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Disclosure: definitely not an airplane expert.

This is a problem discovered during testing. It could mean testing is being done properly; probably it’s a bit late in the dev cycle, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing; now it’s making news because of what happened with Boeing in the past.

But not finding failures during testing maybe means you’re not testing hard enough.

Halting testing is a lot more drastic than "found a failure", though.

> But not finding failures during testing maybe means you’re not testing hard enough.

Also not an airplane expert...

Agreed that finding issues is (often) good (it means you are human and you also found your errors).

But of course such testing, certification, is costly and uneconomical, and if you aren't allowed to fail, then you can't do the correct testing either...

I suspect the issue is two-fold: Firstly, Boeing can't afford to fail, and hence can't test. Secondly, it is driven primarily by profit, not safety, which is part of why it can't afford to fail. Profit drives/motivates new features, efficiencies, and ultimately complex systems, which require exponentially more time to thoroughly test than simple, inefficient, easily verifiable systems.

Falling apart because they are no longer profitable may not be a good thing either - sure, something could "rise from the ashes", but that thing will be in all likelihood, immature, poorly tested, and mostly incompatible with existing systems.

The best bet would be to simplify, as much as possible, all systems, suppliers, etc, and to double, quadruple, perhaps even expand by an order of magnitude the testing effort(s). Perhaps even some sort of new New Deal could come about...

I've done a couple rounds through aerospace or aerospace-adjacent over the years.

This seems to be a certification test (https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boein...), aka the "make-or-break, 0-failures allowed test before we get final approval to sell this aircraft, and we are 99.999% sure this test is going to go flawlessly".

Failing is a pretty big deal. This should have been found far sooner in the process.

> But not finding failures during testing maybe means you’re not testing hard enough.

This is not quite the same. This is finding a failed part that should not have failed, as it should have been designed to -at least- pass the flight test requirements it was designed to fulfil.

And what this article failed to mention was that similar structural issues were found on 2 other test aircrafts.

> The component “didn’t perform as designed,”

What they are saying here is that the component was designed to X, but, not manufactured to those specifications.

Depending on who made that actual component, this is either a failure of Boeing directly or a failure of Boeing to ensure that their suppliers have adequate processes in place to capture these kinds of problems.

This is actually a much more serious failure than a design failure because the problem can't easily be systemically addressed, there is no single component they need to address now. Boeing can not simply say "we checked the other engine mounts in production and they are fine". Even saying that they addressed the issue with the production of that component is insufficient. The real root cause here is why any component which did not meet design specifications was accepted and allowed to be installed on the aircraft. Boeing will need to do a huge review to understand this and may need to inspect and replace huge numbers of other, seemingly unrelated, components.

Not an airplane expert either, maybe Boeing hired a bunch of people from microsoft and started testing in production?

It’s funny that in this country it’s almost unthinkable, but I would imagine that in other countries the solution would be to nationalize the company.

It just needs external regulation. The self regulation was a disaster.

Well that and the people in charge during that decline need to feel personal consequences.

This is also a problem of incentives:If you can roll your dice and the only possible outcomes are:

A) you save your corporation some money while lowering reliability and fucking up safety, but you get a bonus and IF something happens you are either long gone or never held accountable

B) you do nothing, you gain nothing

Then it is clear why more people choose A. If you want management to feel what they are doing is "taking a risk", then make it really, actually risky for them. Especially if it has the potential to kill people. I am talking about significant jail time on top of losing all benefits made during the act. I am an electrical engineer. If something I am not giving my work due diligence and it ends up killing people, I go to jail. If management makes me use flammable materials to safe money and they burn down an orphanage it is a tragic accident that nobody can change, even when you have whistleblowers warning about it internally and publicly.

I constantly heard the phrase that management has to earn a lot because of the huge responsibilities they carry. If the most dire consequence to breaking those responsibilities is that you leave your job with a golden parachute, then that does not sound like it comes at a huge risk. Sure you need to be able to act like a amoral psychopath, but that is a price they are willing to pay.

during that decline need to feel personal consequences.

This is just never going to happen. I agree with you but it's not how power structures work.

Even if there was some type of governance structure setup to do this, those CEOs would workout how to make someone else the fall guy.

The best hope we have is healthy competition, even now, I search for flight that offer AirBus.

and censorship the test results?

The two things do not go hand in hand, no. It's akin to screaming "communism" when someone proposes public healthcare.

I can only imagine the damage to air travel if Boeing was managed like NASA.

The inverse happened: the nation was corporatized with regulatory capture and lobbyists purchasing influence outright, so that is prevented from happening.

Our government is not competent enough to do that.

Much of the issues Boeing has are as a result of government involvement.

Just look at the entire starliner debacle, in any truly free market Boeing would have been fired as a vendor years ago. They were (and are) way behind schedule, their unmanned demo flight was a failure, they still went forward with a manned flight which has been an abject failure -- the crew is on month three of what was supposed to be a 3 hour^W^W9 day tour. They might not be coming home till February. I hope they have someone watering their plants.

If by "involvement" you mean the opposite, sure.

The government approved the merger.

The government allowed Boeing to run with minimal FAA oversight.

I'm speaking of their commercial aviation side, not the military/space stuff.

You seem to be agreeing that our government is not competent enough to handle Boeing from an oversight perspective, let alone actively running the company.

I agree with both of your points, the government should never have allowed the McDonnell Douglas merger (I assume that's what you mean) and I can't possibly agree more that the FAA's "self certification" regime was a hilariously bad concept which was made worse by their implementation.

I was responding to the contention that you made: "Much of the issues Boeing has are as a result of government involvement."

The government hasn't been involved, that's the problem. We elected people who want to deregulate everything and this is what we get.

> If Boeing did fail, that leaves Airbus as the only commercial jet manufacturer?

There's several smaller players in the regional market, like Embraer, Comac, Tupolev, but none of them have long range or widebody craft.

I have to say the Embraer E195-E2 is a lot more comfortable than a 737 or A320 as a passenger, and that's for a plane that's significantly smaller.

It really shows that it was designed in this century. The focus on type certificates/training is really holding the industry back (as well as causing the terrible MCAS crashes).

> Boeing is developing critical space hardware for NASA.

For how much longer though? They're clearly not up to the task of being the second supplier, so NASA is going to need to find a new second supplier.

They're also heavily involved in SLS (though it's questionable how much of a loss that would be, agreed).

And of course all the apaches, globemasters, ospreys, super hornets..

They are definitely too big to fail.

Probably not too big to nationalise though. ;)

your comment is bascally copypasta for a different topic, it's normal during flight tests to find and fix problems.

I agree, on the one had this is normal, there are issues discovered and corrected during testing of all new aircraft types.

But I also wonder if we aren't pushing the limits of what's reasonable for a 2-engine passenger airliner. I get that the more people you can put on a flight the more money the airlines make from that flight, but there's a practical limit somewhere.

we're still making huge leaps forward in the quality of the base materials, until we stop making progress there, I don't think we're able to say that we're at the practical limit.

It's on the backdrop of the 777X being delayed like 4 times so far.

Uh, no. It's not "normal" to find structural failures on your engine mounts on 3 different aircrafts during testing stages.

That points to major structural issues. Or better said, yet an other structural issue on an aircraft type that is already 5 years late.

Boeing could certainly be broken up, think AT&T.

Also I don’t think Airbus would have a problem with Boeing going out of business.

AT&T was broken up based on location, hence the term Regional Bell Operating Companies.

I’m not sure how the relative straightforwardness of that approach maps to a company that basically has two main supply chains (737 in Renton and everything else in Everett with North Charleston as a satellite.)

Maybe they’re talking about Space, Aircraft, Weapons?

There are ways...

Space and weapons.

Commercial narrow body (+ military derived from commercial)

Commercial wide body.

Then break up supply chain (where it hasn't been already).

> Also I don’t think Airbus would have a problem with Boeing going out of business.

I'm not quite certain. Airbus is possibly quite happy to have a stumbling giant occupying that space and tripping over its own feet. It's a lot more comfortable than having to compete against a heavily subsided Chinese company, like what is happening in the EV market. (Not that they are a threat at the moment)

Are any of the Chinese airframes certified for use in EU or USA? If not, is that 100% political, or is the engineeing/QC not up to standards (which is a bit of a LOL given the context of the question)?

To my knowledge, none are, at the moment.

This is partly due to engineering/QC not being up to standards, insofar that the airworthiness certificate delivered by the Chinese Aviation Administration is not recognized/trusted in the West.

But it is not a political decision. Chinese manufacturers wanting to be able to sell and fly their airplanes in the West can simply apply for an EASA (or FAA) certification, like other manufacturers do. If they pass, they are good to go.

The problem is engineering at Boeing is now mostly outsourced (GE influence on that). Eroding decades of knowledge and skills for cheaper labor elsewhere

Boeing has experienced hundreds of major technical incidents but scant few were covered before the MAX crashes. Dozens and dozens more happened after the crashes.

> I also literally see no other path for Boeing but failure.

This is, to put it mildly, premature. No-one expects Boeing to actually go under.

This discovery is a setback, and Emirates won't be happy (also to put it mildly), but it's hardly a company-killing event.

> Emirates won't be happy

Well, they had the opportunity to sign for an other aircraft, and "unexpectedly" jumped ship at the last moment, so that's on them.

>If Boeing did fail, that leaves Airbus as the only commercial jet manufacturer? I don't think anyone, including Airbus and definitely not any airline which has used the airbus-boeing dance during price negotiations wants this to happen.

>Boeing literally can not be allowed to fail

They're too broken for America to repair. They should be shut down, and the pieces sold off to Airbus for pennies on the dollar. Then Airbus can take over the designs and start building better-designed aircraft at the ex-Boeing facilities. There should simply be a stipulation that none of the management is allowed to be American, because obviously they can't do it any more.