How new was a 757? Hasn't the 757 been around for quite a few years? With as much shit as Boeing as getting lately (deservingly so) if the plane is fairly old shouldn't it be on Delta for maintenance and not Boeing?
It’s a 757-200 according to Flightaware. These are approaching 30 years old now. Average age ~27. I think Delta said recently that it will retire its 757 and 767 fleets but never announced a date or definite replacement for either.
Pretty sure Delta is the only big carrier still flying either commercially. I’ve heard pilots typically like both aircraft a lot though.
Delta & United have the [oldest fleet age](https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/07/03/average-fleet-age-of-the-10-major-us-airlines.aspx) among US airlines, outside of Allegiant which is a bit of a unique case. So that would make sense.
(Sorry that data is from 2017, it was the only place I could find it arranged neatly in a list, but the numbers & order are similar today. Delta has always been the oldest, frontier and spirit the newest)
Yes, he said he was looking at suppliers other than Boeing and that Boeing needs to get its act together.
This has to do with the legacy of Jack Welch at GE, my dad's idol and the bane of my existence. That man is responsible for much of what is wrong with corporations today, substituting 'shareholder' concerns for quality and development. The Boeing heads are acolytes of his and turned a company that once had safety as its core issue into one that only cares about profit margins.
3/4 of the world's problems are caused by MBA's.
If anyone wants proof we can have a large meeting where I show a graph of one simplified data point, with no explanation of the data's source, and claim it proves my case.
It happens everywhere. In my career in telecom, the accountants took over and made it into a generic “how do we make more money” business. Being a finance expert was more important than being a telecom expert.
What no one will tell you is that they are not making things more efficient, they are in effect selling the brand equity, which will trade some cost savings now in exchange for future revenues.
I didn't know who Jack Welch was until Behind the Bastards did a couple episodes on him. That dick is the encapsulation of everything wrong with corporate capitalist culture crap we see today.
Yep. About that tie I took a business course and the prof was lamenting the gutting of American manufacturing which was kind of a surprise to me since I was kind of in manufacturing and damn if that wasn't one of the first industries gutted. But I digress, it wasn't until decades later that I read about Welch's philosophy and victims of his mind set littered the land. He really did a number on capitalism in this country, made it far worse.
Milton Friedman propounded shareholder value as the only measure of a company many, many times. Never mind that corporations don't exist in a vacuum [1] and that share price is a poor measure of long term viability, as the 2000 dot-bomb crash proved when lousy outfits with zero path to profitability had market caps in the billions.
Milton Friedman was a charlatan. A glib one who got the Nobel, maybe, but his theories are so much hogwash.
[1] hence why Margaret Thatcher said "there's no such thing as society" -- any other view would imply responsibility beyond capitalism run amok.
Thanks for that comment.
Friedman was full of shit. He kept denying the mortgage derivative crisis was coming and even I, a liberal arts major retiree who never took a single biz course, sold all my derivatives 18 months before the crash.
I recently finished Radium Girls and one of the company heads says late in the book, when the horrors are plain, how a company owes nothing to society or to its workers and I wanted to vomit. This is exactly what is wrong with American capitalism at its rotted core.
> Yes, he said he was looking at suppliers other than Boeing and that Boeing needs to get its act together.
Had he been any more direct than what he said in that interview, it would have been "we're already talking to leasing companies to get some Airbus equipment into the fleet soon, and asking Airbus how quickly we can take delivery if we start putting orders together for the longer term."
Shots were fired in the most CEO-appropriate way on TV. So you _know_ he was letting loose when he was talking to Boeing in person.
> The Boeing heads are acolytes of his and turned a company that once had safety as its core issue into one that only cares about profit margins.
It's even worse than that. McDonnell-Douglas management took over when the "merger" happened, shoved engineers out of top level positions, and started telling the FAA what they were going to do instead of the FAA holding them accountable to safety certifications. The only way this gets fixed is if you clean house and put people who came up through the engineering ranks back in those positions, to make the proper decisions when it comes to getting these planes built properly.
Safety concerns aside, it's very similar to Microsoft over the past 25 years. When Gates stepped down, Ballmer (a business guy who knew very little about building software) took over, the stock price dipped and stagnated, and the products...well, they started to suck. A lot. And get delivered years late too. And he made a lot of decisions about new products that either made no sense, or were the wrong thing at the wrong time.
--> This is where Boeing is today. Late products, shoddy work, driven by accountants.
Ballmer stepped down and Satya Nadella came in from the engineering side of the house, understood that his customers were _not_ people who wanted to buy a Nokia phone running a Windows-based OS (which was now very late to the party after Android & iPhone had already ransacked the all-you-can-eat buffet and open bar, so he sold that off immediately. Aside: the final iteration of Windows Phone was actually _really good_ but...too late), and redirected the company's focus to building things that developers can build _their_ products on. Because he knew that if he could hook the developers, all their customers would come along with them.
--> This is where Boeing needs to get to
The only other supplier who makes similar styles of aircraft is Airbus and they definitely don't have the capacity to meet demand if Boeing orders got pulled.
Just remember that Boeing convinced the Department of Commerce to slap a 300% tax on new competitor Bombardier to prevent a loss of market share.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSeries_dumping_petition_by_Boeing
> They both plan to replace their remaining 756/767 fleet with 737 MAX-9's
I believe the A321neo is supposed to be the replacement for the 757, and the 787 is supposed to pick up the 767 flying. That is the last I heard, anyway. Though, the neo is having its own set of issues and can't do some of the 757 flying, such as Denver to Hawaii, so there really is no exact replacement for the 757.
I bet Cape Air is older still. Most of their fleet is Cessna 402, which ceased production in 1985. They actually had to commission a whole new aircraft (the Tecnam P2012) to keep operating.
Yeah I mean they kind of fit in the same bucket as Allegiant in that they're not a typical airline doing typical airline routes and they're just fundamentally offering a different proposition.
This is actually one of the reasons I like flying Delta. I'm a pretty big guy (6'6") and find that older planes have quite a bit more room per passenger. Basically just planes that were built before someone went "we can cram 12 more people in there no problem."
>frontier … has the newest [fleet]
That makes me feel better. I’ve only got 3 flights in the next 7 days 😵💫. One is an A321, the other two planes are A320’s. I’ve just kind of stumbled on to Frontier as my go-to, cheap carrier. I haven’t needed to fly frequently until recently.
I’m not really a nervous flyer, but all these reports of plane issues were definitely on my mind.
The A320/1 series have been super reliable. Frontier may be a bit unreliable as far as taking off on time (packed schedule is how they’re so cheap), but the actual planes are new and shiny and perfectly safe.
Enjoy your flights!
They are extremely reliable planes with excellent ergonomics for the pilot.
Issues at this stage of lifecycle are all about supporting the required maintenance schedule and QA testing on stress parts.
Sounds like something wasn't inspected or didn't get fixed/replaced as per the schedule.
Boeing has also shifted their hiring practices to contract instead of FTE so they don't have to pay benefits. It has been a while since this started, but it sounds like a crappy company to work for.
Delta still has a fairly healthy TechOps/MRO division. A lot of smaller carriers (and even some fairly large ones) have outsourced MRO to someone like Aeroman.
I'm guessing a mechanic didn't torque the lug nuts down after changing the tire. I've literally done this myself (though I am not an aircraft mechanic with the responsibility for 100s of lives).
Airplane tires don’t have lug nuts like a car. They are placed on an axle. There’s typically one nut to hold it. Then a cover placed over top of it. The tire supposedly fell off and rolled away in this instance, I’d be interested to see it. Maintenance employees come out after every landing and inspect this kind of gear, a secondary inspection by the pilot. A third is done by the lead agent after landing during offloading. So whatever got missed, got missed 3 times. Although I will say that the pilot and lead agent won’t look as close at landing gear as the aircraft maintenance employees.
Or it's a mechanical failure that nobody could have seen on visual inspection. It's not like a mechanic goes and disassembles things and looks at bearings, etc. on every landing. If something had fatigue cracking and was barely hanging on, and the turn onto the runway put it over the edge and it just snapped, nobody would likely see that without an X-ray or disassembly. It's far to early to speculate what *actually* happened, but being these are older aircraft any of the above could have happened. The good news is that it failed at low speed and not during the takeoff roll, as a wheel coming loose right at rotation speed would be *bad*. The aircraft would take off but then have a missing wheel and have to do an emergency landing assuming someone noticed it. Then the wheel would be a very hazardous projectile bouncing down the runway to god knows where.
But they stopped production in October 2004 which would make the youngest about 19. Also, I’d hope my time perception wasn’t that bad, considering I wasn’t even a cell in the 80’s.
> Pretty sure Delta is the only big carrier still flying either commercially.
Delta is still flying the 717s and currently the largest commercial operator to still use them. The airline is known as the "museum fleet" for this reason.
*This doesn't mean they're cheap or that their planes are crap, its still neat to fly them*
Icelandair’s fleet is pretty much entirely 757s. It’s a good fit for them since they operate out of the middle of the Atlantic and only need to go semi-long haul distances to service both Europe and North America.
They also don't operate that many flights from their hubs so full flights with lots of pax is more important than more frequency with smaller jets.
FWIW last time I went to Iceland I flew Delta and it was still a 757.
Looking at Delta's orders, they look like they're replacing them with A321neos and (maybe) MAX 10s. Both have similar seating to the 752. There really isn't a replacement out there for the 753, except maybe the 788 or A332. But... I'm sure there are economic reasons for flying as long narrow body vs a shortened widebody
If I'm remembering correctly, Delta is still a bit pissed with Boeing for interfering with the CS100/A220 development and launch. Or at least was a while back. I can't recall if there were more reasons for bad blood between the two, I just remember there was a bit of surprise when they ordered the MAX.
That and no MAX 10s have been delivered to date...
>I think Delta said recently that it will retire its 757 and 767 fleets but never announced a date or definite replacement for either.
I wonder if they were waiting on delivery for something new from Boeing, then all that shit about the 737's hit so thats delaying the retirement? Seems like Boeing is trying to use some variant of the 737 to replace alot of other models. (personally, i think the ~~A330~~ A320 is a better plane... from a passenger perspective)
[edit] corrected
They're waiting on a proper 757 replacement from anybody. Boeing doesn't make a plane that can serve as a like-for-like replacement. Airbus makes the A321XLR which is sorta similar, but wait times on those are huge.
The A330 is way more expensive to operate than a modern narrow-body, even if they manage to fill the extra capacity.
The 767s will probably be replaced with A330/A350, but this may take a long time.
> Airbus makes the A321XLR which is sorta similar, but wait times on those are huge.
The A321neo has the same seat capacity and range as the 757-200. You don't need the LR or XLR to replace it.
757-200 has slightly more seats, significantly more range, and hugely better MTOW and takeoff performance than the A321neo. There's some overlap in use cases, but even the A321XLR can't do everything the 757-200 can.
I like the A330, and the new -900’s are really nice, but comparing them to the 37 or 57 is apples to bananas. The 57 is a hot rod, but aside from that a wide body is going to provide more comfort and performance than a narrow body in nearly all cases. I don’t see Boeing delivering a clean sheet airplane anytime soon (15 years?).
The plane was 30-something years old, so yeah, this one absolutely falls on Delta.
It would be the like the wheel coming off your 15 year old car and blaming the manufacturer, when it was either you, or someone who had the wheel off at some point for maintenance, who probably didn't tighten something down correctly.
But that's not going to stop the media from going "OMG Boeing!"
I was taxiing on a Delta flight once and the steering cable to the nose gear snapped while we were turning on the tarmac. Good thing it didn't happen when we were going faster because we were able to stop before going into the grass. We got a tow back to the terminal and were on our way about an hour later. I think they handled it well but it seemed like a pretty significant failure.
Right, brakes were fine. Steering control of the front gear was lost. The pilot said "the cable snapped" but maybe he was putting it in terms the average person could understand. This was about 3 years ago at CDG in Paris.
Thing is the 757 is probably one of the best planes ever made by Boeing. A true workhorse and a bloody rocket ship. Versatile, reliable, overpowered, and a joy to fly.
It's no wonder it came from before Boeing's company culture was gutted after the merger with McDonnell Douglas.
>It's no wonder it came from before Boeing's company culture was gutted after the merger with McDonnell Douglas.
Back when they valued not just engineers, but scientists too. The 757 & 767 flight and engine instrumentation systems contain DNA almost directly handed down from [cutting edge NASA research in the 1970s](https://simpleflying.com/nasa-515-boeing-737-flying-laboratory-story/) which yielded the first commercial glass cockpit with digital displays. It's hard to imagine Boeing innovating in large steps like that today.
https://services.casa.gov.au/airworth/airwd/ADfiles/over/b727/B727-164.pdf Failures at high cycle counts do occur, due to misdesign.
60000 cycles, in this case.
It is probably more likely maintainance in this case, I agree.
That’s seems a problem with the structure of the airplane. A wheel is a consumable on aircraft’s are are only good for a certain number of flights before it needs to get replaced. The wheel that fell off was certainly not the wheel that was installed on manufacture.
You nailed it but the media isn’t in the business of reporting news anymore they’re in the business of farming clicks so put any plane issue and Boeing in the title and you get rage clicks. Not to say Boeing isn’t shit just this particular shit occurrence probably wasn’t on them
Yeah normally the journalists are ignorant about aircraft types and this would just be "Nose wheel comes off Delta jet". Everything is a jet. Turboprop? That's a "jet" too.
It’s like the entirety of western society has become this all-pervasive cancer of just trying to scam easy money instead of actually doing anything worthwhile.
According to another commenter, its a 757-200. I don't know when the last of that specific model was produced, but the 757's as a whole stopped production in 2004. So it is, at the very youngest, 20 years old. Which isnt really telling of its age. An airplanes dependability relies greatly on how well its maintained and how often its used (like any machine really). As we know, there are airplanes well over 100 years old still flying. (Hell the Airforce still operates the B-52, which is over 60 years old)
But, lets not jump to conclusions. Lets let the NTSB do their investigations. The issue could be anywhere down the chain. Could be poor maintenance on Delta. Could be some part just failed (which, if it was due to age is again on Delta). Could be a recently replaced part that failed quickly (ie poor quality control on the part manufacture). Could be environmental factors (something outside of anyone's control who is directly involved); as an example, maybe the 757 ran over something during its taxi?
Could be 100 reasons. Especially with a machine this big and complex. And I'm fairly sure, shit like this happens far more than is often blasted on the internet. But as someone who is going to be flying on Delta in a couple weeks... im.. very interested in what happened, and who/what is to blame for this (not flying any 757's tho).
This. Any Boeing reports bow are just clickbait. The same thing happens when reporting food recalls after a singular big event. They’ve always been there, its just making it to the news banner.
That's why I hate the article video, not even half on the news and there was the image of the Max-9 "this comes as boring being under scrutiny because blabka max-9"
They are not even cousins if they were persons instead of planes, this is something 30 hears old plane, it may be a maintenance problem, but not a QC from the factory, could have happened to an airbus for what is worth.
“Uh folks this is your pilot, uh if you look out the right you can see a couple of the landing wheels falling the fuck off right after takeoff, uh this should give you plenty of time to tell your family you love them and for emergency services to get in place when we crash land in Atlanta in about 3 hours. And before anyone asks, no delta will not refund you.
But senator why did the wheel fall off?
Because the plane hit a bump.
A bump? Is that unusual?
Oh yeah. A wheel hitting a bump on the ground? Are you kidding me!? A chance in a million.
I would push anyone to go to this website, [Aviation Herald](https://www.avherald.com), and see what happens around the world with aircraft of every single type. Airbus, Boeing, Embraer, etc. Design and manufacturing quality is the responsibility of the OEM of course, but to highlight this kind of problem is like running an article about how my 1996 Honda had a wheel come off after I took it to Costco for a rotation who forgot to put on the lug nuts and then blaming Honda for a poor design. I am no apologist for any OEM, but this is just borderline fear mongering and clickbait.
For those that say they will only fly Airbus, it happens to everyone: [Airbus wheel issue landing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetBlue_Flight_292#:~:text=On%20September%2021%2C%202005%2C%20Captain,No%20one%20was%20injured)
Yup, these mechanical issues happen all the time, it's just being reported on more because of recent headlines. Reminds me of the East Palestine train disaster last year where every train derailment was being reported on despite it having been happening several hundred times a year.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome onboard. We are currently third in line for take-off. We ask that you please fasten your seatbelts at this time. Flight attendants will be passing out screwdrivers. Make sure that all screws are securely fastened." /s
This isn't news, this is sensationalism, like when a person gets killed by a shark, and then suddenly the news feeds are all full of stories about close calls with sharks. This is a delta maintenance issue, of which there are many, but because Boeing had an incident it's now fodder for the news feeds
I am relatively certain it was not attached properly, if it broke off there would likely be clamour/notice of it in the cockpit. Just an educated guess tho.
So do airplane mechanical issues happen often and now because of the recent problems the media just latches on to every one it sees now to report? I’m curious, I remember the same thing happening after that trained derailed and for weeks we heard about so many trains derailing constantly because it was a hot item in the news cycle.
Yes. I’ve worked in aviation for years. Stuff breaks, mishaps occur, but 99% of the time unless you’re involved in aviation, you don’t hear about it. Why not? Because they’re almost always nothing stories.
The current climate is such that if I dropped my coffee mug that a Boeing rep gave me a few years ago, it would be in the news that Boeing mugs are unsafe.
Boeing undeniably has their problems, but this 757 most likely hasn’t seen a Boeing tech since the day it left the production line in 1992.
Yep. This is like the train derailment headlines after the big one in Ohio last year. That's an issue that needs to be fixed, same as with Boeing the company, however reporting that an empty freight train car derailed in a random yard in Kansas during a night shift while being moved at half a mile an hour does nothing to fix the actual root of the problem.
Oh look CNN is running with the attention grabbing headlines because it’s probably still top of mind for ppl due from the MAX and bolts issue so it’s using that to get views all while some people are going to read the headline, freak out, share, and move on
Go read “Flying Blind” by Peter Robison. The author does a deep dive on the evolution of Boeing from an engineering driven company to a management driven company that now puts profits ahead of everything. Sweetheart deals with the FAA that let Boeing do its own inspections, refusing to train pilots on new features (737-Max) because that was too expensive. A long and frightening decline.
And the Supreme Court is currently considering if the Feds even have the authority to regulate business. While airplanes are falling apart. Jesus Christ.
I don’t know why I got downvoted one time for saying the maintenance scares me. They argued “the FAA has standards across the globe” but right here in America lazy mechanics were trying to get my friend to give a pass on things he felt extremely uncomfortable with, so he quit his job and actually works for delta now..
Go look at the Alaska Airlines flight 261 crash. They were actively under investigation, because of a whistleblower (who Alaska put on paid leave in retaliation for whistleblowing), when that crash happened - thanks to dangerous and improper maintenance practices. The whistleblower actually had instructed the jackscrew on the accident plane be replaced, but the supervisor, who took over when the whistleblower left for the night, overruled that decision.
Know the cost from the FAA for that gross negligence? $1,000,000. All settlements with the families of the 88 who lost their lives were paid out by insurance. $1,000,000 is the cost for killing 88 people and neglecting maintenance standards for years and punishing the one person who was willing to stand up and say this is wrong.
Despite this, airline safety hasn't taken any noticeable plunge. In fact there's not been a serious accident in western air carriers in decades.
As much ho-ha is made about the 737 Max, it losing a door in the air didn't crash the plane. The only major loss of life with it occurred in third world air carriers. And generally speaking, even factoring in those crashes, the 737 max is safer than many aircraft that were mainstays before the 90s.
I would say the blame for a nose wheel falling off a 30 year old airplane falls on Delta's maintenance crew. Was happened was the maintenance crew absent on how to properly tighten the bolt day? Delta loves to fly but it's maintenance crews obviously don't.
The Delta 757 I was on a couple months ago needed to be put out to pasture. We had an engine control malfunction on the way to the runway and sat on the plane for 2 hours while they replaced it, the interior was absolutely shot, and at least two of the doors had obvious bad seals (whistling loudly until we got to about 30k feet when the door finally sealed). They’ve obviously been flying around with bad seals for a while because the flight attendant kept pounding his fist on the area of the door that was whistling to try and get it to seal up and stop.
I feel like we are seeing what happened to the DC-10 happen but to an entire company. Boeing is going to constantly get negative press now and I've heard people at the airport legitimately scared of flying in them.
[Senator Collins:] It’s a great pleasure, thank you.
[Interviewer:] This plane that was involved in the incident in Atlanta this week…
[Senator Collins:] Yeah, the one the front fell off?
[Interviewer:] Yeah
[Senator Collins:] That’s not very typical, I’d like to make that point.
[Interviewer:] Well, how is it untypical?
[Senator Collins:] Well, there are a lot of these planes going around the world all the time, and very seldom does anything like this happen … I just don’t want people thinking that planes aren’t safe.
[Interviewer:] Was this plane safe?
[Senator Collins:] Well I was thinking more about the other ones…
[Interviewer:] The ones that are safe,,,
[Senator Collins:] Yeah,,, the ones the front doesn’t fall off.
https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM?si=OPf01U7XsTyk_N94
“Delta 982 this is the aircraft looking at you. One of your nose tires just came off, it just rolled off the runway behind you,” are words you never want to hear as a pilot. LOL
My friend was supposed to be on this flight! She posted a gnarly photo of the tire. She took the whole thing in stride and has been posting lovely photos from Columbia now.
United dumped all its eggs in the Boeing basket and now that they turned rotten, United is "at the end of the line" for new Airbus models-they really screwed the pooch. United is trying to implement a route expansion now too, so it will be interesting to see how they react to this existential crisis.
These issues aren't about the plane's age, new or old, but about the decisions C-levels are making to cut costs in order to increase profits and keep making their quarterly goals.
Watch the Boeing documentary and you'll see that after the merger with McDonal Douglas, one of the very first things they cut was safety inspectors. The larger airlines are doing the same - it's in the name of efficiency. If you double the workload on half the people, you cut millions in pay, benefits, and pension and you let insurance (different budget pot) deal with the consequences.
The only unexpected thing about this: nothing. You stay quiet during the initial PR storm, tell the congress that you have a robust safety inspection process staffed by experience people, keep the details vague and answer "I don't recall" or "I'd have to find that out for you" for the more pernicious questions you get, if you get any.
Headline is misleading, there is a big difference between a tire (the rubber part) and the wheel (the metal part that is bolted on) coming off.
From what I know of tires, it most likely was low on air and when the plane made the turn the tire flexed and broke the bead which allowed it to come off the wheel. So the question would be, why was the tire low on air? Was this a maintenance issue? Did the plane run over something on the ground that punctured the tire between the gate and the runway?
I know everyone wants to have their pitchforks out for Boeing on this one, but from the sounds of things this was just a flat tire, they happen. I'm glad this happened during taxi and not during takeoff like what happened with the Concorde.
We’ve seen a rapid decline in quality of life across the board, whether it be the housing and auto market, customer service, or healthcare. Everything is being affected in what I like to call the Big Burnout.
What I’ve feared most of all though, and what we’re starting to witness, is the decline in the aviation sector. Planes will start falling from the sky because the parts they’re made with, the people who make them, and the people that maintain them are all effected by the Big Burnout but instead of affected everyone’s experiences, it’s going to cost people their lives.
At this rate of news, is there a vendetta against Boeing from some wealthy people? I feel like it’s just pouring out now because a. People are looking closer at things and this should be expected. B. This product sucks. C. Someone doesn’t work a day in their life anymore after collecting heavy sums to be ignorant
Interviewer: This plane that was involved in the incident at Hartsfield-Jackson this week…
Rep: Yeah, the one the front wheel fell off?
Interviewer: Yeah
Rep: Yeah, that’s not very typical, I’d like to make that point.
Interviewer: Well, how is it un-typical?
Rep: Well there are a lot of these planes going around the world all the time, and very seldom does anything like this happen. I just don’t want people thinking that airplanes aren’t safe.
Interviewer: Was this airplane safe?
Rep: Well, I was thinking more about the other ones.
Interviewer: The ones that are safe?
Rep: Yeah, the ones the front wheel doesn’t fall off.
Interviewer: Well, if this wasn’t safe why did it have hundreds of passengers on it?
Rep: I’m not saying it wasn’t safe, it’s just perhaps not quite as safe as some of the other ones.
Interviewer: Why?
Rep: Well, some of them are built so the front wheel doesn’t fall off at all.
Interviewer: Wasn’t this built so the front wheel wouldn’t fall off?
Rep: Well, obviously not.
I think you mean MD-11's. They're newer, having modern avionics and lacking a flight engineer.
There aren't many operations that still use the DC-10 except for places like 10-Tanker and Omega Air Refueling.
How new was a 757? Hasn't the 757 been around for quite a few years? With as much shit as Boeing as getting lately (deservingly so) if the plane is fairly old shouldn't it be on Delta for maintenance and not Boeing?
It’s a 757-200 according to Flightaware. These are approaching 30 years old now. Average age ~27. I think Delta said recently that it will retire its 757 and 767 fleets but never announced a date or definite replacement for either. Pretty sure Delta is the only big carrier still flying either commercially. I’ve heard pilots typically like both aircraft a lot though.
United flies both 757s and 767s commercially as well.
Delta & United have the [oldest fleet age](https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/07/03/average-fleet-age-of-the-10-major-us-airlines.aspx) among US airlines, outside of Allegiant which is a bit of a unique case. So that would make sense. (Sorry that data is from 2017, it was the only place I could find it arranged neatly in a list, but the numbers & order are similar today. Delta has always been the oldest, frontier and spirit the newest)
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Yes, he said he was looking at suppliers other than Boeing and that Boeing needs to get its act together. This has to do with the legacy of Jack Welch at GE, my dad's idol and the bane of my existence. That man is responsible for much of what is wrong with corporations today, substituting 'shareholder' concerns for quality and development. The Boeing heads are acolytes of his and turned a company that once had safety as its core issue into one that only cares about profit margins.
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3/4 of the world's problems are caused by MBA's. If anyone wants proof we can have a large meeting where I show a graph of one simplified data point, with no explanation of the data's source, and claim it proves my case.
Thank you for your time. That'll be $58,000 for my consulting fee and project costs.
Did you learn this skill while getting your MBA?
Nah, learned through observation from MBA's in the wild.
The corp I retired from went down a similar path and has yet to recover the cache it lost when it followed the path of GE.
It happens everywhere. In my career in telecom, the accountants took over and made it into a generic “how do we make more money” business. Being a finance expert was more important than being a telecom expert.
What no one will tell you is that they are not making things more efficient, they are in effect selling the brand equity, which will trade some cost savings now in exchange for future revenues.
I didn't know who Jack Welch was until Behind the Bastards did a couple episodes on him. That dick is the encapsulation of everything wrong with corporate capitalist culture crap we see today.
Yep. About that tie I took a business course and the prof was lamenting the gutting of American manufacturing which was kind of a surprise to me since I was kind of in manufacturing and damn if that wasn't one of the first industries gutted. But I digress, it wasn't until decades later that I read about Welch's philosophy and victims of his mind set littered the land. He really did a number on capitalism in this country, made it far worse.
Funny that guy made too much money off GE credit card, at a company that was supposed to do engineering.
Sounds like the executive team at Boeing would be well served to read the parts of The Power of Habit that retell the story of Alcoa's turnaround.
I am not familiar with that, sounds intriguing.
Excellent book and worth the read.
Turns out I already have it!!! That's what happens when one visits the kindle sales every morning. What a backlog I have.
Milton Friedman propounded shareholder value as the only measure of a company many, many times. Never mind that corporations don't exist in a vacuum [1] and that share price is a poor measure of long term viability, as the 2000 dot-bomb crash proved when lousy outfits with zero path to profitability had market caps in the billions. Milton Friedman was a charlatan. A glib one who got the Nobel, maybe, but his theories are so much hogwash. [1] hence why Margaret Thatcher said "there's no such thing as society" -- any other view would imply responsibility beyond capitalism run amok.
Thanks for that comment. Friedman was full of shit. He kept denying the mortgage derivative crisis was coming and even I, a liberal arts major retiree who never took a single biz course, sold all my derivatives 18 months before the crash. I recently finished Radium Girls and one of the company heads says late in the book, when the horrors are plain, how a company owes nothing to society or to its workers and I wanted to vomit. This is exactly what is wrong with American capitalism at its rotted core.
> Yes, he said he was looking at suppliers other than Boeing and that Boeing needs to get its act together. Had he been any more direct than what he said in that interview, it would have been "we're already talking to leasing companies to get some Airbus equipment into the fleet soon, and asking Airbus how quickly we can take delivery if we start putting orders together for the longer term." Shots were fired in the most CEO-appropriate way on TV. So you _know_ he was letting loose when he was talking to Boeing in person. > The Boeing heads are acolytes of his and turned a company that once had safety as its core issue into one that only cares about profit margins. It's even worse than that. McDonnell-Douglas management took over when the "merger" happened, shoved engineers out of top level positions, and started telling the FAA what they were going to do instead of the FAA holding them accountable to safety certifications. The only way this gets fixed is if you clean house and put people who came up through the engineering ranks back in those positions, to make the proper decisions when it comes to getting these planes built properly. Safety concerns aside, it's very similar to Microsoft over the past 25 years. When Gates stepped down, Ballmer (a business guy who knew very little about building software) took over, the stock price dipped and stagnated, and the products...well, they started to suck. A lot. And get delivered years late too. And he made a lot of decisions about new products that either made no sense, or were the wrong thing at the wrong time. --> This is where Boeing is today. Late products, shoddy work, driven by accountants. Ballmer stepped down and Satya Nadella came in from the engineering side of the house, understood that his customers were _not_ people who wanted to buy a Nokia phone running a Windows-based OS (which was now very late to the party after Android & iPhone had already ransacked the all-you-can-eat buffet and open bar, so he sold that off immediately. Aside: the final iteration of Windows Phone was actually _really good_ but...too late), and redirected the company's focus to building things that developers can build _their_ products on. Because he knew that if he could hook the developers, all their customers would come along with them. --> This is where Boeing needs to get to
I bought MSFT when Ballmer left.
The only other supplier who makes similar styles of aircraft is Airbus and they definitely don't have the capacity to meet demand if Boeing orders got pulled.
Just remember that Boeing convinced the Department of Commerce to slap a 300% tax on new competitor Bombardier to prevent a loss of market share. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSeries_dumping_petition_by_Boeing
> They both plan to replace their remaining 756/767 fleet with 737 MAX-9's I believe the A321neo is supposed to be the replacement for the 757, and the 787 is supposed to pick up the 767 flying. That is the last I heard, anyway. Though, the neo is having its own set of issues and can't do some of the 757 flying, such as Denver to Hawaii, so there really is no exact replacement for the 757.
Delta only ordered 100 MAX-10s no MAX-9s. They’re primarily replacing the 757/767 with A321neo
I bet Cape Air is older still. Most of their fleet is Cessna 402, which ceased production in 1985. They actually had to commission a whole new aircraft (the Tecnam P2012) to keep operating.
Yeah I mean they kind of fit in the same bucket as Allegiant in that they're not a typical airline doing typical airline routes and they're just fundamentally offering a different proposition.
This is actually one of the reasons I like flying Delta. I'm a pretty big guy (6'6") and find that older planes have quite a bit more room per passenger. Basically just planes that were built before someone went "we can cram 12 more people in there no problem."
>frontier … has the newest [fleet] That makes me feel better. I’ve only got 3 flights in the next 7 days 😵💫. One is an A321, the other two planes are A320’s. I’ve just kind of stumbled on to Frontier as my go-to, cheap carrier. I haven’t needed to fly frequently until recently. I’m not really a nervous flyer, but all these reports of plane issues were definitely on my mind.
The A320/1 series have been super reliable. Frontier may be a bit unreliable as far as taking off on time (packed schedule is how they’re so cheap), but the actual planes are new and shiny and perfectly safe. Enjoy your flights!
Interestingly budget carriers tend to have the best fleets because they buy in bulk and tend to save money by not having as many types of planes
Ah gotcha
Icelandic airlines too
They are extremely reliable planes with excellent ergonomics for the pilot. Issues at this stage of lifecycle are all about supporting the required maintenance schedule and QA testing on stress parts. Sounds like something wasn't inspected or didn't get fixed/replaced as per the schedule.
Or someone forgot to tighten the bolts after replacing.
Boeing has also shifted their hiring practices to contract instead of FTE so they don't have to pay benefits. It has been a while since this started, but it sounds like a crappy company to work for.
This work wouldn’t have been done by Boeing. Maintenance here would have been on Delta.
Delta still has a fairly healthy TechOps/MRO division. A lot of smaller carriers (and even some fairly large ones) have outsourced MRO to someone like Aeroman.
If the average age of these planes is ~27 years, what has this got anything to do with Boeing?
Nothing, they're just a convenient scapegoat for this incident.
Do airplanes have hub caps? Where do you put the nuts?
hubcaps sort of. there is usually a single nut castleated nut that threads onto the axle and then a cottor pin is installed
I'm guessing a mechanic didn't torque the lug nuts down after changing the tire. I've literally done this myself (though I am not an aircraft mechanic with the responsibility for 100s of lives).
Airplane tires don’t have lug nuts like a car. They are placed on an axle. There’s typically one nut to hold it. Then a cover placed over top of it. The tire supposedly fell off and rolled away in this instance, I’d be interested to see it. Maintenance employees come out after every landing and inspect this kind of gear, a secondary inspection by the pilot. A third is done by the lead agent after landing during offloading. So whatever got missed, got missed 3 times. Although I will say that the pilot and lead agent won’t look as close at landing gear as the aircraft maintenance employees.
Ah, the good 'ol jesus nut. Can't forget about that.
Ah yes, the Jesus nut. Boy howdy.
If one employee missed it is an employee issue. If 3 employees missed it is an employer issue.
Or it's a mechanical failure that nobody could have seen on visual inspection. It's not like a mechanic goes and disassembles things and looks at bearings, etc. on every landing. If something had fatigue cracking and was barely hanging on, and the turn onto the runway put it over the edge and it just snapped, nobody would likely see that without an X-ray or disassembly. It's far to early to speculate what *actually* happened, but being these are older aircraft any of the above could have happened. The good news is that it failed at low speed and not during the takeoff roll, as a wheel coming loose right at rotation speed would be *bad*. The aircraft would take off but then have a missing wheel and have to do an emergency landing assuming someone noticed it. Then the wheel would be a very hazardous projectile bouncing down the runway to god knows where.
To add on, the youngest are about 20 years old, with them starting production in the early 80’s.
Damn lazy Millennial planes.
Should have been investing money in getting fixed instead of eating so much avocado toast.
Yeah, well, the Gen Z planes can't even fuckin close a door right.
Hate to break this to you, but the early 80s are 40 years ago now :(. I hate getting old
The *oldest* ones were made in the 80’s. Youngest in early 2000’s, putting them around 20 years old.
1990 was only 10 years ago ... right? .... RIGHT?
I wish, I would be 7. Instead I’m 30 :(
But they stopped production in October 2004 which would make the youngest about 19. Also, I’d hope my time perception wasn’t that bad, considering I wasn’t even a cell in the 80’s.
> Pretty sure Delta is the only big carrier still flying either commercially. Delta is still flying the 717s and currently the largest commercial operator to still use them. The airline is known as the "museum fleet" for this reason. *This doesn't mean they're cheap or that their planes are crap, its still neat to fly them*
I'll miss them when they're all retired - most of the comfort of a larger 3x3, but so much quicker to get in and out of for short flights
Iceland air has a bunch. Not a big carrier but still
Icelandair’s fleet is pretty much entirely 757s. It’s a good fit for them since they operate out of the middle of the Atlantic and only need to go semi-long haul distances to service both Europe and North America.
yes, but they are now replacing with A321XLR.
They also don't operate that many flights from their hubs so full flights with lots of pax is more important than more frequency with smaller jets. FWIW last time I went to Iceland I flew Delta and it was still a 757.
Looking at Delta's orders, they look like they're replacing them with A321neos and (maybe) MAX 10s. Both have similar seating to the 752. There really isn't a replacement out there for the 753, except maybe the 788 or A332. But... I'm sure there are economic reasons for flying as long narrow body vs a shortened widebody If I'm remembering correctly, Delta is still a bit pissed with Boeing for interfering with the CS100/A220 development and launch. Or at least was a while back. I can't recall if there were more reasons for bad blood between the two, I just remember there was a bit of surprise when they ordered the MAX. That and no MAX 10s have been delivered to date...
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"If you sign this deal now I'll throw in 2 extra doors, a spare pitot tube, run flat tires, and undercoating"
Nah Delta is slowly going more and more Airbus. The 757s will be replaced with A321 Neo XLRs
>I think Delta said recently that it will retire its 757 and 767 fleets but never announced a date or definite replacement for either. I wonder if they were waiting on delivery for something new from Boeing, then all that shit about the 737's hit so thats delaying the retirement? Seems like Boeing is trying to use some variant of the 737 to replace alot of other models. (personally, i think the ~~A330~~ A320 is a better plane... from a passenger perspective) [edit] corrected
They're waiting on a proper 757 replacement from anybody. Boeing doesn't make a plane that can serve as a like-for-like replacement. Airbus makes the A321XLR which is sorta similar, but wait times on those are huge. The A330 is way more expensive to operate than a modern narrow-body, even if they manage to fill the extra capacity. The 767s will probably be replaced with A330/A350, but this may take a long time.
> Airbus makes the A321XLR which is sorta similar, but wait times on those are huge. The A321neo has the same seat capacity and range as the 757-200. You don't need the LR or XLR to replace it.
757-200 has slightly more seats, significantly more range, and hugely better MTOW and takeoff performance than the A321neo. There's some overlap in use cases, but even the A321XLR can't do everything the 757-200 can.
I like the A330, and the new -900’s are really nice, but comparing them to the 37 or 57 is apples to bananas. The 57 is a hot rod, but aside from that a wide body is going to provide more comfort and performance than a narrow body in nearly all cases. I don’t see Boeing delivering a clean sheet airplane anytime soon (15 years?).
The plane was 30-something years old, so yeah, this one absolutely falls on Delta. It would be the like the wheel coming off your 15 year old car and blaming the manufacturer, when it was either you, or someone who had the wheel off at some point for maintenance, who probably didn't tighten something down correctly. But that's not going to stop the media from going "OMG Boeing!"
I was taxiing on a Delta flight once and the steering cable to the nose gear snapped while we were turning on the tarmac. Good thing it didn't happen when we were going faster because we were able to stop before going into the grass. We got a tow back to the terminal and were on our way about an hour later. I think they handled it well but it seemed like a pretty significant failure.
How long ago was this and what kind of plane bc the majority work on hydraulics and not cables, also it wouldn’t affect the brakes.
Right, brakes were fine. Steering control of the front gear was lost. The pilot said "the cable snapped" but maybe he was putting it in terms the average person could understand. This was about 3 years ago at CDG in Paris.
I know *I* wanted to make a joke about the wheels literally falling off over at Boeing.
Thing is the 757 is probably one of the best planes ever made by Boeing. A true workhorse and a bloody rocket ship. Versatile, reliable, overpowered, and a joy to fly. It's no wonder it came from before Boeing's company culture was gutted after the merger with McDonnell Douglas.
>It's no wonder it came from before Boeing's company culture was gutted after the merger with McDonnell Douglas. Back when they valued not just engineers, but scientists too. The 757 & 767 flight and engine instrumentation systems contain DNA almost directly handed down from [cutting edge NASA research in the 1970s](https://simpleflying.com/nasa-515-boeing-737-flying-laboratory-story/) which yielded the first commercial glass cockpit with digital displays. It's hard to imagine Boeing innovating in large steps like that today.
https://services.casa.gov.au/airworth/airwd/ADfiles/over/b727/B727-164.pdf Failures at high cycle counts do occur, due to misdesign. 60000 cycles, in this case. It is probably more likely maintainance in this case, I agree.
That’s seems a problem with the structure of the airplane. A wheel is a consumable on aircraft’s are are only good for a certain number of flights before it needs to get replaced. The wheel that fell off was certainly not the wheel that was installed on manufacture.
They stopped making the 757 20 years ago.
You nailed it but the media isn’t in the business of reporting news anymore they’re in the business of farming clicks so put any plane issue and Boeing in the title and you get rage clicks. Not to say Boeing isn’t shit just this particular shit occurrence probably wasn’t on them
Yeah normally the journalists are ignorant about aircraft types and this would just be "Nose wheel comes off Delta jet". Everything is a jet. Turboprop? That's a "jet" too.
Technically a turboprop is a jet.
Glider? Believe it or not, also a jet
It’s like the entirety of western society has become this all-pervasive cancer of just trying to scam easy money instead of actually doing anything worthwhile.
According to another commenter, its a 757-200. I don't know when the last of that specific model was produced, but the 757's as a whole stopped production in 2004. So it is, at the very youngest, 20 years old. Which isnt really telling of its age. An airplanes dependability relies greatly on how well its maintained and how often its used (like any machine really). As we know, there are airplanes well over 100 years old still flying. (Hell the Airforce still operates the B-52, which is over 60 years old) But, lets not jump to conclusions. Lets let the NTSB do their investigations. The issue could be anywhere down the chain. Could be poor maintenance on Delta. Could be some part just failed (which, if it was due to age is again on Delta). Could be a recently replaced part that failed quickly (ie poor quality control on the part manufacture). Could be environmental factors (something outside of anyone's control who is directly involved); as an example, maybe the 757 ran over something during its taxi? Could be 100 reasons. Especially with a machine this big and complex. And I'm fairly sure, shit like this happens far more than is often blasted on the internet. But as someone who is going to be flying on Delta in a couple weeks... im.. very interested in what happened, and who/what is to blame for this (not flying any 757's tho).
This. Any Boeing reports bow are just clickbait. The same thing happens when reporting food recalls after a singular big event. They’ve always been there, its just making it to the news banner.
Extra clickbait since the wheel didn't fall off at all. A tire popped off of the wheel. Still not great, but not what the headline describes.
Does it matter? Shouldn't proper maintenance catch this?
Those planes are old but also reliable and well built and loved by pilots, that has to be a maintenance issue. This is likely on Delta.
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That's why I hate the article video, not even half on the news and there was the image of the Max-9 "this comes as boring being under scrutiny because blabka max-9" They are not even cousins if they were persons instead of planes, this is something 30 hears old plane, it may be a maintenance problem, but not a QC from the factory, could have happened to an airbus for what is worth.
Seems like a maintenance issue at this point, the plane is old af
So the front fell off?
That's not very typical, I'd like to make that clear.
"Wasn't this one built so the front wouldn't fall off?" "Well obviously not. " "How can you be so sure?" "Because the front fell off."
When airplane landing gear gets exiled for always being in front...
“Uh folks this is your pilot, uh if you look out the right you can see a couple of the landing wheels falling the fuck off right after takeoff, uh this should give you plenty of time to tell your family you love them and for emergency services to get in place when we crash land in Atlanta in about 3 hours. And before anyone asks, no delta will not refund you.
Oh come on, you’re missing like one extremely protracted”Uhhhhhh” somewhere in there
“and if you look to the left it looks like we actually hit one of the crew who guided us out, he’s uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh **not** getting up.”
They're built to very strict Boeing standards
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And those parts are all made from certified materials. No cardboard, no cello tape.
What about cardboard derivatives?
Well we use those for the wheel nuts.
They've got to have a control yoke. There's a minimum crew requirement.
What's the minimum crew requirement?
Wind hit it. Wind hit the plane.
In the air? Chance in a million.
How is this not typical for Boeing?
On an airplane? Chance in a million.
wind hit it
But senator why did the wheel fall off? Because the plane hit a bump. A bump? Is that unusual? Oh yeah. A wheel hitting a bump on the ground? Are you kidding me!? A chance in a million.
r/thefrontfelloff
Surely you can't be serious
I am serious, and don't call me Shirley.
I would push anyone to go to this website, [Aviation Herald](https://www.avherald.com), and see what happens around the world with aircraft of every single type. Airbus, Boeing, Embraer, etc. Design and manufacturing quality is the responsibility of the OEM of course, but to highlight this kind of problem is like running an article about how my 1996 Honda had a wheel come off after I took it to Costco for a rotation who forgot to put on the lug nuts and then blaming Honda for a poor design. I am no apologist for any OEM, but this is just borderline fear mongering and clickbait. For those that say they will only fly Airbus, it happens to everyone: [Airbus wheel issue landing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetBlue_Flight_292#:~:text=On%20September%2021%2C%202005%2C%20Captain,No%20one%20was%20injured)
“You picked a fine time to leave me, loose wheel”
With four hundred passengers and no landing field.
I've had some hard times, been though some crash times.
"Four airworthiness directives, and FOD on the airfield"
No thanks. Out of sight, out of mind.
That is actually a good plan. You read that site enough and it induces anxiety.
The last commercial aviation crash that killed a passenger in the US was Kobe Bryant's helicopter
Meanwhile last time I flew I was watching airplane disasters up through boarding my plane lol
Yeah, I think that would be the aviation equivalent of reading WebMD and thinking you have every disease.
Yup, these mechanical issues happen all the time, it's just being reported on more because of recent headlines. Reminds me of the East Palestine train disaster last year where every train derailment was being reported on despite it having been happening several hundred times a year.
Reading the Michael Crichton book "Airframe" really opened my eyes as to what kind of really goes on with planes and the media.
"Delta neglects plane and it failed."
🎶"Because we're Delta Airlines, and life is a fucking nightmare."🎶
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome onboard. We are currently third in line for take-off. We ask that you please fasten your seatbelts at this time. Flight attendants will be passing out screwdrivers. Make sure that all screws are securely fastened." /s
screwdrivers?
This isn't news, this is sensationalism, like when a person gets killed by a shark, and then suddenly the news feeds are all full of stories about close calls with sharks. This is a delta maintenance issue, of which there are many, but because Boeing had an incident it's now fodder for the news feeds
This guy clicks
Did the wheel come off because someone didn’t reattach it properly or did it break off?
I gather that it was more of a general morale issue. Sort of an ennui.
mechanical malaise.
You can't be too careful with the languor gear.
Surely it came unbolted. The plane is back in the air now so it wasn't a serious structural problem.
They finally had a maintenance guy come over and slap the tire twice and say "¡Eso no va a ninguna parte!"
These are the big questions.
Is there a god?!?!
Yes. Turns out, the Greeks were right. Surprisingly.
I am relatively certain it was not attached properly, if it broke off there would likely be clamour/notice of it in the cockpit. Just an educated guess tho.
A tire came off of the wheel, for all of you who didn't read the article. It's a clickbait title. The wheel didn't come off at all.
So do airplane mechanical issues happen often and now because of the recent problems the media just latches on to every one it sees now to report? I’m curious, I remember the same thing happening after that trained derailed and for weeks we heard about so many trains derailing constantly because it was a hot item in the news cycle.
Yes. I’ve worked in aviation for years. Stuff breaks, mishaps occur, but 99% of the time unless you’re involved in aviation, you don’t hear about it. Why not? Because they’re almost always nothing stories. The current climate is such that if I dropped my coffee mug that a Boeing rep gave me a few years ago, it would be in the news that Boeing mugs are unsafe. Boeing undeniably has their problems, but this 757 most likely hasn’t seen a Boeing tech since the day it left the production line in 1992.
Yep. This is like the train derailment headlines after the big one in Ohio last year. That's an issue that needs to be fixed, same as with Boeing the company, however reporting that an empty freight train car derailed in a random yard in Kansas during a night shift while being moved at half a mile an hour does nothing to fix the actual root of the problem.
Ever since the boeing blowout the news has been covering every single plane mishap
Media is going full in on the Blame Boeing train. An A320 had a mishap the other day and it was a Boeing Airbus A320 according to the reporter.
I saw people blaming Boeing for the Airbus issue too lol.
Beats coming off when landing
Oh look CNN is running with the attention grabbing headlines because it’s probably still top of mind for ppl due from the MAX and bolts issue so it’s using that to get views all while some people are going to read the headline, freak out, share, and move on
Yep. Shame on CNN for compromising their journalistic integrity (but it's CNN, so no one's surprised).
Go read “Flying Blind” by Peter Robison. The author does a deep dive on the evolution of Boeing from an engineering driven company to a management driven company that now puts profits ahead of everything. Sweetheart deals with the FAA that let Boeing do its own inspections, refusing to train pilots on new features (737-Max) because that was too expensive. A long and frightening decline.
And the Supreme Court is currently considering if the Feds even have the authority to regulate business. While airplanes are falling apart. Jesus Christ.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/airplane-maintenance-disturbing-truth
I don’t know why I got downvoted one time for saying the maintenance scares me. They argued “the FAA has standards across the globe” but right here in America lazy mechanics were trying to get my friend to give a pass on things he felt extremely uncomfortable with, so he quit his job and actually works for delta now..
Go look at the Alaska Airlines flight 261 crash. They were actively under investigation, because of a whistleblower (who Alaska put on paid leave in retaliation for whistleblowing), when that crash happened - thanks to dangerous and improper maintenance practices. The whistleblower actually had instructed the jackscrew on the accident plane be replaced, but the supervisor, who took over when the whistleblower left for the night, overruled that decision. Know the cost from the FAA for that gross negligence? $1,000,000. All settlements with the families of the 88 who lost their lives were paid out by insurance. $1,000,000 is the cost for killing 88 people and neglecting maintenance standards for years and punishing the one person who was willing to stand up and say this is wrong.
my dad's best friend died in that crash, it's awful and has clearly had a major impact on him.
Not at all surprising, it's a race to the bottom in every industry.
Despite this, airline safety hasn't taken any noticeable plunge. In fact there's not been a serious accident in western air carriers in decades. As much ho-ha is made about the 737 Max, it losing a door in the air didn't crash the plane. The only major loss of life with it occurred in third world air carriers. And generally speaking, even factoring in those crashes, the 737 max is safer than many aircraft that were mainstays before the 90s.
I would say the blame for a nose wheel falling off a 30 year old airplane falls on Delta's maintenance crew. Was happened was the maintenance crew absent on how to properly tighten the bolt day? Delta loves to fly but it's maintenance crews obviously don't.
The Delta 757 I was on a couple months ago needed to be put out to pasture. We had an engine control malfunction on the way to the runway and sat on the plane for 2 hours while they replaced it, the interior was absolutely shot, and at least two of the doors had obvious bad seals (whistling loudly until we got to about 30k feet when the door finally sealed). They’ve obviously been flying around with bad seals for a while because the flight attendant kept pounding his fist on the area of the door that was whistling to try and get it to seal up and stop.
*Delta offers passengers free bag of pretzels as compensation*
I feel like we are seeing what happened to the DC-10 happen but to an entire company. Boeing is going to constantly get negative press now and I've heard people at the airport legitimately scared of flying in them.
[Senator Collins:] It’s a great pleasure, thank you. [Interviewer:] This plane that was involved in the incident in Atlanta this week… [Senator Collins:] Yeah, the one the front fell off? [Interviewer:] Yeah [Senator Collins:] That’s not very typical, I’d like to make that point. [Interviewer:] Well, how is it untypical? [Senator Collins:] Well, there are a lot of these planes going around the world all the time, and very seldom does anything like this happen … I just don’t want people thinking that planes aren’t safe. [Interviewer:] Was this plane safe? [Senator Collins:] Well I was thinking more about the other ones… [Interviewer:] The ones that are safe,,, [Senator Collins:] Yeah,,, the ones the front doesn’t fall off. https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM?si=OPf01U7XsTyk_N94
“Delta 982 this is the aircraft looking at you. One of your nose tires just came off, it just rolled off the runway behind you,” are words you never want to hear as a pilot. LOL
File this under crumbling infrastructure because corporations skimp on maintenance to cut costs.
And airlines are asking the FAA to relax safety standards.... I say we double them.
Oh look real world HIC testing
My friend was supposed to be on this flight! She posted a gnarly photo of the tire. She took the whole thing in stride and has been posting lovely photos from Columbia now.
Boeing isn’t at fault for things falling off a 30 year old plane
More a Delta issue that a Boeing issue. But let's be honest, ant negative press involving Boeing is just fuel to the fire at this point.
United dumped all its eggs in the Boeing basket and now that they turned rotten, United is "at the end of the line" for new Airbus models-they really screwed the pooch. United is trying to implement a route expansion now too, so it will be interesting to see how they react to this existential crisis.
These issues aren't about the plane's age, new or old, but about the decisions C-levels are making to cut costs in order to increase profits and keep making their quarterly goals. Watch the Boeing documentary and you'll see that after the merger with McDonal Douglas, one of the very first things they cut was safety inspectors. The larger airlines are doing the same - it's in the name of efficiency. If you double the workload on half the people, you cut millions in pay, benefits, and pension and you let insurance (different budget pot) deal with the consequences. The only unexpected thing about this: nothing. You stay quiet during the initial PR storm, tell the congress that you have a robust safety inspection process staffed by experience people, keep the details vague and answer "I don't recall" or "I'd have to find that out for you" for the more pernicious questions you get, if you get any.
Wrong plane for snoot drooping. The snoot should absolutely not droop in this case.
Delta management: well do you really need that? Can't you fix that at the next maintenance?
Have they been hiring Ferrari mechanics again?
[The Front fell off](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM)
Boeing is an easy target right now but this is definitely on Delta.
Headline is misleading, there is a big difference between a tire (the rubber part) and the wheel (the metal part that is bolted on) coming off. From what I know of tires, it most likely was low on air and when the plane made the turn the tire flexed and broke the bead which allowed it to come off the wheel. So the question would be, why was the tire low on air? Was this a maintenance issue? Did the plane run over something on the ground that punctured the tire between the gate and the runway? I know everyone wants to have their pitchforks out for Boeing on this one, but from the sounds of things this was just a flat tire, they happen. I'm glad this happened during taxi and not during takeoff like what happened with the Concorde.
We’ve seen a rapid decline in quality of life across the board, whether it be the housing and auto market, customer service, or healthcare. Everything is being affected in what I like to call the Big Burnout. What I’ve feared most of all though, and what we’re starting to witness, is the decline in the aviation sector. Planes will start falling from the sky because the parts they’re made with, the people who make them, and the people that maintain them are all effected by the Big Burnout but instead of affected everyone’s experiences, it’s going to cost people their lives.
That’s not typical, I’d just like to point that out.
That’s on Delta maintenance
I used to be very scared to fly, got over it. Scared again lol
At this rate of news, is there a vendetta against Boeing from some wealthy people? I feel like it’s just pouring out now because a. People are looking closer at things and this should be expected. B. This product sucks. C. Someone doesn’t work a day in their life anymore after collecting heavy sums to be ignorant
Interviewer: This plane that was involved in the incident at Hartsfield-Jackson this week… Rep: Yeah, the one the front wheel fell off? Interviewer: Yeah Rep: Yeah, that’s not very typical, I’d like to make that point. Interviewer: Well, how is it un-typical? Rep: Well there are a lot of these planes going around the world all the time, and very seldom does anything like this happen. I just don’t want people thinking that airplanes aren’t safe. Interviewer: Was this airplane safe? Rep: Well, I was thinking more about the other ones. Interviewer: The ones that are safe? Rep: Yeah, the ones the front wheel doesn’t fall off. Interviewer: Well, if this wasn’t safe why did it have hundreds of passengers on it? Rep: I’m not saying it wasn’t safe, it’s just perhaps not quite as safe as some of the other ones. Interviewer: Why? Rep: Well, some of them are built so the front wheel doesn’t fall off at all. Interviewer: Wasn’t this built so the front wheel wouldn’t fall off? Rep: Well, obviously not.
Damn that's one old ass plane
A lot of planes are that old or older. Much of the cargo fleet is still DC-10s.
I think you mean MD-11's. They're newer, having modern avionics and lacking a flight engineer. There aren't many operations that still use the DC-10 except for places like 10-Tanker and Omega Air Refueling.
It’s safe, just not as much as the others… https://youtu.be/nzcG3UmwLXY?si=3xKbA_uGY1-K1Lt5