"We’re sending our audit people to audit their quality control systems and processes to make sure that every aircraft that comes off that production line, that comes to Alaska has the highest levels of excellence and quality," he said.
Though safety inspections were initially estimated to take between four and eight hours per plane, Whitaker said they’ve “been longer than that.”
“We’ve required a lot of measurements,” he said. “Once the area’s exposed, we want to understand bolt tensions and gaps and things of that nature. So we’ve required more data than would normally be the case because we really wanted to understand the issue.”
They don't trust Boeing enough or their customers don't trust Boeing enough and it's a PR measure to calm the passengers' nerves. Could also be a bit of both.
To me it says their lawyers don’t trust Boeing enough. My cynical side says companies never give a shit what their customers think in an industry like aviation where they have so few or no other real options.
A lot of HN commenters seem to think that people don't care about their customers' wellbeing.
What an attitude. That's their attitude during working hours too? I just don't want to use code written by those HNers.
You are blaming the wrong party. They’ve gotten that perspective from experience not thought vacuum. There are many industries, commercial airlines included that do not have competitive capitalist environments. There are typically 3-5 big players, typically heavily in bed with the gov whose incentives aren’t aligned. Telco, domestic automakers, insurance come to mind initially.
There is also a corporate greed, which is leaking into tech with commoditization, problem in America where fewer and fewer companies treat their employees as assets and rather treat them as cogs. People are loosing their tolerance.
The airlines are one of the few industries where almost everyone comparison shops for each and every purchase. The list of airline bankruptcies is very very long as are the new entrants.
Sure if you fly to some very small destinations you will have very limited choices, but almost definitionally that's a small fraction of the total trips.
It's a very limited and stilted kind of competition. One of the few real bright spots is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegiant_Air
which works on a fundamentally different model from other airlines (limited network, fewer flights per week.) It is getting harder and harder to see the difference between traditional airliners like Delta and "low cost" airlines like Southwest.
People do compare prices on competitive routes. Airlines, in the US at least, try pretty hard not to compete on quality and the mediocrity of the 737 is part of that. Every other commercial airliner built today has a modern fly by wire system which can accomplish what MCAS was supposed to do in a safe way. The 737 is noisy for its size
https://www.aviationfile.com/noise-pollution-levels-by-aircr...
not just in the passenger cabin and on the ground but particularly in the cockpit (years back I wrote a comment on an av blog about the noisy 737 and pilots joined in.) The 737 struggles to take off under good conditions and has to be grounded under conditions that other airliners handle easily. The 737 also lacks the anti-turbulence feature of the A320 which uses the fly-by-wire system to smooth out the ride.
People are so used to the dismal 737 and only somewhat better A320 that they have a hard time believing that modern airliners like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A220
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_E-Jet_E2_family
can be much smaller but much more comfortable than the 737 but people who fly it become believers, the more people who get to experience them the more people will demand them. They cost less to operate too and being a little smaller could support a more efficient network just as 2-engine widebodies replaced 4-engine widebodies.
Things are just as bad in big tech. Ever tried to get support from Google? Many modern companies cut customer support to the bare minimum.
Then there's stuff like the 23andMe saga (also on the front page of HN right now), where the company actively blames their customers for their fuck up.
I think that -people- care for customer well-being.. but that it's barely cynical to say that a board of a publicly traded company only cares about it insofar as it effects shareholder returns.. and with proper market positioning, customer well-being is barely necessary..
If an airline is shown to take risks with its passengers' safety, that airline is dead, so here I would expect shareholder returns to do the job very effectively.
Every single flight represents dozens of risks that an airline has calculated and decided are worth taking.
The board orders subordinates to be safe and cheap. When safety fails to materialize without throwing money at the problem they pretend it's not their fault. What's missing is not care, but commitment. Care without commitment is wishful thinking and I'm sure there's plenty of that.
yeah that's my attitude during working hours. maybe a person cares, but a corporation can't. i expect a corporation cares about making money, and to some extent that correlates with not killing me, but who knows.
the code i write at work is open.
A corporation is a legal fiction. It doesn't actually do anything, it doesn't make decisions. The people who work for the corporation do. Liability should not stop with the corporation but with the actual human beings making the decisions.
You are not exhibiting nonlinear-systems thinking. A corporation is not purely hierarchical. Effects are very diffuse from decisions. Humans don't control things; humans interact with things.
Having a cynical world view about everything is seen by some as a status signifier. HN is full of people obsessed about status. Ergo…
While I think it is commonplace to assume that, it's just an assumption and I feel HN would be better if we just stuck to known facts and marked hearsay as hearsay.
If Boeing really cared about their customers, they would tighten the bolts on outgoing planes to make sure that they wouldn't lose doors and windows and stuff. Maybe Alaska does really care, but I must confess my first thought was also "cagey PR move."
I've seen many products and services clearly making their products worse in order to make more money. Airlines have done similar things with passenger space and various fees, it's not so hard to imagine them cutting corners only to be surprised that they've gone too far and inadvertently impacted airplane safety.
Sure they care about customer wellbeing but isn't making money higher on their list of priorities?
It’s too reductive to talk about what “Boeing” thinks and does as if it’s one single entity with a single purpose and complete alignment on all things. The person(s) who failed to tighten bolts could easily have been doing exactly the right thing, for instance if training and documentation were screwed up.
Boeing in general seems to have a serious culture problem that we should condemn, but it’s not like the “they” that set cultural norms is the same “they” that’s out there on a supplier’s factory floor with a torque wrench.
Being reductive can be a good rhetorical tool, but in this case I think it’s better to view the problem as culture and system rather than a single personality with ill intent.
True. The reality I think is that many of those who do believe that they care just don't actually care as much as they'd have to for a positive effect. Delusion is a strong force.
That is what the feet message and communicate. If they say we do a deathmarch on this project, that is what your managers polished shoes tell the world.
Probably projection. Maybe also motivated by office jobs having tons of people freeloading and genuinely not giving a fuck, which just doesn't work in labor jobs.
Boeing customers is not people, Boeing customers is airlines.
Well, it's getting really scary if two* airline CEOs speak publicly against Boeing, no matter what their motivation is.
* there's a piece of news about Southwest, i think, saying they'll start considering alternatives to Boeing.
Oh man, if Southwest defects from Boeing, Boeing is done for.
Airlines need to push Boeing into chapter 11, acquire a controlling interest, and install adults in charge who can deliver.
I think we should nationalized Boeing, fix it and re-ipo it. Not because I think government can do better at operating at a profit, but because it would be a sick burn: your company was so poorly managed, it had to be taken over by the feds because an airplane version of Amtrak is a better alternative to letting the you clowns continue to manufacture aircraft.
Strongly agree, I just don't believe there is the political will to do it at this, so we're left with capital market and corporate leverage mechanisms to encourage a positive outcome.
Much easier to get everyone in a room and say, "We're going to starve Boeing of revenue until it walks into Chapter 11, at which point we'll be ready to recapitalize and install new folks." Absolutely not my preferred thoughts on fixing a rotting enterprise, but you go to work with the tools you have.
I just don't see how this can happen unless you have global consensus. They are booked until what the next 8 years? Whats to stop non-american airlines desperate for slots on the new aircraft from snapping up those slots?
Ryanair as well. Although they softened their statement, it still spoke to reduced confidence
Ryanair sells spare bolts to passengers after check-in. Its a new service.
If you're near one of the plugged doors, they'll offer a premium bolt-tightening service as an upgrade, but you have to supply the torque wrench...
It was United
Sorry. Can't tell US airlines with no european presence (except transatlantic flights i guess, but i don't do those) apart.
If people don’t think planes are safe, they won’t fly on planes
More people die in the US Every. Single. Day. on the roads than in the last decade in total from commercial flying, but sure flying is unsafe.
https://www.airlines.org/dataset/safety-record-of-u-s-air-ca...
You're using facts in an emotional argument. When the phrase "doesn't feel" is used, logic goes out the window. Have you not ever had an argument with a significant other?
There are some people like that, sure.
But most of us know driving isn't safe, and still do it daily.
Alaska was the airline who had their door ripped off. A reasonable take is to expect them to want to ensure that things like that don't happen again. PR is an added bonus.
same Alaska that knew there is something wrong with the pressure, but decided to continue flying with their plane, just not over the water: https://apnews.com/article/alaska-airlines-portland-oregon-e...
not saying they’re completely guilty, but they do have some part of the fault in that incident.
Pressure loss can be mitigated by dropping oxygen masks and descending to a lower altitude. The plane falling apart is more tricky. The door leading to pressure loss is a red herring. What about a wing falling off?
I don't think the wing fell off the plane and there are several types of failures which are distressing short of the wing falling off.
The wing was an exaggeration. Plenty of other critical parts could fall off.
It's a tough question. If a plane starts behaving a little wonky, per sensor, but you can't figure out what the sensor is complaining about, and the sensor doesn't match human observation, do you have to throw it away? What fraction of planes would be discarded under this model?
"I would recommend that we put the unit back in operation and let it fail. It should then be a simple matter to track down the cause."
You don't have to throw it away. Just ground it and test.
Pressurization problems are not uncommon in aviation. Most planes will drop to a safer altitude or divert to "safer" routes in case something goes wrong. They did what they are supposed to do in those circumstances.
I'm finding these type of apologists comments placing fault towards the airline really hard to sympathize with.
How would you feel if you were on a flight where a door fell off, and the pilot said "only 2% of flights on this specific plane have had unexplained depressurization, and now we have an explanation, folks"?
They hadn’t had unexpected depressurization. They had an error in one of the redundant automatic controllers for pressurization. That controller isn’t even required equipment.
Airplanes fly around ALL THE TIME with equipment that isn’t working. They have a procedure for determining what is and isn’t necessary for a given flight both legally and by the airlines own standards. In this case it very much looks like the pressurization controller was a red herring.
I don't understand why you are being downvoted. The pressurization warnings are a recorded fact.
What I have not heard is if the problems with the door plug are connected to the warnings.
Alaska followed standard procedures in aviation for pressurization issues. Downvotes are probably from people with aviation knowledge/experience.
Thanks for that explanation. I'm ignorant of the inner workings of the aviation industry.
Edit: If that warning was, in fact, an indication of the door plug problem then perhaps the reaction to that warning should be reviewed.
Apropos the discussion of the warning lights, it sounds like there may be some human factors engineering issues as well.
https://youtu.be/5FcyvFfHsjQ
It would be nice to get the black box data, but Alaska mishandled the box and allowed it to write over data from the flight in question. Oops.
They're also the airline that skimped so much on maintenance that a stabilizer jackscrew nut was stripped bare and killed almost a hundred people in a crash off the coast of LA. https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-price-of-an-hour-the...
They also fired the mechanic that raised this issue before the accident. It could have been avoided if they had only listened to him.
It is indeed a bit ironic.
Very valid point, but it's been twenty-three years since that crash - is it irony, or an attempt to be better than that? Hard for any of us to say, but the fact that they're taking these steps now suggests that perhaps it's moreso the latter.
Did they re-hire the fired mechanic? If not, then it's all smoke and mirrors.
Well that's just baseless speculation.
Sure, but grounding planes doesn't buy Alaska's (or Boeing's) CEO a new yacht. I suspect they will spend the minimum amount of time necessary, modulo whatever amount of time the IR and PR people think makes it appear they've accomplished something.
I don't think PR is an added bonus, I think it's the entire point.
I don't agree. This is a pivotal moment. If these planes start falling out of the air, it could be the end of alaska.
they've been through serious air disasters before and have scar tissue from it.
and if it is strictly a pr thing, the auditors go to boeing, take some pr photos, have a beer, and go home, then they deserve to fail.
Even if the only care they had is PR, they surely realize that the worst possible PR for Boeing and Alaska is for these incidents to begin happening on a regular basis, which will lead to consumers flying less, which leads to less demand for Boeing airplanes.
If I were a PR person, thinking only about PR (not caring about anything else), the #1 thing that seems obvious is "what do we need to do to have these incidents stop occurring ASAP".
Or they could be just putting on a show like you're suggesting, but that would do a huge disservice from a PR perspective if that results in the underlying issues not being fixed.
"Door fell off airplane during flight" headlines a couple times a month would be some of the worst PR you could possibly have (with the exception of planes crashing, obviously even worse)
As the saying goes .. Vertrauen ist gut, aber Kontrolle ist besser! (Trust is good but verifying is better!)
Or as we condense it to in English: Trust but verify!
Trustify.
Or, Veritrust which sounds like it needs a ™
NPR reported today that Alaska is "considering options" that don't include the MAX 10s they have ordered, which presumably means looking at Airbus?
I somewhat doubt it's going to happen quickly, and it is likely a combination of sincere anger and saber rattling.
I've been witness to some major product meltdowns, and executives threatening to migrate from a vendor is one of the big guns to pull out post mortem.
---
Edit: Another topic, NPR said "there is only one commercial plane competitor to Boeing, Airbus". What about Embraer?
Wouldn't they first downplay the issues then say they are keeping a close eye anyway?
I don't think this is good PR for the airlines as it is.
Are you accusing Alaska of not actually caring about safety and only engaging in PR window dressing? Is there any evidence supporting this view?
This apparent anonymous comment from a Boeing employee about the number of issues happening in their qaulity system is a bit worrying:
https://leehamnews.com/2024/01/15/unplanned-removal-installa...
That comment thread is wild. Do you think it is genuine?
If what that commenter says is true, the whole company ought to be shut down.
It’d also be an easy sell for either of the two presidential candidates - one can say he’s clamping down on incompetent elites who aren’t that elite after all; the other can talk about a profit-seeking company killing Americans.
I think the cracking down on incompetent elites that aren't that elite is something Republicans feel should be left to the market to decide. I don't think it's an easy sell to argue the government should shut down an entire company over issues rather than letting the issues lead to fewer sales and having the market sort it out. I think most Republicans would vehemently disagree with a statement like "the government should decide who the elites are", which this action seems to be doing.
I agree the profit-seeking company killing Americans is an easy sell with democrats and possibly even a good chunk of independents.
Boeing is also a major defense contractor, and has facilities spread out across many states. No politician of either party is going to call for the shutdown of a major employer of their constituents and a key component of national security.
why don't they acquire Boeing into a government owned company (for the defense stuff)
The US doesn't do government-owned (except in exceptional circumstances). For one, they would be sued by the shareholders (unfair seizure) and competitors (unfair competition). It also is not clear that the government acquiring something would make it run better.
seems to me that you might want quality control on those defense/weapon systems. if the rot is this bad in one part of the company like as not it is just as bad on the govenrment contract side as well.
The pressure to cut costs may be a little lower on the government contract side.
That’s true but it’s very easy to imagine at least one party being more than willing to have the FAA be less deferential.
Sure, but due to its nature the aircraft industry for commerical planes isn't really a free market.
Obviously, Boeing and Airbus represent a duopoly. When you factor in one of them is US-based and is relied upon to deliver on certain national security projects, defense etc no politician is going to let the commercial arm fail and risk the national security arm failing too.
Also there is a lag in the system around failure. The market could decide that Boeing planes are poorly constructed, but how many accidents and deaths would have to happen in order for customer (airlines) to decide to no longer put in orders. That's not really feasible.
"Too big to fail"
It’s hard for both candidates. Boeing is our only airline manufacturer and an American institution. If it shuts down all we have is an European Airbus and creates an opening for a Chinese COMAC.
it sounds genuine to me - perhaps it's worth it for him to be a whistleblower?
No it won't. Boeing has reached too big to fail status.
They employ many millions of people directly and indirectly between commercial and military aerospace.
Boeing has reached PEAK too big to fail recently too when they announced that due to their too big to fail status, they are unable to estimate or control costs anymore and will no longer bid for any US military contracts that are fixed-price.
What you will see is billions in bailout funds given to Boeing shareholders.
So this is like when I would take apart and re-assemble everything when I was a little kid. Sometimes I would have several screws left over. It's a good thing I wasn't making airplanes!
Although it appears you would have been immensely qualified to do so.
no not immensely qualified. Merely as qualified as Boeing which is a fairly low bar apparently.
This seems very funny/strange to me. Way back in the early/mid-90s, the company I worked for invested a lot of money to switch to some new computer accounting/inventory system that ran on AS400 (just to show its age). The software was originally built to track all of the parts and pieces to build an airplane. What type of airplane I don't know, but we made VHS tapes so the level of complexity between and airplane and VHS cassette always seems to be out of whack.
After that, I just assumed all airplane manufactures used something like this.
Interesting, I see this attitude too often in the healthcare industry as well, often leading to recalls.
It sounds like someone under pressure came up with a "loophole" that was compliant with a motivated but literal reading of the CMES reporting requirement. In this case, I would wager dollars to donuts that the CMES reporting requirement only anticipated door separated/not separated.
Mental gymnastics is used to argue compliance with some technical requirement, like it is some legal proceeding where you can debate what the definition of "is" is.
No amount of formal quality process can defend against business pressure and incentives to hack the same system. Requirements dont and cant cover every corner case, like someone saying a door was never fully separated because you tied them together with a shoelace before dethatching it.
Asking if a justification passes the "red face test" is ultimately more valuable than asking if it passes a literal reading.
"Culture eats Strategy for breakfast" -- Peter Drucker (purportedly)
I spent 15 years of my career working in contract manufacturing, building and managing engineering teams building manufacturing & quality systems. A lot of what our company did was for regulated industries (defense & medical). What's not surprising at all is that Boeing customers would have conducted independent audits of the materiel being delivered to them, either while the planes were on the line, or post-delivery. That's to be expected, as is periodic external audits by regulatory bodies. What's mildly more interesting, but still not surprising, is that Spirit was so consistently upset with finished product quality that they contracted with Boeing to have Spirit employees colo'd at Boeing shops to inspect and warranty repair their planes. This is also not remarkable in electronics contract manufacturing: very frequently there are OEM employee squads staffing QA & Repair/RMA benches at contract manufacturer factories, for two reasons. 1) The OEM knows their product better than the manufacturer, and 2) Risk. Ultimately the OEM is accountable for quality to the consumer, no matter who the constructor is.
It mildly more interesting to learn that Spirit was not granted access to Boeing's MES, which leads me to believe that Boeing's stance toward Spirit is more like "they're our customer and they insist on on-site inspection & repair so we'll begrudingly allow it" than "they're our customer and we have a shared interest in quality manufacturing so we'll partner with them to ensure that happens." This is a failure of leadership and extremely short-sighted, and is virtually guaranteed to result in the sort of process failures and outcomes the throwaway describes.
It's not uncommon for OEMs to take over contract manufacturer's sites, either because of a strategic decision to conduct manufacturing operations internally [again], or due to persist or pernicious quality issues arising from specific partners' operations or at specific plants. This is relatively feasible in the case of most electronics and smaller mechanical devices, and contract manufacturers operate in a state of existential fear most of the time, knowing their destiny is in the hands of a small handful of OEM customers (just look at the impact Apple's quarterly reports and projections have on partners like Foxconn, Jabil and Pegatron). It's not practical -- or even really possible due to capital expense -- to do this in aerospace. For that reason primarily, I see no alternative than for Boeing (and others) to be forced into 100% process compliance by presence of permanent external audit teams based in corporate offices and every manufacturing & assembly location. I wouldn't be surprised, too, if Boeing were forced (for political rather than anything to do with quality) to onshore more of their supply chain[1]).
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235197892...
My impression was the the Spirit mentioned in the comment was Spirit AeroSystems, not Spirit Airlines, so the relationship between the two companies is the other way around; Boeing is the customer.
Are there other sites for different industries with comment sections that are this good?
The overall quality is incredibly high.
Granted they are different divisions, but after the CST-100 debacle [1], NASA also sent a team to audit them [2]. Some of the off-channel remarks by NASA were striking.
[1] https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/boeing-starliner-error-wou...
[2] https://blogs.nasa.gov/commercialcrew/2020/02/07/nasa-shares...
I can't believe I've read that. There's no saving this company.
That section reads like a Bad Advice column for software testing in general. "Ehh, don't bother with end to end testing -- testing each part in isolation will be fine."
Maybe fine for an e-commerce site or game, where the stakes are measured mainly in lost revenue/customers and a team of engineers burning the midnight oil to sort the problem. Not so fine for spaceflight.
You're going to be very sad to discover the sentiments around software-intensive systems testing in a lot of places & industries that you'd rightfully assume should know better and do better.
I had a safety critical embedded engineer who had worked on everything from weapons systems to automobiles first not have any idea what property-based testing was and then proceed to tell me at length how it was pointless because unit testing is all you need as long as you keep making your units smaller and smaller.
At the time I worked in FinTech and was aghast at what I was hearing as they worked on self-driving. If I had to pin down what made me shift my career path into "cyber-physical systems", it was probably that conversation.
Since making the transition and later founding a company dedicated to testing in that domain, I've heard dozens and dozens of sentiments even more concerning.
I've encountered devs that think this nonsense before, but always assumed that this attitude couldn't be held with systems that are actually critical. I'm a bit less naive now.
I thought that too, early on. Sort of a perfect-bricks-make-perfect-walls idea. And when problems emerge at the integration stage, it’s often traceable to a gap that a lower-level test could have caught. So the mentality is a bit self-reinforcing.
Exactly. All the products we make are focused at the integration and system level because it's crystal clear that's where enormous amounts of issues arise and unbounded numbers of 11th hour fire drills occur. The various industries who've had multiple product cycles with lots of software are starting to figure this out, but it took awhile.
Despite how obvious it is with a little outside observer perspective, the "perfect bricks" way of thinking is pervasive because that's how the builders and supply chains are organized.
Which is silly, because the whole point of integration testing is to show your bricks don't fit together as expected.
When lax QA testing / engineering practices / boost the share price strategies from move fast break stuff e-commerce/social media practices seep into real world systems companies.
From an outsider's perspective, it seems "move fast and break things" worked well enough for SpaceX.
Boeing et al seem to be following the "move slow and hide problems so we don't fix anything" mantra.
Counterpoint: SpaceX had to re-learn well-known practices that are so commonplace in aerospace it's shocking they weren't being conducted [1]. One example is more complete material testing on critical components as part of supplier quality control. When they lost a rocket due to this process gap, their solution was to layer on those common QC practices. IMO these are risks that, over time, may turn SpaceX into the dinosaurs they are competing with. (reference to Chesterson's fence is probably apt.)
"Moving fast and breaking things" may be fine, but to the GP's point, it has to be a risk-based decision. We probably shouldn't be aiming to move fast when lives are at risk.
[1] https://spacenews.com/falcon-9-failure-linked-to-upper-stage...
Given the amount of money and lives at risk, this level of process short-cutting is mind boggling.
It makes sense from a commercial perspective. Every fault you can find is a bit of a discount off the plane price
It's not that. It's the fact that Boeing is letting an Airline do this. So now what? Every Airline is going to send their team to check their own Max planes during production?
And if an Airline doesn't send a team to check on their plane, does that mean quality control is worse?
It makes sense to Boeing. They now have a path to externalizing QA costs to the airlines.
externalizing QA costs and partial liability
That will factor into pricing.
5D accountant chess
In the commercial/industrial space, having the ability to do on-site QC visits of your supplier/manufacturer of goods is completely normal, often written into the contract itself and sometimes mandated by quality control certification standards.
Part of it is to be able to challenge QC reports submitted by the company. If you have a good you receive with QC paperwork which Boeing no doubt generates, you may want to go see how legitimate the process the paperwork is certifying.
The power of this paperwork extends into lawsuit ammo if a need ever arises.
The job of QC in commercial/industrial is legal ass-covering for both sides of a contract.
There's presumably clauses in the contract that let Alaska cancel orders due to issues like this; especially now that the FAA and NTSB is involved.
Boeing might be willing to let airlines do things they won't normally consider, to try and save these orders.
Doubtful. Rather every fault they find is something they don't have to fix later on.
In any event, having their own people monitoring seems like a win-win overall.
This seems to be common practice at Airbus.
I recently did a public tour of one of Airbus' major assembly lines. I remember the tour guide telling us, that their customers (the airlines) either have their own QA people on the line when their planes get assembled, or pay another company to do it for them.
Yep, it's a very "trust but verify" industry.
I would like to phrase this as “trust and verify”, because the state of trust arises from being open to verifiability, contrary to common misconception that they are against each other.
It's short for "trust, but also verify".
They are naturally against each other, which is why the "but" statement is meaningful.
"Slow and steady" vs "fast but steady".
"Move fast and break things" vs "move fast but don't break things".
It's also insurance against systemic failure at Airbus.
Given the relative costs of their own inspection, the cost of the plane and the cost of a crash or downtime, it seems to make perfect sense.
Plus the fact that these machines have a 30 year working life.
Meanwhile Boeing just inspects itself, or at least they did before they fired most of their inspectors. It's really no surprise that they now have the build quality of the average aliexpress product.
In the current situation, sending your own engineers to the manufacturer is the best way to ensure an independent check of the whole production chain. Much easier than having your mechanics take the airplane apart after delivery.
This is pretty standard for people manufacturing in China. I guess someone assumed because it was "Made in USA" meant the due diligence wasn't necessary?
In decades past, you could actually trust Boeing's QA processes. I think there may be a lot of people who haven't got the memo that Boeing is a different company now.
The problem is that there are many of these planes that have already been delivered. They're going to have to find some way of ensuring QA for those before they're allowed in the air again.
Right. They have to be taken apart. All doors have to be checked systematically and also they need to do random probes to sample for possible other systematic manufacturing defects.
Probably talking to their mechanics, they might quickly identify other problematic components which might have been noticed during maintenance but not strongly enough reported and tracked. Basically everything that needed repairs which shouldn't have been needed.
It's interesting that they managed to get this access. It may be useful in the lawsuit that will surely follow.
This is pretty normal is it not? In the automotive world when you have quality or run rate problems the big 3 company will have someone on the line watching.
Yeah, same for consumer tech. We always had our own people embedded in the manufacturing operations in China/Taiwan/Vietnam to keep things running smoothly and ensure there were no miscommunications around specifications.
When you're buying a ~$100M/unit where the manufacturer is making 15+% margin, you get pretty good access to do what you need to do in order to feel comfortable with the purchase.
The Boeing CEO's quote is really bad:
".... We will follow the lead of the FAA and support our customers every step of the way.”
It should be: "we will lead the way in putting engineering first, and building in quality from before the first part is built"
But those financialists just cannot see anything but their short term profits. Executive earnings for the past decade+, when they goosed profits by cutting quality, should be clawed back.
Yeah that's the aeronautics version of "We will use your information for X, Y, Z, and other purposes permitted by law".
It's the "genuine leather" of aeronautics.
It's the lowest possible standard that keeps the speaker out of jail.
Seems quite shocking that an audit of structural integrity of an entire plane down to the bolt level takes only 4 hours in anyones estimate
It's also the case that Alaska doesn't trust the FAA - for good reason. There used to be FAA-linked auditors that reported back to the FAA directly, even though they were paid by Boeing (i.e. they could be fired by the FAA, but not by Boeing). This was the case up through 2004:
Regulatory Capture at the FAA, Claremont Journal of Law and Public Policy Leo Kalb Bourke, November 12, 2021
https://www.5clpp.com/?p=4026
We don't need to go through everything, at least not immediately.
We know the door/bolts have issues, so we can just scrutinise those really carefully. The crucial part is not looking at whether there are issues (we already know there are), but at the nature of those issues. Are they localised and contained, or are they systemic? The extent to which they're systemic tells us how worried we need to be about everything else in the planes
(Personally, given the MCAS situation, I don't believe for a moment these issues are not systemic, but a layperson's semi-educated guess isn't a valid basis for an airplane audit)
Yea the doors and bolts are just the canary in the coal mine.
Why is Alaska doing this? I agree, the FAA should absolutely ground them all and white glove everything.