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Comment by verdverm | Hacker News Reader

There are over 1000 of them in service

https://simpleflying.com/boeing-737-max-airlines/

The OP post gets a bit ranty or biased at times, especially at the end

Manufacturers in other areas regularly have to recall tens of millions of units. I see no reason this should be different.

Auto recalls involve bringing cars in to have the problematic bits fixed. Grounding planes for inspection and repairs seems like a close analogue to that.

Yeah, but in this case, they intentionally understaffed / underpaid the people doing the assembly, and the design is fundamentally flawed.

In practice, if a car recall required retorquing every bolt, the manufacturer would probably just declare them totaled instead of doing the repairs. All recently built Boeings require that level of recall. (737s, Max or not, military models, etc have all been having these issues due to willful manufacturing negligence that Boeing initiated 5-10 years ago)

With the MAX, they also probably should change the wing and engine geometry and replace the control electronics while they’re at it.

Scrapping the existing ones and discontinuing the line is looking more and more reasonable over time.

> In practice, if a car recall required retorquing every bolt, the manufacturer would probably just declare them totaled instead of doing the repairs.

Bear in mind that a 737 seats ~150 people and average car occupancy is somewhere around 1.5, so it's more like the value of 100 cars compared to the increased complexity of the checks.

There are also very significant levels of inspection required as standard (something like 10 000 hours per year minimum) on an airliner compared to a personal vehicle (not including normal pre-flight checks). Even divided by 100 using the same maths as above, a car does not undergo anything LIKE 100 hours of inspection per year. Depending on where you live, you might have your car at the mechanics for a day every year or two to do a roadworthiness inspection.

That said, I agree, it does seem like there are quite a lot of quality issues with these planes.

That’s patently absurd… Yes, let’s scrap 1000 new aircraft that cost $60m or so each instead of checking the tightness of bolts…

You're assuming that the planes can be disassembled and put back together, and that the assembly line didn't screw up harder to fix things. They checked the doors and tail wing for loose bolts, and one airline reported loose parts in the tail wing. Some of the bolts and parts are more important than a door plug. What do you with all the load bearing parts that have been flying with a few missing bolts? X-Ray them to check for microscopic stress lines?

Also, what's the failure rate of a plane that's been taken apart and put back together in the field (including things outside of routine maintenance)? I'm guessing it's closer to the end of life reliability than beginning of life reliability.

The way things are trending, at some point the depreciation, repair costs, cancelled flights and increased probability of loss of life will exceed $60M per plane. It's got to be in the millions already. Low tens of millions wouldn't surprise me.

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