Airlines say they found loose parts in door panels during inspections of Boeing 737 Max 9 jets::Federal investigators are learning more about how a door panel flew off an Alaska Airlines jetliner last week.
I always wondered what would happen if an army of accountants took over an engineering-heavy company and just gutted the engineering culture for profit…
This is absolutely crazy. Boeing was the undisputed number one maker of passenger Jet for decades, and McDonnell Douglas was 2nd. USA had a lead on passenger jets in the world where the competition was mostly irrelevant. Then Boeing buys McDonnell Douglas, so there is less competition in USA, but that only paves the way for Airbus.
It’s crazy how USA managed to lose their sovereignty in an area where dominance was almost total. But the lack of preventing monopolies in USA, was probably the cause, making the problem 100% internal for USA as I see it. Allowing ever more monopoly like companies since Reagan, is undermining the strength of American innovation and excellence.
This is probably also the reason the bean-counters took over, why bother with the technology, when there is almost no competition? We might as well make as much money as we can.I think that a Milton Friedman/Ronald Reagan style of anarcho-capitalist idiology will eventually become popular in any capitalist system, as capitalism demands endless growth at its core.
You can put some patchwork on top of it (social democracy-style regulations and safety nets), but since people are allowed to have enough power to buy governments and influence media conglomerates, it will just revert back into what we now call late stage capitalism.
Although even if we cap income, politicians are surprisingly cheap to buy. $10000 slipped into the right pocket could influence the vote enough for a deregulation-bill to pass, not to mention privately-owned media has the need to make a profit, and they’re going to want to make more profit so much, that they’ll do whatever it takes to do so.
I think what you describe is important to be aware of, and as things are now it rings mostly true. But I’m not entirely sure. Wasn’t USA even more capitalistic in the late 1800’s? then it turned towards actually improving conditions under and after the great depression. Which went reasonably well until the late 70’s, where it probably peaked with Jimmy Carter. Ironically the oil crisis reversed the direction. But I suspect the direction can be reversed again.
AFAIK Russians considered the 70’s as late stage capitalism, but instead it was the Soviet Union that collapsed.
But again as things are now USA with Republicans getting ever more extreme it is going really really bad over there IMO, But USA is a very poor democracy, where an undemocratic or at least far from ideal 2 party system is protected by first past the post elections, that undermines democracy, together with a flawed system of freedom of speech that allows the press to spread outright lies without repercussions.
Most EU countries have better and stronger democracies, and I don’t think we are seeing late stage capitalism taking over here. Although we have some right wing tendencies, that are mostly driven by high immigration from the middle east, immigrants that on average don’t adapt well into our societies. Compared to the compassion of democracies in that regard, we have seen almost zero compassion from communist countries, so with regard to human values, socialism/*communism seems to not be the answer.
Thisis what happened at litetally every good tech company.
Well that and “engineering culture” is now mostly “startup culture” where tech companies are spun up purely with an exit strategy in mind with the goal of growing in value for the founders as quickly as possible
Bolts needed additional tightening
Ratcheting up pressure on Boeing
Heh
Why do airlines still buy Boeing? New airplanes they make are clearly dangerous, and they don’t seem to be able to fix it for the next one, as we are already at the next ones…
Boeing advertises the 737 Max by saying that it works just like the old 737 so you don’t need to retrain your pilots and save money. The issue a few years ago with that is that these planes are not 737 so when some new issue happens the pilots don’t know how to deal.
There’s a long list of reasons:
- training pilots to change planes
- training maintenance teams
- changing procurement practices
- adapt supply chain
- etc
- and then on the bottom, 2 of the most important ones: cost control (maximize profits) and comfort
The cost of retraining their pilots would bite into their profits.
It’s near impossible to switch to airbus if an airline is preset entrenched in Boeing. You have to retrain everyone from ground crews to pilots to FAs to maintenance. On top of that you need new suppliers for spare parts, maintenance hubs and contracts.
Also supply is a major issue. Both Airbus and Boeing are back ordered for years, so there isn’t a way to easily switch fleets.
If that door plug hit and killed someone on the ground, then that would be some Final Destination shit.
More like Donny Darko
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The comments Monday from the National Transportation Safety Board came shortly after Alaska and United Airlines reported separately that they found loose parts in the panels — or door plugs — of some other Boeing 737 Max 9 jets.
“Since we began preliminary inspections on Saturday, we have found instances that appear to relate to installation issues in the door plug — for example, bolts that needed additional tightening,” Chicago-based United said.
The findings of investigators and the airlines are ratcheting up pressure on Boeing to address concerns that have grown since the terrifying fuselage blowout Friday night.
Boeing has delivered more than 200 to customers around the world, but 171 of them were grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration on Saturday until the door plugs can be inspected and, if necessary, fixed.
During Alaska Airlines flight 1282 on Friday night, roller guides at the top of one of the plugs broke — for reasons the investigators don’t fully understand yet — allowing the entire panel to swing upward and lose contact with 12 “stop pads” that keep the panel attached to the door frame on the plane, NTSB officials said at a news briefing in Portland.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said the safety board was investigating whether four bolts that help prevent the panel from sliding up on rollers were missing when the plane took off from Portland or whether they blew off “during the violent, explosive decompression event.”
The original article contains 725 words, the summary contains 240 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Wait wait wait… A part of complex thing fell 20K feet out of the sky onto the hard ground.
And they say some of the stuff they found is ‘a bit loose’ ?
Hmmmmm…
