Boeing 737-800 makes emergency landing after its engine cowling detached | Hacker News Reader

Boeing 737-800 makes emergency landing after its engine cowling detached

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32 pointselorant33 comments

Boeing is justifiably facing the heat but I hope people's attention starts to turns to the airlines as well. They have been cost cutting on maintenance, personnel and basic training for far too long, and now the results are plain to see.

100% this, I know several folks in the aviation maintenance biz for the big airlines, and they were shocked at how much they started cutting back, I want to say it started in 2017/2018. A lot of the older experienced folks had enough and just retired.

Many US air carriers outsource maintenance to MROs in El Salvador, Mexico, or other low labor cost geographies.

https://elsalvadorinenglish.com/2024/02/19/el-salvadors-aero...

https://aviationweek.com/mro/safety-ops-regulation/new-bill-...

https://www.fastcompany.com/90384118/disaster-waiting-to-hap...

https://arsa.org/samsa/

That doesn't have to imply lower quality though.

Apple phones are made in ultra low wage China but quality control is not an issue.

It doesn't have to, but until proven otherwise, it is safe to assume corners are being cut and there is no accountability. If you meet developed world standards, prove it. If you're unwilling to prove it, we should not trust you.

> Apple phones are made in ultra low wage China but quality control is not an issue.

I don't fly in an iPhone at ~500MPH and 36k feet MSL. I want my government to have "a throat to choke" when people die due to corporate cost savings using this arbitrage. The 737 MAX killed 346 people, and the recourse was...not impressive.

This is no different than the video where an exec is asked to drink the glass of water if fracking fluids are safe [1]. Is it safe? Okay, prove that it is, and maybe regulators allow it to continue. High level, I am of the opinion we are at a point where there is no trust of corporate decisions when life safety is involved.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0HL4L6Pa-4

Corners are being cut by Boeing right in the USA.

Indeed, and the CEO was pushed out by the board (which held private meetings with aircraft customers without the CEO) and the org is at risk that the US government might nationalize them if the board and shareholders don't right the ship (as they are too big to fail). Seems like an ideal time to move through the industry chain encouraging better behavior.

No need for the "what about this terrible org/business practice also?" There are resources to go around.

> I want my government to have "a throat to choke" when people die due to corporate cost savings using this arbitrage. The 737 MAX killed 346 people, and the recourse was...not impressive.

Yeah this is exactly the problem. The US government is too dependent on Boeing for military solutions. So they can never choke hard enough.

> It doesn't have to, but until proven otherwise, it is safe to assume corners are being cut and there is no accountability.

That's not really fair on the Latin American countries. Some just have a lower standard of living so they can be cheaper without cutting corners that would have to be cut in the US. And the FAA can simply stop recognising their maintenance qualifications if they really do cut corners.

I live in a low wage country myself though in Europe and there's also this undeserved reputation.

Yeah cowlings are removed very regularly for maintenance and this plane is the previous model so it's bound to be a number of years old. That cowling will have been taken apart many times. Maintenance is more likely, or perhaps some foreign object impact.

The MCAS issues and the poor QC on those plug bolts are unforgivable but it's too early to point the finger at Boeing for this.

We all know the Baader–Meinhof / frequency illusion, which is where something becomes interesting to an observer so suddenly they notice things that were always there, but because they suddenly notice it seems there has been some massive increase in frequency.

What is it when something gets into the zeitgeist narrative so every possible instance is widely reported on in a way that it wasn't before? Parts have always been flying off planes, and there have always been maintenance issues, but suddenly every single one is reported making it feel like it's some sudden outbreak. In the same way we're hearing about every boat hitting something when boats have always been hitting things, it just didn't have a context under which it was newsworthy.

Do you have some reason to think the actual rate of incidents hasn’t increased?

Issues like this story happen many times every single day, and have for decades. Calling this an emergency landing is a bit of an exaggeration, and they returned for precautionary reasons. Barring actual data showing otherwise, there is zero reason to believe these incidents are more common.

Over the past few years the media has reported on athletes suffering heart issues if not sudden death. This has literally always happened, it just wasn't widely interesting or notable so it saw little reporting. Because of vax/anti-vax fears, media realized every such story would see massive virality so they leaned in. Suddenly a bunch of moms and pops[1] think this is some new thing. Exactly the same idea.

[1] - I mean, this event has been submitted here dozens of times. A cowling tearing off is about the least notable or interesting thing to happen on a plane. Outside of the Boeing-Bad current narrative it has zero noteworthiness unless you were on that plane and it was an inconvenience.

Why do you think that this happens multiple times every day? Do you have any sources, or are you just making things up?

We should also be aware of the frequency illusion illusion, which is when an actual increase in frequency is mistakenly attributed to the frequency illusion, especially when the stakes are high.

If one's measure of the frequency of something is "how often the media reports on it" (media meaning traditional and social media), in all likelihood their awareness of the frequency that it occurs at, both presently and historically, is comically inaccurate.

The US alone has an emergency landing just about every day (if distributed evenly, though obviously as with random events it clusters). Weird hydraulic issues, landing gear problems, sensors not working correctly, flap issues, etc. Without a context it's an ordinary, regular event of zero notability beyond to some technical bulletins.

The pilots initially reported that crew thought it was a birdstrike. You can listen to the audio here: https://youtu.be/GBQkk4RcidA

Are these incidents happening more often or is society and the media just giving it more attention?

Maybe both?

10% former, 90% latter.

They happen all the time and forums dedicated to them are among the OG specialty nerd forums, still going strong. Probably one of the reasons not to turn HN into one of them, outside of special occasions.

Thos one is the kind of thing that would stay forgotten on the third page if everybody wasn't looking for it.

Another, non-twit-verse, link: https://bnonews.com/index.php/2024/04/southwest-boeing-737-l...

As these accidents happen, I just hope nothing major happens. It just goes to show how well engineered these are and a lot of airplanes can land safely with one of the engines. Still the build quality in everything has gone down and airplanes aren’t an exception apparently.

>It just goes to show how well engineered these are

What an absolutely wild statement

This is your scheduled reminder that there were 37 million scheduled passenger flights in 2023, of which one (1), a turboprop crash in Nepal, resulted in fatalities. There were zero (0) fatalities in commercial jet aviation, not just in the US but the entire world:

https://askthepilot.com/safest-year-2023/

In computing terms, that's 99.99999%, or over 7 9s of reliability, for ginormous machines flying through the sky in all sorts of crazy weather conditions. So, yeah, we've engineered things pretty damn well.

Seeing body panels repeatedly flying off Boeing aircraft and responding with "wow brilliant engineering" is truly bizarre.

The aircraft in question has been flying since 2015, it's much more likely that this was a post-inspection fuckup (somebody fastened the cowling improperly etc) than a Boeing manufacturing/design defect. In any case engine cowlings are not safety-critical, and the airplane returned to base safely with no injuries, meaning everything else worked as intended. This would literally not be news if Boeing hadn't been in the headlines recently for entirely deserved reasons.

For what it's worth, PPRuNe notes that the Airbus A320 has had over 30 (!) similar incidents: https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/658527-southwest-738-str...

You're quoting a source-less forum post, which later on is contradicted:

> Not 30 times, I can name about 3 times it happened.

> Thing is, it’s a known issue to the point it prompted a design change from Airbus. Why didn’t Boeing take note and change their design?

Boeing are in the process of redesigning the engine cowling on the 737NG to better handle fan blade failures, but has asked for more time to "validate specific maintenance-related failure scenarios" [1] - maybe "Southwest forgot to check they're properly latched" is one of those scenarios? :-)

1: https://aviationweek.com/air-transport/safety-ops-regulation...

BBC story: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68758088

Another site's coverage. Facts are thin right now. https://avherald.com/h?article=51721379&opt=0

Isn't this a CFM or SWA problem? Boeing doesn't make the engines or maintain them.

Not the engines but they do make the cowlings afaik. Also they sell the plane as a whole so they're responsible for it even if they didn't make every part in house.

But yeah it's really unlikely to be a Boeing issue and much more likely a maintenance or external issue.

maintenance issue with airline or yet another manufacturing defect from the worst airplane manufacturer?

Honestly, hard to say at this point. Maybe open up short positions on both.

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