Alaska Airlines 737 Max makes emergency landing due to depressurization
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Given Boeings absolutely atrocious safety record with the Max, I’m not similarly inclined to believe a bunch of speculation about regulators being dumb
> According to FAA record posted online, the Boeing 737-9 MAX rolled off the assembly line just two months ago, receiving its certification in November 2023.
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38882358 (“HN: Boeing wants FAA to exempt MAX 7 from safety rules to get it in the air“)
It also wasn't a window... that's a plug for an unused emergency exit location. Planes have spots in the fuselage where emergency exits can be placed if the aircraft is configured with enough seats where it needs more exits. This one wasn't, so instead of an emergency exit, there's a plug bolted into the spot instead. Would have to guess that there was a defect in this one though...
"The Front Fell Off" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
I'd thought that outward-opening doors on passenger aircraft had gone away after the DC-10 disasters with them.[3] Apparently not.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFNU0cc29OQ
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zyxy3naQh0
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_96
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_981
For anyone that doesnt know, McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing.
> Second photo shows it wasn’t the full seat. Still couldn’t imagine sitting next to a gaping hole in the aircraft.
Wear. Your Seatbelts.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2024/01/alaska-airlines-flig...
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/iphone-survives-1600...
https://twitter.com/avgeekjake/status/1743474494411608489?s=...
Maximizing profit is a good thing that a healthy company should do, but if it wants to remain a healthy company in the future then it should not be done "at all costs"... Profit needs to be balanced with: safety, quality, and the humans who research, create, and manufacture the products. Too much emphasis is put on the one person at the very top who often makes decisions that sacrifice safety, quality, and the humans who research, create, and manufacture the products.
At this point, the 737 Max seems cursed.
I think it is quite logical that the added complexity results in additional failures.
It's going to be quite hard for the public to regain confidence in that aircraft, especially when (as noted elsewhere) Boeing was just now trying to get an exception from the FAA re: certification of the max 7.
Alternatives include the Chinese Comac 929, Sukhoi SSJ100, or A320 from Airbus. the first two are non-starters as most north american politicians are furiously opposed to the idea of carriers so much as looking at chinese or russian passenger jets. the A320 on the other hand, while arguably a better widebody jet than anything Boeing has ever produced, has the same political hand-wringing and strong arming from lobbyists and airline executives alike. American Airlines replaced a chunk of their fleet with the A320 because the Dreamliner was literally killing about as many people as it managed to transport when it wasnt down for loose bolts or reboots due to battery issues.
Given enough time and without meaningful reform and intervention by Washington, Boeing will literally hand the win over to these 3 other competitors just like AT&T handed over 5G to Huawei. Ironic considering Airbus was originally a Boeing joint venture.
“The Boeing 787 has been involved in seven accidents and incidents as of November 2023, with zero fatalities and no hull losses.”
Maybe it worked because the predecessor companies' main problem was "just" scale - they made some decent planes already.
All is just caused by one group, one thing, one enemy. The analytical capabilities of a mouse seeing cats in every shadow.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/djWftXndJ7iMPsjrp/the-dark-a...
It's like an LLM hallucinating.
From Wikipedia:
> The Boeing 787 has been involved in seven accidents and incidents as of November 2023, with zero fatalities and no hull losses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner#Accident...
It's not always noticeable since they are sometimes already dim (especially on later flights when people might be trying to sleep, but they will turn the lights on for their safety check and then turn them off again).
I don't see enough detail to really know how high they fly once the depressurization happens. I'm guessing that, if possible, they descend to an altitude where the supplementary oxygen is not critical for preserving life so the loudness could go back up. I couldn't find if there's a "typically safe" maximum altitude that is used in depressurization or it's situational.
Probably someone with better flightradar knowledge could figure out the altitude with time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29ghXy6O2dc
FUSELAGE BLOWN OUT MID-AIR | Alaska Emergency at Portland
Plus increased noise from the engines (or at least the engine on that side of the plane), as a sibling comment notes.
As a customer, how else can you send your feedback to Boeing (and the airlines) that this level of perceived risk is unacceptable? It's clear there are issues at the company and Boeing is unlikely to respond unless there are financial consequences.
With that said, however, I really dislike Boeing's recent decisions and the safety issues that have come up. I do agree that Boeing needs to face financial consequences, but I don't believe that customers have any power in this situation. Realistically, airlines and governing authorities would have the most impact and if they don't see issues big enough with Boeing to stop ordering planes, there isn't much else to do.
The fact that they refuse to fix the problem after Lion 610, such that Ethiopian 302 faced the same fate, is, at least for me, horrendously wrong.
THEN add on the fact that there's a one in a million chance your plane may open up and accidentally cast you into the abyss and I say, just give me a car, my snacks, my music, my full seat, and the ability to stop and use the washroom when I want and Im good to drive across the country. Flying bites.
That's not YOUR point. The head of this thread (although to be fair, didn't SAY, but implied) he was swapping planes for safety. And that he's still flying, just on a different plane model, seems to reinforce that it was THEIR point.
Had the same discussion yesterday in another thread - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38886355
https://www.tiktok.com/@strawberr.vy/video/73207980848693937...
Note: different cuts from the above TikTok video, it is not exactly the same edit.
( From related https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38889774 )
I was on a flight that made and emergency landing once, it was TERRIFYING. The pilot circled once then we went down at a very steep angle.
What was even worse was the three days we were stranded in Gander Newfoundland while they fixed the plane and then flew in a new crew. It was basically an refueling/military base and not a real airport, no food or facilities. After that I never flew without my toothbrush, change of clothes and contact solution in my carry on.
If you ever watch the takeoff profile of a FedEx or UPS plane compared to the airlines, they turn much harder because they’ve no passengers to complain.
https://people.com/human-interest/couple-who-met-because-of-...
I've never felt more gross in my life or had a nicer shower in my life than that first one after we finally landed, got to the location and finally relaxed. Mainly it was not having a toothbrush that was the worst!
You used to fly without those things? :O
For example i know a couple living a long distance relationship. They both have enough stuff at each others place so that they can travel very light.
Now of course it sucks if you suddenly get stranded in between, but it is not life threatening just an inconvenience. And from then on it is just a tradeoff. You can gain a small bit of regular convenience for the cost of risking a rare but moderate inconvenience.
Unbelievable by my standards, because those items had saved me time and again from my frequent time mismanagements, but not everyone is on an exact same standard.
https://www.alternativeairlines.com/airlines-not-flying-boei...
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/10/1212144515/plane-missing-wind...
And inspect similar planes in the mean time.
Airliners have survived much much worse:
737 MAX was already grounded for fatal safety issues that should have prevented it from being deemed airworthy in the first place.
Boeing recently argued safety shouldn't be a concern for the 737 MAX
Boeing clearly appreciates shareholder value above safety and quality. Which you cannot have for systems this complex
The whole shtick is that it's not a brand new plane. Boeing sought (and obtained, and seeks yet again) exemptions because it's "just a 737". Pretending that it is a brand new plane would mean they lied to avoid costly and time consuming safety certifications. You can't have it both ways.
Indeed. The delivery of a commercial airliner from the manufacturer is nothing like buying a new car. It is a months long process, involving multiple safety checkoffs and test flights. Just about every nut and bolt is checked and double checked, and hours of inflight verifications are made. To get through that process with such a glaring defect boggles the mind.
Also, what makes 737 Max a dynamic product ?
(The tweet is just referencing this and a flighradar track, poorly.)
https://katu.com/news/local/alaska-airlines-flight-1282-retu...
If there can be a big hole in the plane and we can call that a "depressurization event", I would like to advocate for changing how we describe this.
It's an exit door opening, not some random part of the fuselage developing a potentially structure-compromising hole...
My assumption has been there's always fresh air actively added continuously at a rate that can compensate for such small leaks, and that it's just an automatically regulated thing. Maybe a gauge/alarm visible to the pilots would indicate an out of spec level of fresh air entering to maintain pressure, without actually being a "depressurization event"...
But a door-sized hole is a whole (har har) different story.
Edit: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/53831/are-press...
I suspect that's only an issue on airliners when the hole happens in a window.
There's no shortage of search results confirming that something like gunfire on an airliner likely won't depressurize the plane unless it hits a window....
I suppose if the small hole had existed since before takeoff, you could avoid catastrophic damage as the aircraft will not be pressurized at all. I wouldn't call it a depressurization event, though.
"Man, it's unfortunate that there's a problem with the pressurization system in this.. sky."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522
> An investigation into the crash by the Air Accident Investigation and Aviation Safety Board (AAIASB) concluded that the crew had neglected to set the pressurization system to automatic during the take-off checks. This caused the plane not to be pressurized during the flight and resulted in nearly everyone on board suffering from generalized hypoxia, thus resulting in a ghost flight [..] eventually crashed near Grammatiko, Greece, killing all 121 passengers and crew on board. It is the deadliest aviation accident in Greek history.
it's not generating ambiguity for the people who need to know
for example, air traffic control and other pilots listening on the radio will know that this aircraft needs to be cleared to descend to a lower altitude and other traffic needs to get out of the way, be alert, etc.
Boeing will investigate, regulators will rattle sabers, and the public will be very loud about this for a week until the next news cycle rolls around.
We prioritize convenience above all else. The easy answer here is people could just not fly if we're actually concerned with Boeing or the industry in general.
We don't have to fly, but it is convenient so we'd rather make a lot of noise about the headline without making any meaningful change. It sounds nice to expect the FAA or Boeing or whoever else to fix this, why do we so often skip the actual power we have by simply not spending our money there?
The FAA actually do quite a good job and if anything are maybe a bit over the top in enforcing saftey given that for most people there is near zero risk of dying in a plane crash compared to a lot of stuff that people do die regularly from.
There's a funny thought experiment on undesired side effects there: the MAX is flawed because it was designed to maximize updates while playing the fine line to avoid re-certification. One has to wonder if getting the certification requirements easier to pass might have resulted in the MAX not existing, and instead having a more "natural" and safer plane created instead.
(no it would not, seeing as Boeing was already cutting it short, lowering the standard would lower safety. Still, interesting thought experiment)
I'm not saying the FAA shouldn't also intervene, I'm simply pointing out that consumers almost always seem to ignore their own power in the situation.
What you're describing feels much like a tragedy of the commons problem. If I chose not to fly everyone else still will and I'll be left driving around like a schmuck. I might as well fly too, and when I'm worried about safety I'll just call for more regulation.
Agree or disagree with the politics behind it, Budweiser was absolutely rocked by a large enough number of customers deciding to no longer buy their product.
The comparison is absolutely valid from where I sit. One vote or one customs makes little to no difference. Enough people raising their voice, though, can fundamentally shake the system.
Basically, yes. Voting changes you way more than it ever changes the world, and introspection about that is worth considering.
That’s what happens where people can vote and expect that their vote actually counts.
If one vite is worth casting simply fr the fact that it can help a person think more deeply about issues that matter to them, certainly the same could be said for how they choose to spend their money as well.
Fair enough.
However, if that is the case, then the bean counting management is guilty of sabotaging US national security by running Boeing into the ground for short term profits.
The entire C-Suite of Boeing should be sentenced to multi-decade prison terms at IDF SuperMax for their selling out US National security for profit.
I don’t actually think this is true. Boeing has a terrible track record with defense contracts in recent years. They lost the KC-X tanker competition to Airbus before Boeing lobbied to overturn the decision, they lost the JSF competition to the Lockheed Martin F-35, and they (in partnership with Sikorsky) lost the Black Hawk replacement competition to Bell. Super Hornet production is ending next year and Osprey production could probably be turned over to Bell.
No, it’s less that Boeing is vital to national security and more that Boeing is a government jobs program. It’s the jobs—not Boeing’s importance to national security—that has influenced powerful senators like Patty Murray and Lindsay Graham to put their thumbs on the scale.
100%
[1] https://theaircurrent.com/feed/dispatches/alaska-737-max-9-t...
http://web.archive.org/web/20240106075153/https://news.alask...
These same exact exit plugs have been in service without issue since at least 2007.
> Each aircraft will be returned to service only after completion of full maintenance and safety inspections. We anticipate all inspections will be completed in the next few days.
What maintenance? The plane was barely two months old and the part that failed was meant to be something installed permanently, not an emergency exit door that would probably see regular inspections. It's probably "just" sloppy assembly from Boeing/Spirit, which, yes, merit a grounding and inspection.
Planes are complicated machines and the processes for inspecting them are highly detailed. Once they figure out what happened, the fix might be simply to include some simple check for whatever happened. Just another line item for a routine inspection. And probably the list of things to check for doors is quite long already.
In any case, flailing your arms and panicking is not part of the process. This incident seems completely unrelated to previous incidents and it happened many years after the first max flew. Which suggests it's an isolated incident. It's quite possible that the door has not been redesigned for the max (quite likely even, because why would they?) in which case they might have to look at all 737s going back 50 or so years.
Or maybe, just maybe, this is 1,000x more likely to be a maintenance issue than it is a faulty design.
If there were a genuine, ongoing safety issue worth worrying about pilots would stop flying them. People seem to entirely forget that the crew up in the cockpit are humans with an interest in self-preservation.
Both in terms of original certification and also doubling down on “no issue planes are fine” until it became incontrovertible that the planes were the problem and then all the collusion and shadiness about how the 737 came to be came out.
So with that history, even if it would be an overreaction, rebuilding trust would look like immediately grounding in a situation like this out of an abundance of caution. Btw the 737 has had other maintenance problems crop up since they put it back in service since the fleet was grounded to retrofit the part that was needed to fix the original fatal-causing defect. Honestly this just looks like an unsafe plane top to bottom that could sink Boeing (except they’re not allowed to sink because they’re critical partners to the national defense industry)
Planes are not cars. They don’t go in once a year to change the oil filter and tighten a few bolts.
But perhaps pilots would be less likely to get rated for Max aircraft if (hypothetically) there's a perceived broad issue with their safety? This could cause those who have a choice (stronger pilots) to go airbus.
Not saying it's the case, just pondering here.
You'll forgive me if I find your assertion strains credulity.
If the MAX is as likely to fall out of the sky as the armchair experts at HN believe, pilots wouldn’t fly them.
Then you’re going to have to ground all the 737-900ERs (in service
since 2007) out there as well, since they use the exact same part.
a.) The -900ER has exit doors where the -9 has plugs blocking off the doors.
b.) If the problem was installation related then it would still make sense to ground the planes and inspect the potentially faulty aircraft.
The -900ER can and has come configured with the exact same plugs in those doors.
From today on HN.
The radios and antennas on both the aircraft and for ATC are not only of much higher quality but are also positioned as perfectly as possible so as to maximize Tx/Rx performance.
All that to say, the pilots and ATC nearly always experience more clear comms than the general public has access to.
A Cessna 152 is not an airliner, obviously, but I would think audio quality shouldn't differ all that much between them.
The 152 could have had a 40 year old radio or a crappy antenna. Who knows. As you pointed out - that 152 is subject to a lot less maintenance scrutiny than commercial airliners are.
The other thing that plays in here is that ATC language is very highly standardized. In any specific phase of flight, the pilot will generally know what to expect next from ATC. This allows them to discern instructions (and read them back for verification) even if the signal is weak. In situations like these, ATC may seem completely unintelligible to people not used to ATC language and patterns.
From my experience as a small plane pilot, radio comms is almost always quite clear. The antennas and radios are aimed “at the planes” not at receivers on the ground, after all.
I'm a pilot and even on very old planes like piper cub where the radio is just a desk radio added in the cockpit, the audio is much clearer. And with something like Bose A1 (noise canceling headset, A20 and A30 now), you hear it very well.
Most the time you hear ATC perfectly as they have very large antenna. ATC will hear you worse because of the noise around you, but with good mic it is still quite OK. They have large receiver too so you can be far. The worst audio is always plane to plane, there are some situations where your are far from a plane and only hear the ATC side of the conversation. But even if those situations, you can ask ATC to relay a message. It is very rare as you hardly have any reason to talk with a plane that is 100km away on the other side of a mountain.
There was a time when Boeing was considered a very trustworthy and reliable company, is this the result of a decline in an engineering-focused culture?
Edit: Many of the comments in this thread mention that they avoid the 737 MAX whenever possible. Maybe if enough people start to boycott these unsafe airplanes that would result in more economic pressure and lead to improvements?
Name the Officers.
Message their socials publicly.
Don’t dox them, hold them accountable in a public facing manner
Doesn't matter what turns out to be root cause here. The Max might finally get the critical mass of brand damage here. Especially if Daily Mail et al are reporting it in the headlines.
Boeing might be properly held accountable* for their previous mistake, now. IMO the previous outcome did not seem fair to 'consumers' / victims, and did not seem to be an appropriate deterrent / incentive for future QC/QA improvements.
*The company - I don't hold hope for holding execs accountable.
If this happened at cruising altitude with a higher pressure differential, would the plane survive? (I know generally the door won't open at that altitude since they open inward, but I assume the same forces wouldn't do anything to prevent a window blowout)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1380
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/falling-through-the-crac...
> The captain felt the aircraft roll to the left and right, and the controls went loose; the first officer noticed pieces of grey insulation floating in the cockpit. The cockpit door had broken away and the captain could see "blue sky where the first-class ceiling had been.
> The crew declared an emergency and diverted to Kahului Airport for an emergency landing. During the approach to the airport, the left engine failed, and the flight crew was unsure if the nose gear was lowered correctly. Nevertheless, they were able to land normally on Runway 2, thirteen minutes after the incident.
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/falling-to-pieces-the-ne...
Wonder if those full-of-themselves people will blame fentanyl and weed here, hehehehe. Feels kind of karmic.
What kind of policing is this anyway? Does pointing out the irony of the fact that Boeing forgot how to build planes feels kinda butthurt compared to being supremacist about technology?
Well it actually should. And this topic SHOULD be inflammatory and provocative. It would be totally weird if everyone is fine with this. Its not like supremacist outlook on tech has nothing to do with deteriorating quality of that tech anyway.
I wonder if airlines have data showing that their Airbus flights are more popular than Boeing flights after adjusting differences.
I remember reading an article about how some Boeing employees are surprised the 787 planes don’t have more issues because their warnings about quality issues are ignored.
Also I know a 737 MAX pilot who had time on A320 and he said fly A320 if you can.
It's not even just the safety, the Boeing Dreamliner for example is shockingly uncomfortable to fly in.
Struggling with this comment, I do a lot of long-haul and the dreamliner is a clear differentiator on arrival due to cabin pressure and humidity. Boeing seems to have made a lot of mistakes over the years but I seek out a dreamliner for anything over 8 hours.
Perhaps you are the victim of the airline more than the aircraft itself?
> The 787 and A350 nudge the humidity up to approximately 25% — an incremental upgrade, to be sure, but an upgrade nonetheless. That's because their composite-materials fuselages won't rust like metal ones would under increased humidity.
https://thepointsguy.com/news/the-healthiest-planes-in-the-a...
Haven't been on an A350 but definitely enjoyed the other two for long-haul. There's a noticeable difference when you spend enough time in that tube, Sydney to London is 24hr's straight with a short time off the plane halfway in the middle of the night. Long-haul is the default for Australians travelling internationally.
Something that's fascinating to me though, and which puts a lot of online aviation discourse (that mostly comes from US domestic flights) into perspective, is that the short hops we sometimes do like Melbourne -> Hobart, is that they are immediately noticeable as far less comfortable. Apart from sleep effects, 1 hour of domestic flying leaves me feeling worse than 14 hours of long haul, and I think it's just seats and leg room. Economy (and cheap!) long haul flights are not actually that bad, at least for me as a 6' tall guy.
Maybe it's a personal preference thing.
I was seeing flights on 737 Max 8 were easily 10-20% cheaper compared to other models on a given route and date. The 737 Max 8 ended up being my most flown model in 2023.
It's seems impossible that on some routes we do not have alternative to Boeing planes. Consumers should be allowed to decide with their wallet. Isn't that the whole purpose of the Capitalist system?!
Booking sites like Kayak let you filter flights by aircraft model, but it's a pretty rare feature from what I've seen.
It’s 2 months old, so poor maintenance, wear and tear, etc are not even minor factors.
This is just a poorly made plane with awful quality control.
And that’s even before we get into some of the design issues, both the shortcuts they’ve taken and ones that are more fundamental.
I wouldn't trust either, industry is moving to Airbus because of their failures.
"Provision for the new exits – which boost the exit limit capacity from 189 to 215 passengers – “will be structurally installed as standard in all -900s, and will allow operators to decide if the door should be activated or deactivated”, says 737 chief project engineer Mike Delaney."
Makes it sound like they're always installed, and airlines can opt to activate them or not...
[1] Simulated full pressurization, often many of them
[2] And yeah. Spirit's got problems. But those problems wouldn't be problems if Boeing didn't sell off BCA's Wichita fuse fab to investment bankers back in 2005 as "Spirit". It's a pretty good name, since it's what some religions think is left behind after you're dead.
Maybe if Boeing, you know, lobby to lower these safety restrictions then those pesky quality control checks will reduce and somehow everything will just work out just fine [1].
Seriously though, as a brand new, fresh off the production line 737 this kind of event should be so rare as to be nearly impossible.
[1] - https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boein...
I am open to the possibility that an industry might be over-regulated and also expect that the people who would be most likely to try and correct that imbalance would be the companies in the industry. Therefore, it seems perfectly reasonable to me that a company should be able to lobby the government in it's own interests. The issue of de-regulation creating safety hazards lies completely with the government officials who take their advice (and probably money) without regard to the effects that might happen.
When a mobster bribes a cop, the person that's commiting the (much) greater offense is the cop.
a) you’re okay with companies (effectively) acting like mobsters, in their own pecuniary interest
b) you expect every (individual, human) government official to act morally and correctly in every instance, despite the pressure and temptation placed upon them
c) you see no problem with this setup, and see no need to alter this situation
Wow.
Boeing - "Hold my beer, I think I have some duct tape around here somewhere"
If you want to get hung up on the emergency exits, consider why every modern airliner has doors that are easier (power assist) to open in an emergency but the 737 has doors that are more difficult to open in an emergency.
Yeah, I guess. Facts don’t agree though.
Switch to Linux today :)
There really is no way to know what happened without more research, and I’m confident the priority will be to understand if this was a one off or widespread issue.
sorry, but this one’s on Boeing.
Maintenance protocols are a mix of manufacturer recommendations and carrier/maintenance contractor SOPs, which are then approved by the manufacturer and FAA.