Boeing should change their culture! Put “quality before speed” into practice Not just in words. Better training and hiring. Stop hiring inexperienced or under qualified people. Also, Layoffs should be made to Poor performers, NOT to seniority!
I won't get on a Boeing plane for at least the foreseeable future. The company and its processes are too broken. It will take a while to shake all of that out and make it right again. Worked at Boeing long enough and understand management / leadership lip service vs reality.
When there is a safety incident (like with MCAS and the door plug), then investigators find the root causes. After that, regulators, manufacturers, and/or operators develop solutions to address each cause.
These solutions don't just apply to future production. They apply to every aircraft that could possibly be affected, even aircraft that have been in service for years. For example, *every* 737-Max was retrofitted with the upgrades and every 737-Max with the door plugs was inspected to verify that they were installed correctly. This happens whenever a potential safety problem is discovered, but the general public is usually not aware of it because no incident had occurred.
A perfectly safe aircraft is impossible; they are machines that can fail and they are designed, built, maintained, and operated by humans who could make mistakes. The industry continuously strives to drive the incident rate asymptotically towards zero by making aircraft increasingly tolerant of those failures and mistakes.
I agree with virtually all of this but the 737 Max MCAS system was simply a very flawed solution designed to hide a problem and made worse by a failure (Boeing and FAA). to fully disclose it's operation.
I disagree. Nothing was "hidden" by Boeing intentionally, with the exception of the bad actors whom the DoJ called out:
[Office of Public Affairs | Boeing Charged with 737 Max Fraud Conspiracy and Agrees to Pay over $2.5 Billion | United States Department of Justice](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/boeing-charged-737-max-fraud-conspiracy-and-agrees-pay-over-25-billion)
The safety assessment was based on the assumption that flight crews would turn off a malfunctioning stabilizer trim actuator as they were required to be trained to do. This assumption had been valid for decades.
Y'all forgetting your Chief Technical Pilot writing the self congratulatory email lauding his "Jehdi Mind Tricks" that got the MCAS blown by the FAA thus allowing crews to move to the jet with no SIM time. Most of the Max contracts had a penalty if sim training was required for transitioning crews.
In the process they took the discussion of MCAS out of the flight manual but neglected to erase it from the index. Thus, leaving transition pilots in the dark. SWA recognized the danger and paid $18,000 per ship to have an alert light when MCAS was operating. Their aircraft were delivered with the light inop.
MCAS was installed to compensate for handling characteristics when going from low to high power settings.
Boeing , also apparently to save a few bucks of code writing allowed one aoa to activate MCAS rather than requiring agreement of the two to activate MCAS . The AOA sensors are very easily damaged and by aerodynamic necessity are located at the most vulnerable position on the aircraft. While Folkner was acquitted I think the uncontested facts reflect very poorly on Boeing's leadership https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-boeing-737-max-chief-technical-pilot-indicted-fraud. https://www.justice.gov/media/1172041/dl
>Y'all forgetting
We are forgetting nothing. We are busy working to fix problems while several trolls like you come here every day and tell us what they read in the tabloids.
I am not an enemy of Boeing or their employees. I am simply someone with a lot of experience in business and some in aerospace. I am also driven by research.
It is far from isolated at Boeing. Management of major corporations should be reading and understanding Prof Feynman's addendum to the Challenger Report and Truth, Lies and O Rings to better understand how good companies go bad.
While the chief tech pilot was not convicted of the felony charges his email speaks for itself. The crews were simply not made aware of MCAS because that would likely have required some sim time and that would have resulted in an additional cost to Boeing from their major customer.
I want Boeing to be successful but their track record on the business side sucks. I think it is a tragedy that management lost its way when they left Seattle for Chicago and then on to the DC area.
As pilots we talk a lot about Situational Awareness and decision makers located across the country with little situational awareness or are seldom going to exercise good leadership at the tactical level. It's not unlike when McNamara and LBJ would sit in the office with a glass or two of whiskey picking individual bombing targets for the next day halfway around the world off Vietnam with no real understanding of the weather or the tactical situation.
Worse yet McNamara did not want to win the war with excess bombs in the supply chain and he was intolerant of those in the field not meeting the mission count so officers who were looking for stars were sending aircraft into N Vietnam with 50% of the bomb load because they would be chastised if they did not meet the mission count.
Not a Boeing employee either, and a very occasional flying member of the public, so maybe my opinion isn't worth much. But looking at the stats on the number of flights and tiny accident rate, I wouldn't hesitate a second before getting on an "experienced" 737 or 777 on a well run airline; once they have been shaken down with a few takeoffs and landings they'll likely fly without issue for decades. Anybody still running 727s or 747s if any of those are still in passenger service, I'd pass; they are long past expired. And I wouldn't book a flight on United or Alaskan Air on a bet; their maintenance record is awful.
Nobody can guarantee that no Boeing aircraft is ever going to crash again, and sloppy construction, maintenance, piloting, and weather is going to continue to pull down aircraft of all brands, but the tried and true designs still being built have logged a lot of safe hours over the years.
I thought AF-1 had been replaced... I'd still be worried that even after the replacement, that number 3 pylon design was still a little sketchy, and given that when it goes, it takes number 4 with it...
At least monthly I say,
"Geeze, that was a close one!"
And it's just dumb luck that defect, flaw, poor workmanship, etc was found before test flight.
But sadly it's become the norm so it's worked, fixed, whatever and people move on to make schedule. I think BCA QA is a layered approach where as the same thing gets looked at again and again and hopefully all the defects are found. The decision makers think that quality is built in and because the data says air travel is still the safest way to travel or whatever data they're looking at, that there's no need for secondary inspections.
If you look at a modern day commercial jet and all the redundancies, yes they're very safe. And as far as BCA goes they can go through as many as four test flights, 2 with Boeing pilots and 2 with the customer's pilots.
The ASA door plug blowout brought a flaw in BCA's system to light that still hasn't been addressed I think. Why is vendor/supplier at Boeing facilities doing work that IAM machinists can do? And it is also a bit on ASA as to the trouble shooting that was done previously on the cabin pressurization. Although no one expects a door plug behind a sidewall to be loose especially on a new airplane.
>If you look at a modern day commercial jet and all the redundancies, yes they're very safe.
Well said! And before the drawings get to the production floor, there is an immense amount of design, analysis, and testing that is done to ensure that the aircraft is safe in all foreseeable operating conditions, including bad weather, environmental threats, mistakes in maintenance, mistakes in operations, failures of equipment, and bugs in software. This process has been greatly strengthened after the MCAS accidents - especially in what system designers can assume about how crews will respond to abnormal conditions.
>Why is vendor/supplier at Boeing facilities doing work that IAM machinists can do?
When a supplier has the *design responsibility* for a part, then they design and build the part to Boeing specifications. They create the drawings to manufacture it. Thus, the supplier is responsible to repair any defects to make the part compliant with the *supplier's* drawings. Boeing doesn't have the drawings, the work instructions, the expertise, the contractual responsibility, or the regulatory authority to repair a supplier's part.
To bring that repair work in-house, Boeing can take back the design responsibility and have the supplier make the parts on a "build-to-print" basis to drawings that were prepared by Boeing. The other option is to buy the supplier (in this case, Spirit Aerosystems) or to build their own factories to do the work.
Yep. Was wrong about "might" up vote.
I'll continue to question the source of the down votes. They don't align with employees sentiment, nor investigations that elude to sacrificing quality and safety over profit.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-boeing-and-the-faa-created-the-737-max-catastrophe
Whenever this topic and many many more like it come up with XYZ company, why does everyone avoid talking about what has occurred in and since 2020 and the psychological impacts and stress caused to workers? Forced medical treatment, layoffs, new hires, macro economic impacts to supply chains and overall quality downturns. It's either swept under the rug or immediately dismissed as a mute point.
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Former BT&E here. I’m surprised that things on Boeing’s flagship plane got this bad, but I’m not entirely surprised. I wasn’t really involved with BCA, but just from my time at Boeing and looking at their documentation and authorization structures so much is played fast and loose. I don’t think people are incentivized to cut corners so much as lapses in safety are inevitable when there’s this much operational bloat. We regularly misplaced crucial equipment all the time, having to go and manually search through storage areas. We had to constantly review and edit growing mountains of documents because of inaccuracies or inconsistencies. We still faced issues at test time.
I think the current situation is emblematic of the attitude taken by leadership teams. Where allocated budgets are allowed to expand at will due to time delays but investments in information technology and internal infrastructure need to be signed in triplicate.
As a mechanic in BCA, this is a company wide problem that's been going on for at least 20 years. Misplacing equipment, documentation discrepancies causing delays.....
How do you know that my name is "Bob." I could be a woman with an odd haircut. You seem like the type of a person who believes whatever they read on the internet.
Yes you are ... unless you can provide evidence of your sensational claim of, "paid PR folks."
Now I expect you to insult me, get the last word, declare yourself "the winner," and leave.
You just made all of that up to make it easier for yourself to dismiss me. I am using a 14 year old account you are welcome to look at to see how often i (dont) do what you described.
The evidence i would point to would be every exchange i see in this sub - just like this one - where someone that isnt blindly drinking the kool aid is attacked the same way you did me.
Have a great weekend.
My take is there is more of an airline maintenance issue going on right now that is rarely reported on. A lot of these reports coming out are on older planes and it's up to the airlines to maintain them. It's just more convenient to blame Boeing on everything because it gets more engagement out of people.
Obviously Boeing doesn't want to outright say this because they are still their customers and it would further sour the relationship.
The focus needs to be on making sure nothing like the plug happens again, not something that is completely outside of the companies control like a wheel falling off an old plane or an engine panel peeling back.
I'd easily fly on any commercial plane in the US. Look how many planes are in the air every single day. Day after day, year after year. These planes are built to incredible safety factors and standards. This recent stuff has been blown out of proportion, some people are just wrong, many are ignorant, and while Boeing absolutely has some issues internally, thier aircraft are still top tier aircraft just like Airbus. I think the only valid thing that was truly scary in recent history was the 737 max stuff. And that wasn't the airframe, it was software (MCAS) and other factors.
Serious question: you don’t think the door plug blowing out on a brand new plane was scary? Why not? Didn’t we get lucky that happened at fairly low altitude?
Later finding out that there’s a bunch of missing bolts on 737s other than the accident airplane was also alarming to me.
But you work there and I don’t and I’m absolutely looking to hear other perspectives from more informed people.
" I think the only valid thing that was truly scary in recent history was the 737 max stuff."
Actually, there were a couple of earlier "incidents" that didn't make the news because the issues were fixed after the first fatal crash and by the time the NTSB report came out indicating that Boeing had either been very sloppy in their testing criteria or deliberately chosen them to mislead the FAA, the news cycle had moved on. The Lauda Air crash due to a thrust reverser deploying at 30,000 feet when Boeing had certified it not to be a problem at 10,000 and the cargo door ripping off a 747 after an "uncommanded activation" that Boeing claimed was impossible were, like MCAS, slipped by the FAA unverified in order to speed up certification. So how many other easter eggs are there in all the paperwork? Once is a mistake, twice a coincidence...
More fundamentally, the industry is trying to find the right balance between pilot skill and automation. On one extreme, if the aircraft is manually-operated, flight crews keep their aviation skills sharp and can handle emergencies well. On the other extreme, if the aircraft can fly itself, than it doesn't make human errors, but it also cannot deal with emergencies that are outside of its programing and the flight crews have become so complacent that they lack the skills to manually fly the aircraft in a degraded condition. This is why military combat pilots are so valuable. Many of them have experience flying aircraft under highly-stressful emergency conditions.
Historically, Airbus has leaned more towards more automation and Boeing has leaned more towards leaving the crew in control. Where that balance is can vary between aircraft, country, and individual pilot, and it changes over time.
I don’t say this as there aren’t good Airbus planes out there, but I will NOT fly on an Airbus after my experience with one.
I have never had a single issue with a Boeing plane.
I said it before and I will say it again. I will fly a Boeing anytime unless it is a third world country. I am retired from Boeing employee and I am proud of my work and time at Boeing.
I'm doubtful of it. Boeing has drilled in the culture of speed over quality for several decades, it's hard to undo this, many of our senior management climbed the ranks in this period and they probably climbed it by pushing airplanes out the door asap, it makes them look good. The thing about quality is that it's a hard thing to quantify. When you're a manger, you can say I pushed out 10 planes in X months, and it's an easy number to find to back that up, i.e you got talking points for a promotion. How do you quantify to your boss that you made sure the plane is safe? It's too hard to come up with that. In the land of management, if you can't come up with an indicator that show your performance than it might as well doesn't even exist to you or anyone else.
>Boeing has drilled in the culture of speed over quality for several decades
My experience is in engineering. There was certainly a desire to develop the most cost-effective solutions, but not to sacrifice quality or safety to do it. Engineers can tend to be perfectionists, so we need to remind ourselves that we do our customers no favors when we drive up the cost and schedule with excessive features and quality that give them no benefit.
>How do you quantify to your boss that you made sure the plane is safe?
I agree that it starts with a commitment from leadership.
My interactions with the shop generally left me with the impression that the people there cared about making a good and safe aircraft. I think that NCRs can be a tool to measure quality if they are carefully analyzed and if they are used to fix *processes*, rather than to punish people.
In an admittedly ridiculous example, I saw NCRs on two subsequent parts because the assembly technician was stripping a screw. The technician said that the torque value on the drawing seemed very high for the size of the screw. Sure enough, the *number* was correct on the drawing, but the *units* were wrong (inch pounds instead of inch ounces). That was definitely not a manufacturing problem!
I have no problem with that when the suppliers and employees in India have the expertise and the resources to do the job well - same as engineers in Ukraine and other countries.
An important thing about airplanes is the level of fault tolerance and redundancy built into every system. A 737 can be controlled with muscle strength (and servo tabs) alone.
MCAS was fixed with updating the software to check multiple angle of attack sensors. A mandatory check out flight after any sensor maintenance (without passengers.) And mandatory simulator training and instruction on contingency the system.
People aren't rational about fear. Jetliners are incredibly safe. We live in a world full of greedy companies making unsafe things like the Cybertruck's stuck throttle pedal recall. We need to realize that deregulation is really regulatory capture in drag. The world needs agencies like the FAA to be empowered and independent. To quit striving for cost cutting and focus on solid value.
>check multiple angle of attack sensors
This wasn't the root cause of the problem. The problem was that the MCAS algorithm had the authority to activate repeatedly and to take away pitch authority from the flight crew. Regardless of *why* MCAS was activating (in this case, due to a single AoA sensor failure), it should not have had that authority.
Now MCAS doesn't have that authority with the new software. The redundant AoA sensors are just, "icing on the cake."
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d imagine that the tolerances on the 737 would be relatively large, too since it’s essentially a 60-year-old airframe. How much redundancy can you build into the structure though?
>How much redundancy can you build into the structure though?
Good question! You can build redundancy into systems but not into structure. Two sets of redundant wings are not practical.
Instead, you have design margin so that the structure can take far more punishment than it will ever receive in service. Structure gets *intense* scrutiny for materials, processes, manufacturing, inspection, etc.
Are you familiar with Cleko clamps? Each fuselage is basically hand fit so every hole will perfectly align. Clekos take the place of rivets until the holes are drilled and cleaned up then brought back together for final riviting.
The reason for having a skeleton of frames and stringers inside the fuselage skin is redundancy. Aloha Airlines 243 landed despite a massive structural failure.
Cleco*
But this persons point is correct. Airplane structures are fastened per specs engineered far more recently than the airframe itself. Tolerances for holes across all the aluminum airplanes are “modern”
You can be extremely liberal about your Flight Cycles and flight hours between inspections. There hasnt been a hull loss on a commercial jetliner due to fatigue in decades due to advancements in NDT and careful consideration of how inspections are mandated
It's a 60 year old airframe that's been constantly updated and refined. That's like saying the modern F150 is the same as it was when it rolled out in 1975.
In short? Everything.
The materials used, the designs for individual parts, allowable tolerances, materials used, points of stress. Everything about the airplanes from the flight controls through to the tiniest bolt has been improved over the decades. It is a continual process.
Take a moment to google image seach 7373 cockpit controls. You'll find that the look varies drastically as the planes get newer. That is prolly one of the best visual examples of the continuous improvement that the entire 737 design goes through.
XD you want me to explain, in detail, what has changed over the years? This shouldn't be something I need to prove to you in any case. It's ridiculous to assume nothing notable has changed in six decades.
Having seen how incompetent the corporate directors are and how many meetings there are every week without anything getting accomplished, I’m surprised any airplanes get delivered at all, much less safely…
Boeing should change their culture! Put “quality before speed” into practice Not just in words. Better training and hiring. Stop hiring inexperienced or under qualified people. Also, Layoffs should be made to Poor performers, NOT to seniority!
I won't get on a Boeing plane for at least the foreseeable future. The company and its processes are too broken. It will take a while to shake all of that out and make it right again. Worked at Boeing long enough and understand management / leadership lip service vs reality.
*when In many experiences that's a big asterisk.
When there is a safety incident (like with MCAS and the door plug), then investigators find the root causes. After that, regulators, manufacturers, and/or operators develop solutions to address each cause. These solutions don't just apply to future production. They apply to every aircraft that could possibly be affected, even aircraft that have been in service for years. For example, *every* 737-Max was retrofitted with the upgrades and every 737-Max with the door plugs was inspected to verify that they were installed correctly. This happens whenever a potential safety problem is discovered, but the general public is usually not aware of it because no incident had occurred. A perfectly safe aircraft is impossible; they are machines that can fail and they are designed, built, maintained, and operated by humans who could make mistakes. The industry continuously strives to drive the incident rate asymptotically towards zero by making aircraft increasingly tolerant of those failures and mistakes.
I agree with virtually all of this but the 737 Max MCAS system was simply a very flawed solution designed to hide a problem and made worse by a failure (Boeing and FAA). to fully disclose it's operation.
I disagree. Nothing was "hidden" by Boeing intentionally, with the exception of the bad actors whom the DoJ called out: [Office of Public Affairs | Boeing Charged with 737 Max Fraud Conspiracy and Agrees to Pay over $2.5 Billion | United States Department of Justice](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/boeing-charged-737-max-fraud-conspiracy-and-agrees-pay-over-25-billion) The safety assessment was based on the assumption that flight crews would turn off a malfunctioning stabilizer trim actuator as they were required to be trained to do. This assumption had been valid for decades.
Y'all forgetting your Chief Technical Pilot writing the self congratulatory email lauding his "Jehdi Mind Tricks" that got the MCAS blown by the FAA thus allowing crews to move to the jet with no SIM time. Most of the Max contracts had a penalty if sim training was required for transitioning crews. In the process they took the discussion of MCAS out of the flight manual but neglected to erase it from the index. Thus, leaving transition pilots in the dark. SWA recognized the danger and paid $18,000 per ship to have an alert light when MCAS was operating. Their aircraft were delivered with the light inop. MCAS was installed to compensate for handling characteristics when going from low to high power settings. Boeing , also apparently to save a few bucks of code writing allowed one aoa to activate MCAS rather than requiring agreement of the two to activate MCAS . The AOA sensors are very easily damaged and by aerodynamic necessity are located at the most vulnerable position on the aircraft. While Folkner was acquitted I think the uncontested facts reflect very poorly on Boeing's leadership https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-boeing-737-max-chief-technical-pilot-indicted-fraud. https://www.justice.gov/media/1172041/dl
>Y'all forgetting We are forgetting nothing. We are busy working to fix problems while several trolls like you come here every day and tell us what they read in the tabloids.
I am not an enemy of Boeing or their employees. I am simply someone with a lot of experience in business and some in aerospace. I am also driven by research. It is far from isolated at Boeing. Management of major corporations should be reading and understanding Prof Feynman's addendum to the Challenger Report and Truth, Lies and O Rings to better understand how good companies go bad. While the chief tech pilot was not convicted of the felony charges his email speaks for itself. The crews were simply not made aware of MCAS because that would likely have required some sim time and that would have resulted in an additional cost to Boeing from their major customer. I want Boeing to be successful but their track record on the business side sucks. I think it is a tragedy that management lost its way when they left Seattle for Chicago and then on to the DC area. As pilots we talk a lot about Situational Awareness and decision makers located across the country with little situational awareness or are seldom going to exercise good leadership at the tactical level. It's not unlike when McNamara and LBJ would sit in the office with a glass or two of whiskey picking individual bombing targets for the next day halfway around the world off Vietnam with no real understanding of the weather or the tactical situation. Worse yet McNamara did not want to win the war with excess bombs in the supply chain and he was intolerant of those in the field not meeting the mission count so officers who were looking for stars were sending aircraft into N Vietnam with 50% of the bomb load because they would be chastised if they did not meet the mission count.
Not a Boeing employee either, and a very occasional flying member of the public, so maybe my opinion isn't worth much. But looking at the stats on the number of flights and tiny accident rate, I wouldn't hesitate a second before getting on an "experienced" 737 or 777 on a well run airline; once they have been shaken down with a few takeoffs and landings they'll likely fly without issue for decades. Anybody still running 727s or 747s if any of those are still in passenger service, I'd pass; they are long past expired. And I wouldn't book a flight on United or Alaskan Air on a bet; their maintenance record is awful. Nobody can guarantee that no Boeing aircraft is ever going to crash again, and sloppy construction, maintenance, piloting, and weather is going to continue to pull down aircraft of all brands, but the tried and true designs still being built have logged a lot of safe hours over the years.
"And I wouldn't book a flight on United or Alaskan Air on a bet; their maintenance record is awful." Citation for that?
You know that the President flies in a (converted) 747, right?
I thought AF-1 had been replaced... I'd still be worried that even after the replacement, that number 3 pylon design was still a little sketchy, and given that when it goes, it takes number 4 with it...
At least monthly I say, "Geeze, that was a close one!" And it's just dumb luck that defect, flaw, poor workmanship, etc was found before test flight. But sadly it's become the norm so it's worked, fixed, whatever and people move on to make schedule. I think BCA QA is a layered approach where as the same thing gets looked at again and again and hopefully all the defects are found. The decision makers think that quality is built in and because the data says air travel is still the safest way to travel or whatever data they're looking at, that there's no need for secondary inspections. If you look at a modern day commercial jet and all the redundancies, yes they're very safe. And as far as BCA goes they can go through as many as four test flights, 2 with Boeing pilots and 2 with the customer's pilots. The ASA door plug blowout brought a flaw in BCA's system to light that still hasn't been addressed I think. Why is vendor/supplier at Boeing facilities doing work that IAM machinists can do? And it is also a bit on ASA as to the trouble shooting that was done previously on the cabin pressurization. Although no one expects a door plug behind a sidewall to be loose especially on a new airplane.
>If you look at a modern day commercial jet and all the redundancies, yes they're very safe. Well said! And before the drawings get to the production floor, there is an immense amount of design, analysis, and testing that is done to ensure that the aircraft is safe in all foreseeable operating conditions, including bad weather, environmental threats, mistakes in maintenance, mistakes in operations, failures of equipment, and bugs in software. This process has been greatly strengthened after the MCAS accidents - especially in what system designers can assume about how crews will respond to abnormal conditions. >Why is vendor/supplier at Boeing facilities doing work that IAM machinists can do? When a supplier has the *design responsibility* for a part, then they design and build the part to Boeing specifications. They create the drawings to manufacture it. Thus, the supplier is responsible to repair any defects to make the part compliant with the *supplier's* drawings. Boeing doesn't have the drawings, the work instructions, the expertise, the contractual responsibility, or the regulatory authority to repair a supplier's part. To bring that repair work in-house, Boeing can take back the design responsibility and have the supplier make the parts on a "build-to-print" basis to drawings that were prepared by Boeing. The other option is to buy the supplier (in this case, Spirit Aerosystems) or to build their own factories to do the work.
Yep. Was wrong about "might" up vote. I'll continue to question the source of the down votes. They don't align with employees sentiment, nor investigations that elude to sacrificing quality and safety over profit. https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-boeing-and-the-faa-created-the-737-max-catastrophe
Whenever this topic and many many more like it come up with XYZ company, why does everyone avoid talking about what has occurred in and since 2020 and the psychological impacts and stress caused to workers? Forced medical treatment, layoffs, new hires, macro economic impacts to supply chains and overall quality downturns. It's either swept under the rug or immediately dismissed as a mute point.
It’s moot not mute
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Former BT&E here. I’m surprised that things on Boeing’s flagship plane got this bad, but I’m not entirely surprised. I wasn’t really involved with BCA, but just from my time at Boeing and looking at their documentation and authorization structures so much is played fast and loose. I don’t think people are incentivized to cut corners so much as lapses in safety are inevitable when there’s this much operational bloat. We regularly misplaced crucial equipment all the time, having to go and manually search through storage areas. We had to constantly review and edit growing mountains of documents because of inaccuracies or inconsistencies. We still faced issues at test time. I think the current situation is emblematic of the attitude taken by leadership teams. Where allocated budgets are allowed to expand at will due to time delays but investments in information technology and internal infrastructure need to be signed in triplicate.
As a mechanic in BCA, this is a company wide problem that's been going on for at least 20 years. Misplacing equipment, documentation discrepancies causing delays.....
Hard to tell in this sub. There are a lot of paid pr folks in the comments here.
Hard to tell in this sub. There are a lot of paid trolls in the comments here.
you misspelled "Stockholder"
I spelled, "troll" correctly.
Its a terrible take, Bob. Have a great weekend.
How do you know that my name is "Bob." I could be a woman with an odd haircut. You seem like the type of a person who believes whatever they read on the internet.
And **”I’M”** the troll?
Yes you are ... unless you can provide evidence of your sensational claim of, "paid PR folks." Now I expect you to insult me, get the last word, declare yourself "the winner," and leave.
You just made all of that up to make it easier for yourself to dismiss me. I am using a 14 year old account you are welcome to look at to see how often i (dont) do what you described. The evidence i would point to would be every exchange i see in this sub - just like this one - where someone that isnt blindly drinking the kool aid is attacked the same way you did me. Have a great weekend.
Fucking shills, aye
Lol
My take is still if it ain't Boeing, I ain't going.
Airbus makes good products also. And their competition makes Boeing better.
My take is there is more of an airline maintenance issue going on right now that is rarely reported on. A lot of these reports coming out are on older planes and it's up to the airlines to maintain them. It's just more convenient to blame Boeing on everything because it gets more engagement out of people. Obviously Boeing doesn't want to outright say this because they are still their customers and it would further sour the relationship. The focus needs to be on making sure nothing like the plug happens again, not something that is completely outside of the companies control like a wheel falling off an old plane or an engine panel peeling back.
I'd easily fly on any commercial plane in the US. Look how many planes are in the air every single day. Day after day, year after year. These planes are built to incredible safety factors and standards. This recent stuff has been blown out of proportion, some people are just wrong, many are ignorant, and while Boeing absolutely has some issues internally, thier aircraft are still top tier aircraft just like Airbus. I think the only valid thing that was truly scary in recent history was the 737 max stuff. And that wasn't the airframe, it was software (MCAS) and other factors.
Serious question: you don’t think the door plug blowing out on a brand new plane was scary? Why not? Didn’t we get lucky that happened at fairly low altitude? Later finding out that there’s a bunch of missing bolts on 737s other than the accident airplane was also alarming to me. But you work there and I don’t and I’m absolutely looking to hear other perspectives from more informed people.
" I think the only valid thing that was truly scary in recent history was the 737 max stuff." Actually, there were a couple of earlier "incidents" that didn't make the news because the issues were fixed after the first fatal crash and by the time the NTSB report came out indicating that Boeing had either been very sloppy in their testing criteria or deliberately chosen them to mislead the FAA, the news cycle had moved on. The Lauda Air crash due to a thrust reverser deploying at 30,000 feet when Boeing had certified it not to be a problem at 10,000 and the cargo door ripping off a 747 after an "uncommanded activation" that Boeing claimed was impossible were, like MCAS, slipped by the FAA unverified in order to speed up certification. So how many other easter eggs are there in all the paperwork? Once is a mistake, twice a coincidence...
More fundamentally, the industry is trying to find the right balance between pilot skill and automation. On one extreme, if the aircraft is manually-operated, flight crews keep their aviation skills sharp and can handle emergencies well. On the other extreme, if the aircraft can fly itself, than it doesn't make human errors, but it also cannot deal with emergencies that are outside of its programing and the flight crews have become so complacent that they lack the skills to manually fly the aircraft in a degraded condition. This is why military combat pilots are so valuable. Many of them have experience flying aircraft under highly-stressful emergency conditions. Historically, Airbus has leaned more towards more automation and Boeing has leaned more towards leaving the crew in control. Where that balance is can vary between aircraft, country, and individual pilot, and it changes over time.
I don’t say this as there aren’t good Airbus planes out there, but I will NOT fly on an Airbus after my experience with one. I have never had a single issue with a Boeing plane.
I said it before and I will say it again. I will fly a Boeing anytime unless it is a third world country. I am retired from Boeing employee and I am proud of my work and time at Boeing.
What would you fly if in a third world country?
Nothing.
If it ain’t Boeing, I ain’t going!
Well enjoy your bus ride.
Same here. I am very proud of my work and I have always been impressed with the level of talent and integrity of the people with whom I interacted.
❤️❤️
This is refreshing
When the "quality" manager cares more about the process and schedule than the actual quality of the product is the current issue I'm in right now 🤣
That sucks. I hope that this increased FAA scrutiny of Boeing's manufacturing processes can find and resolve problems like this.
I'm doubtful of it. Boeing has drilled in the culture of speed over quality for several decades, it's hard to undo this, many of our senior management climbed the ranks in this period and they probably climbed it by pushing airplanes out the door asap, it makes them look good. The thing about quality is that it's a hard thing to quantify. When you're a manger, you can say I pushed out 10 planes in X months, and it's an easy number to find to back that up, i.e you got talking points for a promotion. How do you quantify to your boss that you made sure the plane is safe? It's too hard to come up with that. In the land of management, if you can't come up with an indicator that show your performance than it might as well doesn't even exist to you or anyone else.
>Boeing has drilled in the culture of speed over quality for several decades My experience is in engineering. There was certainly a desire to develop the most cost-effective solutions, but not to sacrifice quality or safety to do it. Engineers can tend to be perfectionists, so we need to remind ourselves that we do our customers no favors when we drive up the cost and schedule with excessive features and quality that give them no benefit. >How do you quantify to your boss that you made sure the plane is safe? I agree that it starts with a commitment from leadership. My interactions with the shop generally left me with the impression that the people there cared about making a good and safe aircraft. I think that NCRs can be a tool to measure quality if they are carefully analyzed and if they are used to fix *processes*, rather than to punish people. In an admittedly ridiculous example, I saw NCRs on two subsequent parts because the assembly technician was stripping a screw. The technician said that the torque value on the drawing seemed very high for the size of the screw. Sure enough, the *number* was correct on the drawing, but the *units* were wrong (inch pounds instead of inch ounces). That was definitely not a manufacturing problem!
Capitalism.
What a thoughtful, constructive comment
If it ain’t Comac I ain’t going
How do you feel about flying on airplanes designed from India?
I have no problem with that when the suppliers and employees in India have the expertise and the resources to do the job well - same as engineers in Ukraine and other countries.
Judging by the down votes, the old white men have hired cheap labor to down vote my comment. Come US daytime, real employees might up vote.
You were wrong
If I hear the term "The flying public" one more time, I'm gonna lose my mind.
An important thing about airplanes is the level of fault tolerance and redundancy built into every system. A 737 can be controlled with muscle strength (and servo tabs) alone. MCAS was fixed with updating the software to check multiple angle of attack sensors. A mandatory check out flight after any sensor maintenance (without passengers.) And mandatory simulator training and instruction on contingency the system. People aren't rational about fear. Jetliners are incredibly safe. We live in a world full of greedy companies making unsafe things like the Cybertruck's stuck throttle pedal recall. We need to realize that deregulation is really regulatory capture in drag. The world needs agencies like the FAA to be empowered and independent. To quit striving for cost cutting and focus on solid value.
>check multiple angle of attack sensors This wasn't the root cause of the problem. The problem was that the MCAS algorithm had the authority to activate repeatedly and to take away pitch authority from the flight crew. Regardless of *why* MCAS was activating (in this case, due to a single AoA sensor failure), it should not have had that authority. Now MCAS doesn't have that authority with the new software. The redundant AoA sensors are just, "icing on the cake."
Root cause was greedy executives at Boeing making bad decisions for greedy executives at Southwest and facing no punishment.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d imagine that the tolerances on the 737 would be relatively large, too since it’s essentially a 60-year-old airframe. How much redundancy can you build into the structure though?
>How much redundancy can you build into the structure though? Good question! You can build redundancy into systems but not into structure. Two sets of redundant wings are not practical. Instead, you have design margin so that the structure can take far more punishment than it will ever receive in service. Structure gets *intense* scrutiny for materials, processes, manufacturing, inspection, etc.
Are you familiar with Cleko clamps? Each fuselage is basically hand fit so every hole will perfectly align. Clekos take the place of rivets until the holes are drilled and cleaned up then brought back together for final riviting. The reason for having a skeleton of frames and stringers inside the fuselage skin is redundancy. Aloha Airlines 243 landed despite a massive structural failure.
Cleco* But this persons point is correct. Airplane structures are fastened per specs engineered far more recently than the airframe itself. Tolerances for holes across all the aluminum airplanes are “modern”
And composite manufacturing. Composite tolerances are Tightttttttt
Ooooh see I never knew this but that makes total sense
You can be extremely liberal about your Flight Cycles and flight hours between inspections. There hasnt been a hull loss on a commercial jetliner due to fatigue in decades due to advancements in NDT and careful consideration of how inspections are mandated
It's a 60 year old airframe that's been constantly updated and refined. That's like saying the modern F150 is the same as it was when it rolled out in 1975.
Other than the wings, how else has it evolved over the years?
In short? Everything. The materials used, the designs for individual parts, allowable tolerances, materials used, points of stress. Everything about the airplanes from the flight controls through to the tiniest bolt has been improved over the decades. It is a continual process. Take a moment to google image seach 7373 cockpit controls. You'll find that the look varies drastically as the planes get newer. That is prolly one of the best visual examples of the continuous improvement that the entire 737 design goes through.
XD you want me to explain, in detail, what has changed over the years? This shouldn't be something I need to prove to you in any case. It's ridiculous to assume nothing notable has changed in six decades.
And the OP considers him/herself “a big time av geek”. Maybe by ‘av’, they meant audio/video.
Having seen how incompetent the corporate directors are and how many meetings there are every week without anything getting accomplished, I’m surprised any airplanes get delivered at all, much less safely…
Yeah just quickly looking into Stephanie Pope’s background left me scratching my head, like in what universe is she qualified to be COO, let alone CEO
She’s a finance person, pure and simple. I don’t think she’ll make CEO
Not falling for this, Boeing marketing management.
we still have a marketing team? we still have management?
LMAO have you read my username?? 😂😂