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Why are they even using plugs in the fuselage.....short cuts? profits?
Blame Henry Ford and the assembly line. You either refuse the wants of different users to have a non standard seat configurations or you have a door blocked by seats.
Something comes up in an inspection and you then check out the rest of the fleet rather than wait for that something to be found after an accident investigation. You would think it would happen with any aircraft type.
It does, yes. I am one of the many that implements the changes into the manuals for future maintenance.
Having spent 38 years in the airline business I have tended to be a cheerleader for the builders. Lately it appears Boeing has hit a snag with MAX production by Spirit. Spirit builds the fuselage for the Max and ships it to SEA for final assembly. This door blowing out has opened a can of worms and it looks like Spirits QC has been suffering. The pandemic hit staffing hard and it appears the new QC people have been willing to overlook some defects and just push things out the door. Will be watching Boeing to see if they get a handle on it and right the ship. FAA is coming down hard and it looks serious for BA...........any additional screw ups could be really bad for SEA.........
Embattled aviation giant is slammed for hiring $22M/year ACCOUNTANT as its CEO while rival Airbus's boss is aeronautical engineer...
Boeing's decision has come under fresh scrutiny after yet another safety drama.
Critics of Boeing say the differences in the two CEOs' job history is emblematic of Boeing's alleged decision to put its profits ahead of engineering excellence.
In recent years, Calhoun has drawn criticism for his lavish lifestyle and salary.
Unlike Calhoun, who mainly works from home and only appears in the office twice a month, Faury regularly works from Airbus's European headquarters.
Calhoun rather splits his time traveling between his $10.5 million sprawling waterside home named 'Camp David' in Lake Sunapee, NH, a house in a gated South Carolina resort community and $2.75 million Chicago apartment, and reportedly uses Boeing's private jets to hop between his homes and the company's offices.
Boeing's best-selling plane ever, with almost 4,800 ordered and over 1,400 completed - has become a byword for corporate incompetence and death.
Boeing has been accused of rushing into updating the 737 to compete with Airbus' similar-sized rival, the A320, rather than investing in a 'clean-sheet' design.
Consider Boeing's "Starliner" program. Boeing was selected, along with SpaceX, to privately develop reusable spacecraft capable of earth orbit missions, including serving as a shuttle to/from the International Space Station, launching satellites, etc. I think that began about 10 years ago.
SpaceX began running cargo missions in 2014, and began to run human crewed missions back in 2020. To this day, no humans have flown aboard the Boeing Starliner - because no one has been confident enough to actually attempt it.
There have been endless cost overruns and schedule overruns from the Boeing team, endless technical problems with both Boeing hardware and software that so far they've been unable to solve. What's more, NASA has paid Boeing double what SpaceX has been paid, although Boeing hasn't been able to demonstrate cost, schedule or quality control over their project, and haven't achieved the ultimate project objectives - 4 years after SpaceX has! If you want to describe this as a competition, SpaceX won it years ago, and it's hard to understand what the rationale is for continuing to fund the Boeing program. Nevertheless, it's reported that Congress still strongly supports Boeing and wants them to continue to receive more patience and more money. It's mind-boggling really. I don't know if dozens of Congressmen are being paid off by Boeing, but it wouldn't surprise me in the least.
Having spent 38 years in the airline business I have tended to be a cheerleader for the builders. Lately it appears Boeing has hit a snag with MAX production by Spirit. Spirit builds the fuselage for the Max and ships it to SEA for final assembly. This door blowing out has opened a can of worms and it looks like Spirits QC has been suffering. The pandemic hit staffing hard and it appears the new QC people have been willing to overlook some defects and just push things out the door. Will be watching Boeing to see if they get a handle on it and right the ship. FAA is coming down hard and it looks serious for BA...........any additional screw ups could be really bad for SEA.........
Got a chuckle out of the idea that the FAA is "coming down hard". Here in America we are scared to death of the "R" word, particularly when those regulations tend to eat into very large corporation's bottom lines.
Believe it or not, aviation enterprises like Boeing usually have their own employees serve in the capacity of FAA regulatory overseers for QC and testing - does that sound like a conflict of interest to anyone?
In Europe, there is far more oversight and integration with regulators than there is in the USA. No surprise that overall, Airbus does not suffer from the endemic problems that we see at Boeing. They have had their share of failures too, but they practice taking full responsibility for correcting the processes or manufacturing issues that led to the problem.
Both Virgin and Airbus stressed there was no impact to the safety of last week’s aircraft despite the missing fixings. Neil Firth, the Airbus local chief wing engineer for A330, added that the affected panel was a secondary structure used to improve the aerodynamics of the plane.
I'll bet $5 that the guy got everyone around him excited and led to the cancellation.
Those looked like screws, not bolts. And I seriously doubt those guys were engineers - most likely aircraft mechanics (or technicians).
Regardless if was assessed to be a safety issue or not, I'd not want a part flying off the wing, even if it was just something to "improve the aerodynamics". If there's a hole there meant for screws, then screws should be in the hole.
There was a case some years ago when a commuter plane in Texas crashed and killed everyone on board because a mechanic had left some screws out. The tail of the plane was ripped off.
4 out of 119 fasteners, according to the link. Also - do we know the age of that aircraft? The Alaska Airlines 737 was just a few months out of the factory - still had the new aircraft smell. That's a Boeing problem. Eventually, the airlines and their maintenance contractors become responsible.
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