[HN Gopher] Updates on Grounding of Boeing 737 MAX 9 Aircraft
___________________________________________________________________
Updates on Grounding of Boeing 737 MAX 9 Aircraft
Author : hef19898
Score : 221 points
Date : 2024-01-13 10:30 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.faa.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.faa.gov)
| paulsutter wrote:
| Do all 737-9 Max have plug doors? If not title should be updated
|
| > Every Boeing 737-9 Max with a plug door will remain grounded
| until the FAA finds each can safely return to operation.
| HappyJoy wrote:
| Depends on the seat configuration. Some times instead of a plug
| you have a door.
| hipadev23 wrote:
| Are some of those times where the plug converts to a door
| mid-flight?
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| No - doors have hinges and you can close them afterwards
| without having to look for the blown door in someone's
| backyard.
| gregoriol wrote:
| But doors need bolts too, right?
| simion314 wrote:
| Yes, but FAA is not willing to pro-actively inspect the
| entire plane, at least 3-5 random ones should be inspected,
| maye also offer something so Boeing employees have the guts
| to speak up
| beej71 wrote:
| I'm curious about this, too. Seems like the door would have
| the exact same mount as the plug if they're to be
| exchanged...?
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Yeah, I think the title is wrong, but it's confusing because
| there's a lot of conflicting info online about this.
|
| https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/boeings-737-max-9-airc...
|
| says:
|
| "Southwest told FOX Business that the Max 8 and Max 7 models in
| their existing fleet do not have the exit-door plug like the
| one involved in the Alaska Airlines incident on Jan. 5.
| Overall, its fleet and operation are unaffected."
| masklinn wrote:
| The title does clearly talk about Max 9, so the Max 8 and 7
| are irrelevant (the max 9 is longer, hence the possibility of
| needing an actual door for high density setups).
|
| The title should still clarify that it's only max 9s with a
| plug door _but_ as far as I understand that should be pretty
| much all 9s in the US: the additional exit is only needed in
| the densest configurations which are only used by ULCC, 85%
| of the global MAX9 fleet has a plug.
| closewith wrote:
| The Max 8s can also have the door (Ryanair fly 8200s and
| have the additional door), so presumably may have the plug?
| alistairSH wrote:
| No, high density seating layouts get a door in that opening vs
| the plug.
|
| But, the majoity, if not all, Max-9 operating in the US have
| the plug. The high density version is, IIRC, mostly sold to low
| budget European carriers.
| specialist wrote:
| My neighbor is retired from Boeing. Started on factory floor,
| fresh out of the Navy. Was a troubleshooter/inspector for
| years. He stays on top of all the Boeing news. He has _A LOT_
| to say about MD 's execs destroying Boeing's obsessive
| culture of engineering and quality.
|
| As of two days ago, his current understanding is the plugs
| are removed and reinstalled when the interiors are installed.
| Meaning it could have been mfg correctly (in Wichita, KS) and
| then reinstalled incorrectly (Renton, WA?).
|
| He isn't yet clear about who was responsible for what. Like
| how this could have been missed by the multiple inspections.
|
| Heresay, so take it or leave it. Just repeating what he tells
| me. I've encouraged him to comment, but he's not that kind of
| person.
| beej71 wrote:
| Does anyone here know how the real emergency exit door mounts
| versus the plug door?
| p_l wrote:
| IIRC there's essentially a door assembly that supports
| opening _once_ , so it doesn't have all the bells and
| whistles of normal door assembly, that fits into the same
| mounting points as the plug door but also has components
| that enable opening it.
| thatjoeoverthr wrote:
| If the doors are manufactured wrong, what else could be wrong? Is
| it even possible to check everything, if they were wholly
| manufactured sloppily?
| jl6 wrote:
| Depends how deep they go on the root cause analysis. If the
| manufacturing flaw was in turn caused by management flaws, then
| yes, that's an underlying issue that has the potential to taint
| everything above it.
| rst wrote:
| Well, looking at another part of the organization distant
| enough that top management (the C-suite) is pretty much all
| they have in common: They had massive quality problems on
| their _space capsule_ (Starliner). (They launched the first
| test flight without having ever done an intgrated test of the
| software in expected mission time -- which led to the
| computers being so confused immediately after launch that it
| blew most of the thruster propellant. That led to an urgent
| hunt for software bugs elsewhere, with the capsule already in
| orbit -- which found another nasty bug which was even worse.)
|
| This is in addition to numerous other quality control issues
| on airliners -- several other well-publicized issues on the
| 737-MAX itself, bric-a-brac left in tanks on 767 tankers,
| quality control issues at the plant producing 787s.
|
| It really does look systemic.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| The KC-46A is also garbage, from their military division.
|
| I agree the problem is systemic.
|
| https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/08/08/usaf-tanker-
| aircra...
| rst wrote:
| Those are the 767 tankers I mentioned -- the KC-46A is a
| modified 767.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| "Is it even possible to check everything"
|
| Yes. It is possible to check everything. We've been
| manufacturing now for centuries. There are absolutely
| techniques, methodologies, organizational structures, all to
| prevent this.
|
| That this is happening is purely cost cutting. Accountants
| balancing lives against pennies. Just like automakers would do
| calculations to determine the cost of installing seat belts
| against potential lawsuits. Nobody cares about lives, it was
| simply a calculation based on potential lawsuits.
|
| Notice, it is totally possible to check everything. There was
| never a problem with our ability to prevent deaths, it was just
| too expensive. Because lives are actually cheap. MOLOCH.
| XorNot wrote:
| They're not balancing lives against pennies. They're just not
| thinking about it. That's the mistake you're making: you're
| implying a plan because a plan means there's control. But
| that's not how it works: someone said "hey it would be
| cheaper if we could just not do this" - someone probably said
| "well this double check is necessary because bad things could
| happen". They were dismissed with the twofer of "that check
| never finds any faults" or my personal favorite "that won't
| happen" (no justification given).
|
| No one in Boeing has a spreadsheet of expected aircraft crash
| rates versus dollars earned on manufacturing and turned the
| dial till they got a nice peak. They just plain didn't think
| about the potential consequences.
| orwin wrote:
| Exactly. They probably don't balance anything.
|
| Industrial tools manufacturers have the same issues.
| Sometimes it ends in breaking that hurt both people and the
| tool, but sometimes it's even more dumb: 'hey, this part is
| under a lot of friction, has to be replaced after each
| maintenance cycle, let's buy almost the same at half the
| cost, the maintenance will be 20% cheaper'. How it end up:
| the tool require faster maintenance cycle, and in the end,
| without taking into account maintenance technicians
| salaries, it ends up 30% more expensive (which isn't an
| issue for new tools, but quite a big one for tools under
| initial maintenance contracts)
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Right, you are correct. Corporations have adapted and don't
| make such blatant calculations anymore. With seat belts, or
| gas tanks, in 70's. There were actual actuaries that did
| the exact calculations, what would manufacturing cost, what
| percentage of accidents would result in lawsuits, what are
| estimated payouts. And they actually did the math to
| balance cost to produce to lives.
|
| But they got into a lot of trouble that they were doing
| those calculations.
|
| Now it is more subtle, everyone has budgets to hit, there
| are deadlines, production quotas. And with Just In Time
| Manufacturing, and local 'ownership'. Some Blackbelt
| consultant convinces the local managers to 'optimize'. And
| of course, they start cutting corners. No real calculation,
| just constant pressure to cut.
| maxbond wrote:
| > MOLOCH
|
| Could you elaborate?
| ahartmetz wrote:
| A an ancient god that eats humans, sometimes used as a
| metaphor for capitalism or other pitiless societal forces.
| maxbond wrote:
| Sorry, I could've been clearer, I understood the
| reference, I wanted to know what they meant by signing
| off like that. I took an inference that seemed unusual
| and perhaps mistaken, so I wanted clarification.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| In the Moloch essay, there are several examples of
| 'capitalism' or 'libertarianism' that make the point that
| there is such a constant drive to cut costs, that humans
| will destroy themselves. And this drive is "Moloch", we
| are it, and also subject to it.
|
| So to me Boeing is just another example in a long line of
| corporations just doing what corporations do, cut costs,
| no matter what the impact.
|
| It sounds too blatant, who would consciously want to kill
| people to save a few pennies.
|
| But what actually happens is just organizational,
| everyone has a budget to hit, there are layers and layers
| of middle managers that are getting squeezed, and they
| start cutting corners. No single corner seems that bad.
| But it is a constant slow progression towards disaster.
|
| A thousand cuts. Some 'common joe manager' that has a kid
| in collage, a mortgage, and his boss is breathing down
| his neck, so he cuts a corner. -- But the problem is,
| everyone has a boss, no one is free, the entire
| organization/system is the beast, but we also comprise
| the beast.
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-
| moloch/
| nostrademons wrote:
| Probably referencing this essay:
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-
| moloch/
| davedx wrote:
| Don't worry, I am sure the FAA will make sure Boeing sends them
| a very serious memo that the plane has been checked and can fly
| again this time.
| acdha wrote:
| You don't see any possibility that the unprecedented in
| modern times failure of the 737 MAX might have caused anyone
| in the FAA leadership or Congress to reconsider their
| relationship? Some might see the language in this memo as
| evidence of that.
| MontagFTB wrote:
| The DC-10 cargo door issue was unprecedented in its time,
| and the first failure was smoothed over with a phone call
| from the CEO to the FAA, instead of an airworthiness
| directive. The plane wasn't grounded until the second
| incident killed all aboard.
|
| I am glad for the AD in this case, and hope the FAA casts
| as watchful an eye over Boeing that we are all hoping they
| will, but shortcuts have happened before.
| acdha wrote:
| Yes - I'd like to think that we've learned better but
| that was in the late 1970s and we are suspiciously around
| the time where the people who had direct experience would
| have retired or been on the way out, similar to how a lot
| anti-vax recruits were too young to have lived memory of
| just how many kids things like polio harmed.
|
| It sometimes seems like we need the engineering
| equivalent of what Germany does with Holocaust education
| to remind everyone of how past disasters were
| preventable, and usually caused by multiple people
| deciding not to act on early warning signs.
| p_l wrote:
| And the FAA director at the time was selected
| specifically as a person who would be more willing to
| play ball with the business, and had such marching orders
| from President.
|
| Similar thing happened during Bush Jr's administration.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Boeing - ready to change and fix everything, except their
| corporate culture.
| jakozaur wrote:
| Airbus A320neo is just a better plane. A case study where better
| engineering provided a competitive advantage.
| squirrel6 wrote:
| True, I've heard and read that many pilots prefer the cockpit
| config over the 737. Boeing needs to just start over.
| diggan wrote:
| > Boeing needs to just start over
|
| Would that even be possible? How long time would it take them
| to complete a completely new design? And then how long time
| from the design is finished until they can start delivering
| planes?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Is _not_ starting over even possible for Boeing a this
| point?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Using a trusted and proven design (eg: 737 NG) is fine
| and even beneficial. In fact, reusing older designs in
| and of itself is fine.
|
| The problem is Boeing clearly doesn't know how to
| manufacture good aircraft anymore. Whether it's a rehash
| or clean sheet design, the result won't change until
| Boeing is run through the washing machine.
| sgarland wrote:
| Except it's been so heavily altered that they had to use
| software (MCAS) to correct for the flight characteristics
| induced by the larger engines. And we all know how that
| worked out.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yes but this is not a huge problem with the airframe
| itself. The tendencies without MCAS are fine. The pilots
| just need to be trained for them.
|
| The problem was that airlines want to skimp on the
| training.
|
| The same thing happened with the engine management.
| Boeing doesn't want to introduce an engine warning system
| because it would mean pilots have to be retrained. A lot
| of these barriers aren't part of the physical design but
| the industry as a whole being extremely wary of training.
| Probably as a result of cheap low-cost carriers emerging.
|
| Not saying Boeing is a great manufacturer but it's not
| the only issue at play.
| sgarland wrote:
| I've just finished reading Flying Blind by Peter Robison
| (recommended elsewhere on HN recently), which had
| engineers arguing that the plane's flight characteristics
| in extremis were not acceptable, and that the correct fix
| was by physical redesign, not software.
|
| Another point the book made was that since nearly every
| other modern aircraft has far more advanced avionics, it
| causes the issue of pilots who are used to computers
| handling a lot of tasks suddenly having to do that
| themselves. This is probably not as much an issue with
| carriers who solely use 737s, like Southwest, but I can
| definitely see the issue otherwise.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Interesting, I was reading elsewhere that the pitch-up
| tendency is not extreme and within limits of other
| approved airframes.
|
| And there's the stabiliser trim that helps a lot with
| control forces of course. But I didn't read that book, I
| will check it out thanks!
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > The problem was that airlines want to skimp on the
| training.
|
| The airlines weren't entirely at fault; Boeing
| misrepresented the necessity of serious pilot training.
|
| The FAA - not Boeing - eventually mandated simulator-
| based training for pilots transitioning onto MCAS-
| equipped aircraft.
| 05 wrote:
| > The tendencies without MCAS are fine
|
| FAA seems to disagree..
|
| > ([0], scroll to bottom) Following publication, an FAA
| spokesman on January 11 provided the additional statement
| regarding Administrator Dickson's comments around
| Boeing's selected path for meeting Federal Aviation
| Regulations for the original implementation of MCAS on
| the 737 Max. The Air Current sought and received comment
| from the FAA in advance of publication and that is
| reflected in the story above. We provide the latest
| response in full:
|
| > The fact of the matter is that the FAA -- and the other
| authorities -- determined during a 20-month review that
| MCAS was a necessary part of the flight control system.
| We all reviewed and approved the changes to the system as
| part of the recent certification.
|
| > This is directly addressed in the 100-plus page report
| [1] that was filed with the Airworthiness Directive. We
| made it clear that the aircraft would not have been
| compliant with the stick force and G requirements and
| higher angle-of-attack without MCAS or some other type of
| mechanism. The FAA does not tell applicants how to design
| planes, so the choice to develop MCAS was an engineering
| decision on the part of Boeing. The FAA's role is to
| evaluate and approve proposed designs against the
| regulatory requirements.
|
| [0] https://theaircurrent.com/aircraft-development/mcas-
| may-not-...
|
| [1] https://www.faa.gov/foia/electronic_reading_room/boei
| ng_read...
| postingawayonhn wrote:
| It clearly hasn't been fine and beneficial.
|
| You can tweak and upgrade an aircraft to a certain
| extent, but they've pushed the 737 design too far.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| 737 MAX flies just fine so long they are manufactured
| properly and we stop pretending it's a 737 NG with pilots
| trained as such.
|
| Y'all think 737 MAX as an airframe can't fly safely, and
| that's straight retarded. I sincerely believe Boeing
| should face bankruptcy from their _many_ recent failings,
| including 737 MAX, but even I will still say 737 MAX are
| fine birds so long as common sense is applied.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Since the MAX program was created specifically to avoid
| going through a full certification process, I'd say
| they're going to triple down. On the spectrum of MAX
| shenanigans, a hole blowing open in the fuselage barely
| ranks. The plane didn't even crash this time! And it is
| not yet clear that Boeing intentionally deceived the
| regulators; they might have paid Spirit to do it.
|
| It's great that the FAA is looking into this. Who is
| looking into FAA, though? Is this another case of
| institutional capture?
| plett wrote:
| The whole reason the 737 Max series exists is to avoid
| having to start over. By maintaining "backwards
| compatibility" type approval with the regular 737 then the
| existing massive pool of 737 pilots can jump straight in it
| and start flying.
| deaddodo wrote:
| I always thought that was the most idiotic part that the
| FAA accepted. Like, I get that there has to be leeway for
| similar configurations of the same plane so they don't
| have to go through the process for each. But it's been so
| clearly abused that it's ridiculous now.
|
| This: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94
| /EM_N323A...
|
| Is so obviously not this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wi
| kipedia/commons/3/32/Alaska_7...
| Symbiote wrote:
| I'm not sure a simple picture is enough.
|
| The Airbus A330 and A350 share the same type rating. (At
| least some variants; I'm not an expert.)
| nicole_express wrote:
| A big advantage Airbus has is their more modern designs
| are full fly-by-wire, so they're able to more practically
| compensate for the handling characteristics in software.
|
| As far as I know (not a pilot or aeronautics engineer)
| MCAS was more or less an attempt to do the same to a non-
| fly-by-wire plane, and we see how that turned out...
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| The Airbus A330 and A350 share the same type rating.
|
| In fact, they do not in the United States.
|
| https://registry.faa.gov/TypeRatings/
|
| In Europe, they do:
|
| https://www.easa.europa.eu/en/downloads/11737/en
|
| However even within the same type rating you may have
| additional training or restrictions. For instance the FAA
| prohibited Southwest from using the same pilots across
| three generations of 737 (Classic, NG, MAX), so Southwest
| ditched the Classics when they bought the MAX.
| deaddodo wrote:
| The picture is just to show how far the plane has
| deviated from its original design on a colinear (e.g.
| same price/size target among the new generation) scale.
| If you want more depth into the pains Boeing goes to not
| trigger a "new design" recertification, there are plenty
| of articles on it released during the initial Boeing MAX
| MCAS forced crashed saga, such as ArsTechnica's series of
| articles.
| bilsbie wrote:
| How bad can retraining possibly be?
|
| Is there something in that process we can address
| instead?
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| It's definitely "possible": Clean out the outsource-
| advocating management from C-suite to middle, and replace
| them with engineering managers.
|
| This was always a leadership issue.
|
| Whether the will is there? The fear of not dying while
| flying 4 miles high is a powerful incentive, and the
| public/market had spoken
|
| What other (poor) outsourcing can we disincentivize?
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| 787 was announced in 2003, and the first shipment was in
| 2012. Obviously we have no idea what the extent of work was
| prior to the announcement.
|
| A220 was officially launched in 2008 (with like 3-5 more
| years of some degree of development prior to that) and
| first delivery was in 2016.
|
| A350 was officially launched in 2004 and first delivery was
| 2014.
|
| Expecting 8-12 years would be reasonable.
| bilsbie wrote:
| The 747 was designed in 65 and doing its first commercial
| flights 5 years later.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747
| ahoka wrote:
| Yes, because redoing something from scratch usually reduces
| the amount of problems. Do you really think that?
| sgt101 wrote:
| eerrr...
|
| I can only speak from experience with software, but several
| times I've been in projects trapped with implementations
| that take months to incrementally update and then seen
| clean sheet implementations blow them out of the water in a
| matter of weeks.
|
| In one case I saw an implementation of a radio system that
| met 100% of the technical requirement that a staff engineer
| wrote as a side project in six weeks. The corporate
| implementation couldn't meet the spec, had taken 2 years
| and was being developed by scores of engineers.
|
| Interestingly the corporate implementation was supplied to
| the customer, caused a huge reputational dent and was
| ulitimately scrapped... while the staff engineer was
| dismissed!
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >I've been in projects trapped with implementations that
| take months to incrementally update and then seen clean
| sheet implementations blow them out of the water in a
| matter of weeks.
|
| Firefox vs. Chrome in a nutshell.
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Not the example you are looking for. KHTML -> WebKit (for
| a while, that was the engine of Chrome!) -> Blink.
| Ekaros wrote:
| 737 might be at point where redoing it from scratch might
| be sensible. You can only iterate from same starting point
| that is over 50 year old design so long.
|
| At certain point starting from new will make more sense.
| And it might be now.
| p_l wrote:
| The problem is that 737 design requires significant redoing
| to make it inherently safer (either structural redesign, or
| switch to Fly-By-Wire), with all options involving
| significant certification hurdles.
|
| At some point the question becomes if there aren't bigger
| wins possible with new airframe.
|
| Or at least resurrecting 757 and maybe making a shortened
| version.
| rst wrote:
| Likewise the 757, which current Boeing management scrapped when
| market trends were against it, but is now the plane they want
| -- so instead they're trying to cheap out with 737 retreads.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Short-term thinking seems to be a big factor in all these
| issues.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| On the other hand, Airbus went ahead with the A380 and gets
| a lot of bad press for it ("How could they not have seen
| this coming").
|
| And the 757 is an old design too.
| HPsquared wrote:
| A380 was an example of "spending now in hope of future
| return". It was a case of long-term thinking gone wrong.
| kergonath wrote:
| You cannot avoid mistakes every now and then. At least it
| had no particular safety issue and is quite a reliable
| aircraft, and they still made money with it. This is
| nothing like the issues Boeing is facing.
| oskarkk wrote:
| Sadly, in the end they lost money on it. They came to a
| point where producing the plane was profitable, but they
| never recouped the development cost:
| https://simpleflying.com/was-the-a380-programme-
| profitable/
| p_l wrote:
| A lot of A380 development went into A350 and new
| techniques going in other planes.
|
| Including 787, actually.
| dgemm wrote:
| Depends what you consider "old", but the 757 is from the
| same era as the A320.
| closewith wrote:
| Obviously the 757 is in the same class as the neos, but they
| could never have competed with them. Either Boeing continued
| selling ever more efficient 737s or they risked losing the
| entire segment to Airbus.
| rst wrote:
| Upgraded versions of the even older 737 are competing with
| the neos just fine, if you go by sales placements.
| closewith wrote:
| Well, yes, exclusively because of the type rating.
| deaddodo wrote:
| And it mostly comes down to Boeing being unwilling to invest in
| a new design so they can keep getting grandfathered into the
| approval process since all iterations are "the same plane".
| Something that probably directly led to recent events.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I strongly agree. I fly a lot, far more than the average
| person. So I have a lot of preferences for which plane I'm
| sitting on.
|
| Not surprisingly, it is originally from Bombardier.
|
| The US, no the world, desperately needs more competition and
| other plane builders.
| Symbiote wrote:
| The originally-Bombardier plane is the A220.
|
| The A320 / A320neo has nothing to do with Bombardier.
| lierborgu wrote:
| I think maybe it's the A220 (developed by Bombardier,
| acquired by Airbus) you're thinking about here, not the
| A320neo (developed by Airbus)
| noir_lord wrote:
| My favourite commercial flight was on a 787, that was one
| comfortable plane to fly on (they pressurise to a lower
| altitude than anything else I'd flown commercial) but every
| other flight I've got in the top ten was airbus.
|
| Given the choice though I'd fly on an airbus with lower
| passenger comfort than any recent Boeing.
|
| I never used to look at what aircraft it was but now I do and
| I avoid Boeing, that's a strategic failure, don't make
| customers think is a good rule.
| naijaboiler wrote:
| Same here for me. 787 has the best flying customer
| experience. After that, the rest of the top 10 are airbuses
| atif089 wrote:
| Anyone got any idea what's the status of that X1 thingy which
| was supposed to be like Concord fast but still affordable by
| peasant class
| afruitpie wrote:
| Are you thinking of Boom Supersonic?
|
| I know next to nothing about aviation or economics, but my
| gut feeling is a plane with ~80 seats for international
| flights will be expensive.
|
| https://boomsupersonic.com/
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > ~80 seats for international flights will be expensive.
|
| Also, it sounds like a lot of GHG emissions per
| passenger-mile.
| atif089 wrote:
| Yup, boom supersonic indeed. I remember reading somewhere
| that they were also working on a ~200 capacity model
| mnbion wrote:
| The R&D is the same but Airbus has superior QA and
| manufacturing.
| m463 wrote:
| I think a lot of the qualities people assign to aircraft are
| actually determined by the carrier.
|
| Some carriers give you things like leg room and comfort, some
| do not, and some take it away then sell it back to you.
| gravity2060 wrote:
| Boeing... when one door closes another one opens.
| kaapipo wrote:
| Haha, a good one
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| or as I heard somewhere: Boeing... the sound made by bits of
| airplane hitting the ground.
| okdood64 wrote:
| Nice to see the memes I come across on IG repeated on HN.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The tone of this statement is interesting to me.
|
| Normally official statements are far less direct, more vague, and
| more technical.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Probably because they know Boeing is a problem and they want
| the public and politicians to clearly know they are a problem
| to get momentum on legislation to force them to behave.
|
| At this point I'm starting to agree we should severely limit or
| outright ban stock-based or near-term performance based
| compensation.
|
| "Sorry kids, this is why we can't have nice things!"
| dheera wrote:
| > At this point I'm starting to agree we should severely
| limit or outright ban stock-based or near-term performance
| based compensation.
|
| If Boeing employee compensation takes a hit, they will lose
| good engineers to Meta, Google, and TikTok which already
| probably pay 3X. You want safer planes? Help bid their stock
| up so that it attracts good engineers.
|
| This is the problem with public companies. Boeing stock value
| should be determined by safety, by FAA, and by actual
| passengers, not by some armchair investors who don't even fly
| on their planes.
| deaddodo wrote:
| Uh, what?
|
| Did you just list two companies which had some of the most
| comprehensive layoffs this year and a third Chinese private
| firm for clearance-based US engineers (generally
| stereotyped as uptight and/or establishment types) to move
| to?
| happyopossum wrote:
| You seem to be stuck in a weird news bubble / or some
| kind of layoff echo chamber. Google had a 6-7% layoff 12
| months ago, and has been hiring steadily, almost
| aggressively since then.
| acdha wrote:
| They're just better informed that you:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/11/technology/google-
| layoffs...
|
| All of the big tech companies are going to have a risk of
| layoffs for a while: the Wall Street activist crowd is
| looking to cash out and those companies which have
| guaranteed income like ads will look great in the short
| term with lower costs on the same income stream. It'll
| take time for the drawbacks to manifest, and often that
| stage will lead to more layoffs when they decide to get
| out of a particular business they've let themselves fall
| behind in.
| oskarkk wrote:
| Is a 0.5% layoff important?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The story is about a company with 180,000+ employees
| laying off hundreds, less than one one-thousandth. What
| does that mean? It would be like a company with an $1.8
| billion budget losing < $1.8 million on something.
| acdha wrote:
| It means anyone considering working there has to think
| about how directly their work connects to one of the big
| strategic goals and assess the odds that they'll be next.
| That certainly doesn't mean nobody should take a job
| there but it adds to the absurdity of someone suggesting
| Google and Boeing are in a hiring competition given how
| different those jobs are.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The odds are less than one in a thousand that they'll be
| next. They only have to be above the 0.1th percentile of
| Google employees.
| acdha wrote:
| That's only true if everything is determined at random.
| In real life, new hires are usually more at risk than
| people who've been around long enough to have a track
| record and allies. More importantly, layoffs also tend to
| involve shifts in business priorities which is why I
| mentioned needing to think about goals - it might be that
| 0.1% of the total staff are being laid off, but that
| doesn't help you if it's your entire project.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| And your odds might be better, depending on the project,
| etc. The average is less than 0.1% - some better, some
| worse. If > 999 out of 1,000 aren't good enough odds for
| you, where will you work?
|
| Lots of people dream of that kind of job security.
| CableNinja wrote:
| Many many many companies have had layoffs in 2023, and
| more are already on the chopping block for 2024. A lot of
| people i talk to regularly, including myself, have been
| laid off in the last 6-7 months.
|
| Google is not the only company in the world. You can even
| search here on HN for layoff discussions, which have
| spiked in the past year.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The engineers FAANG needs are usually not of the aerospace
| variety, are they?
|
| And no, please don't use more start-up or software dev
| thinking during the development of safety critical hard-
| and software.
| martijnvds wrote:
| From FAA to FAANG
| nostrademons wrote:
| Actually there's more crossover than you might think, but
| at an earlier point in the education process.
|
| One of my coworkers at the first startup I worked at out
| of college was an MIT-trained aeronautical engineer. He
| was re-training as a software engineer for quant hedge
| funds (at a salary lower than what I got), because
| aeronautical engineering didn't pay enough to support a
| family in the Boston area. Jumped ship for an actual
| quant hedge fund during my tenure there, for 3x the pay.
| Then the financial crisis hit and I have no idea what
| became of him.
|
| I think this is a pretty common story for the personality
| type that goes on to become software engineers. If it
| were the 70s/80s, when both defense and commercial
| aviation were hot, they would've gone into aviation. Many
| actually _do_ go into aviation as their second career,
| eg. John Carmack, Phil Greenspun, or Sebastian Thrun. But
| the money has been in software from 2000-2020, and so
| that is where the smart engineers go.
| evntdrvn wrote:
| I got a MSc in Controls Systems, spent over a decade
| getting crap pay for highly technical and extremely
| stressful work, then made a conscious decision to go to
| the bottom of the software Eng ladder and climb my way
| up.
|
| Ended up getting 3-4x the pay for 3-4x less stress.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| The engineers at Boeing are not going to trade planes for
| web apps.
| ptmcc wrote:
| I personally know several that have, because Boeing pays
| shit for the level of work and the culture sucks.
|
| It's like the games industry. They underpay because
| people dream of working in the industry because they
| think it's cool.
| cdolan wrote:
| "The government should set the stock price"
|
| Please don't spread this dangerous line of thinking
|
| Government continues to fail. Let's stop waiting for it to
| fix our problems
| lolinder wrote:
| The government continues to fail because a certain
| segment of Congress consistently works to hamstring and
| defund important regulatory arms of government. They then
| point to the failure of government (which they caused) as
| evidence that more funding should be cut.
|
| It is the government's job to ensure that private
| companies don't sacrifice safety in the pursuit of short-
| term gains. Humans are extremely shortsighted by nature
| and the free market will always choose the short term
| over the long term without intervention.
| m_fayer wrote:
| In a very broad sense, just like large enterprises are
| "us", the government is also "us". These are different
| ways that we organize to achieve our aims.
|
| As I see it, government continuing to fail can be seen as
| us continuing to fail. If I stop waiting for us to fix
| our problems, I'm giving up on us, which I'm fighting not
| to do.
| piva00 wrote:
| > Government continues to fail. Let's stop waiting for it
| to fix our problems
|
| It continues to fail since your government adopted the
| policy of less government is better as an ideology, then
| a whole section of your political class completely
| embraced it and decided to hamstring government powers to
| sabotage it and let private companies take over.
|
| There are other governments in the world which suffer
| much less from this, even though the USA successfully
| exported this ideology no other country went so deep into
| this stupidity.
|
| Now you experience the side-effects of the Nixon/Reagan
| eras biting your asses, and since a large part of your
| society doesn't have much of a grasp of history and its
| consequences we end up with a large cohort believing that
| government = bad a priori.
|
| Bad government is bad, but bad government happened by
| design, not because government is naturally bad.
| Government in democratic countries is what the people and
| society under it makes of it, your society decided to
| make it bad by voting believing in lies from the past 40
| years.
| cdolan wrote:
| So much assumption based upon so few words that I put
| into this website
| piva00 wrote:
| Care to expand on the few words then? From what I gather
| you are from the USA so my comment does apply to the
| society you live in.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Don't forget Thatcher!
| acdha wrote:
| > > At this point I'm starting to agree we should severely
| limit or outright ban stock-based or near-term performance
| based compensation.
|
| > If Boeing employee compensation takes a hit, they will
| lose good engineers to Meta, Google, and TikTok which
| already probably pay 3X. You want safer planes? Help bid
| their stock up so that it attracts good engineers.
|
| First, those are entirely different industries and skills,
| and the companies you mentioned all are doing layoffs so a
| steady paycheck at Boeing might be looking pretty good.
| More fundamentally, however, nobody said compensation would
| go away without being replaced but rather that it'd be
| restructured to avoid the incentive to juice short-term
| share prices. This would have little effect on Boeing
| engineers who are not given enough stock for that to be a
| huge deal but it'd have a big impact on the managers who
| have been making so many bad calls: if getting paid in cash
| means the financial engineers don't find working there
| appealing and they're replaced by real engineers, that'd be
| a net win for the company and the flying public.
| Xunjin wrote:
| I was pretty against this way of thinking a decade ago, now I
| cannot deny this might be the solution for most problems on
| predatory capitalism.
| nostrademons wrote:
| I'm not sure that this by itself would help. The root issue
| is the double-edged sword of _liquidity_. If you have the
| ability to "take the money and run", it creates a strong
| incentive to do things which increase the amount of money
| you can take now, and then offload the consequences onto
| problems that will surface long after you have run. Cash is
| actually worse than stock, because you literally get the
| money _now_ and have no incentive and no mechanism to see
| it increase in value later. Much of the _reason_ for stock-
| based compensation is to align incentives between the
| executive and shareholders so that their time horizon at
| least encompasses their vesting period.
|
| To really fix the problem, you need to destroy liquidity
| for decision-makers. Basically make it unprofitable to
| switch companies or retire, so that a.) they are forced to
| stay with the company and live with the consequences of
| their decisions and b.) they don't gain anything from
| short-term revenue bumps anyway. This was sorta the system
| that was in place in the 1950s & 1960s, where the top
| marginal tax rate was 90% so the government took all your
| money above a certain max anyway, and as a result companies
| invested in seniority-based perks like more vacation time,
| private jet use, employer-funded health insurance, etc. But
| this...destroys liquidity, which makes the companies and
| economic system less resilient to outside changes. This is
| what happened to U.S. industry in the 1970s, when they
| found they were uncompetitive with new Japanese firms, or
| to the housing market today, where we've built a system
| that offered great suburban living to Boomers but now can't
| adapt to the incoming Millennial population.
| lostlogin wrote:
| On one level these are both imposed rules (ie
| regulation), but this is an approach I haven't heard
| before and I like it. It would also help a fleet of other
| problems, like underfunded public institutions and
| infrastructure.
| xattt wrote:
| They must be alluding to the previous MCAS disaster - I.e.
| strike two.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > "This incident should have never happened and it cannot
| happen again."
|
| Indeed, you're right. Pretty opinionated and emotional for a
| regulator.
|
| I can't blame them though, they have gotten a lot of flak for
| letting boeing police itself with MCAS, and now this...
| savrajsingh wrote:
| Feels like this part was written by a consultant in a foreign
| country -- the pdf letter is more formal
| hef19898 wrote:
| Not emotional, passionate. Don't forget, everyone in civil
| aviation spent their lives since decades worrying about
| safety. And then comes Boeing and fucks that all over
| _twice_.
|
| Bad news for Boeing so, the FAA seems to be rather pissed.
| And rightly so.
| jmbwell wrote:
| And embarrassed.
|
| Boeing: we can inspect ourselves
|
| FAA: OK, but
|
| Boeing: don't worry!
|
| FAA: Ok but do not fuck this up
|
| Boeing: Relax, guy!
|
| <multiple disastrous human catastrophes>
|
| FAA: GOD DAMMI--
| hef19898 wrote:
| That's how you want the regulators holding your existence
| as company in their hands, right? Pissed off and
| embarassed by you.
| isignal wrote:
| Are they cheekily quoting the CEO who made a similar
| statement last week?
| op00to wrote:
| This statement gave me the exact same feeling that hearing my
| full name (including middle name) coming from my father gave
| me.
| groestl wrote:
| "Now look what you've done, Marjory Stewart-Baxter! You're
| grounded!"
| hyperman1 wrote:
| They were seen reacting way too late in the MCAS debacle, to
| the point other countries were pondering re-evaluating the
| trust-by-default position the FAA has.
|
| The FAA must be seen to react decisively to keep their trust.
| This way, they keep carrying enough weight to declare the
| airplanes safe again later.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| > The safety of the flying public, not speed, will determine
| the timeline for returning the Boeing 737-9 Max to service.
|
| One reading-between-the-lines: "We believe we now have the
| upper hand, the public attention, to shake enough budget out of
| Congress that in future we can have a reasonable fraction of
| safety inspectors reporting to us rather than Boeing. At least
| until public interest moves on to its next big question, such
| as speculating on Taylor Swift's sexual orientation."
| ddlsmurf wrote:
| Ok. So who is inspecting the FAA ? That definitely needs done
| too.
| Xunjin wrote:
| I'm sorry but what is your point?
|
| I'm not USA citizen and IANAL, but any federal investigation
| department has the power to do it, also a federal legislative,
| so the congress could do it too.
| ddlsmurf wrote:
| My point is that it was their job to catch this before the
| plane was commercially used. While I expect no one to be
| perfect, I do expect some introspection as to why this went
| through the cracks. Why is this unreasonable ?
| eganist wrote:
| This is one of those questions that reads as being in bad faith
| on its face, but it has a good answer to it.
|
| https://www.oig.dot.gov/agency/federal-aviation-administrati...
|
| In the US, the major executive departments have Inspectors
| General who serve as a check on the department itself.* The
| Department of Transportation's OIG would be responsible for
| such an investigation of the FAA.
|
| It wouldn't surprise me if the FAA's handling around granting
| Boeing's self certification license to them is investigated.
|
| *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspector_General_Act_of_1978
| ddlsmurf wrote:
| Why does it read as bad faith ? All the problems were signed
| off, not further than November were they considering more
| exemptions...
| eganist wrote:
| Were they? I thought boeing was self certifying elements of
| the MAX like the door plugs, do you have something showing
| the FAA inspected the door plugs?
|
| Everything I'm reading says the FAA is moving to divorce
| the certification process from Boeing to a third party as a
| consequence of this event where Boeing demonstrated they
| couldn't even certify the little things.
| https://www.npr.org/2024/01/12/1224444590/boeing-
| faa-737-max...
|
| And that's my point about your comment coming across like
| it's in bad faith. Usually people throw out questions with
| implied inflammatory answers as a lazy way to incite
| argument, and then those questions either continue or are
| seasoned with false information ("the problems were signed
| off") when someone takes the bait. Then the OP tends to
| write off the bad faith perception claiming they're trying
| to engage sincerely. There's a name for it:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
|
| ---
|
| Given how the FAA responded so far, honestly it could go
| either way whether they're investigated for it by the DOT
| OIG. If there is an investigation, it'd likely just be
| around this self certification process, not necessarily the
| whole org. And it looks like the FAA is moving quickly to
| demonstrate that they're not asleep at the wheel.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Totally legitimate question. Boeing got let off the hook last
| time for egregious shit. They paid a fine and their fleet went
| back up.
| drewcon wrote:
| I think about this HN post about Boeing quality...a lot.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19671611
| philip1209 wrote:
| Wow, I'm now no longer as excited to fly on a 787 next weekend.
| (I had picked it out of other equipment options.)
| robjan wrote:
| The 787 and A380 are still the best planes (in terms of
| comfort, at least) on the market. It makes my 12 hour flights
| between HK and the UK way more bearable.
| philjohn wrote:
| Have you travelled on an A350 yet?
|
| The A350, in my opinion, is more comfortable than both (and
| I'm a big proponent of the A380 and 787 for comfort)
| ibejoeb wrote:
| I give boeing a pretty hard time, but the 787 is great. It's
| far more comfortable than pretty much anything else out
| there. The windows alone make the experience better.
| mtreis86 wrote:
| Only plane I've been on that I didn't feel the need to wear
| hearing protection.
| ibejoeb wrote:
| Yeah I actually tuned off noise cancellation the other
| day.
| acdha wrote:
| That's the tragedy of all this: they're not completely
| failing to have good ideas, but the willingness to cut
| corners on safety mean everyone has to question what's
| lurking beneath the surface. They would have sold a ton of
| aircraft anyway, but someone figured their bonus would be
| huge if they could make the profit margin a few percentage
| points higher.
| davedx wrote:
| Talk is cheap. How much credibility does the FAA really have at
| this point? Are they doing their job or rubber stamping planes to
| fly when Boeing says they're ready?
|
| At this point they seem as useful as Tesla's board.
| acdha wrote:
| This is a weird comment to make in response to them doing
| something Boeing very much does not want them to do. It's like
| going to someone at the gym and asking when they're going to
| get serious about their fitness, rather than last week when
| they were eating Doritos on the couch.
| dt3ft wrote:
| > Boeing must provide instructions to operators for inspections
| and maintenance. Boeing offered an initial version of
| instructions yesterday which they are now revising because of
| feedback received in response.
|
| Is this something we could get our hands on? I'm super curious as
| to what the instructions contain, is it a mere "tighten the
| screws" or something a lot more severe?
| p_l wrote:
| Such emergency addenda aren't secret, might just be annoying to
| acquire a copy if you're not an owner of effected plane.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| > I'm super curious as to what the instructions contain, is it
| a mere "tighten the screws" or something a lot more severe?
|
| This is probably the place to lurk if you want information from
| insiders:
|
| * https://www.pprune.org/tech-log-15/
| maxbond wrote:
| Working under the assumption Boeing had sent a copy to the FAA
| (maybe also NTSB?) and that it would be FOIA-able, I started
| filling out a FOIA request through MuckRock, but they've
| changed their model and are charging a small fee ($20 per 4
| requests). Which does sound like a fair price, but ultimately I
| decided not to do it.
|
| So, if you or anyone else want to pick up the torch, here's how
| I was planning to scope the request: Any and
| all instructions for the inspection and/or maintenance of
| Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft received by the FAA between January
| 6th, 2024 and January 13th, 2024.
|
| The necessary legal incantations are contained in the template
| MuckRock provides.
|
| But in all honesty I bet the easiest way to get a copy is to
| check in with the aerospace media/blogosphere every few days
| until someone publishes a copy.
| brunohaid wrote:
| Still fascinating how presciently Matt Stoller nailed the issue 5
| years ago:
|
| Let's start by admiring the company that was Boeing, so we can
| know what has been lost. As one journalist put it in 2000,
| "Boeing has always been less a business than an association of
| engineers devoted to building amazing flying machines."
|
| https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-coming-boeing-bailout
| dd36 wrote:
| His work is so important.
| cedws wrote:
| Enshittification: the reaper of engineering powerhouses.
| calrain wrote:
| Boeing is so far off the rails.
|
| They need a reset.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Nearly 23 years ago: 'A Boeing aerospace engineer presented a
| controversial white paper in 2001 at an internal technical
| symposium. The engineer, John Hart-Smith, warned colleagues of
| the risks of the subcontracting strategy, especially if Boeing
| outsourced too much work and didn't provide sufficient on-site
| quality and technical support to its suppliers.
|
| "The performance of the prime manufacturer can never exceed the
| capabilities of the least proficient of the suppliers," Hart-
| Smith wrote. "These costs do not vanish merely because the work
| itself is out-of-sight."'
|
| https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/boeing-manufacturing-7...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Airbus was a masterstoke of international politics as much as
| it was of technology in that it involved a high level of
| international cooperation that was completely successful.
| (Compare that to the corruption-driven procurement that left
| Superphenix with broken steam turbines)
|
| Boeing's outsourcing plan was quite similar in that it
| discouraged many countries that might have been able to enter
| the competition for airliners, say Japan, from doing so. Japan
| very well might have decided to subsidize and otherwise help
| domestic manufacturers but didn't feel they had to because they
| made the tail of the Dreamliner.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| From the same article: 'Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury, in a June
| interview, said the plane maker faces similar risks with its
| own suppliers--many of which Boeing shares. But he said
| Airbus has largely been able to avoid major problems with its
| quality-assurance approach.
|
| "We are quite intrusive on what suppliers are doing," Faury
| said. "We always have to remain very prudent and very humble
| --you don't know what could hit you tomorrow."'
|
| ... 'When it [Spirit] needed to ramp back up, not only did
| Spirit have fewer people on site, the company had lost years
| of expertise. There were fewer experienced mechanics, but
| also fewer experts who could inspect the quality of their
| work. ... Boeing's demands for lower prices left Spirit
| strapped for cash as managers panicked over meeting
| increasingly demanding deadlines. Boeing routinely had
| employees on the ground in Wichita and conducted audits of
| the supplier.'
|
| Leadership issue from Boeing : Completely disparaging and
| underestimating the deep skills of manufacturing and
| engineering through-and-through.
|
| What was Boeing even auditing? And guess who's left holding
| the bag of awfulness?
| a_square_peg wrote:
| Can confirm. I worked as Airbus' tier 1 supplier and they
| were even accompanying us to manage our own supplier, which
| in hind-sight, ensured that things like this didn't happen.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| That sounds a partnership: They're there to help.
|
| In essence, did Airbus help advise what sorts of corners
| could/couldn't be cut?
| a_square_peg wrote:
| The way the project was structured, it was in the
| interest of everyone to succeed since everyone paid for
| their own development cost and only made money when the
| planes were sold. Not the easiest client to work for mind
| you - I've been told that many companies flat out refuse
| to work with them, but again, thinking back, I think
| that's what made the project a success, although
| extremely stressful.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Some customers you can't afford to have and some you
| can't afford to lose, especially not the ones that help
| you to perform at (or even above, by educating you) your
| potential.
| a_square_peg wrote:
| Yep - certainly lessons learned through painful
| experiences.
|
| Supply chain management is incredibly challenging and
| it's interesting to see one school of thought moving away
| to vertical integration as an alternative solution and
| another doing just as well with suppliers (Airbus, Apple,
| ASML, etc).
| sfifs wrote:
| My guess of what may have happened reading between the lines is
| - Boeing originally possibly instructed Spirit to loosely fit
| the plug and not secure it because they planned to remove it to
| fit out the interiors. In this case Boeing would be accountable
| to secure the plug door after the interior is done to the right
| specs
|
| Somewhere down the line, Boeing possibly decided not to remove
| the plug and instead just load interiors through the bigger
| openings only. They possibly either did not document this
| change and think through implications and instructions changes
| for Spirit to secure the door plug instead or did so but Spirit
| possibly missed. So the bunch of planes may have been delivered
| with loose plugs that Alaska and United found.
|
| All the implications of outsourcing without sufficient
| supervision and hand-offs made in the parent point would have a
| bad effect. The question FAA is probably asking is if Boeing or
| Spirit has deviated from documented production practice in this
| area, have they deviated in other areas.
| williamcotton wrote:
| Yet another example of not just the inability, but the
| unwillingness to engage in managerial accounting.
|
| These companies primarily focused on financial accounting and
| even use EPITDA as an internal metric. They do not consider the
| true costs, such as, people dying or being traumatized by the
| use of their products. They do not think about the costs of
| such decisions 20 years into the future. These executives are
| motivated primarily by their performance with regards to their
| own personal shares.
|
| Quarterly reports are the rear view mirror. Making projections
| into the future is the road ahead of you. A focus on short term
| goals leads blown out windows and aircraft falling from the
| skies.
|
| This is how the tech industry is managed as well. It is not
| "enshitification", it is rather corporate incentive structures
| and a general level of incompetence. Pure tragedy, the hero CEO
| brings his own downfall upon himself with only the audience
| capable of understanding the reasons why.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Yeah the MAX itself isn't as much of a problem as the
| outsourcing.
|
| Spirit is a financial tire fire. They've had zero gross margin
| since the pandemic and they're now burning through half their
| revenue in interest payments on top of that. Boeing is
| offloading those losses onto them in order to juice up their
| own profits. Boeing should probably just be forced to reacquire
| them.
| nostrademons wrote:
| Clarification for anyone who is as confused as I was: Spirit
| _Aerosystems_ , not Spirit _Airlines_. Spirit Aerosystems is
| the subcontractor that made the door plug. It was spun out of
| Boeing in 2005 and still has tight employee connections.
| Spirit _Airlines_ has no connection to Boeing; they actually
| run an all-Airbus fleet.
| nostrademons wrote:
| "The performance of the prime manufacturer can never exceed the
| capabilities of the least proficient of the suppliers"
|
| Software connection: this is known as SLA Inversion [1], the
| phenomena that you can never be more reliable than your least
| reliable component. There are ways to get around it, but they
| involve having multiple redundant but independent paths to
| achieving a successful result. This is difficult for structural
| components of an aircraft because each redundant mechanism adds
| weight and decreases performance & fuel economy.
|
| It's somewhat shocking to me that there are no redundant
| failsafes to something as critical (and potentially error-
| prone) as a loose bolt in a door plug, though. Or maybe there
| were and we'll see compound errors in the final FAA report,
| which will definitely be interesting to read.
|
| [1] https://sookocheff.com/post/architecture/stability-
| antipatte...
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| I'd be really surprised if it was just one loose bolt that
| would allow this to happen, but I don't know. It would be
| hard to believe they were that stupid, so I'd rather not
| assume.
| beej71 wrote:
| I'm not a structural engineer or anything, but I don't see
| how a single missing bolt would allow this to happen. It
| would have to be at least the two upper retaining bolts,
| neither of which were particularly picky about torque and
| both of which had cotter pins on castle nuts, ideally.
|
| In my humble, ignorant opinion, this. You heard it here on
| the Internet. :)
|
| Last I heard, though, none of the 4 main bolts were
| recovered, and they were going to do lab tests to try to
| determine if they were present to begin with.
| bcrl wrote:
| Watch Mayday. There are a number of accidents that were
| caused by a single bolt, but it is usually a systemic
| series of faults that allowed that to happen as was the
| case for Flight 17: https://www.avm-mag.com/a-loose-bolt-
| and-lives-lost-the-cras...
| WalterBright wrote:
| Speculation: if none of the 4 bolts were tightened, the
| bolts may have vibrated loose one by one. The door blew
| out when the last bolt fell out.
|
| Or the wrong bolts were used - bolts that were not strong
| enough.
|
| Or the particular batch of bolts used were not heat
| treated, making them not strong enough. (You can't tell
| if a bolt is heat treated by looking at it.)
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Unlike you I have less than no background in this, most
| especially in aero, but if the faults were as basic as
| you've described, that would be not failure but outright
| engineering negligence.
| WalterBright wrote:
| It's not engineering negligence. It's the process that is
| supposed to implement the design.
|
| That said, it's also a goal of engineering to make the
| process easier. One such technique is to design things in
| patterns. Then, if something doesn't fit the pattern,
| attention is easily drawn to it to investigate the
| problem. Design things so that when they look right, they
| are right. For example, look at the line of rivets
| holding an assembly together. They should form a nice
| neat pattern.
|
| I try to write software the same way. I lay out the code
| in patterns. Anything that looks out of place in the
| pattern draws attention as being a mistake.
| noduerme wrote:
| When I test-drove my 1980 Datsun, the owner had just been
| working on the brakes. As I drove with him through the
| neighborhood, I kept hearing a clunk. I thought it was
| the transmission. Then at about 40mph, the rear driver's
| side wheel detached and went flying past my door. The
| rear of the car skidded on the axle until I managed to
| get it to a stop.
|
| Turns out the guy's family had come over right as he was
| tightening the lugnuts and he forgot to finish them.
| Maybe only one was properly tightened.
|
| He'd wanted $5k for it, but I offered him $2800 as we
| retrieved the wheel and he accepted.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| Right but that's not a single fastener. A single missing
| wheel bolt or lug nut is not a catastrophic problem. If
| all of them are loose or missing that can be a problem.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
| WalterBright wrote:
| That's why every critical thing in an airplane is
| redundant.
| logifail wrote:
| > That's why every critical thing in an airplane is
| redundant
|
| I'm not sure how to understand that claim. Do the
| emergency doors/door plugs have two bolts? Three bolts?
| Ten bolts?
|
| If the manufacturer and/or the operator is not capable of
| making sure that _all_ the bolts are _always_
| appropriately tightened, what is that claim actually
| worth?
|
| > One crash happened because a maintenance worker taped
| over the redundant sensors so the airplane could be
| cleaned, and forgot to remove the tape. The inspection to
| ensure the tape was removed also failed
|
| So from that we learn that failures can stack, just like
| like redundancies?
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Do the emergency doors/door plugs have two bolts? Three
| bolts? Ten bolts?
|
| I don't know the design. But I'm sure it is not one where
| one bolt failing will cause the door to come off.
|
| > If the manufacturer and/or the operator is not capable
| of making sure that all the bolts are always
| appropriately tightened, what is that claim actually
| worth?
|
| The process also has to be redundant. One mechanic
| tightens the bolts, and an inspector checks it and signs
| off on it. If there are loose bolts shipped, then the
| inspector has some 'splaining to do.
|
| > So from that we learn that failures can stack, just
| like like redundancies?
|
| Zipper failures are not supposed to happen. Any crash is
| the result of an unexpected zipper failure. The whole
| airline system is extremely complex, and finding every
| potential zipper failure is nigh impossible, though
| everyone involved tries to anticipate every scenario.
| When a zipper failure happens, then each event in the
| zipper is corrected.
|
| This is how airline travel, an inherently dangerous
| activity, has become so incredibly safe.
| jacquesm wrote:
| They have four bolts. Two at the top and two at the
| bottom.
| cratermoon wrote:
| I believe we're going to find that it wasn't a single loose
| bolt, but that all for bolts were missing, somehow.
| jacquesm wrote:
| No, then the first pressurization would have led to the
| plug being blown out.
| throwaheyy wrote:
| No. The bolts don't hold the door/plug against the
| pressure. There are 12 stops and brackets, separate from
| the bolts, that take the pressurization load and transfer
| it to the airframe. The bolts are there to simply prevent
| the door from translating upwards from behind the stops
| (as it would when opened as a real door).
|
| The bolts could be missing and it could take some time
| (vibration, landings etc.) for the plug to work its way
| upwards from behind the stops.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You've got that 100% backwards. The 12 stops stop the
| door from moving _inward_ , the only thing that stops the
| plug from moving _outward_ is the bolts. See the widely
| circulated drawing of how that plug is constructed, I
| think you have inside and outside mixed up.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| Sorry you couldn't be more wrong here. The parent post
| describes this correctly.
|
| The door rests on the stops (on the inside) which
| transfer 100% of the pressurization load (from the inside
| out) into the fuselage. The stops look to be welded or
| part of the structure. There is no need to prevent
| movement inward because the force under pressurization is
| in the opposite direction! This door is apparently a 20
| year old design, used on the legacy pre-MAX 737, it was
| not conceived by idiots.
|
| The bolts don't carry this load at all. Their purpose is
| to keep the door from _sliding upwards vertically_ up and
| over the stops.
|
| The operation of the door for maintenance e.g. like
| opening a window for ventilation, the bolts are removed,
| the door is then lifted upwards with the help of springs,
| sliding past the stops and pops out. There looks to be a
| small strap to help keep it propped open.
|
| Likely the presence of any one of the four bolts that
| restricts vertical movement would have prevented this, at
| least until it was discovered at a maintenance checkup.
|
| It's possible the door was sitting on the stops with no
| bolts and enough landings happened inducing vertical
| loads to cause it to gradually slip out of place. Similar
| to how you can hold a mattress on top of your car with
| friction and your hand for a period of time, it just
| takes one gust of wind in the right direction and the
| rest is history.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > The door rests on the stops (on the inside) which
| transfer 100% of the pressurization load (from the inside
| out) into the fuselage.
|
| No.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%
| 2Fq...
|
| The drawing is _from the inside of the plane_. If it had
| been the other way around the door could have never
| gotten past the stops. And since it is from the inside
| that means that the stops themselves (which are _stops_ ,
| so they're not bolted into the door, just into the
| fuselage, the plug door is just resting against them)
| can't hold the door against the fuselage pressure any
| more than you can push on a rope. For that you need those
| bolts, they are the elements that provide the tensile
| strength counteracting the pressure in the cabin. That's
| also why the bolts coming loose led to pressurization
| warnings. If there had been no bolts the whole plug door
| would have come out immediately. The stops ensure that
| the door sits flush with the outside of the aircraft and
| it's the bolts that pull the plug door _against the
| stops_.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| I'm going off what the NTSB said, you're citing Reddit
| and developing your own interpretation of a diagram you
| do not understand.
|
| When you pull the door closed, the stops on the door are
| ABOVE and BEHIND the ones on the fuselage. The door then
| slides DOWN to lock it into place. So under pressure the
| tabs on the door push AGAINST the ones on the fuselage.
| The bolts prevent the vertical motion to unlatch the door
| _and do not carry any pressurization load._
|
| _> they are the elements that provide the tensile
| strength counteracting the pressure in the cabin._
|
| There are NO bolts here carrying tensile loads, shear
| loads only.
|
| Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jeO5fwRXLo
|
| At 1m40s the chairwoman of the NTSB explains why you're
| wrong. I'll accept your retraction anytime. :)
| jacquesm wrote:
| I'm going by the construction drawing which is 100%
| unambiguous and not a bunch of words. Reddit has nothing
| to do with it, that's just one place where this Boeing
| sourced drawing can be found.
|
| The NTSB comment is just about the fitting guides not
| about the stops, and yes, they stop the door from moving
| upwards. There are no bolts through the stops and they do
| not mesh into any part of the door as far as I am aware,
| nor does the drawing show anything that they can slot
| into, it's just a bit of pressure. If it isn't the bolts
| providing the tension then it would have to be some other
| mechanism but none is apparent on the drawing. I'm sure
| the bolts will _also_ stop the door from moving
| vertically, just as much as they stop if from moving
| laterally, the key bit is that if they do not engage that
| the door can slide up and outward and into the airstream
| on the side of the plane, which is a formidable force.
| After that it is just a matter of time before the door
| will escape.
|
| The big question for me is whether all of the bolts had
| to come loose before the door escaped or whether it was
| enough for one or two of the four that were loose to come
| out to do start a feedback loop (door goes off a bit,
| more air, more vibration and so on). I also wonder if
| they'll be able to recover the bolts from inside the
| airframe or whether they've been lost.
|
| > I'll accept your retraction anytime. :)
|
| This is the sort of dumb comment that you may want to
| take elsewhere.
|
| It is 100% possible that my reading of that construction
| drawing is wrong, but you haven't shown _where_ or _how_
| it is wrong, just that the NTSB person said something
| that is either incompatible with the drawing or that
| there is a discrepancy between my understanding of the
| drawing and reality. If you want me to progress in my
| understanding you 'll have to explain, not demand because
| _nothing_ the NTSB officer said helps with that
| understanding other than to contradict, which is a good
| indication that I 'm wrong but not _how_ I am wrong. All
| she talks about is 'matching circles' but those run in a
| different direction than against pressure so I really
| don't see how that matches the drawing. It's possible the
| stops hook _over_ the corresponding parts in the plug but
| that 's not readily apparent from the drawing at all.
| throwaheyy wrote:
| You're wrong. The stops take the pressure load, that's
| why there are 12 of them and they are beefy. The bolts
| simply keep the door behind the stops, that's why only 4
| bolts are needed for that.
| wannacboatmovie wrote:
| _> I 'm going by the construction drawing which is 100%
| unambiguous and not a bunch of words._
|
| It's not a construction drawing, it's a cartoon showing
| the door in the open position and you are assuming
| (incorrectly) the operation of the door.
|
| This will be my last comment on this topic because this
| argument is fruitless and you seem unable to see it any
| other way. That said:
|
| This is a high res photo of an installed door plug:
|
| https://nitter.privacydev.net/pic/orig/media%2FGDk50Aaa4A
| Esm...
|
| You can clearly see the "stop fittings" on the door are
| on the INSIDE and rest on the ones connected to the
| airframe, preventing outward movement.
|
| When the door opens, it slides up along those two black
| cylindrical things at the bottom, the stops move past the
| matching ones on the fuselage, and it hinges outward.
| throwaheyy wrote:
| Sorry but you are completely wrong here.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's possible, but saying it is so will need to come
| with an explanation of how I'm wrong and how your view
| matches the construction drawing that I linked because I
| think that drawing is kind of important, going on the
| assumption that it really shows the situation in the
| aircraft. Either there is some trick to the installation
| process that isn't readily apparent or some other detail
| that I'm missing.
| throwaheyy wrote:
| No, I won't provide such an explanation or attempt to
| convince you any further. It's not "my view" it's just
| how it works. Plenty of videos and photos online
| demonstrating how the door works, you can easily go find
| them and convince yourself.
|
| Edit: I'm feeling charitable so here's one, knock
| yourself out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maLBGFYl9_o
| maxerickson wrote:
| When the door plug is installed, the stop pads on the
| plug pass the stop pads on the plane and then the door is
| shifted vertically to align them, with the pads on the
| plug on the inside of the pads on the plane.
|
| Instead of arguing about it, maybe consider which way the
| pressure is pushing during various phases of operation
| and decide how you would design the thing if the highest
| forces push outward...
| WalterBright wrote:
| > This is difficult for structural components of an aircraft
| because each redundant mechanism adds weight and decreases
| performance & fuel economy.
|
| All structural (and other flight critical) components in an
| airliner are redundant. And yes, they add weight, decrease
| performance, and increase fuel consumption.
|
| As for the door, it is also redundant. We'll have to wait and
| see to find out what the exact cause was before finding a
| solution.
|
| The obviously loose bolts are certainly a problem. The
| process should be one mechanic installs the bolts, then an
| inspector inspects it and signs off on it.
|
| If you watch "Aviation Disasters" (I watch all of them)
| there's always multiple causes for each accident, and
| multiple fixes. One crash happened because a maintenance
| worker taped over the redundant sensors so the airplane could
| be cleaned, and forgot to remove the tape. The inspection to
| ensure the tape was removed also failed.
| zh3 wrote:
| Famously, the 'swiss cheese' model [0, critical article] -
| every layer has holes, so layers of safety are required to
| reduce the chances of holes lining up (leading to a failure
| dropping though - and resulting in an accident).
|
| [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1298298/
| lostlogin wrote:
| > It's somewhat shocking to me that there are no redundant
| failsafes to something as critical (and potentially error-
| prone) as a loose bolt in a door plug, though.
|
| There were warning lights going off suggesting a
| depressurisation was going to occur, but these were broadly
| ignored (though flights were restricted to shorter routes).
|
| Not quite a fail safe but also not an ideal response.
|
| https://www.kptv.com/2024/01/08/watch-live-ntsb-officials-
| gi...
| mulmen wrote:
| That's not what those lights mean. The warning was for a
| malfunction of one of the triple-redundant pressure
| _control_ systems.
|
| > Homendy said investigators have learned that before the
| Friday flight, the "auto-depressurization" warning light
| came on during or after three previous flights, at least
| one time while the aircraft was in the air, and once while
| it was on the ground. Each time, the light was checked out,
| and Alaska Airlines reported the light turning on was a
| "benign" issue.
|
| Homendy addresses this in the media brief:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jeO5fwRXLo&t=257s
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| There is another effect, if the dependency is strong enough
| suppliers can intentionally lower the quality to force Boeing
| to buy them out with much greater profits than they would have
| made from continuing as a normal supplier. Thus suppliers have
| an strong incentive to lower quality to unsafe levels and
| Boeing has a strong incentive to not do anything about it.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| this applies to an entire national economy, Silicon Valley was
| successful due to having hardware and software right next to
| each other, same thing for US manufacturing in general when we
| were a powerhouse.
|
| We then let our government get bribed by Wall Street to allow
| outsourcing everything for a few decades of short term profit.
| Now China has the manufacturing ecosystem that allows them to
| innovate more efficiently
| voakbasda wrote:
| Yup. Speaking as an embedded engineer, outsourcing at least
| some manufacturing to China (or other Far East empires) is
| often the only road to profitability with modern hardware.
| Doing so significantly impacts the momentum that can be
| achieved.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Doing so significantly impacts the momentum that can be
| achieved
|
| In a good way or a bad way? I can think of a few success
| stories that are dependant on China's manufacturing
| prowess. I'm typing this on an iPhone.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| How is China's economy doing? Also, the US economy is running
| near full capacity; what would you have the US move offshore
| in order to bring manufacturing onshore? Or would you allow
| more immigration and foreign investment?
| kranke155 wrote:
| The US economy is running at full capacity, but it could be
| that the some part (20-30-40%) capacity is being used in
| absolutely poor performance areas.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Why would we think the productivity of those resources
| would be higher for manufacturing?
| callalex wrote:
| There is something to what you say, but the continued success
| of both Apple Silicon and Nvidia processors seems completely
| opposed to your statement. How do you reconcile those two
| things?
| corethree wrote:
| >These costs do not vanish merely because the work itself is
| out-of-sight.
|
| This quotation isn't technically true. There are actual costs
| that do vanish depending on who you contract to. This is
| completely independent of quality. They are orthogonal.
|
| The sacrifice is characterized as a guaranteed drop in quality
| if costs are lowered. No. When you sub contract quality is just
| harder to control. You are rolling the dice. But depending on
| the sub contractor there can even be an increase in quality
| along with a cost drop.
|
| For example: iPhones. Subcontracted to china. But pretty high
| quality. Of course apple had to move over qc to china but there
| was still overall an up in quality with a cost drop.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Could someone who disagrees with this offer their
| counterpoint?
| corethree wrote:
| Haha. This is an illustration of human bias.
|
| You can't find a counter point on your own so instead of
| building a conclusion based off of evidence you call out to
| others to provide you with evidence so you can support your
| desired conclusion.
| binoct wrote:
| A more charitable read of the question could be: GP reads
| a compelling argument about a topic they have little
| expertise in, and are curious if there are dissenting
| opinions.
|
| We can also talk about how much to trust comments on
| hacker news generally, but multiple data points from any
| quality of source are better than one.
| corethree wrote:
| This is true. I'm assuming disagreement in general
| because my post has negative karma.
|
| I therefore think it's more realistic to assume that he
| disagrees. But you're right I could be wrong.
|
| Anyway my comment was very general. And I offered a
| anecdotal counter point. Falsification only needs a
| single piece of evidence as proof.
|
| A single example of a sub contractor who is both cheap
| and high quality will falsify the general quotation here.
| There is literally no stronger argument in existence. So
| not surprised that people can't find a counter point as
| what I offered is literal proof.
|
| Other then dismissing the quality of iPhones coming out
| of china, At best one can counter by changing the topic
| of the debate. You could say that in general there's a
| trend of lower quality associated with lower cost and
| that while it's not strictly true, it could be generally
| true. But that's not the argument.
|
| In fact on that topic i am not making such a strong claim
| that it isn't true. For that topic I literally don't
| know.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I agreed with your post, but was confused by the heavy
| downvoting and wanted to understand what I was missing.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > "The performance of the prime manufacturer can never exceed
| the capabilities of the least proficient of the suppliers,"
|
| It's also limited by the least proficient of their internal
| functions. Internal or external makes no difference in that
| respect.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I see a risk of this thing being "Conways's Airplane" like the
| law that says your software will be structured like the team
| that made it.
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| Apologies: The actual white paper as well -
| https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/69746-hart-smith-on-...
| mrb wrote:
| Hindsight is 20/20. I'm sure one could go back and read
| thousands of these internal technical symposium papers
| criticizing X or Y or Z, and most of those turned out to be
| unwarranted.
| politelemon wrote:
| A lot of focus on Boeing and its systemic issues with
| subcontracting and cost cutting. Does Airbus suffer from similar
| issues or problems with corporate culture?
| jeffrallen wrote:
| > where it lost a "plug" type passenger door _and additional
| discrepancies_
|
| Whoa. That's a pretty big bomb that the FAA just threw there.
| "We've just begun and what we've already found was so bad we're
| grounding the airplane."
|
| I suspect that means the quality system governing the handoff
| from the subcontractor to Boeing is completely broken. It could
| mean that the way Boeing is monitoring quality from all
| subcontractors on that airplane is fundamentally flawed.
|
| It's going to be a long way back for Boeing.
|
| Operators of the 737 Max 9 are going to need to find some
| financing to pay their costs on these airplanes until Boeing
| makes them whole.
| Havoc wrote:
| FAA is missing the forest for all the trees here.
|
| Instead of grounding one model for one issue they should be
| asking questions about wtf is going on at boeing wrt safety
| culture.
|
| And same question can be asked about the FAA frankly. If Boeing
| engineers are saying they refuse to fly on these planes how is
| the FAA granting rights to self-certify?!? Are these people
| permanently high?
| voidfunc wrote:
| You gotta read between the lines. Boeing cannot be allowed to
| fail. The FAA is a formality. That's basically what is being
| said.
| Solvency wrote:
| But why not? Why can't they fail? Why can the world have so
| many car makers and yacht makers but we can't disrupt up a
| flailing company like Boeing?
| gumby wrote:
| Because they are a major military contractor. In fact the
| Boeing we know today was formed by a merger between the
| failing McDonnell-Douglas and then-successful Boeing -- a
| merger basically forced by the DoD because MCD's military
| contracting was too important to them. The management of
| the resulting company mostly came from MCD.
|
| Makes one wonder if the military and space sides of the
| business are also suffering quality problems or not.
| voidfunc wrote:
| Basically best to understanding Boeing and the US
| Government as one and the same the only difference is
| Boeing has a ticker symbol.
| gumby wrote:
| Boeing is a negligible subset of the USG though.
|
| I find it more weird when Lockheed, CSC etc contract to
| run non-military programs for the USG. Whatever your
| opinion of military matters, I think it's a bad idea to
| have a company whose main objective is killing people
| manage a program designed to, say, keep people from
| starving to death.
| m463 wrote:
| I agree, for example the Grumman LLV
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_LLV
| voidfunc wrote:
| Eh... also gotta consider Boeing employs 145K people.. it
| would be really bad if it went under.
| philwelch wrote:
| 80% of the work a military does is to keep people from
| starving to death. It's called "logistics".
| gumby wrote:
| Yeah, but not Lockheed
| philwelch wrote:
| That's not true. Lockheed makes cargo planes and
| helicopters.
| gumby wrote:
| Yes but someone else ( the military) operates them, just
| as they do trucks and forklifts and whatever.
|
| I'm talking about Lockheed contracting with civilian
| governments to _operate_ welfare systems and such.
| p_l wrote:
| Lockheed has considerable logistical arm, though mostly
| unrelated to feeding people anything other than lead and
| depleted uranium.
|
| It also sucks hilariously and if you think F-35 had
| avionics problems then you're just not ready for
| Lockheed-Martin quality in logistics.
| noir_lord wrote:
| Should split the companies and let the commercial arm
| sink or swim.
|
| It won't happen because lobbying and been one of the big
| two is good for soft power so Boeing will be allowed to
| kill people as long as it stays under a certain rate.
| privacyisntdead wrote:
| In the years since, manufacturing problems have
| emerged[1] not only in the 737 but at other factories
| where Boeing makes its 787 Dreamliner, a U.S. military
| refueling tanker and Air Force One replacement jets[2],
| as well as at some of its key suppliers.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/boeing-
| manufacturing-7...
|
| [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-dreamliner-
| delays-faa-de...
|
| [2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeings-new-air-force-
| one-hit-b...
| philwelch wrote:
| The space side of the business is a huge mess--Starliner
| was supposed to go into operation around the same time as
| Crew Dragon but got delayed by multiple issues.
|
| Also, Boeing's status as a major military contractor is
| slipping. They have lost multiple contract bids in recent
| decades. As a consequence of losing the JSF competition
| they have also put a lot of lobbying and PR effort into
| attacking the F-35 in an attempt to drum up more business
| for the Super Hornet; this didn't work out and Super
| Hornet production is set to end next year.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > But why not? Why can't they fail?
|
| Also see big banks. Some companies aren't allowed to fail.
| ScoobleDoodle wrote:
| Giving Boeing a pass just increases the blast radius to the
| airline industry and consumers. The management at Boeing
| putting in place an incentive structure counter to safety and
| engineering should be removed and replaced with people who
| can enable a return to an engineering and safety culture.
|
| Make Boeing management face the music and contain the blast
| radius to those who have lead poorly.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| One peculiar thing about frameworks within which state agencies
| operate, unless they are pure authoritarian vehicles to "make
| it so" for pretty much anything a power figure asks, is that
| they have a ruleset within which they operate. They can do no
| less, but they can also do no more, even if the spirit of the
| issue calls for it.
|
| So you can make them do more by initiating a legislative
| process, complete with campaigning and lobbying, which is quite
| expensive and time-sucking for your average Joe Concerned
| Frequent Flyer Kowalski.
|
| On the other hand, your friendly neighborhood Seattle company
| that makes planes can do just the same, except that they can
| afford to retain lobbyists, their board members are well
| connected, their C-suite play golf and have dinners with the
| right people. And they have power to push rules such that will
| make FAA's reach effectively toothless, and do it quickly if
| need be.
|
| That of course assuming that corruption in the FAA itself does
| not exist and that they indeed are doing what they can.
| hackernoteng wrote:
| I have been against the 737 max since it came out. You have a
| proven safe reliable design in the 737. Then you bolt on engines
| it was never designed to use. It changes the flight dynamics of
| the plane, which needs to then be monitored and "corrected" with
| special software. Changing dynamics with different engines could
| cause all kinds of unforeseen issues with fuselage integrity,
| different stresses, airflows, etc. How do we know bolts dont
| loosen due to different stresses from different types of engines?
| The whole dynamics of the plane is suspect.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| Then you bolt on engines it was never designed to use.
|
| Congrats you've described the overwhelming majority of 737s
| ever built, as only the first 1,100 or so (around 9% to date)
| were built with the JT8D. Or you've described none of the 737s
| ever built if you consider that any airliner was _designed_ for
| whatever engines it was installed with.
| burnerburnson wrote:
| The recent push to relax education standards in the US is only
| going to make problems like this worse.
|
| For example: https://www.oregonlive.com/education/2023/10/oregon-
| again-sa...
|
| I can see it already in my company. Many of the newer engineers
| don't even have basic language skills. Reading their design
| documents is an exercise in divination. This has repeatedly
| resulted in delays and costly miscommunications between
| partnering teams.
|
| We need a national push to raise the quality of our educational
| institutions from grade school through university. And we need to
| re-focus the curriculum on the subjects of greatest importance:
| reading, writing, math, and science.
| beej71 wrote:
| I'm 1000% on board with this. It's already going to take
| decades to dig out.
|
| Sadly, though every politician claims to be pro-education, very
| few of them actually are, and some are actively against it.
| sega_sai wrote:
| Maybe that's an unconventional take. But in my mind, the
| situation is the result of 'instantaneous' incentives in
| companies. I.e. CEOs and managers are rewarded when the stock
| price rises and are never penalised if things fall apart in a few
| years time. Hence, the motivation to save costs and financialise
| the company. By the time you start to see the results of this the
| CEO already left on his/her golden parachute. In my mind, the
| financial incentives need to be based on performance in 5 years
| or 10 years.
| asylteltine wrote:
| The same FAA that fast tracked the max version which led to TWO
| separate fatal accidents? Yeah I'm sure they are so concerned
| about safety.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| There's no fixing the 737 MAX because it was engineered and
| manufactured in a business culture incompatible with excellence
| and safety. The problem is aircraft are capital assets are
| compelled to quickly reenter service for economic reasons with a
| few fixes around the periphery when thorough and proper
| inspection and retrofitting more involved than a multiyear
| maintenance check.
| agubelu wrote:
| > "This incident should have never happened and it cannot happen
| again."
|
| I agree that this statement is unusually direct, but I find it
| noteworthy that they use the word "incident". According to ICAO,
| one of the criteria for an _accident_ , not an incident, is when
| "the aircraft sustains significant damage or structural failure",
| which is the case here.
| htk wrote:
| Playing devil's advocate, this could be considered the limit of
| an incident, as the plane could still operate.
| agubelu wrote:
| Yes, but the criteria for an accident is "structural
| failure", not "hull loss" or "inability to fly".
|
| I would say that a gaping hole in the fuselage constitutes
| structural failure.
|
| FWIW, the related Wikipedia page correctly refers to it as an
| accident:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_1282
| hedora wrote:
| I'd read that as "Boeing has passed the point where the results
| of gross negligence can't be called accidents."
| p_l wrote:
| In aviation lingo, "accident" is more serious than "serious
| incident" which is more serious than "incident".
|
| Accident is a plane crash, dead people, etc.
|
| Serious Incident is one that was dangerously close to moving
| into becoming an accident.
|
| Incident is pretty much everyday thing and usually you
| investigate it yourself and self report. Includes even things
| like front wheel turning 90 degrees during taxiing resulting
| in broken front wheel assembly.
| htk wrote:
| I think it's about time the POTUS addresses the recent
| developments.
|
| The WH was eager to insert itself in the news that Boeing sold
| planes to India, Saudi Arabia etc.
|
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
|
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| Why is this written so.. poorly?
|
| This is not the dialect of English I expect from an aviation
| organization.
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