Those bolts being loose (and they are BIG bolts) would mean multiple people in the installation process didn’t do their jobs, and signed their life on the line saying they did.
When I did maintenance, there was someone (QA) there to witness every torqued bolt, inspect every safety wire and installed part.
There is something rotten in Boeing.
The same management that drove it to ground?
The fish rots from the head. And these constant problems sure do sound like a new company culture of cutting corners instead engineering first.
I've heard this since they killed hundreds of people in the two crashes. Why are they being protected? They have names.
The NTSB is staffed with people familiar with the industry - it has to be. Thus, a significant portion of these people are former Boeing employees. And historically, many NTSB staff have gone to work for Boeing (and other industry giants) after their stint at the NTSB as well. It's not that large of an industry after all. This is known as the Revolving Door.
Regulatory capture
It's more a question of culture (oversimplifying, sales vs engineering) and this is harder to change most of the time. Apparently, even the Max debacle was not enough.
> But the nearest Boeing commercial-airplane assembly facility would be 1,700 miles away. The isolation was deliberate. “When the headquarters is located in proximity to a principal business—as ours was in Seattle—the corporate center is inevitably drawn into day-to-day business operations,” Condit explained at the time.
Oh man, wouldn't want that to happen.
> With ethics now front and center, Condit was forced out and replaced with Stonecipher, who promptly affirmed: “When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm.”
Indeed.
That was a funny one. They replaced him with his chairman... hence, more of the same.
> that was initially a regional airplane but is now being used for transatlantic flights.
Rushing to judgement merely obscures the true responsibilities.
Alternative is wrong bolts, or sabotage.
But more possible - one lazy QA ghosting.
In my experience, no one puts their job on the line over silly reasons like this, unless there is intense pressure (unrealistic deadlines, heavy workload and poor working conditions) that makes mistakes like this inevitable. I wouldn't be surprised if an honest independent review of either company found ridiculous cost-cutting measures and/or emotional overload.
Boeing should be held liable for hiring based on skin colour and orientation instead of merit, this risking lives.
In fact, this is one pattern I've seen with such racist dog whistles - blame the marginalized groups and target DEI measures without any good justification to save the image of the privileged. It propagates the sinister implication that an employee is definitely bad if they are a DEI hire.
We're talking about a dangerous situation again with the potential to cause loss of life. It warrants serious contemplation as it might affect us some day. The fact that some people will hijack the discussion to advance their racist agenda is beyond disgusting.
The argument so far has shown how fallacious and unsubstantiated this claim is. The irony in this case is that the exact opposite applies.
> It should be discarded for a merit based approach that ignores race, religion etc.
This so called 'merit' is a distraction meant to hide 'privilege'. There is no merit unless privilege gap is addressed first. If you think DEI hiring counts as privilege, then you haven't seen or recognized systematic discrimination, racist mistreatment and outright kakistocracy. It's like a trained and well-armed soldier asking a farmer for a fair duel over who gets to keep the harvests- there is nothing fair about it.
My original reply had nothing do with race, but you managed to drag it into it for no good reason. The only reason I responded is because I didn't want to lend credence to such crude ideas with my silence. Unless you have any reasonable evidence to suggest that DEI hires are in any way responsible for these mishaps, I'm going to assume that have nothing more to say other than a one-sided diatribe against the challenge to your privileges.
Once you get out of the wacky humanities courses and into the real world this argument falls apart. Look at the aforementioned UA incident.
> This so called 'merit' is a distraction meant to hide 'privilege'
We'll have to agree to disagree on that one.
> My original reply had nothing do with race, but you managed to drag it into it for no good reason
Race is but one component of DEI and the easiest to reach for.
> I'm going to assume that have nothing more to say other than a one-sided diatribe against the challenge to your privileges.
Yes safe landings and safe air travel is a privilege and DEI is a challenge to that. What's more it is but a single industry where public safety and product quality is being sacrificed for the religious dogma of DEI. Its a funny coincidence DEI is Latin for god, but fitting none the less.
Or did anyone decided to cut corners by using an old batch/skipping degreasing/not putting glue because they were late on delivery?
This thing is obviously not just an interior part, look at the meat in those castings, and it’s obviously safety critical, look at the cotter pins on other bolts. Sounds like it was going to be installed behind interior paneling and not inspected every day. For something like that, every important bolt should be secured by secondary methods, torqued and witnessed installed correctly. This looks like a failure in engineering (not having wire on this bolts), then a profound failure in assembly with multiple people not doing their jobs (not torquing, not witnessing, faking logs), risking the lives of passengers.
If this happened at cruising altitude and speed, people would have died. I can’t find the flight number but I believe 9 people died when a jet lost cabin pressure and a piece of the plane while decompressing during cruising altitude over water.
With a seperate follow through by another party to check the work.
That's SOP for US | AU | UK | EU military air mechanical crews.
Clearly this is hyperbole.
Though it should be!