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Comment by nvy | Hacker News Reader

Well, this is my field so let's calm down for a sec and dispense with the hyperbole.

The plane itself is not "fucked"; my understanding is the aircraft landed safely and nobody was injured. The door/window that departed the aircraft is a serious incident that will be investigated. There will be a report produced that identifies the root cause(s).

>How does the maintenance crew fuck up a plane this badly in the span of two months?

Are you under the impression that aircraft maintenance works like car maintenance, where you just change the oil every so often?

Lots and lots of things get removed and replaced on a regular basis. It's entirely possible somebody just didn't install the door properly after removing it for a routine inspection. It's a big deal and a serious incident but these things do happen from time to time, even at name-brand airlines.

I'm all for lambasting Boeing but let's stop frothing at the mouth until we see the report.

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This is a pretty arrogant reply. Whatever “field” you refer to, the problems at Boeing cut across disciplines and appear to go to systemic management problems. It’s not just issues engineering new systems.

There have been well documented issues also with assembly and inspection. Boeing has a track record of recent quality problems at assembly time and even clashed with FAA on how to detect defects

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/faa-m...

Yes, software engineers should take over airplane maintenance because their track record at safety is just sooooo much better, right?

Airline industry has processes that work well and made flying ridiculously safe - there hasn't been a major plane crash in the whole of 2023! - maybe they know more about maintenance, accidents, investigations and corrective actions than a bunch of HN users?

Members of the public should be encouraged to ask how this happened because they’re the ones who trust their lives to these planes. The airline industries in places where the public couldn’t ask questions did not make flying ridiculously safe.

People can make a much better motivator by simply not flying.

The general public really isn't particularly well suited for asking the right questions to get to the bottom of this, but they are well suited for not being customers if trust in the industry is lost.

Frothing at the mouth is exactly what is called for here. A plane that loses a big chunk is indeed “fucked”, the only reason someone didn’t die is that that particular seat wasn’t occupied. There should have been many many redundant safety systems and procedures here with either didn’t exist or failed. People should be out for blood because there are obviously serious problems at both Boeing and the FAA.

This was not a near miss, this was a 10 out of 10 failure of the kind which should never happen. The NTSB report will indeed show much but there is no reason to not demand congressional hearings and criminal investigations immediately. Everyone on that plane should start a class action suit against the FAA and Boeing immediately.

I'm not standing by comments that go against the safety culture of aviation

No, nobody should be "frothing at the mouth", that's an ignorant and unhelpful behaviour. Air travel didn't get safer by doing that

> A plane that loses a big chunk is indeed “fucked”

It landed fine and it is in principle repairable. No, it is not fucked

> There should have been many many redundant safety systems and procedures here with either didn’t exist or failed

Again someone who doesn't know nothing about the subject and thinks that experts haven't thought about their first conclusion after 5 seconds of thinking.

> this was a 10 out of 10 failure

5 out of 10 wrong on that comment. The seal failed and everything else worked. The masks, the procedures, the emergency landing.

But yes, either the installation of that door seal was faulty or there is a systemic issue with that seal (not sure how many customers are flying with it as opposed to just having the door there) - or a combination of factors with something else in between.

> Although a door is available for that row in the plane's design Alaska chose not to exercise that option, having the doors deactivated by Boeing before delivery.

> It therefore appears from the inside of the cabin like a regular window seat, although from the outside the frame of the deactivated door remains visible

Aerospace was my field before tech was. Reliability is still my field.

A door got sucked out of a plane in flight. That is not a matter of unavoidable human error but can only be the consequence of a concert of cascading failures of the type that should never happen which is why it’s a 10/10, if the flight had been full at least one passenger would have likely been sucked out. It is dumb luck that this did not happen.

Your attitude of derating a disaster like this is a strong indicator of the type of problem in the industry. In the end if we don’t get executives resigning and major operating overhauls with the responsible entities, it will be a terrible miscarriage of justice.

From the sound bites in these videos it seems sitting on the seat next to that empty seat was a child. I am thinking how each we fly my son always asks to sit next to the window.this accident was so close to having a fatality…

It wasn’t a door.

Whatever. It was the large plug put in place of where an optional door would be. This is not an important distinction.

How do you know it's related to Boeing's actions in any way? Why do you think there weren't any safety procedures, and again, how do you know it's Boeing's fault they weren't followed?

Do you think it's only Boeing itself doing aircraft service? It's not.

> How do you know it's related to Boeing's actions in any way?

With all of their actions in recent memory, they currently have negative benefit of the doubt; problems and issues should be assumed, and if/when they occur, public blame and shame will generally start on them until proven otherwise.

That's the consequence of throwing caution to the wind and repeatedly trashing their own reputation for a few more short-term dollars.

It is Boeing’s aircraft. Absent a sophisticated act of intentional sabotage, Boeing is at least partially responsible. The physical design, manufacturing, assembly, qualification, maintenance plans, and maintenance training are all responsibilities of the prime contractor. If a damn door falls off in flight more than one of those definitely contributed. It isn’t only Boeing. The FAA is also reasonable for verifying and requiring Boeing do all the right things and they will share blame as well as likely one or more of the several groups that will have contributed to the failure.

If one door falls of the aircraft, it's most likely a service tech didn't do the job properly, not that there is a systematic issue. That'd require much more fallen doors.

What you mean to say throwaway51104 is that it is completely Boeing's fault and you work on minimal wage in a hired PR firm trying to defend them on social media.

There have been warnings for years that Boeing has lost the plot and abandoned their safety culture.

>If one door falls of the aircraft, it's most likely a service tech didn't do the job properly

More or less what both Boeings predecessor and the FAA took away last time such a thing occurred. Crew didnt close the door properly and a warning sign was installed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_96

>Injuries 11 (2 crew, 9 passengers)[1]

>That'd require much more fallen doors.

That happened last time that happened

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_981

>Fatalities 346

I think its fair to argue you dont have a very sensible perspective here. We tried the approach you proposed in the past and it didnt work.

> We tried the approach you proposed in the past and it didnt work.

You work at Boeing or aircraft safety regulator or something?

Can you elaborate on what exactly you've done?

No, bad case of language barrier. Thanks for asking for clarification, its an equally unpleasant misunderstanding as people feeling insulted by the use of the generic you.

Touché

This isnt my native language, might i ask you for your interpretation of that post? I didnt think i was being confrontational here, so i cant figure out how to interpret your post.

Pls be direct, any little bit helps.

As many others have pointed, the aircraft was too new for that door plug to have ever been inspected by maintenance.

There is no doubt that Boeing is guilty of either negligent assembly or of using wrong parts, such as inappropriate bolts.

The fact that any of these two has happened indicates bad procedures used during production at Boeing.

It could indicate a design problem, if for instance better bolts used in the past have been replaced with cheaper bolts.

What service would that be? They dont even look at those plugs until thousands of flight hours in. This was ten weeks old.

According to news reports, it wasn't a door though. It is said it was a window located at a place where a door could be installed as an option. If it's the case, I suppose there was not specific maintenance on this part of the aircraft.

I do agree with you that proper investigation is required before jumping to any conclusion, plenty of factors (external or internal to boeing) can contribute into this type of incident.

There's some Airplane 2 energy in this comment.

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