Updates on Grounding of Boeing 737 MAX 9 Aircraft
faa.gov
faa.gov
“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...
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.
“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?
In essence, did Airbus help advise what sorts of corners could/couldn’t be cut?
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).
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.)
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.
Not sure I understand, are you saying that this is a failure not of engineering but of processes? In that, the original engineering was sound but somebody took shortcuts in the implementation? Or do you mean something else?
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.
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?
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.
Indeed. The tragedy with Boeing though is that they seem to have greatly regressed when it comes to safety. We all thought planes plunging down to the ground, doors getting ripped off of the fuselage were a thing of the past but they have reappeared.
Doesn't that feel just a little awkward, to first claim "every critical thing in an airplane is redundant", yet when asked for specifics to have to resort to saying you "don't know the design"?
FWIW, I'm sure aircraft are safe. At least, "safe enough" [usually].
Yet we all know they're built by humans working for corporations, and we also know both humans and corporations are sometimes flawed.
> Zipper failures are not supposed to happen
Right. Every so often they do, though, don't they?
So how many have to fail for the door to open?
In other words, if three fail, can one still keep the door shut?
The job of the 4 bolts is to "hold" the already placed and aligned pins/contacts that are in contact with the door frame stop brackets, in the "outward direct contact position. These bolts also serve to prevent the door from translating "upswards as well." The pins also prevent upward alignment, but they are not as strong, they are really for alignment. The contact point bracket (with a pin in the center), and the door frame stop bracket really hold the door against air pressure.
The bolts keep the door from pushing back into the plane (on the ground, with no air pressure), and also present the door from "sliding up" such that the door contacts and the frame contacts would not longer contact.
The alignment and door plug placement (for insertion, and removal) is aided by guide tracks on the panel, and guide track rollers that are mounted to the door frame.
On flight 1282, the door plug's roller tracks were described as badly damaged.
Any one of the door plug "retention" bolts properly torqued would have been adequate to hold the contacts with pins, in position. Any two (one top, one bottom), properly torqued would have been adequate to prevent roller track damage from vibration, door weight, in flight turbulence induced vibration. All four provide dual redundancy. (Two diagonals, or two, one up, one down.) While the NTSB has been totally silent thus far, it seems that the bolts were likely missing in their entirety, or all 4 bolts were so loose, that the bolts backed out until missing, or only one or two "lose" bolts remained. The bolts don't work if there are not tightened to torque spec for holding the door plug contacts in place against the door frame stops.
So, yes, this assembly did in fact have typical critical system redundancy. And it hard warnings on the pressurization system on whole (many possible causes). While Boeing or supplier (or probably BOTH), and the FAA all failed in new plane inspection, AlaskaAir failed with the pressurization warnings. (3 prior faults.) Extremely disappointing how the entire manufacturing chain, and operational chain BOTH failed here for this event to occur.
Really, cannot call this event an accident. An accident is something like the torque wrench being mis-calibrated. (Though that is still a manufacturing or maintenance fail.) But in this case, supplier fail, Boeing fail, FAA fail, AlaskaAir (3 times fail). Pretty despicable really.
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.
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.
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.
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. :)
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.
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%2FGDk50Aaa4AEsm...
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.
Fair enough.
> 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's a wrong assumption on your end, it's just that I prefer to go by actual evidence rather than a bunch of unsourced claims no matter who makes them.
> This is a high res photo of an installed door plug:
So, finally something useful: the stops apparently hook over the brackets bolted to the airframe, that wasn't obvious from the drawing but I suspected it might be the case (see other comment). So pressurizing the aircraft will provide some holding force (the friction on the stops) even if all of the bolts would be missing or had come loose at any point after assembly.
Thank you for providing the picture.
Edit: I’m feeling charitable so here’s one, knock yourself out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maLBGFYl9_o
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...
Indeed, picture provided by another poster above shows that is exactly how it works.
And I covered that eventuality in another comment:
> It's possible the stops hook over the corresponding parts in the plug but that's not readily apparent from the drawing at all.
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.
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...
> 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
However, the most obvious speculation, is that the plane was leaking (badly) and the primary system was probably keeping up with the leak (which is why the problem was intermittent.) But that primary system was likely have to "run all the time" (because it had to keep up with the leak) - and one of two (or both) things likely happened. Either sometimes it could NOT keep up (based on elevation, pressure, and temperature variations), or else the pressure pump was actually overheating (from constantly having to run to keep up with the leak), and occasionally failing. When this happened, the plane control systems would automatically switch to the secondary pump, and light the WARNING LAMP. Given that the problem happened twice in the prior 3 days, the problem was getting worse.
AlaskaAir's response was totally inappropriate, and NOT safety focused. They did not ROOT CAUSE the issue, HOPED it was the lamp, or lamp electricals, replaced those parts, and called it good. And the 4th time was the charm, when the plug failed entirely, there having been 3 prior warnings of an issue in pressurization. In my opinion, inexcusable, and the reason I am no longer flying on AlaskaAir. Though I would further speculate that Boeing's inspection procedure instructions probably do not include inspecting the exit door seals, the door plug seal, or the rear pressure cone. Inspecting those things would be much more expensive than just checking the warning light, and the pump operation. (The pressure pumps operating just fine, and the LAMP just fine as well.)
So Homendy's statement is almost certainly expected to be shown to be misplaced and premature. I was incredibly surprised that she made the statement.
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
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.
From what I've seen, businesses will often hire someone with specific experience dealing with Chinese manufacturers in their specific vertical, for example PCBs/electronics, tooling like injection molds, or textiles.
The fastest international delivery isn’t comparable to driving 30 minutes to shop for the parts needed for some wild idea (etc.), but that market no longer exists in the US.
In addition to delays, that makes R&D more specialized and therefore more expensive; not to mention the local loss of expertise by the sellers of the components.
Just trying to build some Arduino ideas: I’m looking at $$, planning, and days of shipping. No opportunity to try something out on the spur of the moment.
It's also predicated on people that are intimately familiar with the underlying manufacturing. Lose the manufacturing, and in a generation you're left only with people who know the current designs but lack the knowledge and experience essential to continue innovating.
Exactly as you say: when you no longer have 30-minute access to experimental parts and in-depth advice, your ability to innovate suffers.
Example: You mention NVidia as a success—and they are—but reliable middle-tier builders like EVGa simply could not remain in business in the graphics card business.
Eventually only NVidia will be supplying their own GPUs and cards.
This in turn significantly drives-up the cost of hiring good local talent if the need ever arises; as TSMC discovered when setting up shop in the US.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's also limited by the least proficient of their internal functions. Internal or external makes no difference in that respect.
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
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?
Makes one wonder if the military and space sides of the business are also suffering quality problems or not.
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.
I’m talking about Lockheed contracting with civilian governments to operate welfare systems and such.
Incidentally Sodexo—the cafeteria company—also has military contracts to run mess halls on military bases. So they are technically also a defense contractor. This isn’t surprising because they run cafeterias in hospitals and schools and prisons so they are also good at doing business with the government.
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.
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.
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...
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.
Also see big banks. Some companies aren’t allowed to fail.
Make Boeing management face the music and contain the blast radius to those who have lead poorly.
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.
Normally official statements are far less direct, more vague, and more technical.
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!"
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.
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?
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.
Lots of people dream of that kind of job security.
So if you were in Google Assistant, your chance of being laid off was much higher.
Of course, you could counter with, "just don't join Google Assistant lmao", but it's not clear to an outsider what the fortunes of various teams will be. Heck, it's often not even clear to the VPs running those very teams, to say nothing of the rank and file engineers there.
So a bit more compassion please, thank you.
Right, so in ~ as many situations where your odds are worse, there will be situations where your odds are even better than < 1/1,000.
> you could counter with, "just don't join Google Assistant lmao"
> So a bit more compassion please, thank you.
You said that, not me!
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.
And no, please don't use more start-up or software dev thinking during the development of safety critical hard- and software.
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.
Ended up getting 3-4x the pay for 3-4x less stress.
It's like the games industry. They underpay because people dream of working in the industry because they think it's cool.
Please don’t spread this dangerous line of thinking
Government continues to fail. Let’s stop waiting for it to fix our problems
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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...
Bad news for Boeing so, the FAA seems to be rather pissed. And rightly so.
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—
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.
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."
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.
Sadly, though every politician claims to be pro-education, very few of them actually are, and some are actively against it.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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/boeing_read...
You can tweak and upgrade an aircraft to a certain extent, but they've pushed the 737 design too far.
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.
It's great that the FAA is looking into this. Who is looking into FAA, though? Is this another case of institutional capture?
This: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/94/EM_N323A...
Is so obviously not this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Alaska_7...
The Airbus A330 and A350 share the same type rating. (At least some variants; I'm not an expert.)
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...
The Airbus A330 and A350 share the same type rating.
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.
Is there something in that process we can address instead?
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?
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.
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!
Firefox vs. Chrome in a nutshell.
At certain point starting from new will make more sense. And it might be now.
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.
And the 757 is an old design too.
Including 787, actually.
Not surprisingly, it is originally from Bombardier.
The US, no the world, desperately needs more competition and other plane builders.
The A320 / A320neo has nothing to do with Bombardier.
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.
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.
Also, it sounds like a lot of GHG emissions per passenger-mile.
Some carriers give you things like leg room and comfort, some do not, and some take it away then sell it back to you.
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.
I agree the problem is systemic.
https://www.thedefensepost.com/2023/08/08/usaf-tanker-aircra...
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.
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.
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)
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.
Could you elaborate?
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/
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
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.
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.
Similar thing happened during Bush Jr's administration.
The A350, in my opinion, is more comfortable than both (and I'm a big proponent of the A380 and 787 for comfort)
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...
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.
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.
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:
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.
"the aircraft sustains damage or structural failure which:
- adversely affects the structural strength, performance or flight characteristics of the aircraft, and
- would normally require major repair or replacement of the affected component"
The shorthand we used when I was more active in flying was "the plane or the crew can't continue (without extensive work)"
Then you bolt on engines it was never designed to use.
> Every Boeing 737-9 Max with a plug door will remain grounded until the FAA finds each can safely return to operation.
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."
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.
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.
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.
Basically a bunch (4 really large, 4+ smaller, IIRC) bolts that connect the plug to brackets on the fuselage. The big bolts have castle nuts and cotter pins, the smaller bolts don’t appear to have retention devices.
In one of the photos (I believe it was a United 737) those bolts appeared loose. Again, all what I remember seeing in photos, so YMMV.
The real door probably uses the same brackets and basic attachment points, as it’s designed to be retrofitted after delivery should the operator decide to increase seat count.
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?
This is probably the place to lurk if you want information from insiders:
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.
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.
What was the last war that USA decisively won? When did an astronaut go to orbit in an American rocket? (SpaceX is the exception that proves the rule). What can USA manufacture at greater scale, with better quality, for cheaper cost than anyone else in the world? Does the median American have access to the best quality of life and Healthcare? What about education?
This is not the dialect of English I expect from an aviation organization.
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.
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
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.
In the absence of information I would've done just that, but I had a look at your comment history first before I replied. lol
Happy to have been helpful. Cheers mate
They need a reset.
At this point they seem as useful as Tesla’s board.