FAA orders inspection of 2,600 Boeing 737s over oxygen mask issue
reuters.com
reuters.com
If this happened on an Airbus plane it wouldn't have ended up on the front page.
Ever since the MAX crashes we periodically get these threads where a bunch of people who don't understand normal procedure speculate that a totally normal incident is actually more sinister. These are some of HN's least valuable threads, so I'd prefer to preempt it.
Might explain the comments you saw.
In the context of Boeing actually fixing problems instead of sweeping them under the rug, it's abnormal to follow the prescribed procedure.
In the context of planes needing fixes like this so long after delivery, also abnormal.
Perhaps, but I think its a good thing that boeing is under more scrutiny and is getting more shit than their competition would for the same. Not much more general public can do.
Anyone that remotely cares about aviation can tell you that completely routine Boeing-related “news” now routinely makes its way to the HN front page, not because it’s notable, but because everyone wants to post their recycled rants about “MBAs” because they had a bad day at work or whatever.
Exactly, I also wonder why I spend my time here commenting if everyone else is an idiot ... hmm. </ironyoff>
No.
The right way would be:
"Boeing discovered an issue in design or quality"
But this is not what happened.
Not in the context of everything else that's happened.
> If this happened on an Airbus plane it wouldn't have ended up on the front page.
Has Airbus been discovered to have decades long cost cutting, cutting corners, negligence, bribes, passenger deaths, incompetence, and criminal activity?
I'm not defending Boeing re: everything, I'd just like to see us rise above uninformed internet brigading and have a useful conversation that isn't primarily driven by cognitive biases.
Because Airbus weren't shown, publicly, on multiple occasions, to be a bunch of incompetent fools failing to do basic manufacturing things well. Do you need a reminder that Boeing and their supplier Spirit failed at basics such as tracking who did what work, drilling holes, remembering to put back bolts they took out, tracking their work in the required systems, etc.
There is zero trust in Boeing doing the right thing, and every little detail of their operation needs to be under intense scrutiny to insure their incompetence and cost cutting do not kill any more people. Why did they change the adhesive on the oxygen masks? Did they test it enough?
If we were talking about patterns and stats that would be one thing, but this kind of pile-on after every Boeing anecdote isn't data-driven and isn't meaningful. It's just confirmation bias, and I prefer to see better on HN.
It happens for example with car recalls too, there's a high profile issue that affects a lot of them or sounds particularly bad; then if there's a smaller more mundane issue they also have to recall a few for it gets attention it wouldn't have otherwise.
Does it take 5 YEARS to find issues like this? Is it some kind of rare issue? IF this was some other company, I'd give benefit of the doubt to them. But this is Boeing, given the shenanigans they have pulled past few years, did they "issue a bulletin" because they are genuinely concerned or because they realized someone is gonna find out anyways?
When you buy an airplane, it is a 30 year relationship. The airlines listen.
That trust was severely damaged when the FAA showed themselves to be incompetently incapable of controlling Boeing, and incapable of realising that by refusing to ground the planes after the crashes. This resulted in 300+ hundred deaths. Since then EASA and the Civil Aviation Administration of China have stopped blindly trusting the FAA, and have their own extra checks and processes applied. As an example, the EASA was involved in 737 Max recertification (unprecedented), and is involved in the 777X certification. CAAC also didn't recertify the 737 Maxes until months after the FAA did.
It will take the FAA and American aerospace decades to build back any semblance of trust.
I would love a statistical analysis on defects and accident occurrence at Boeing over the past 20 years. Is there an actual increase since 2020?
Consider, how many rubber-stampers have been removed from the critical path within the FAA since 2020? Probably a decided drop in the number of golf outings with Boeing and Airbus guys as well.
Nothing may have changed with Boeing. But you’d see changes in enforcement if the critical workers at FAA were to change.
You change the adhesive by issuing an Engineering Change Order. This is an engineering approval step.
In this situation, the specific adhesive probably was no longer available. Happens all the time.
I do not have and insight on how that industry work, but I imagine several stealth patching, design philosophies receiving on field data, and a lot of learning due to those incidents.
> I do not have and insight on how that industry work, but
This is why I think these articles shouldn't be submitted. People who know how these things work don't click because they know it's just the media sensationalizing the routine, but they're a magnet for uninformed speculation.
That’s why I carefully placed my lack of inside knowledge and the word “imagine” before I made my statement.
From the outside seems that the aviation industry has a lot of care for security and opportunistic continuous enhancement as a high stakes/high consequence industry in comparison with SWE that most of the time does not have the same philosophy.
> This is why I think these articles shouldn't be submitted. People who know how these things work don't click because they know it's just the media sensationalizing the routine
That’s why here in HN those stories should be posted; not only for the wide range of people in terms of skills that we have here but it contributes with an informed debate and/or ideas exchange.
Past the initial couple submissions when this all came to light, everything since has been classic internet brigading and social hysteria wrought by the media looking for particularly easy clickbait.
Sincerely, these articles are just spam and it is a disservice to society to enable the media spewing them out.
The industry works by doing safety right before the plane first flies.
Not really sure they will ever get it back. What we’re seeing right now from the FAA, is calibrated safety theatre in an attempt to ameliorate Boeing’s reputation. Likely because a decision has already been made to save Boeing from its engineering and business practices regardless of our ability as a nation to affect internal change in that corporation.
I think we can try to force management changes, but even when we do, there’s a tendency to promote from rising stars within. With all the obvious consequences.
So it’s a hard problem.