Well it’s a good thing they did stock buybacks instead of investing in basic safety and inspection practices. Seems to have really worked out well in the long term.
Or instead of investing in a redundancy or software failsafe for the angle-of-attack sensor that was problematic back in 2019.
Or investing in a plane design that was not lopsided due to being rushed out the door to compete with Airbus, necessitating the need for the MCAS system to begin with because they also didn’t want to invest in pilot retraining on how to fly a lopsided plane.
Nothing can be done! If we add a backup AOA sensor the cost of the plane will increase by 0,00001% tHiNk Of ThE ShArEhOlDeRs!!1!!
Getting these planes from the factory with loose bolts is pretty inexcusable. Boeing’s really fallen far. Kind of crazy that the airline has to go double check that the brand new plane they got from the manufacturer is actually put together properly.
I have known Boeing workers, I called them friends. My friends would tell me how stressful each bolt and rivet can be. Like you have to sign off on all your work, every screw. I don’t know what that environment is like now, but in years past those workers took high pride in their work. And the executives were the ones that caused the problems with their work.
An article I read about it said that they outsourced it to another company, then that company fired all their experienced workers during covid. So the answer to it and everything is short sighted greed.
For a change
Yaya. I feel like a pretty dramatic shift in how Boeing designs, builds, and signs off on things really has to come from the top first
I’ve heard that the board of directors got rid of a lot of the old executive team, that was made up of people that had worked as engineers and knew how to build an airplane, and brought in people that instead knew how to maximize profit and reduce costs.
Tale as old as Jack Welch’s first day at GE
GE builds bombs, Boeing builds planes that could plow into the ground… either way, they’re trying to kill people.
Yes, but GE, under the leadership of Jack Welch was the pioneer of the “shareholder profits are the only thing that matters” brand of capitalism in the post WWII era. Prior to Welch GE and most American companies during that time were prioritizing what their company produced, attempted to innovate, and treated their workers with some dignity. Certainly not perfect as foreign exploitation was a major leg propping it up but a far cry from where we are today.
It’s all subcontracted out now to limit liability, and the workers are understaffed
The FAA is one of the few agencies that still has teeth. They will likely hold Boeing’s feet to the fire because the buck stops with them. I worked for a smaller aircraft manufacturer, and if we outsourced parts that failed, saying “oh it was the other company’s fault” would not be a valid excuse for the FAA. There would still be investigations into our practices, questions about why we didn’t have adequate inspections to verify the parts when they came in, and reviews into our vendor vetting processes. Any fines or disciplinary action would fall on us, not just the negligent outside company. Because at the end of the day, if we hired a negligent company that produced inferior parts, then WE were being negligent.
That said, bigger companies have a lot of connections and sway at the FAA and can do a lot that smaller companies can’t. But with all the repeated issues and bad press, I’m leaning towards Boeing getting raked over the coals.
There are only two government agencies you should never fuck with; the IRS and the FAA. The FDA used to be on that list, but they’ve fallen a bit to regulatory capture in recent years.
They should have used self sealing stem bolts.
If you need any, I’ve heard about a couple of guys on a station looking to unload a bunch of them for a good price.
I don’t have any latinum, but I might get my hands on… other goods. Trade?
Have faith and the Great River shall provide.
Do you have any yamok sauce?
About 5000 bottles
“Really?! Every single conference room already has a meeting scheduled?! You guys, I told you I was gonna meet with the reporter today, and he just called and said he’s on his way, and I just… Y’know what, fuck it, ju- just give me those fuckin chairs…”
“Mr. Minicucci, are you crying?”
“No! No, that’s a stupid quest- you’re crying! Butt munch… sniff”
Soon
"Tom, I’m more than frustrated and disappointed…
(on a serious note, fuck Boeing, they’re literally a bunch of murderers who made piles of money and have never been properly held to account for the hundreds of people they killed, but I saw that picture in the article and couldn’t not imagine this)
s/loose/quick release/
- Boeing Marketing
No cg!? That’s how you break your plane!
Jfc have these people never heard of Loctite or Rocksett?
Why waste money on that when the executive board has greens fees to pay for?
Because you can probably buy loctite wholesale cheaper than the cost of recalls, settlements, inspections, hit to reputation, etc. One of those “spend now to save later” deals.
If they were smart anyway. Also dead people or whatever, maybe they’ll haunt his mansion.
They’re smart enough to realize they’ll get their bonus and a job elsewhere before any of that bad stuff happens
“it’ll hold till the check clears”
I have to wonder if the loose bolts are an additional problem not really related to the door falling off. Bolts should have lock wire keeping them in place. Even if they are loose, a door could be rattling or hissing air, but I’m not sure how it comes off. I’m not an ME, or a manufacturer, so I could be wrong, but if so, I’d like to know how that happens.
A current working theory (from people more expert than me) is that Spirit Aerosystems (who builds the fuselage) does a loose install of the door for transport to Boeing, who then does a final install of the interior. Since this door is usually removed for the interior installation the theory is that it isn’t and the loose install is what has ended up on otherwise flight worthy planes.
Here’s how I think it went down:
Conference Room, Spirit Aerosystems:
“How can we reduce the hours needed to get the fuselages out of the door?”
“We could skip tightening the door plug bolts. After all, they use them at Boeing to finish the interiors so it will actually save them time, too.”
“Johnson, get this man a promotion!”
Later that year
Conference Room, Boeing
“How can we reduce the hours needed to finish these interiors?”
“We could just skip removing the door plugs and do it all from the actual doors. Then we don’t have to re-do something already done at the supplier”
“Johnson, get this man a promotion!”
So, lack of communication. That does seem to be a core part of problems in any place.
Especially when you know that Spirit Aerosystems used to be a part of Boeing that they sold of as a cost cutting measure
Always seems weird to me, like they aren’t going to be making plans bodies for many other customers, so now Boeing has to pay extra for each body since now spirit aerosystems wants to have growing profits on every thing they make.
The savings is the deferred liability. Supposedly. They still stamp ‘Boeing’ on the turd.
I was recently in Wichita at the airport where spirit aerosystems builds fuselages and could see a large Boeing plane that transports the fuselage inside it to Washington to be finished
The fuselage is manufactured in Kansas before being shipped by rail to Washington for final fit-out and assembly. The door plugs are put in place in Kansas, but not tightened down to flight spec because it’s expected that Boeing will take them off again to fit out the interior, then bolt them down to spec. One theory I’ve heard is that Boeing’s not using the plug doors to move in seats and lavatories and what have you, and no one thought to double check the plug doors afterwards in Washington because no one has touched them since it arrived from Kansas.
Gods. It is worse than I thought. These execs need to be throughly and publicly destroyed.
It’s definitely a huge warning.
Kinda the brown m&m test
This principle is named after a rock band (Van Halen), who had a “brown M&M’s clause” in their contracts with event organizers, stipulating that the organizers must provide M&M’s in the backstage area, but that there must be no brown M&M’s available. This small clause gave the band an easy way to check whether organizers actually paid attention to all the details in the contract, which was important given how complicated and potentially dangerous the band’s production was.
I’m not any of those things either, but I do subscribe to Mentour Pilot on YouTube who mentioned that there had been previous flights of that plane with cabin pressure issues.
s/loose/missing/g
Is that a lot?
A lot > many > several > a few > a couple > acceptable number of loose screws keeping the flying metal tube intact.
So no, not quite a lot.
Gonna need this in a color tier system like the US Homeland Security Terror warning
Hmm…don’t they check the bolts occasionally? Seems like they would, but I guess not.
They are brand new planes.
Really? I haven’t been following this closely. I don’t know what the protocol is for new planes either. No inspections then?
They come freshly certified. The operator is then responsible for regular checks at a variety of intensities as the aircraft ages.
The incident aircraft was delivered three months ago.
When you get new tires or have them rotated you’re supposed to take them back for tightening after 50-100 miles. Perhaps they ought to update the documentation to take them to the mechanic for a few ugga duggas after a couple flights.
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We need more aircraft manufacturers. I don’t care about efficiency. I care about style.
With a bunch of different companies we’d get some truly weird designs. Twin boom tails on a stealth fighter or some shit. A lot of companies means way more ideas which means more weird planes, which we all like.
So I say we save the weird planes and break up the big aerospace companies.
Who knows, maybe we’ll get weird spaceships this time!
We need more aircraft manufacturers. I don’t care about efficiency. I care about style.
Companies that buy airplanes care about efficiency and don’t really care about style.
If you want weird, figure out how to make it efficient in some way (flies farther, flies significantly faster, drinks less fuel, dirt cheap to build, dirt cheap to maintain), etc.
One company’s “weird” is Boom Supersonic. They’re going with “flies significantly faster”
It is crazy crazy expensive designing and building a normal passenger airliner at scale. We’ll see if this company is able to do all that, as well as something new.
You sound like you’re not very much fun at parties
You sound like your an absolute pain in the ass for anyone who has to be in the same fucking room as you.
You sound like you’re gonna get blocked.
I don’t know about that. I can’t say I automatically gravitate to the most popular people at the party. Instead I like talking to people on the sidelines or in the corner that maybe not be as popular. They too frequently have something to say that is worth hearing. I can’t say it always works out.
Sometimes those people aren’t popular because they don’t know how to express themselves. Other times those people express themselves and its an overall negative result like lash out and insulting for some reason, like you did just now. I don’t think I’m going to ask you how fun you are at parties. I hope your day gets better.
Sadly, physics makes a call. Planes aren’t meant to be a party. Over a century of flight has figured out the core concept.
