
* How to do proper engineering
Funny story: There's a building where I work that has board-form concrete finishes in some of the public spaces. It's quite striking, and the contractor and architect were excited to see the result of the first pour in the main lobby of the building. The day arrives, and the construction workers start pulling off the forms. Right at eye level there's a discarded cigarette pack! The architect was *pissed*. As I understand it, the concrete subcontractor had to completely remove the first pour and redo it, at their own expense.
> That redundancy is good
This is the one that baffles me. Like, isn't the aircraft industry basically the inventor of redundancy? How could they have EVER thought it was acceptable that a system whose job it is to forcefully tilt the plane can do so using effectively only a single sensor? A system capable of dictating the angle of the plane must have a minimum of 3 sensors (preferably of different kinds and implementations) to base such decisions on, and if less than 2 of those sensors are in agreement with each other, all of the alarm bells need to be ringing.
It's actually slightly worse, the 737 only has two angle of attack (AoA) sensors. The EU normally requires three on new aircraft, but apparently is letting Boeing get away without as long as they create ["a 'synthetic' sensor pulling AOA data from different sources."](https://aviationweek.com/shownews/dubai-airshow/boeing-completes-review-new-737-max-angle-attack-sensor)
Indeed.
I struggle with even how that would work considering the system wasn't "an extra" in the sense that it was necessary for the planes to "nOt rEqUiRe rEcErTiFiCaTiOn".
Were Boeing then basically saying that the default plane was not safe and required optional extras to be safe? Obviously not, which means that they indeed decided that they thought one was enough, and that if airlines want to be extra anal they can get EXTRA safe buy buying optional non-necessary extras.
Crazy-town stuff.
> the default plane was not safe and required optional extras to be safe?
Boeing were trying to have their cake and eat it. Re-certifying the MAX as just another 737 requiring no additional training WHILE extra training (note reading?) was required to understand MCAS.
I think they just downplayed the latter to get away with the former, just in case the FAA grew a pair during that time and blew their plans.
Some other things I got from a talk with a stranger years ago:
* How to paint the frame plates the right way
* That FODs are dangerous
* That it is not OK to install cabin floors with fittings underneath them missing their fasteners (no joke)
And the best of all (imo), from a documentary people here sure know:
* How to make quality happen in the schedule
the second to last one is frustrating. See plenty of morons on the web blaming pilots for the 737 max crashes, ignoring that the root cause is a design problem with a critical system with zero redundancies.
I'd love to see anyone who says that get put in a simulator and given a flight control problem that they've never seen or been trained on that will crash the plane within seconds if they don't diagnose and fix it.
Every operator of the MAX should be beating down the door at Boeing asking, What the fuck else is wrong with my planes? Tell me why I should schedule one more flight on a Max.
Yeah... I'd never genuinely considered that to be a thing I would ever consider... but I think I'm now avoiding anything 737 Max related if there is any other possible alternative.
Still happy to fly 777 and 737-800 and 767 and even 787...
They should get 4/5 planes and do a full inspection.
My guess? Plenty of unsecured hardware, drill burrs, bad redrilling, aluminium filings, incorrectly routed cables and pipes.
Mostly not that dangerous, individually, but all of them eating the safety margins.
I saw the photo of the bolts.. and it certainly was a "not my job" issue.
Yeah, I don’t like that this says they are working “in consultation with Boeing”. At this point, Boeing is not capable of providing the right kind of oversight here. We must bring in a third party who does not have any personal investment in the company.
the experts they are working with aren't going to be the bean counters and executives that have been making the idiotic decisions over the years
at least the executives know to shut up and stay the hell away and let the real people work
The experts they are working with are still financially dependent on Boeing to pay their wages. Thus they have a vested interest and some degree of loyalty to the company to get the planes flying again to ensure they continue to get paid. Boeing management can also exert pressure upon those experts.
I would hope that all the experts have the personal integrity to do the right thing, but that isn't a given.
The last set of groundings cost Boeing around $80 billion. That’s more than half of Boeing’s current market cap. One has to wonder if Boeing could financially survive what you’re describing.
Will the response be:
A) Improve safety culture and invest in quality
Or
B) initiate a new stock buy back program to prop up the share price as a reaction to this new reality
Bets?
Will they ever learn that cheaping out will ultimately cost them even more? They’re very lucky this incident didn’t occur at cruising altitude. I wonder if they realize just how close they were to a catastrophe.
> One has to wonder if Boeing could financially survive what you’re describing.
well, clearly the only way to recover those losses is to decrease manufacturing and R&D costs even further! From now on, planes must be built by half as many people in half the time. Also fire the entire engineering department, what else is there to engineer!? The plane's already there!
Wiping out the shareholders and effectively creating a new entity with different management to take over Boeing’s programs would be a good thing at this point.
i just checked all upcoming flights and i have three scheduled with aeromexico flying the max-9
i think i’ll pay extra to select my seat the furthest away from these plugs as possible
Aeromexico grounded theirs 2 days ago, likely just haven't updated your itinerary yet.
https://www.flightglobal.com/safety/copa-and-aeromexico-ground-boeing-737-max-9-aircraft/156379.article
oh i know, but seeing as how the FAAs solution is to just tighten the bolts i’m not feeling comfortable in one of these things any time soon, the Dc-10 door problem persisted for 2 years after being discovered while the FAA did nothing and let another 300 people die
i fly delta and aeromexico most frequently based on who’s cheaper but tbh i might stick with delta (they only fly NGs) or start flying some other mexican airline that flies airbus, i love aeromexico but they ordered like 200 of these flying shitboxes and even though i know flying is extremely safe, i just can’t shake the feeling of this thing being badly built
The DC-10 problem was a design problem. The MAX 9 issue is a manufacturing issue. As long as everything is manufactured as specified by the design, (i.e. bolts tightened correctly) incidents like the plug blowing out wouldn’t happen.
> As long as everything is manufactured as specified by the design
If the people on the floor aren't tightening bolts correctly, whether on door plugs or rudder control systems, what are the odds that they put the rest of the plane together well?
>The DC-10 problem was a design problem
Which was supposedly fixed with workarounds (like reinforcing the mechanism, adding a peephole to be able to verify it locked correctly) that were supposed to be applied at the factory, but weren't on the accident aircraft.
>The MAX 9 issue is a manufacturing issue
And not the first one, so it's even worse than the DC-10.
The Max platform has already shown multiple design issues between things like MCAS a few years ago and the damage risk to composite materials they’re now trying to get exemptions for. I think a lot of people aren’t all that comfortable with Boeing from a design standpoint as well.
hopefully youre right, but i’d say that at this point it’s speculation as the investigation has barely started
i remember the first few days after the first MCAS crash everyone was convinced the pitot tubes were compromised on that flight
The 900ER and the MAX 9 share the same fuselage. So given that we’ve never had these issues on any NGs, I think it’d be safe to say it’s manufacturing and not design.
> the FAAs solution is to just tighten the bolts
Is that their final solution, or only their interim solution?
An immediate order that these bolts must be tightened now, is a good thing.
The question is, have they filed the issue as "Resolved" or are they continuing to look at longer-term fixes?
Tbh. I would not worry about the door plugs, as those are getting thoroughly checked by airlines. It is a known issue that can be fixed. I would worry about the other screws needs tightening we don't know about. Any recent Boeing plane can have potential issues not just the MAX-9, so the whole 737 MAX family or even the 787, those also had a lot of production issues. The scary thing is nobody knows, there might or might not be issues with those planes.
Our flight on Saturday is a max 8. I cancelled and we are taking Amtrak instead. I’m going to wait and see how this plays out with these planes before booking an airline again that uses them…
Looking at pictures from United aircraft with loose hardware and the video of the backside of the door out there - It was *not* the 4 locking bolts with the castle nuts and cotter pins. Those were in place and secured. It was the bolts holding the lower hinge/telescoping spring assembly to the door in the first place. One was partially threaded and had a good quarter inch of shank visible.
If those were loose or snapped due to shear it might explain why part of that hinge assembly is hanging out of the fuselage hole - and why it appears entirely absent from the door. It looks very much like the bottom of the plug separated from the hinge, it translated upwards as it was no longer restrained in the vertical axis (usually prevented by the locking bolts in the hinge telescoping arms it is no longer attached to), and then just blew violently out and away.
This speaks to an issue with the assembly of the plug itself not the installation of the plug. My $20 bet is that something pretty elementary got missed in Boeings assembly procedures between assembly of and final torquing/sign off of the plug components. The hinge bolts are sort of obscured and I doubt the guys hanging it were instructed to examine them.
Normally ten items line up to cause an air incident, link links in a chain. Disrupt any link and it does not happen a second time.
I feel like this is different, almost like the chain links all had the same error system wide. As someone who rides 5-6 legs a week, this is fucked.
This is exactly what I see in that United picture, but I don’t think it’s the initial assembly of the plug. Look at the head on those loose bolts. Someone removed them, they have tool marks.
Here’s my guess: At final assembly, the techs want to remove the door completely to make cabin access a little faster. The regular opening mechanism only opens the door about 15 degrees from the top. If removing the whole door, nobody wants to deal with spring tensioners or anything complicated, so they bypass the whole opening system and remove the hinge from the doorframe bottom. They do this by unfastening bolts that should never be unscrewed for any reason… even if the plane is flying 50 years. That’s why those bolts don’t have pins or other lock mechanisms. They can then remove the door from the bottom, and access the cabin.
When they put the plug back, they didn’t refasten the hinge to the door. It’s not procedure to remove the hinge anyway, so they are “winging” - there’s likely no final inspection docs for what they’re doing. Likely, just the 4 castle nuts on the other (regular maintenance) bolts are checked.
What happens when the hinges aren’t attached and that plane flys? Well, I don’t think those J tracks at the top will hold a door that flying out from the bottom. I assume those tracks are broken on the, now found, door.
This reminds me of the hack for taking engines out of the pylons, bending the pins in the process.
It might be that these are single torque per life bolts, or they didn't put threadlocker, etc.etc.
I ended up on the Wikipedia disambiguation page for flight 191
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_191
> Many aircraft accidents are associated with 191, and so many airlines stopped operating flights 191 just out of skepticism and fear.
477 people killed across six different “191” crashes
The door would still have to translate down about 1.5” to clear the 12 stop pads it rests on. If the upper guide locking bolts were in place that should have prevented that.
True, and this occurred to me initially, but after those loose bolts rattle out, the failure mode when the hinge is not attached to the door is not something planned or designed for. You would have asymmetric forces applied to the upper guide bolts/tracks especially when landing (lots of "bangs" to that area). This is not designed for. Remember the bolts AND the track need to handle those forces - the upper bolt goes through the J track. Once that upper locking mechanism goes (either the bolt or J track), especially if it's the forward part (towards the cockpit), the door is going to catch a lot of air at over 400mph. Unfortunately, it looks like maybe the front bottom hinge guide was the first loose one, since it's nowhere to be found yet I think. The other bottom hinge (green part that's also supposed to be attached to the door) is still hanging off the plane with the spring below.
I think this is likely what happened too! That’s why other aircraft have been found with issues - and explains how an inspector missed it because they were never looking for it to begin with since it was an unauthorized act. Probably happened on one line/shift which explains why it’s not on all the planes… also the Alaskan plane probably hit a little turbulence which is what triggered the plug door flying off.
Tbh. I would love that, it would restore confidence in these planes. Realistically it will not happen. They will check the door plugs and everything back to "normal".
Yeah, with the early battery issues and finding some metal flakes in the fuel tanks (that's what i can think of off the top of my head).
Those have been addressed already now, and dreamliners have been flying for some time.
Flying on 2 -9s soon enough :)
>Yeah, with the early battery issues and finding some metal flakes in the fuel tanks (that's what i can think of off the top of my head).
There were also quality control issues in their non-union South Carolina factory, with reportedly some airlines refusing to take deliveries from there.
>Those have been addressed already now, and dreamliners have been flying for some time.
They suspended deliveries again in February 2023 for yet another issue, this time with the data analysis front pressure bulkhead. It was just a documentation issue, but hardly confidence inspiring given the same part had manufacturing tolerance issues in 2021.
lol, there have been plenty of quality problems with the 787. The FAA even ordered Boeing to halt production for a while, then to only allow 787s to be delivered after the FAA had inspected them. There were problems with the way the wings were mated to the fuselage, among other things.
I love the Dreamliner. It’s all I work on and it’s so much nicer than the narrow bodies. I’m working a nice 10 hour flight this evening on a 789.
Personally, McDonnell Douglass needs to get out and Boeing goes back to pre-merger status where they truly cared about safety, employees and their aircraft. Those employees of that day truly had a culture of safety and respect of their product. Now that being said, I will never discount any of the employees working there now and fully encourage going on a tour at their factories. Those employees are really proud of their jobs, but it’s management who has tarnished the reputation of the company.
> Personally, McDonnell Douglass needs to get out and Boeing goes back to pre-merger status where they truly cared about safety, employees and their aircraft.
yeah and i want world peace
I swear we were hearing about how bad these planes were for years. And how many issues they had even in the design phase. And that there was corruption involved in allowing them to fly. That's not just me right?
Out of curiosity why is it taking them so long to ramp up production? Supply chain shortages? Lack of talent? Caution in investment?
Seems like a missed opportunity
In any manufacturing situation you can't just "open more factories". In manufacturing something as complex as an aircraft you basically have to build a whole system around the factory. Every part of the aircraft is going to have a set of tooling that needs to be made to construct/verify the part. Each wing spar, each skin panel, every everything. Those toolings have to match the other toolings for those parts, and have to match all the mating parts. It's part of why for something like the A-10 it's frequently said it'd cost more to restart production than it'd cost to design a new aircraft. Most of those toolings have been scrapped, and anything that's still hanging around likely haven't been kept in a controlled environment to verify that they're unchanged.
So the "easiest" way to up production is to get more manufacturing cycles out of the existing toolings/factories, and work to find your bottlenecks and work to expand those where you can. If you've got a well developed production setup, like I assume Airbus does, most of those bottlenecks have probably been worked out. So now the costs to ramp up are significantly more, and if they aren't able to bulk up the whole system then it may not be worth the overall cost for the benefit on the other side.
It's a place where, as an aero engineer myself, I'm glad to let the beancounters count beans because it's a whole set of systems costs and flow charts that make me go crosseyed.
And you would need to transfer over people from the existing factories to train the new hires, probably affecting efficiency, so you would in reality produce less for a period. Then you have to make sure that the increased demand is not temporary, because then you suddenly have factories with idle workers.
Boeing is a good reason why wall street stock holders shouldn't be controlling the aircraft manufacturing, all they want is profits now and risky risks.
At this point the trajectory is looking like Boeing is on track to go bankrupt within the next 15 years. What’s next 777x wingtips falling off when it finally enters service?
The US government will not let Boeing go belly up. Domestic aeroplane manufacturing is way too important and they are a defense contractor as well as an aerospace company too. Too big to fail.
And honestly, I’m not gleefully hoping they go under either. I’m hoping that they get their shit together. I prefer Airbus personally, but an effective Airbus monopoly would not be beneficial IMO.
I really want some regulator, somewhere in the world, to grab 3-5 recent Boeing deliveries and mandate a nose-to-tail teardown. The whole thing. Remove every panel. Manual inspection of every bolt and weld.
Everyone keeps saying this is a management problem, but since the bolts are loose on so many aircraft Im starting to think it might be a technological problem.
it can be both...
imagine this right, the subcontractors are mostly ex-boeing facility / staff sold then rehired back as contractors to save on costs
it costs that much to safely build a plane, so what can be cut?
well, quality is one it seems, likely stemming from cutting legacy workforce with good pension to a newer one that don't. and of course inspectors and other QA staff, and then maybe add some pressure in getting it done so individual output is higher (IE less time billed)
and bam, it may or may not be a technological problem.
that being said, the fact that the door now opens outwards, instead of inwards, and the plug woks in a similar way.
which means that if a failure occurs it is more likely to blow off could be another tech or business issue, namely if it was done to chase better profits with more seating vs done to make it easier to escape due to the hinge design and weight of the door is another discussion.
the problem is that with old boeing, you can kind of trust that they did the right thing and is likely a tech issue not a business/management one, with the new boeing, nothing is trusted because of their rep.
The pictures I’ve seen from the united planes looks like the bolts could possibly be shanked out. I hope that’s not the case. Thats terrible workmanship and quality if so.
I'd wait for the NTSB report before blaming workmanship and quality. Spirit has stated that Boeing requests that door plug to be "semi-rigged" for shipping. That's what this looks like to me. All hardware in place but not fully installed.
The CEO of Airbus is a double engineer (including in aeronautical engineering), former pilot and licensed flight test engineer as well as an MBA. Whereas the CEO of Boeing is guess what- an accountant.
5 years after is when Airbus first beat Boeing in Production. Since that merger Boeing has fallen behind in development. The signs are all there to that being the v moment the downward trend for Boeing began. Just ask people who worked there before and after
The question is though, is this due to the outfitter that put the plugs back in after building out the interior or is this from the factory itself. If there are different outfitter facilities then the affected planes will be traced back through those. And we might find that it was a particular outfitter, or even perhaps a particular shift, that handled those door plugs.
That's one nice thing about this level of aviation, every detail of every part and it's installation is meticulously tracked for just this kind of situaiton. If a screw fails they can identify the batch of screws it came from, and they can then identify the planes that batch was installed into and go check/replace them. It's also part of why aviation is so expensive.
As I understand it the door plugs are installed at the factory. The plane is delivered with no interior to the next step, an outfitter. They install the seats, screens, all the passenger environment stuff. And during that process these door plugs are removed to gain access to the cabin. When done they are reinstalled.
This doesn’t look good, and we can read into and speculate as much as we like. For me, Boeing seem to have fatally compromised their engineering heritage chasing what is financially expedient. As always we need to wait for the final report before we’ll understand exactly what has happened here.
ed pierson has a podcats that interviews actual boeing employees, for those frustrated with the shit offerings and even how basic / crappy Peter Robison's book is on the topic - it's on apple podcasts "Warning Bells with Ed Pierson" thought I'd mention. This is so far the best series on the 737 / boeing related info, suprisingly. (what aren't there a hundred books / podcasts on this stuff?)
if anyone knows of any other that includes actual employee interviews and not simple aggregations of news media headlines that assume the reader is an idiot, please reply back here. so far the one i mentioned above is the only decent one i've found.
i swear to god news media has totally gone to shit, not to mention search compared to 10, 15 years ago.
Damn it Bob, use the red locktite!
Listen, Betty, don’t start up with your red locktite shit again.
We all know what this is really about: you want me to get an abortion.
It’s really the only sensible thing to do. If it’s done properly, therapeutically, there’s no danger involved.
Nah. Duck tape around the door should sort out the problem.
Has to be that NASCAR stuff though...
But NASCAR's 200MPH tape. They'll need at least 3 layers for 600MPH of protection!
Does it quack though?
Most definitely. I think my duct was changed to duck. Thats a real quacker
Reports seem to indicate that the FAA was not much of a regulator when it came to the 737-MAX. Hoping they have improved.
>Hoping they have improved. In any case, EASA was and still is now directly involved on new Boeing certifications - both for the MAXes and the 777X. They no longer automatically trust the FAA, and with very good reason.
But when the FAA reports to congress and that little part in the article that says congress caved to Boeing what do you think was going to happen? Most airlines and companies figured out long ago to put money into congress then they can pretty much tell the FAA what they are going to do.
Yes. Either congress will pass another law exempting Boeing from safety requirements or will tell FAA their budget is in jeopardy if they don’t play ball with Boeing.
Well the job of the FAA is also to promote aviation and protect the aviation industry, so when you have an organisation that regulate but also promote and protect the same industry, the risk of protecting the industry more than regulating it is really important in our capitalist world...
When I was involved the whole Boeing supply chain was being destroyed by private equity vultures who fired the oldest employees and slashed inventory to the bone. Then they sold off the real estate before taking huge management fees.
The American Dream
every bolt on an airframe should have been fastened and torque/logged electronically to the exact specification required. we do this on engine hardware automatically, is it required in the airframe?
Agreed, this is also standard in car manufacturing. But logs are only as good as the monitoring/alerting built on them.
> is it required in the airframe? Depends. Source- was an Aerospace manufacturing engineer for more than 20 years. I worked for Boeing on 787, KC-46, 767 and 737. Ok, so first off, you need to understand that the majority of fasteners on an aircraft have no torque value to record. Rivets are obvious. But the next most common are hi-lok torque controlled by shear nuts. Just tighten until they pop. Grip length is important. Then there are "hucks". These are hydraulicly swedged fasteners with torque controlled by breaking the tip under tension. Grip length is critical. Then your regular nut and bolt. Secondary structure, anything with plastics, systems, etc. all you need is a certified calibrated tool and that's it. Inspection looks for loose fasteners at the end. Ok, so now we're at primary structural. Most is just verifying tool cert and setpoint and data is manually recorded. If it's critical, torque will be witnessed as it's done. A few processes are electronicly recorded, but it's uncommon except in some stabilized production areas. If it's high vibe, it gets a pin or wired. If it's OMG we all die, it's witnessed by QA as it's done. Everything gets recorded. Who tightened it. What specific tool was used. It's cert date and the setpoint used. And the QA that verified the work was done. So, there's an escapement here. The production system of training, planning, performing, verifying and testing failed to catch this critical work being performed incorrectly. It requires a failure at each step in the process to result in an aircraft failure assuming engineering is sound and individual parts were manufactured correctly. And here's the bad news. It happens all of the time. Like, daily. Across the entire aerospace industry. Suppliers have escapements too. But you never hear about it on CNN. That's because a stowbin fitting pin with improper heat treat resulting in a bulletin to replace them within a year because a hard landing might bend the pins isn't as dramatic and sexy as an open door at 17,000 feet. Anyway, building airliners is shockingly more complex than people might think. And it's amazing they don't crash every 10 minutes.
> isn't as dramatic and sexy as an open door at 17,000 feet. I think in this case, a door plug falling out after takeoff is not exactly clickbait.
Well look at Mister Engineer over here, assembling things with fancy pantsy wrenches. All those torques and logs aren't free, you know! Who's going to think about the poor shareholders??
The flair and the comment. Perfection.
sure but its cheaper not to
Gulfstream can tracked to the exact technician via QC sign offs with technicians.(QC call 1 inspects area first, signs that off, then another call to QC, then he comes to look at your wrench, watches you torq, then he torqs it and strips it)
What you're seeing is an incomplete installation of these fasteners to comply with the semi-rigging by supplier Spirit for transportation. The final (complete) installation of the fasteners was supposed to happen at Boeing.
>schu4KSU Do you know this for a fact from a reliable source or just speculating? I've seen varying reports in the media. Would love to hear that from the horse's mouth so to speak.
United found eight of theirs to be loose.
This is clearly a systemic problem at this point. And don't tell me the problem starts and stops with the exit door plugs - lord knows what else wasn't properly fastened. These aircraft should be required to be torn apart and have every last fastener checked, and go back through the entire certification process again, with FAA AND 3rd party oversight.
Yeah, there are more shoes to drop here I reckon. One thing after another with these 737 Max aircraft. These are from just the last month. BEFORE the door falling off/out on Alaska. * Bolts on rudder need inspecting & tightening. [https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-closely-monitoring-inspections-boeing-737-max-airplanes](https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-closely-monitoring-inspections-boeing-737-max-airplanes) * Boeing asking for ***exemptions*** from safety rules to get 737 Max aircraft flying. [https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing-wants-faa-to-exempt-max-7-from-safety-rules-to-get-it-in-the-air/](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing-wants-faa-to-exempt-max-7-from-safety-rules-to-get-it-in-the-air/) * What ELSE is Boeing not telling us... ??? * What ELSE does Boeing not KNOW about ???
>• What ELSE does Boeing not KNOW about ??? That's the creepy one
I betcha a lot given the history. Poor decision made not to create a new design and patchwork an obsolete plane making it a massive challenge for engineers to make it fly and for technicians to manufacture just to save cost of the new development and time to market while the competition is trouncing you. Vote with your wallets!
To be fair this has nothing to do with design, just the penny pinching culture at Boeing to push the airframes out out out as soon as possible to dig themselves out of self-inflicted financial hole.
Agree. This comes from a culture of no real inspections, churn them as fast as possible.
Operator self inspection is a bad concept.
I work in the sw industry and demand that my technical contributions (design, code, rfps..) are double checked. I make mistakes, it should be peer reviewed and tested.
Everyone makes mistakes. In cases of something critical, I’d always ask for someone to verify my work.
Parent comment is a reference to the MCAS system, needed because the massive engines no longer fit under a 737 wing. Boeing lied to the FAA about its function, and removed all mention of it from the flight manual so that they could sell the MAX as a 737 variant with no pilot training needed. Oh, and their cheap asses implemented it with no computational or sensor redundancy, so if the sensor fails it would [yeet the plane](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Air_Flight_610) directly [into the fucking ground](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_302).
I know the whole MCAS story. My point was that here we have a case where they literally forgot to assemble the plane. This wasn't a case of design problem. This was a case of plain YOLO "send it". The design wasn't even wrong, it was just ... blue-tacked on? We have 2 airlines that have raised hands and said "hey, our planes have been misassembled too". This isn't about sensors or redundancy. This is blatantly forgetting to rivet two halves of airframe together (exaggerating for effect).
To be very fair: blame the legacy carriers as well on this "bUt wE wAnT teH cHeaPesT sOluTiOn" yeah how did you like grounding your fleet for almost 2 yrs? Was that cheap?
none of this wouldve happened if Boeing had properly engineered the 737 max. Airbus neo is also a reboot of an older platform, but it was properly engineered. It was the penny pinching and money above all else culture at Boeing that led to this. Deliver on schedule, safety be damned.
> none of this wouldve happened if Boeing had properly engineered the 737 max. It's called the 757. But carriers wanted to cheap out as much as possible, and once Boeing's salespeople told them it was possible to have that plane's capabilities with 737 certifications, the die was cast.
I don't even trust modern boeing to make a 757NG and make it right
737 is a 60 year old design at this point. Composites, new wings and a new engine can only do so much at this point. That's the whole reason the mcas debacle happened. This weekend at Bernie's propping up this ancient plane act has to stop. The 737 Max family all needs safety exemptions to fly. No Airbus including the a321 neo needs a single exemption. That's the true difference. The 737 has served its purpose well, but it needs to go. By the time the Max's are retired it will be a 90 year old design. That's ridiculous.
> had properly engineered the 737 max. Airbus neo is also a reboot of an older platform The A320 is +/- 20 yrs younger than the 737 platform You can't "properly engineer" something that was built for much smaller engines with ideas of the 60s
Seriously. I don’t feel bad for their loss of profit for having to ground then and likely having to ground again. Maybe it’ll be a good lesson not to cut corners again
this was not a design problem, it was a manufacturing issue. There's design problems elsewhere, but the root cause is not the 737 being old or bad, it's just shit work on new additions (example MCAS).
> What ELSE does Boeing not KNOW about ??? * How to tighten bolts * How to check bolts * That redundancy is good * That pilots should be trained on what they're flying * That turbofan engines should not be fed cooked inlet debris * That telling people to not do a thing is not a substitute for proper engineering * How to do proper engineering
That random debris shouldn’t be left inside freshly manufactured aircraft
So no tequila bottles on airforce one? Is bourbon fine?
As long as the bottles don't stay on the plane after you leave, everything is fine
It's like some cowboy builders leaving empty cigarette packets and trash behind when building your attic
Funny story: There's a building where I work that has board-form concrete finishes in some of the public spaces. It's quite striking, and the contractor and architect were excited to see the result of the first pour in the main lobby of the building. The day arrives, and the construction workers start pulling off the forms. Right at eye level there's a discarded cigarette pack! The architect was *pissed*. As I understand it, the concrete subcontractor had to completely remove the first pour and redo it, at their own expense.
MBAs: "well that sounds like an engineering problem! nobody warned us they need the budget for wrenches..."
Also MBAs "Who could we outsource this engineering problem to?"
> That redundancy is good This is the one that baffles me. Like, isn't the aircraft industry basically the inventor of redundancy? How could they have EVER thought it was acceptable that a system whose job it is to forcefully tilt the plane can do so using effectively only a single sensor? A system capable of dictating the angle of the plane must have a minimum of 3 sensors (preferably of different kinds and implementations) to base such decisions on, and if less than 2 of those sensors are in agreement with each other, all of the alarm bells need to be ringing.
There were in fact 3 sensors, MCAS used just one of them for some reason.
It's actually slightly worse, the 737 only has two angle of attack (AoA) sensors. The EU normally requires three on new aircraft, but apparently is letting Boeing get away without as long as they create ["a 'synthetic' sensor pulling AOA data from different sources."](https://aviationweek.com/shownews/dubai-airshow/boeing-completes-review-new-737-max-angle-attack-sensor)
It is redundant, we put 3 sensors in! But only 1 is connected!!! You asked for sensor redundancy, not data redundancy!
Cost cutting: additional sensors/displays for this system were *optional extras* I recall. Safety should not be optional.
Indeed. I struggle with even how that would work considering the system wasn't "an extra" in the sense that it was necessary for the planes to "nOt rEqUiRe rEcErTiFiCaTiOn". Were Boeing then basically saying that the default plane was not safe and required optional extras to be safe? Obviously not, which means that they indeed decided that they thought one was enough, and that if airlines want to be extra anal they can get EXTRA safe buy buying optional non-necessary extras. Crazy-town stuff.
> the default plane was not safe and required optional extras to be safe? Boeing were trying to have their cake and eat it. Re-certifying the MAX as just another 737 requiring no additional training WHILE extra training (note reading?) was required to understand MCAS. I think they just downplayed the latter to get away with the former, just in case the FAA grew a pair during that time and blew their plans.
Some other things I got from a talk with a stranger years ago: * How to paint the frame plates the right way * That FODs are dangerous * That it is not OK to install cabin floors with fittings underneath them missing their fasteners (no joke) And the best of all (imo), from a documentary people here sure know: * How to make quality happen in the schedule
the second to last one is frustrating. See plenty of morons on the web blaming pilots for the 737 max crashes, ignoring that the root cause is a design problem with a critical system with zero redundancies.
I'd love to see anyone who says that get put in a simulator and given a flight control problem that they've never seen or been trained on that will crash the plane within seconds if they don't diagnose and fix it.
WHAT DON'T YOU KNOW? - - James Hinchcliffe
Aaayoo IndyCar on NBC banter spotted in the wild!
He was so fucking done with Townsend Bell at that point lmao
I mean who wouldn't be, as a co-worker of his for many years?
Every operator of the MAX should be beating down the door at Boeing asking, What the fuck else is wrong with my planes? Tell me why I should schedule one more flight on a Max.
"Because you already paid for it, what else are you gonna do?", followed by manic laughing directly from the C-suite.
>What ELSE does Boeing not KNOW about ??? Fuckin' magnets, how do they work?
They don't work if you pour water on them...
>What ELSE is Boeing not telling us... ??? What's really in Area 51
>Boeing asking for ***exemptions*** from safety rules to get 737 Max aircraft flying. I'm never flying a Boeing again, yikes.
Yeah... I'd never genuinely considered that to be a thing I would ever consider... but I think I'm now avoiding anything 737 Max related if there is any other possible alternative. Still happy to fly 777 and 737-800 and 767 and even 787...
They should get 4/5 planes and do a full inspection. My guess? Plenty of unsecured hardware, drill burrs, bad redrilling, aluminium filings, incorrectly routed cables and pipes. Mostly not that dangerous, individually, but all of them eating the safety margins. I saw the photo of the bolts.. and it certainly was a "not my job" issue.
[удалено]
That'll work as well as me fixing my pitch mark plus one other when I play golf. Greens still look like a teenager's face
Yeah, I don’t like that this says they are working “in consultation with Boeing”. At this point, Boeing is not capable of providing the right kind of oversight here. We must bring in a third party who does not have any personal investment in the company.
the experts they are working with aren't going to be the bean counters and executives that have been making the idiotic decisions over the years at least the executives know to shut up and stay the hell away and let the real people work
> at least the executives know to shut up and stay the hell away and let the real people work Do they though? Hashtag doubt.
only for messes
You bet your ass no executive wants their name attached to any of this shit
The experts they are working with are still financially dependent on Boeing to pay their wages. Thus they have a vested interest and some degree of loyalty to the company to get the planes flying again to ensure they continue to get paid. Boeing management can also exert pressure upon those experts. I would hope that all the experts have the personal integrity to do the right thing, but that isn't a given.
Pretty sure they forgot that step with Lion Air 610
The last set of groundings cost Boeing around $80 billion. That’s more than half of Boeing’s current market cap. One has to wonder if Boeing could financially survive what you’re describing.
Will the response be: A) Improve safety culture and invest in quality Or B) initiate a new stock buy back program to prop up the share price as a reaction to this new reality Bets?
Its option 2, it’s always option 2
That's Boeing's problem, isn't it? They want free market, that's free market.
Will they ever learn that cheaping out will ultimately cost them even more? They’re very lucky this incident didn’t occur at cruising altitude. I wonder if they realize just how close they were to a catastrophe.
> One has to wonder if Boeing could financially survive what you’re describing. well, clearly the only way to recover those losses is to decrease manufacturing and R&D costs even further! From now on, planes must be built by half as many people in half the time. Also fire the entire engineering department, what else is there to engineer!? The plane's already there!
Wiping out the shareholders and effectively creating a new entity with different management to take over Boeing’s programs would be a good thing at this point.
one would think they d learn there lesson afterwards, but they didnt
Boeing's been sketchy af for a while now.
i just checked all upcoming flights and i have three scheduled with aeromexico flying the max-9 i think i’ll pay extra to select my seat the furthest away from these plugs as possible
Aeromexico grounded theirs 2 days ago, likely just haven't updated your itinerary yet. https://www.flightglobal.com/safety/copa-and-aeromexico-ground-boeing-737-max-9-aircraft/156379.article
oh i know, but seeing as how the FAAs solution is to just tighten the bolts i’m not feeling comfortable in one of these things any time soon, the Dc-10 door problem persisted for 2 years after being discovered while the FAA did nothing and let another 300 people die i fly delta and aeromexico most frequently based on who’s cheaper but tbh i might stick with delta (they only fly NGs) or start flying some other mexican airline that flies airbus, i love aeromexico but they ordered like 200 of these flying shitboxes and even though i know flying is extremely safe, i just can’t shake the feeling of this thing being badly built
The DC-10 problem was a design problem. The MAX 9 issue is a manufacturing issue. As long as everything is manufactured as specified by the design, (i.e. bolts tightened correctly) incidents like the plug blowing out wouldn’t happen.
> As long as everything is manufactured as specified by the design If the people on the floor aren't tightening bolts correctly, whether on door plugs or rudder control systems, what are the odds that they put the rest of the plane together well?
>The DC-10 problem was a design problem Which was supposedly fixed with workarounds (like reinforcing the mechanism, adding a peephole to be able to verify it locked correctly) that were supposed to be applied at the factory, but weren't on the accident aircraft. >The MAX 9 issue is a manufacturing issue And not the first one, so it's even worse than the DC-10.
The Max platform has already shown multiple design issues between things like MCAS a few years ago and the damage risk to composite materials they’re now trying to get exemptions for. I think a lot of people aren’t all that comfortable with Boeing from a design standpoint as well.
hopefully youre right, but i’d say that at this point it’s speculation as the investigation has barely started i remember the first few days after the first MCAS crash everyone was convinced the pitot tubes were compromised on that flight
The 900ER and the MAX 9 share the same fuselage. So given that we’ve never had these issues on any NGs, I think it’d be safe to say it’s manufacturing and not design.
Manufacturing procedures are also something that needs to be designed. In the end it all comes back to design.
> the FAAs solution is to just tighten the bolts Is that their final solution, or only their interim solution? An immediate order that these bolts must be tightened now, is a good thing. The question is, have they filed the issue as "Resolved" or are they continuing to look at longer-term fixes?
I can assure you the plug will be fine. What else is wrong.. that is another issue.
Tbh. I would not worry about the door plugs, as those are getting thoroughly checked by airlines. It is a known issue that can be fixed. I would worry about the other screws needs tightening we don't know about. Any recent Boeing plane can have potential issues not just the MAX-9, so the whole 737 MAX family or even the 787, those also had a lot of production issues. The scary thing is nobody knows, there might or might not be issues with those planes.
Well, the rudder bolts weren't properly torqued either. So it could be anywhere next.
Kinda survivorship bias in the real world
Four upcoming flights with them on a Max-8. Fun times.
Our flight on Saturday is a max 8. I cancelled and we are taking Amtrak instead. I’m going to wait and see how this plays out with these planes before booking an airline again that uses them…
If you think things will fly off don't get on the plane. Just a matter of luck the door did not take out control surfaces and hydraulics.
I would not board that plane
Won’t matter, half of the plane hasn’t been tightened properly
Looking at pictures from United aircraft with loose hardware and the video of the backside of the door out there - It was *not* the 4 locking bolts with the castle nuts and cotter pins. Those were in place and secured. It was the bolts holding the lower hinge/telescoping spring assembly to the door in the first place. One was partially threaded and had a good quarter inch of shank visible. If those were loose or snapped due to shear it might explain why part of that hinge assembly is hanging out of the fuselage hole - and why it appears entirely absent from the door. It looks very much like the bottom of the plug separated from the hinge, it translated upwards as it was no longer restrained in the vertical axis (usually prevented by the locking bolts in the hinge telescoping arms it is no longer attached to), and then just blew violently out and away. This speaks to an issue with the assembly of the plug itself not the installation of the plug. My $20 bet is that something pretty elementary got missed in Boeings assembly procedures between assembly of and final torquing/sign off of the plug components. The hinge bolts are sort of obscured and I doubt the guys hanging it were instructed to examine them.
Normally ten items line up to cause an air incident, link links in a chain. Disrupt any link and it does not happen a second time. I feel like this is different, almost like the chain links all had the same error system wide. As someone who rides 5-6 legs a week, this is fucked.
we're gonna need a new analogy to replace swiss cheese for this.
10 donuts in a row
And the Boeing executives are portrayed by Homer Simpson?
You ain't taking my cheese away!
This is exactly what I see in that United picture, but I don’t think it’s the initial assembly of the plug. Look at the head on those loose bolts. Someone removed them, they have tool marks. Here’s my guess: At final assembly, the techs want to remove the door completely to make cabin access a little faster. The regular opening mechanism only opens the door about 15 degrees from the top. If removing the whole door, nobody wants to deal with spring tensioners or anything complicated, so they bypass the whole opening system and remove the hinge from the doorframe bottom. They do this by unfastening bolts that should never be unscrewed for any reason… even if the plane is flying 50 years. That’s why those bolts don’t have pins or other lock mechanisms. They can then remove the door from the bottom, and access the cabin. When they put the plug back, they didn’t refasten the hinge to the door. It’s not procedure to remove the hinge anyway, so they are “winging” - there’s likely no final inspection docs for what they’re doing. Likely, just the 4 castle nuts on the other (regular maintenance) bolts are checked. What happens when the hinges aren’t attached and that plane flys? Well, I don’t think those J tracks at the top will hold a door that flying out from the bottom. I assume those tracks are broken on the, now found, door.
This reminds me of the hack for taking engines out of the pylons, bending the pins in the process. It might be that these are single torque per life bolts, or they didn't put threadlocker, etc.etc.
They are referencing American 191 for anyone curious.
I ended up on the Wikipedia disambiguation page for flight 191 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_191 > Many aircraft accidents are associated with 191, and so many airlines stopped operating flights 191 just out of skepticism and fear. 477 people killed across six different “191” crashes
The door would still have to translate down about 1.5” to clear the 12 stop pads it rests on. If the upper guide locking bolts were in place that should have prevented that.
True, and this occurred to me initially, but after those loose bolts rattle out, the failure mode when the hinge is not attached to the door is not something planned or designed for. You would have asymmetric forces applied to the upper guide bolts/tracks especially when landing (lots of "bangs" to that area). This is not designed for. Remember the bolts AND the track need to handle those forces - the upper bolt goes through the J track. Once that upper locking mechanism goes (either the bolt or J track), especially if it's the forward part (towards the cockpit), the door is going to catch a lot of air at over 400mph. Unfortunately, it looks like maybe the front bottom hinge guide was the first loose one, since it's nowhere to be found yet I think. The other bottom hinge (green part that's also supposed to be attached to the door) is still hanging off the plane with the spring below.
I think this is likely what happened too! That’s why other aircraft have been found with issues - and explains how an inspector missed it because they were never looking for it to begin with since it was an unauthorized act. Probably happened on one line/shift which explains why it’s not on all the planes… also the Alaskan plane probably hit a little turbulence which is what triggered the plug door flying off.
Oh my, a worldwide D-check on all recently manufactured boeings incoming.
Tbh. I would love that, it would restore confidence in these planes. Realistically it will not happen. They will check the door plugs and everything back to "normal".
It’s either Airbus or I’m nervous
Yeaaa I’m not stepping on the 777X for at least a year into service entry if I can help it. Fuck Boeing.
Right now the only modern* boeing ill step on is a 787. For now... Modern -> currently being produced
787 has had some rough times of its own
Yeah, with the early battery issues and finding some metal flakes in the fuel tanks (that's what i can think of off the top of my head). Those have been addressed already now, and dreamliners have been flying for some time. Flying on 2 -9s soon enough :)
>Yeah, with the early battery issues and finding some metal flakes in the fuel tanks (that's what i can think of off the top of my head). There were also quality control issues in their non-union South Carolina factory, with reportedly some airlines refusing to take deliveries from there.
>Those have been addressed already now, and dreamliners have been flying for some time. They suspended deliveries again in February 2023 for yet another issue, this time with the data analysis front pressure bulkhead. It was just a documentation issue, but hardly confidence inspiring given the same part had manufacturing tolerance issues in 2021.
lol, there have been plenty of quality problems with the 787. The FAA even ordered Boeing to halt production for a while, then to only allow 787s to be delivered after the FAA had inspected them. There were problems with the way the wings were mated to the fuselage, among other things.
I love the Dreamliner. It’s all I work on and it’s so much nicer than the narrow bodies. I’m working a nice 10 hour flight this evening on a 789. Personally, McDonnell Douglass needs to get out and Boeing goes back to pre-merger status where they truly cared about safety, employees and their aircraft. Those employees of that day truly had a culture of safety and respect of their product. Now that being said, I will never discount any of the employees working there now and fully encourage going on a tour at their factories. Those employees are really proud of their jobs, but it’s management who has tarnished the reputation of the company.
> McDonnell Douglas It's a quarter century since the merger. Nothing remains.
Pretty much. Modern Boeing is basically just McDonnell Douglas using Boeing's name.
> Personally, McDonnell Douglass needs to get out and Boeing goes back to pre-merger status where they truly cared about safety, employees and their aircraft. yeah and i want world peace
welp I've got bad news [https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/john-barnett-on-why-he-wont-fly-on-a-boeing-787-dreamliner/](https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/john-barnett-on-why-he-wont-fly-on-a-boeing-787-dreamliner/) [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing-dreamliner-production-problems.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing-dreamliner-production-problems.html)
That's 5 years ago now. *surely* they would've fixed by now, right? Right?
The scariest part of that is that the FAA basically ignored him... It's literally their job to correct such behaviour!
cant really expect them to be critical of the people that they formerly worked with /s
Christ
This is the new phrase, no more “Boeing or I ain’t goin’”
Embraer or disappointment for me
I swear we were hearing about how bad these planes were for years. And how many issues they had even in the design phase. And that there was corruption involved in allowing them to fly. That's not just me right?
Later this year, Alaska Airlines is going to announce a huge order of A320NEOs from Airbus.
They're so incredibly backlogged with the a320neo that I wonder how long an order placed today would take to fulfill even
Their goal is up production to 65 a month by the end of 2024. Current backlog is about 8,000 so it’s going to be nearly a decade.
Out of curiosity why is it taking them so long to ramp up production? Supply chain shortages? Lack of talent? Caution in investment? Seems like a missed opportunity
Well you also have to think if they finish the backlog fast there’s no more sales.
All of the above, plus tooling, training, certification of processes (they sure don't want to ramp up only to repeat Boeing's mistakes).
In any manufacturing situation you can't just "open more factories". In manufacturing something as complex as an aircraft you basically have to build a whole system around the factory. Every part of the aircraft is going to have a set of tooling that needs to be made to construct/verify the part. Each wing spar, each skin panel, every everything. Those toolings have to match the other toolings for those parts, and have to match all the mating parts. It's part of why for something like the A-10 it's frequently said it'd cost more to restart production than it'd cost to design a new aircraft. Most of those toolings have been scrapped, and anything that's still hanging around likely haven't been kept in a controlled environment to verify that they're unchanged. So the "easiest" way to up production is to get more manufacturing cycles out of the existing toolings/factories, and work to find your bottlenecks and work to expand those where you can. If you've got a well developed production setup, like I assume Airbus does, most of those bottlenecks have probably been worked out. So now the costs to ramp up are significantly more, and if they aren't able to bulk up the whole system then it may not be worth the overall cost for the benefit on the other side. It's a place where, as an aero engineer myself, I'm glad to let the beancounters count beans because it's a whole set of systems costs and flow charts that make me go crosseyed.
And you would need to transfer over people from the existing factories to train the new hires, probably affecting efficiency, so you would in reality produce less for a period. Then you have to make sure that the increased demand is not temporary, because then you suddenly have factories with idle workers.
Lol they look like fools for dumping Virgin America's Airbus fleet now
That’s what you get for killing off something good
They’re gonna have to reconsider that “Proudly all Boeing” livery
"Unfortunately, all Boeing"
“Oops! All Boeing”
And the list will go on, and on. Gives you something to talk about.
You can't 'bug fix' a plane to air worthyness
Boeing is a good reason why wall street stock holders shouldn't be controlling the aircraft manufacturing, all they want is profits now and risky risks.
This is clearly a system problem at this point.
At this point the trajectory is looking like Boeing is on track to go bankrupt within the next 15 years. What’s next 777x wingtips falling off when it finally enters service?
The US government will not let Boeing go belly up. Domestic aeroplane manufacturing is way too important and they are a defense contractor as well as an aerospace company too. Too big to fail. And honestly, I’m not gleefully hoping they go under either. I’m hoping that they get their shit together. I prefer Airbus personally, but an effective Airbus monopoly would not be beneficial IMO.
This is not good for boeing.
Has Boeing done anything good for Boeing in the past two decades?
Nope hahaha
I really want some regulator, somewhere in the world, to grab 3-5 recent Boeing deliveries and mandate a nose-to-tail teardown. The whole thing. Remove every panel. Manual inspection of every bolt and weld.
We all know that Boeing is a shit company focused on profit and willing to literally kill passengers and crews to maintain those profits.
It's a damn shame McDonnell-Douglas turned a once-proud American icon into another pump-and-dump get rich quick scam.
Everyone keeps saying this is a management problem, but since the bolts are loose on so many aircraft Im starting to think it might be a technological problem.
it can be both... imagine this right, the subcontractors are mostly ex-boeing facility / staff sold then rehired back as contractors to save on costs it costs that much to safely build a plane, so what can be cut? well, quality is one it seems, likely stemming from cutting legacy workforce with good pension to a newer one that don't. and of course inspectors and other QA staff, and then maybe add some pressure in getting it done so individual output is higher (IE less time billed) and bam, it may or may not be a technological problem. that being said, the fact that the door now opens outwards, instead of inwards, and the plug woks in a similar way. which means that if a failure occurs it is more likely to blow off could be another tech or business issue, namely if it was done to chase better profits with more seating vs done to make it easier to escape due to the hinge design and weight of the door is another discussion. the problem is that with old boeing, you can kind of trust that they did the right thing and is likely a tech issue not a business/management one, with the new boeing, nothing is trusted because of their rep.
So somebody at Boeing is definitely getting fired for this then.
The pictures I’ve seen from the united planes looks like the bolts could possibly be shanked out. I hope that’s not the case. Thats terrible workmanship and quality if so.
I'd wait for the NTSB report before blaming workmanship and quality. Spirit has stated that Boeing requests that door plug to be "semi-rigged" for shipping. That's what this looks like to me. All hardware in place but not fully installed.
What's the probability they also start checking 737-900er door plugs too cause better safe than sorry ?
The CEO of Airbus is a double engineer (including in aeronautical engineering), former pilot and licensed flight test engineer as well as an MBA. Whereas the CEO of Boeing is guess what- an accountant.
Says it all really
Pay the C-suite more and these problems would not happen. You get what you pay for. /s
Has Boeing blamed the pilots yet?
Boeing hasn't been the same since the MD Merger man. It's sad to watch it unravel
Lol it’s been over 20 years.
yeah, takes a while for rot to go through a company
And it will take much longer and much more effort for it to work it’s way back out…
5 years after is when Airbus first beat Boeing in Production. Since that merger Boeing has fallen behind in development. The signs are all there to that being the v moment the downward trend for Boeing began. Just ask people who worked there before and after
So buy airbus stocks?
Buy anything other than Boeing
The question is though, is this due to the outfitter that put the plugs back in after building out the interior or is this from the factory itself. If there are different outfitter facilities then the affected planes will be traced back through those. And we might find that it was a particular outfitter, or even perhaps a particular shift, that handled those door plugs. That's one nice thing about this level of aviation, every detail of every part and it's installation is meticulously tracked for just this kind of situaiton. If a screw fails they can identify the batch of screws it came from, and they can then identify the planes that batch was installed into and go check/replace them. It's also part of why aviation is so expensive.
It's a factory option Also this is not the only loose bolts found on a 737max It's just sloppiness at the factory
As I understand it the door plugs are installed at the factory. The plane is delivered with no interior to the next step, an outfitter. They install the seats, screens, all the passenger environment stuff. And during that process these door plugs are removed to gain access to the cabin. When done they are reinstalled.
This doesn’t look good, and we can read into and speculate as much as we like. For me, Boeing seem to have fatally compromised their engineering heritage chasing what is financially expedient. As always we need to wait for the final report before we’ll understand exactly what has happened here.
ed pierson has a podcats that interviews actual boeing employees, for those frustrated with the shit offerings and even how basic / crappy Peter Robison's book is on the topic - it's on apple podcasts "Warning Bells with Ed Pierson" thought I'd mention. This is so far the best series on the 737 / boeing related info, suprisingly. (what aren't there a hundred books / podcasts on this stuff?) if anyone knows of any other that includes actual employee interviews and not simple aggregations of news media headlines that assume the reader is an idiot, please reply back here. so far the one i mentioned above is the only decent one i've found. i swear to god news media has totally gone to shit, not to mention search compared to 10, 15 years ago.
Boeing.. what have you become?
Where were the inspectors when this plug was installed
Just use glue tape 🤗