Japan ANA Boeing 737-800 flight turns back due to cockpit window crack | Hacker News Reader

Japan ANA Boeing 737-800 flight turns back due to cockpit window crack

channelnewsasia.com

216 points2-718-281-828118 comments

The plane in question was JA56AN [0], which according to PlaneSpotters.net was delivered in June 2009 [1]. Forbes [2] indicates that the service life of a fight deck window is ten years (it's not clear if that applies to the windshield as well as passenger windows)—if that's accurate, it's likely that this is completely unrelated to Boeing's significant manufacturing problems lately. Unfortunately for Boeing it doesn't matter, anything involving a 737 will get news coverage right now.

[0] https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/nh1182

[1] https://www.planespotters.net/airframe/boeing-737-800-ja56an...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisagarcia/2018/05/19/airplan...

Boeing made a business decision to brand a new model as a "737". They wanted to trade of the reputation of the 737. Instead they tarnished it.

Further, they allowed the old planes to tarnish the reputation of the new ones. If they had made of completely different brand name, then a 10-year-old 737 wouldn't get mixed up with a new plane.

But its more like the opposite: the new MAX planes are tarnishing the reputation of the older ones. This one incident being a more standard problem that hasn't gotten much attention in the past.

Branding didn't really matter. The MAX had to be a 737 for certification and crew training.

Boeing cut corners during development, MCAS. And it seems that they are cutting corners as well in manufacturing, supplier management and quality insurance.

There is nothing to funny about any of that.

> The MAX had to be a 737 for certification and crew training.

I don't believe that this is correct. They could have called it anything, it's the type rating that matters.

That's absolutely not true. 737 MAX IS 737, lengthened. It is not a completely new plane, it is not a plane that just accidentally or by design looks like 737. It IS 737, with slightly different behaviour because of the fact it is lengthened and it has engines moved.

And the story of the MCAS is that Boeing needed this system to make 737 MAX to behave in entire envelope. But introducing new major system would require re-certifying pilots so the hid the fact, downplayed importance of it.

The point is they could have called it “Blueberry” instead of “737 MAX” and have it still share the same type rating as the 737.

Which is perfectly reasonable as changing the branding alone isn’t particularly meaningful from a safety, airworthiness, or training perspective.

> 737 MAX IS 737, lengthened.

That wasn't under dispute. The question you responded to is whether they had to use the 737 brand.

And personally, I think that once you lengthen it and move the engine, it would not be weird at all to give it a different number. Even just 738 would give it better distinction than "MAX".

> But introducing new major system would require re-certifying pilots so the hid the fact, downplayed importance of it.

Is it typical to hide critical systems from pilots in the aviation industry? Or is only Boeing doing that?

No, what parent said is true: they could have changed the model number if they so chose to, and kept the same type rating. The 757 and 767 have the same type rating for example.

Whether they call it 737, 737 Max, 73Seven, 838 or whatever else is just marketing and has no bearing on keeping training compatibility. Only the type rating matters for that.

You're right on. For example, the 757 and 767 share a common type rating.

Boeing was trying to piggy back on existing 737 certification. If they certified it as a new plane, the certification would be more extensive and the pilot training would be different (which could have been a better route given the size of the engines they installed on it).

No, it is a variant of the 737 so using the certification is correct. They weren’t trying to avoid additional certification, it just wasn’t required as it’s a variation of an existing type

It is definitely a variant of the 737, but tacking on those extra large radius engines that the original airframe wasn't designed for and 737 pilots weren’t trained for virtually made it into a new plane.

they kept the 737 branding to indicate backwards compatibility with existing jetways so airlines wouldn't need to upgrade other equipment.

True. I augmented the 737-800 with MAX in my head incorrectly reading the title first, corrected later on reading the article, will need to work on erasing this story from the MAX list in my head.

They wanted to trade on the wake of the 737 so badly they ruined it big for the generic audience (those paying for it by buying tickets).

I almost said they wish they did not use 737 and make a new aircraft instead but of course they give no f, not at all, top managers care about the coming year or two only, the top salary and bonuses, thats it, the rest could sink or die for them. They will go on elsewhere ruining something completely else for the rest of us. Prosper and thrive regardless of the wreck caused and others will let it without comparable consequences.

I think the problem was rather that they did not actually develop a new model, but instead pimped their existing one to compete with Airbus neo variants.

I don't understand why the service life is relevant here, unless ANA wasn't maintaining their planes properly which I doubt is the case given the reputation of this airline.

I included it because in theory it shows that the windshield was either overdue for replacement or it wasn't an original windshield, so it's not evidence of failure on Boeing's part in the initial manufacture of the plane.

Admittedly, I don't know much about how maintenance works for these planes, so there could be something I'm missing.

I'd wait with any judgment until the inevitable investigation has run its course because there are just as many ways in which it could be a Boeing issue as there are ways in which it can't. Anything specific about this failure is right now mostly speculation. Also, and maybe surprisingly to some, cracked cockpit windows are not a big deal as long as they stay in place until the landing because they are multi-layered and ridiculously strong to begin with.

> or it wasn't an original windshield

Put another way, it’s a recently-fabricated windshield. Which could be read as it being less resilient than the original.

That’s not how I’m reading it, absent further information. L

I would imagine the windshield is a recently manufactured replacement rather than the original article. There was a more recent 787 that suffered from a cracked windshield last December in London too.

The thing that really surprises me is that the regulatory bodies arent catching this stuff either, safety standards are not mutable.

It also happened in April 2022 on a Bombardier CRJ-700 [0] and in October 2020 on an Airbus A319 [1]. After the 2022 incident the local newspaper reported that it had happened more than three dozen times in the previous five years. If Boeing is disproportionately represented in those stats that's one thing, but so far I don't see any reason to believe they are.

[0] https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article260551697.html

[1] https://thepointsguy.com/news/smashed-windshield-how-pilots-...

> if that's accurate, it's likely that this is completely unrelated to Boeing's significant manufacturing problems lately.

I'm not sure how "recent" lately is referring to here, but it seems Boeing have had engineering/manufacturing issues for quite some time.

About the 787 Dreamliner:

> Early 787 operations encountered several problems caused mainly by its lithium-ion batteries, which culminated in fires onboard some aircraft. In January 2013, the U.S. FAA grounded all 787s until it approved the revised battery design in April 2013. Significant quality control issues from 2019 onwards caused a production slowdown and, from January 2021 until August 2022, an almost total cessation of deliveries.

Maybe it's just finally catching up with them?

> Boeing moved its corporate headquarters [there] in 2001 when they opted to leave Seattle for Chicago.

It's been going downhill since management physical separated itself from engineering/production.

Cockpit windows are also manufactured by a third party specialist glass company (i.e. PPG Aerospace, not Boeing), cost about the same as a new car precisely because they get subject to the sort of stress that is inclined to break a layer, and subject to regular inspection. Plus in this case it appears the other layers of the window did their job and avoided anything more than an annoyingly expensive but routine return to base.

So in summary, Boeings break down like MacDonnells[1], but it’s not Boeing’s fault, it’s the fault of the entire ecosystem, but not Boeing, just everyone involved with Boeing, we get it. Entire denial of ownership of problems should be patented as a business model. So that no other manufacturer can copy it for 20 years.

[1] McDonnell planes were known for falling apart, doors flying in the air, lengthened planes which didn’t adapt the airframe for the new length, or just pieces falling off. Remember the Concorde getting pierced in the fuel tanks by a metal frame dropped on the airstrip by the previous plane and crashing into a hotel? Yup, it was a piece that fell off a McDonnell.

Their point is that cracked windshields are neither uncommon nor (typically) dangerous. They happen regularly across all manufacturers and have redundancy in place to make sure they don't hurt anyone.

Boeing has a lot of problems, more so than other manufacturers, but this isn't a good example.

no, in summary, airframers all contract out their windshields to the same few specialists, whose replacements are routinely retrofitted without OEM involvement, and cracks developing in a windshield designed to be resilient to a crack developing in one of the layers is not an unexpected phenomenon.

(And fwiw the bit that fell off the DC-10 that the unlawfully overloaded Concorde ran over was an engine part on a GE engine incorrectly retrofitted [twice] by Bedek and Continental respectively shortly before it detached, so it'd be difficult to imagine anything that had less to do with the half of the airframe OEM that didn't design the the non-engine parts that didn't fall off over quarter of a century earlier. Might as well get angry at Bill Gates for air traffic control failures)

Hadn't heard of that incident before, so looked it up:

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/flaming-concorde...

Everyone on board died. Damn. :(

Window cracking isn't uncommon. Cockpit windows are typically made of layers of acrylic glass sandwiched together, with heating elements in the middle. They are exposed to incredible forces, the forward airflow on the outside, positive pressure from the inside, cold on the outside and warmer on the inside, then there's the internal temp when the anti icing elements are on. And despite all of this, they're so strong that a crack can be discovered on one side and the aircraft can still be safely landed.

It sometimes feels dishonest whenever an event is published in the news without having the typical frequency of occurrence.

This is one of those stories that wouldn't be noticed if not for the attention on anything Boeing related right now. Instead it's near the top of the front-page.

This hyper selective attention is very bad. It leads to all kinds of wrong inference about the background frequency of events, because suddenly when under the microscope we notice all kinds of things that would have previously gone unnoticed.

Well how often do cockpit windows of passenger aircraft crack?

From a 2022 report, trivially searched-for on Google:

> According to the Federal Aviation Administration, more than three dozen instances of cracked windshields have been reported by airlines over the past five years.

https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article260551697.html

https://avherald.com/h?search_term=cracked+windshield&opt=1&...

Most of them are Boeing it seems:

  14x Airbus
  35x Boeing
  5x  Bombardier
  3x  Embraer

Does Boeing also have more plans in service and/or more flights?

For a fair comparison, this should be measured against flight hours per manufacturer

Takeoff/landing cycles, actually. Cruising at high altitude is much less rough on the airframe (including windows) than the strains that happen when changing altitude.

A quick search gave me 12K vs 10K planes. I couldn't find the actual hours or number of flights

And until last year, most of the planes in the sky were also Boeing. And the Boeing planes in the sky, on average, are older.

Blatantly Overlooked Engineering Inadequacies, Now Grounded

those don't mean much with out at least a "out of X planes from manufacturer Y"

A cursory Google suggests that it is not an uncommon occurrence.

This article from 2014, predating all of Boeing's recent failures, claims it is a regular occurrence and is also not always reported because it's a relatively minor thing to happen:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140507001219-90103575-crack...

~ weekly, globally.

The most infamous incident with a cockpit window is probably British Airways Flight 5390. An incorrectly installed window blew out, causing one of the pilots to be partially ejected.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390

Here's a link to an Aviation Herald search for "windshield crack". Looks like a lot of bird and hail, but also a fair number of them just cracking.

https://avherald.com/h?search_term=windshield+crack&opt=0&do...

There are lots of Boeing on there, but unsure what the ratio of Boeing to Airbus there are in service. Certainly some Airbus on there as well.

Since this involves a window I can't help but think of the windshield pitting epidemic,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_windshield_pitting_epi...

On the other hand, the hyper focus on Boeing might result in some actual change instead of more of the same as before. Perhaps a little of the stick to contrast with the carrot?

I wholeheartedly agree. They need to get an aerospace engineer back at CEO and not some MBA optimizing for quarterly reports.

People are absolutely dying because of an incoherent understanding of the value chain. The decision to outsource may please Wall Street for three months but it certainly hurts the brand in the long term. Boeing is in the business of R&D and production. That’s their value add. Fuck the investors, they’re literally killing people!

> Fuck the investors, they're literally killing people

epitaph of the new century. from water that makes your teeth black to illegal drug trials in poor countries. corporations are amoral by design and we have to assume they will do literally anything to make a buck.

>from water that makes your teeth black

???

Tried to google it and found something about tap water with high iron content.

Fluoride is known to discolour teeth; also, inactive dental caries will turn dark, and most dentists will jump at the opportunity to drill that shit out.

It's a toxic relationship. "I fund you so I decide whether you matter or not"

The previous CEO was an aerospace engineer. As was the CEO who moved the company's headquarters from Seattle to Chicago. So I'm not sure an engineering background is any guarantee they'll do better.

But perhaps the company's recent problems will give an engineering-minded CEO a little more leverage to steer the company back toward engineering excellence, even in the face of pressure from the board and shareholders.

Perhaps the government should create a fund which guarantees a hefty reward for whistleblowers on aviation companies/airlines, enough that they don't need to fear for their own livelihood and can effectively retire without loss of income if they expose something significant.

Apparently AF261 had a whistleblower who had to sue in court for damages. That's not correct, that's not how this should be done.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/faa-increase-oversight-...

> Jan. 12, 2024, 8:07 AM CST / Updated Jan. 12, 2024, 8:54 PM CST

> The Federal Aviation Administration will increase its oversight of Boeing production and manufacturing, the agency said Friday, one day after announcing it had opened an investigation.

> The FAA says it will audit Boeing's 737 Max 9 production line and its suppliers "to evaluate Boeing’s compliance with its approved quality procedures."

> The results of the initial audit will determine whether additional audits are needed, the agency said.

> "It is time to re-examine the delegation of authority and assess any associated safety risks," FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said in a statement.

> ...

The linked statement: https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-increasing-oversight-boeing...

Maybe, but if the perception is that they're going to get the stick no matter what they do, I'm not sure that creates much pressure or incentive to do the actually do the right thing.

Either way, I don't think it's a net positive for us to choose to be less correctly informed about an issue or encourage the same in others, even if it's in pursuit of an otherwise worthwhile goal.

yeah anything to get them to start being an engineering company again instead of a "let's squeeze all we can out of this profit center and not listen to our engineers"

It's a weird point to make. Does Boeing need your defense? In real life this is what happens. Bad students. Repeat offenders. Criminals. Neverdowellers. Their actions get spot lit and they're put under a microscope

I don't see how making a stink over Boeing's constant little problems isn't a tiny cosmic balancing act against their decades of negligence.

Hysteria is hysteria.

I'm not defending Boeing. I've said elsewhere I wouldn't fly on a max.

I'm attacking the way in which the media (and audience, the media is mostly just chasing ratings) gets obsessed about a topic to the exclusion of other stories, only to dramatically flip-flop around and completely dump a topic once it's bored of it.

Are you new here? (Jokingly...)

I don't know what percentage of HN is about AI & LLM in the past few months but it's like nothing else important is happening in the ICT world.

It’s not just HN, you all seem to be upset with basic human nature here. Something happens, and then you notice related events more often because they feel more salient. You might as well be upset that people recognize patterns, it’s just part of how people are wired.

Some of us choose HN to receive our preciously minuscule free time on because we expect it to be of a higher signal to noise ratio than average.

> This hyper selective attention is very bad.

> because suddenly when under the microscope we notice all kinds of things that would have previously gone unnoticed.

They knew that was a risk when they started cutting corners. Now they are paying the price. Can't say I feel for them. It's a nice deterrent.

In the context of just Boeing, that makes sense.

In the broader 'news' context, it's bad, because there are a crapton of things that really aren't as significant as they are made out to be to the layman. It's not a firehose we should be drinking from, instead, the most significant things are supposed to be selected by specialists so we have enough space in our heads to focus on things we choose to instead of just whatever happens to be getting firehosed at us.

(you can probably elaborate the 'selected by specialists' with complete departments or even organisations that specialise in various things - the world is much too big and made of too many pieces for just some person or small team to do all the 'is this thing important' work for everything, and definitely not in a single outlet)

We don’t in fact drink from the firehose. There are actually specialists who select what stories we are exposed to. The simple fact is that their incentives of politics and profits don’t align with yours of general knowledge and a peaceful learned population, and what we see today is the end result of these incentives.

Specialists who carefully wield their HN up votes to make sure you see stories like this one...

Yep.

Another example is the stranger kidnapping scare of the ‘80s.

There’s an unhealthy paradox at work: The rarer a highly emotional event occurs, the more media attention attention it gets. The more media attention something gets, the more people think it’s actually common.

Another example is police killing unarmed black men.

Trying explaining to someone that something is in the news because it’s rare is futile.

AS1218 is probably not the cause of extra attention to airplanes _in Japan_.

They had arguably much worse events on Jan 2 (landing JAL516 A350 crashed into a earthquake relief Coast Guard DC-8 on landing; killed 5, and both aircraft caught fire).

Sure but that had nothing to do with the intrinsic safety engineering of either plane.

It's the cause of extra attention of "Hacker news" to this story, which otherwise wouldn't be paid much attention outside of regional news.

Instead right now it's the #1 story on HN.

Agreed this is a nothingburger but the side effect of having a spotlight on Boeing is helpful. There are fundamental changes needed at Boeing to move the finance guys off the helm and move engineering back into leadership roles.

This is how journalism and social media have been working in the Internet Age: keep bombarding people with the topic du jour because it sells (or it is easy HN karma), and then move onto the new thing.

For many, like OP, Hacker News is the place to post random news that have nothing to do with computers or hacking. (I blame HN's vague and simplistic guidelines that allow "anything that our users might find interesting")

> Hacker News is the place to post random news that have nothing to do with computers or hacking.

Thankfully. If HN was just posts about Docker or Web stacks I would have left a long time ago.

Covid?

You’re fighting human nature if you think people aren’t going to be hyper attentive to things like this after the (latest) Max 9 incident. Also, it is not in any way “very bad.” In fact, it’s very good. Plane makers should believe one faulty decision could completely ruin them, that’s how they should be attacking any engineering problems related to putting people in the air. Clearly Boeing’s leadership is ok with putting profits before safety, they need to be shown there is no profit without extremely tight safety margins.

>Plane makers should believe one faulty decision could completely ruin them

In that case nothing will ever be done, improved or innovated. The optimal is close, but greater than zero on faulty decisions.

Inaction/no decision is a decision too, although that idea is often a surprisingly hard sell in the media.

Funny, because the broad non-attention is what lead us to the situation we are in now.

Every single Boeing story here is filled with comments from Seattle tech people thinking they know something special about Seattle aerospace, but they don’t, and they’re completely unaware of this.

Mostly it’s people repeating their parents stories and they’ve never bothered to fact check them, or it’s people who have never like Boeing doing military aircraft and simply shit on them for that.

It has zero impact though outside of extending the ignorance of HN readers and promoting fear, uncertainty, and doubt. No one doing aerospace cares what HN thinks or even knows about HN for that matter.

They wanted to trade on the hyper selective attention and binding new and old very tightly together, but this thing has double edge, everyone knows it, they must eat what they cooked! They wanted the good ignoring the bad in their deliberate half blindness.

Even if it normally wouldn't be news, given the shitshow that the MAX is and how they're now trying to get MAX-10 certified, this might be a case of the media being a functionally broken clock.

The FAA should have hell to pay if they certify it and this will put pressure on them, as at the end of the day they answer to the American public, even if boeing only answers to shareholders.

True, but we see the same cycle frequently. Apple keyboards, Teslas and FSD, Apple antennas, Samsung phones catching fire, etc, all created an environment where tangential stories received elevated attention.

I measure societies by what they’re hysterical about. It’s the best measurement of character there is imo.

Kinda like how every train derailment was evidence of a failed society a few months ago and now nobody cares again.

"...Flight 1182 was en route to Toyama airport but headed back to the Sapporo-New Chitose airport after the crack was found on the outermost of four layers of windows surrounding the cockpit, the spokesperson said..."

Hopefully people can tell routine maintenance issues from newsworthy improper design and implementation / manufacturing problems.

> Hopefully people can tell routine maintenance issues from newsworthy improper design and implementation / manufacturing problems.

100 upvotes and counting. There's your answer.

On HN? Never. This entire thread is proof of it.

No reason to pretend like HN is some special noteworthy kind of echo chamber. You won't find any large online community where the majority reads more than the headline.

We've now reached the stage where every non-story is interesting because it has "Boeing" in the headline. While you think this hurts Boeing's reputation, I'm not at all sure that's how it plays out. It desensitizes people and reminds them that the news is just about clicks and outrage. Then they'll not be paying much attention if there is real newsworthy revelations.

The fact that it's getting so many upvotes on HN is kind of sad, but not unexpected.

Are you a Boeing stock owner? The buzz is deserved because 20 documented, serious deficiencies in the 737 MAX have escaped widespread press. Furthermore, few people are aware of the 737 NG Ducommun scandal. The rot at Boeing stretches back to the 90's.

> Are you a Boeing stock owner?

Nope, just someone rational who has a passing interest in aviation, and knows that broken cockpit windows are pretty routine. They do get tracked, of course, and if you look at that you'll find that every manufacturer is well represented.

I have no appreciation for emotional clickbait outrage news and I hate to see it on Hacker News. I'd like our community to hold itself to higher standards.

This made the news only because of Boeing's current troubles with the MAX9. They richly deserve the scrutiny for that blunder, but cracked windshields on aircraft are not all that uncommon. A step above anecdotal, but if you go to the Aviation Herald and search for "cracked windshield"[1], the first page of results covers about a year and has sixty-something entries. About half are Boeing aircraft, but again, this is not rigorous, because Avherald doesn't cover everything (but please, support them if you can; they are a great resource.)

[1] https://avherald.com/h?search_term=cracked+windshield&opt=0&...

Here we go. The inevitable mainstream media freak-outs over the usual background noise of airplane issues. This is how I know my YouTube recommendations are going to be extra awful for a while.

Big deal. It's Boeing's fault. Maybe they and the airlines shouldn't have defrauded the public and regulators. If they hadn't, this would indeed be in the background noise.

FYI: 737 NGs were also manufactured shoddily says whistleblowers from 20 years ago. Bear straps and other falsely approved, deficient structural components were beaten into place with hammers on the assembly line ("preloaded"). There have been 3 737 NG accidents where people died because the fuselage broke up when 737 Classic fuselages would've survived similar scenarios.

This happened a few times to 737.

With picture https://twitter.com/HawaiiNewsNow/status/1658175996925734912

Another one. https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/Avelo-flight-from-Tw...

It's not specific to 737. 787 also had a bunch of cracked pilot window issues not related to external impact.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eemw9RNkU_k

It's also not specific to Boeing. All airplanes get cracked windows sometimes.

Doesnt a plane at high altitude with a cracked window at those speeds (900+ kmh/hr) pose a risk of exploding from too much cabin pressure especially if it's the front window; regardless of brand/company??

which may mean perhaps weather is to be factored before we blame a brand regardless; because no matter how you put it:

every company in any industry does things differently. Sometimes their practices are far from optimal, but at the very least they meet baseline before blaming or considering shareholders or quality control as the only culprit....

Right now any bad news related to a 737 is fatal to the brand, regardless of how common or uncommon the incident may be.

Or the opposite. Now people will become desensitized and assume it's just more clickbait.

I think you underestimate how many people hold a dim view of (nu)boeing

Or perhaps you overestimate how many people hold any view of Boeing at all.

They're fairly well known in europe after the MAX debacle, I don't know how it is stateside though.

or even saw the story. Tech nerds tend to pay a lot more attention to the news than most by a large margin in my experience (other than people that are actually in the journalism business)

When I see that the plane has been in service for 30 years and has a cracked windshield I think less about the age of the glass and more about the rigidity of the airframe. Seems that as a plane ages out it would tend to stress those types of parts more.

If you have to go through any hassle like turning back, it's best to be on a Japanese plane.

Recent 737 accidents remind me of the famous Aloha Airlines Flight 243.

As long as it doesn't remind us all of the ill fated JL123 flight...

Reading the wikipedia page on that one is horrific.

For the curious:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Air_Lines_Flight_123

Indeed, i used to work for ANA, and my colleagues used to bring this up fromt time to time, with assorted creepy anecdotes. This disaster somehow struck a nerve in the Japanese psyche.

There were even novels written on this topic with a boarding pass for flight 123 included as a bookmark.

How many buildings collapse in the world daily? How many catch fire and burn to the ground?

How many trucks and cars self combust or lose a wheel?

How many trains derail out of the tracks?

Aviation people and regulators are so paranoid, they hold a chokehold on global economic growth, maybe only nuclear regulators causes more GDP and quality of life losses.

Instead of grounding them or demolishing them send these plane to Africa, they will take them

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