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lazide

But what does that have to do with not bolting the door plugs back in correctly?

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That they keep happening to the same airplane.

Don't forget the MCAS fiasco, as well.

Or the engine deicing you can’t leave on for more than 5 minutes because it might start a fire.

That's the point.

The problem isn't specific, it's systemic.

Systemic to manufacturing is not the same as systemic to the aircraft’s design.

You are 100% correct, and it seems there are both systemic manufacturing process issues and systemic issues with the plane design

In aviation, a manufacturing problem that goes uncaught is an everyone problem. QA should catch it. Ideally software and procedure should back stop things. In the Alaska Air case the pressurization alarm went off on two previous flights, which got the aircraft limited to non-ocean routes, but it was still allowed to fly. These alarms were likely due to the door unseating on prior flights, the dynamics just weren't enough to actually eject it off the rails.

Thought experiment: Let’s imagine that the Boeing design department 20 years ago had whipped out a perfect all-new airplane design and the MAX had never happened. I’ll call its replacement the “797 Pro Max.” It fixes all the things we all agree are unfortunate hacks about the 737 MAX and was designed freshly by people at least as competent as Airbus’s designers. Anyway, couldn’t this type of “so and so took off part X and forgot to properly bolt it on, and nobody made sure that removals were properly documented to ensure safety” problem happen exactly the same on a 797 Pro Max? I think the (very real) design problems really have little to nothing to do with their obvious process/manufacturing problems brought to light by the plug door incident.

Could it? Maybe.

But the 737 MAX Process/Program is known to be defective. I'll take possibly bad over surely bad any day.

I don't think we disagree that the 737 MAX process has problems. I was only arguing that you could have any combination of the matrix and that a sound airplane design won't guarantee safety on its own. It's appearing the 737 MAX may well be the top-right of this.

    ┌──────────────────┬──────────────────┐
    │    Bad Design    │    Bad Design    │
    │                  │                  │
    │   Good Process   │   Bad Process    │
    ├──────────────────┼──────────────────┤
    │   Good Design    │   Good Design    │
    │                  │                  │
    │   Good Process   │   Bad Process    │
    └──────────────────┴──────────────────┘

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