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Comment by mustardboy | Hacker News Reader

Tiktok video of the event posted to twitter.

https://twitter.com/avgeekjake/status/1743474494411608489?s=...

Man.. if I hadnt seen it I wouldn't have believed it.That is absurd. How the FAA keeps approving this junk from Boeing is even more concerning than how bad Boeing manufacturing has become.

Yeah … I kinda wanna make sure we fly airbus planes now cuz what is going on with Boeing’s QA?

Went from an engineering company to an MBA company.

Sadly, that's the story of most great technology and manufacturing companies of the past.

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.

not much choice. Boeing is practically the only US manufacturer of widebody passenger jets and enjoys a privileged position as such. there is literally no other American competition for passenger air.

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.

Not that I have much respect for modern Boeing, but quoting Wikipedia re Dreamliner:

“The Boeing 787 has been involved in seven accidents and incidents as of November 2023, with zero fatalities and no hull losses.”

This makes no sense. The Comac 929 is a widebody that is still in the prototype stage, the SSJ100 is a regional jet that competes with the A220 or Embraer (a market where Boeing doesn’t even have a product), and the A320 is not a widebody. No airline replaces Dreamliners with A320s.

Why do people with no insight write walls of text on things they don't understand?

It’s rather ironic that by claiming their comment lacks credibility without including any counterpoints it makes your comment itself lack credibility too.

He keeps using "widebody" for narrow body planes. He lies about Boeing having anything to do with Airbus' foundation.

It's like an LLM hallucinating.

This is a form of ultra-BS

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/djWftXndJ7iMPsjrp/the-dark-a...

Please present evidence or any other narrative?

Ideologies are a tool to explain the world. And if you do not use the scientific brain, the energy wise cheap heuristics take over.

All is just caused by one group, one thing, one enemy. The analytical capabilities of a mouse seeing cats in every shadow.

Was this screed written by an AI?

If it was written by AI it would be higher quality.

Airbus has never been a Boeing joint venture. It is a politically desired united European aircraft company (doesn't sound good so far?) that somehow took off (heh).

Maybe it worked because the predecessor companies' main problem was "just" scale - they made some decent planes already.

> 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.

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...

ignoring various questionable details here, the one main point is correct: Boeing and Airbus are strategic industrial assets of USA vs EU and have deep implications for strategic security for both US and EU and their clients. For example, servicing these machines provides access to sensitive infrastructure all over the planet to these two companies’ employees & “certified” 3rd party consultants. If you are sitting say in UAE, buying Boeing vs AirBus is a political decision as well as a practical decision.

Honestly this might lead to another 737 Max grounding, which will shoot up the cost of airfare.

At this point, the 737 Max seems cursed.

It’s not cursed, it’s the inevitable outcome of regulatory capture. That Boeing have suffered little to no consequences from the Max failures is a symptom of an FAA that desperately needs a purge of corrupt processes and officers.

Not cursed, just poorly designed. They needed to go to clean sheet design.

From what I remember from the first 737 max incidents, the 737 max was designed as an iteration of 737 limited to the updates that would allow Boeing to bypass re-certification. The upgrades were significant and some, like engine placement, un-natural and clearly driven by regulation bypass.

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.

But was that door specific to the max? I would assume previous generations of B737 had the exact same door. It seems to me that this is more an indictment of Boeing's manufacturing than a design flaw specific to the max (well, we will see what actually caused it). If that's the case, this would curse all boeing models.

I don't think we know that yet. Yes, I have seen many reports that the Max has the "exact same door" as the 737-900, but how confident are we that there wasn't some cost-cutting or "simplification" measure done on newer models, or a change to a cheaper subcontractor building a crucial part, or whatever? There's enough complexity there that I think there could be significant differences while still theoretically staying within the "same design."

Fun fact: they dim the interior lights when you're landing at night so your eyes are already adjusted to the darkness if an evacuation is required.

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).

Unreal. Do people not go deaf from the sound of the air coming into the exposed fuselage like that? I would have thought they'd be covering their ears or something.

Air is going out at that height, not in! Pressure falls so rapidly that it should be rather quiet after a short while.

400MPH with an open window plausibly causes some loud noise due to turbulent flow across the opening. The turbofan engines are also reasonably close to the opening and ground crew wear hearing protection to mitigate the effects of the noise.

My assumption was that the air pressure at that height is low enough to not be loud. Yeah it’s moving fast but there isn’t much of it. Different story on the ground.

That's a good thought. Initially the density is pretty normal and I'm sure there's a loud sound, but once pressure drops the air wouldn't transmit as much sound.

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.

I found this video of the cockpit communications and it looks like they quickly go to 10,000 feet then down to 7,000 feet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29ghXy6O2dc

FUSELAGE BLOWN OUT MID-AIR | Alaska Emergency at Portland

Once pressure is equalized, you have the same situation as an open car window, except at much higher speeds. I don't know about other people, but to me the noise of an open car window is really annoying even at 120 km/h. I can't image what it must be like at airliner speeds.

Plus increased noise from the engines (or at least the engine on that side of the plane), as a sibling comment notes.

It's not so bad. Used to be a jumpmaster in the 82nd Airborne, where part of the job was to stick your head out of the side of the open door of a C141 while in flight to check for issues, towed jumpers, etc. It's loud, but survivable. You can hear yelling over it. Of course we were going much slower...

Wow I couldn’t believe it the first time I watched that video, had to watch it multiple times. Crazy and scary!

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