Aircraft rivet hole issues cause delays to Boeing 737 Max deliveries US aerospace giant Boeing is set to delay the deliveries of nearly 50 of its popular 737 Max aircraft after a supplier discovered a series of incorrectly drilled rivet holes. The issues were first reported by an employee from Spirit AeroSystems, the fuselage supplier for the 737 Max, who discovered that the holes were too …
Moving corporate away from production. Opening up new production to gain access to a lower cost, less trained workforce. Outsourcing previously in-house subassembly manufacturing to reduce costs. Remove in-house quality oversight.
Grant C suite bonuses.
After you "merge" with one of the most notoriously poor aerospace companies around.
Congratulations. Never mind your foot, you aimed for your head. And got a bullseye.
I was just thinking something similar when I read "Spirit AeroSystems, the fuselage supplier for the 737 Max" and my first reaction was, wait...what? Do Boeing actually make aircraft now or are they just assembling kits these days? Surely if you claim to build and aircraft, then at the very least you build the foundation around which everything else is built, ie the fuselage.
I wonder if Airfix (Hornby Hobbies Ltd) might light to take them over?
(They do seem to go into an awful depth of detail when designing their models and take great care in getting the rivets right!)
> Do Boeing actually make aircraft now or are they just assembling kits these days?
A charge which could be more accurately aimed at Airbus. There is nothing wrong with having subcontractors if you manage them properly.
Nobody is claiming Intel could make better phones than Apple because they have in-house fabs.
Airbus has always had distributed production on account of being a pan-European business. Final assembly takes place in Toulouse and Hamburg. Airbus has a very different philosophy to Boeing from the ground up and are very difficult to compare on a brick-by-brick basis. Your typical Airbus has countless features to mitigate against the biggest risks in modern aviation. Boeing hasn't introduced anything new in over a decade apart from fixing a bug that allowed the autopilot to stall the aircraft.
Your typical Airbus has countless features to mitigate against the biggest risks in modern aviation.
Said features prevent well-trained, skilled, knowlegable pilots from performing certain actions to save the plane in an emergency, because the system analysts and/or computer programmers did not, or could not, imagine a situation in which operating the aircraft "out of the standard flight regime" was the correct thing to do.
I'm thinking of the L-1011 which had its left elevator jammed into the "full up" position upon takeoff, which would have led to a stall and crash. As it happened, the captain reduced thrust from the two wing engines, went to full thrust on the tail engine, and had the passengers move forward, the combination of which allowed him to turn around and land safely. As I write this, I can imagine many people saying, "But how often would that happen?!"
For the people on the aircraft, just once would have been enough to kill them if the computer had stopped the pilot.
They spun off what is now called Spirit AeroSystems out of the larger Boeing company to keep the bean counters and shareholders happy. The overall production process stayed the same, just the responsibilities, technology, QC and financial wise shifted...
Upper management at Boeing thought they can keep plucking the goose that lays golden eggs (the 737 series) well past due date, baiting airlines with projected lower costs by allowing for pilots with one type rating to keep flying those planes without having to invest in additional training for a complete new type rating when switching to a complete new plane model. With the introduction of MCAS, existing 737 pilots should now have been allowed to fly those planes without (expensive) retraining and certification/check rides. Cutting corners on production and QC is just one more nail in the coffin...
"They spun off what is now called Spirit AeroSystems out of the larger Boeing company to keep the bean counters and shareholders happy. "
The downside is it creates little fiefdoms with boundaries that can't be crossed without formal negotiations. It can also lead to differences in workflows, QC norms and work standards. On the bookshelf behind me I have a set of McDonnell Douglas engineering standards manuals. Those applied across the whole of the company. One of my specialties when I was in aerospace was developing that sort of thing and I borrowed heavily from those MD publications. It keeps everybody doing things the same way and especially keeps the documentation consistent.
"Do Boeing actually make aircraft now or are they just assembling kits these days?"
I also find it odd that there would be a case for outsourcing a core component of a product. If it can't be made in-house at a lower cost, why not? I can see the reasoning behind not making the engines or avionics as customers will want choices but every 737 starts as a basic airframe.
It's worse than that. They capped raises 10 years ago and aren't paying enough to keep their production talent. Much like the software problems crashing the 'max, this is really another example of penny-wise and dollar poor by Boeing. I like cheap planes as much as the next guy... But there is a reason I don't let the homeless guy change the oil in my car and I pay a bit extra for a dentist I like... Sometimes paying a bit more is worth it.
I hope Boeing is learning from these expensive in dollars and lives lessons.
Well, no. At least, the situation is far more complex. The main reason why Boeing acquired McDD was to get their hands on their very lucrative military aircraft production (F-15, F-18, C-17), after having out-lobbied McDD out of the civilian aircraft market already (the DC-9/MD-80/9x was a direct competitor to the 737) and not having themselves any military contract for decades (B-52s and xC-135s are all 50s/60s designs "warmed up". And that Boeing got the contract for the replacement for the KC-135 and the E-3 was also by "influencing" DoD and politicians to sell an inferior product in a rigged "competition"...
Boeing was able to eliminate a direct rival to their main market and get some "fresh" blood in the military sector. Once again, for the bean counters, this all made perfectly sense and for a great bonus check...
MBAs gonna MBA
> "He said the errors would were "not an immediate flight safety issue and all 737s can continue operating safely."
And this is what you said before, during, and after the 737 Max MCAS issue that took down two passenger flights, killing everyone on board.
That's something of an urban myth. The Comet failures were due to metal fatigue, the second crash was due to a crack which started at a repaired rivet hole near the small square "window" cut out for the direction finder antenna. The fuselage skin didn't have the strength to contain it.
There was another concern that the main windows, rectangular with rounded corners, were only riveted in and not glued as well which the original design intended. That wasn't a cause in any of the crashes, but the two have become conflated.
Well. not quite. It ultimately came down to the poor design of the windows, as those stresses on the skin due to the increased speeds and flight level of jet aircraft wasn't well understood at the time.
The loss of the wing of the plane in India was only "suspected" to be material fatigue. It was later determined that it was rather extreme G-forces due to the overreaction of the pilot in extreme weather conditions that resulted initially in a nose dive of the plane. Two accident upon takeoff was also due to pilot errors with few flying hours and "cycles" experience of the pilots.
The Comet actually ended up to serve for several decades just perfectly fine as the British Nimrod anti-submarine/maritime patrol aircraft....
There's an apocryphal story about Alan Sugar & corporate consultants:
One day Alan was doing the rounds of his offices when he paused at the door of one office. Inside were an engineer and a consultant. The consultant was trying to reduce the cost of the item the engineer had designed. The consultant keep on banging on about one component that was (relatively) expensive and insisting that there must be a cheaper way to do the job, The engineer was getting exasperated as the consultant clearly had no clue about electronics and there was no way to replace the component with anything else. By the end of the day, Alan had kick all the consultants off site.
Never found a reference to this but seen it quoted a couple of times. (I even think it was mentioned in a TV program)
Some time before they got into the computing game a friend was tempted by the cheap price to acquire a new Amstrad hifi tuner (a.k.a. FM radio).
At home and connected to an amplifier it was found to be non-functional. it could't be tuned to any station.
As used to be common in those days we decided to "take the back off it" (i.e. void the warranty) and take a look inside.
The first thing we noticed was a prominent "Quality Control" sticker with the word "passed" scribbled on.
The second thing we noticed was the drive band that should have connected the tuning knob to the electronics lying in the bottom of the chassis.
-A.
I was working in the PC industry while Amstrad were selling home computers and they were definitely hiring engineers. The (possibly apocryphal) word was that the pre-Apprentice Mr. Sugar had a habit of addressing employees as "Oi, you" which was one of the reasons I didn't apply.
Yes, in a way we should be seeing more of these come up throughout the year. It should be expected and could be a sign that they are trying to turn things around.
As bad as the drip feed of bad news might feel, if it amounts to things that are caught early enough they must hope that the people that matter (FAA and EASA, aircraft customers) see this as a positive. Boeing is fortunate that airlines have high switching costs to go to the only real competitor and that passengers have limited say in which aircraft they fly with.
“passengers have limited say in which aircraft they fly with”….. to a point
There’s a site that tells people what aircraft they are going to be flying… people are starting to use it..
I’m flying to Rome later this year with my family, I chose an airline flying an airbus rather than one that uses 737s. It’s a bit of extra travel time, may not impact the airline, but I made the decision, I’m sure I’m not the only one doing this.
ie. they relied on a worker/whistleblower to report mistakes, their QA system didn't catch them in the fuselages already delivered.
That's the real issue - it's not finding faults, it's finding that you didn't find faults
But that doesn't work for the bean counters at the airlines! Those older planes have (nominal) less fuel efficient and more maintenance requiring engines. Beside that some of those really old 737 still flying (kind of) commonly are not allowed into international airspace (just check on those 737s that made the news recently in Russia).
At some point, those older planes' operating costs are well above the break-even point and thus deemed no longer financially viable...
actually, they did find faults during production at Spirit. But those airframes were delivered to Boeing for assembly anyway, sending a team there as well, which was then fixing the issues while other work to finish the plane was being done...
"their QA system didn't catch them in the fuselages already delivered."
I didn't see any mention of how far off the wrong holes were. Is it something QA could catch without needing precision templates to overlay over all screw/rivet points? I expect there are plenty of things that are only inspected to the level of noticing that there is a fastener there and it's doesn't look like it wasn't properly installed. Somebody working on the assembly line that could also be seeing it from a POV that makes it obvious the hole(s) is out of place is going to be the best person to spot the issue. Those people should get bounties. When I worked as a doorman at a bar, we got a pay out for catching fake ID's. That kept all of us very focused on checking since we could do rather well on a popular night. The bar figured out that it was cheaper to pay the bounty than pay the fine for underage people being caught inside and having their license suspended for a period of time. For Boeing, it doesn't have to be cash, it could be points towards a flight voucher or paid days off. Look how much all of this negative press is costing them.
To be fair, even with these fuckups, the planes still have a great record. But the real problem is the politically engineered lack of competition. Airbus is snowed under with orders and would probably face similar problems if it tried to scale up production to get even more. For decades the US plane makers didn't have to worry about competition until the European airlines finally got the planes they wanted and Airbus became a success. Consolidation and a duopoly were considered the only way to preserve profit margins jobs and US airlines were strongarmed into continuing to buy Boeing. Though, to be fair, if some of them had the choice, they'd buy the cheapest, crappiest things out there because most US airlines hate passengers that can't be transported in boxes.
>To be fair, even with these fuckups, the planes still have a great record.
Not sure that Lion Air or Etheopian Airlines and 346 dead would agree...
I'm not sure that many in the aviation engineering / maintenance world would agree either. There's been a background hum of reports of FOD and defects on Boeings for a long time now. I'm not sure the USAF or the US Army would agree either. The problems they have had with new Boeing products in recent times have been widely reported. These include reports of a whole batch of brand new Apache helicopters sent back over build issues. The KC46A has been extremely problematic to bring into service, with at least one exceptionally dangerous in flight failure that could have killed an entire crew and whomever they would have crash landed on (the hold cargo clamps suddenly released the hold cargo; fortunately, they were straight / level at the time and spotted it, and managed to fly without the cargo shifting). And so forth. The replacement Air Force One has been a farcial procurement.
>Airbus is snowed under with orders and would probably face similar problems if it tried to scale up production to get even more.
Actually, Airbus has successfully scaled up several times already, and managed to avoid such fuckups. I'm sure they had teething troubles in scaling up, but they've managed to keep those from entering into service. They have FALs all over Europe, in Mobile Alabama, and in China. The quality from all of them has been pretty good. Getting the Chinese one working as well as it does is a major accomplishment for both Airbus and the workers there, and is actually a major threat to Boeing. It's creating a generation of Chinese workers who thoroughly understand the point of good QC / QA, and may take that expertise into COMAC. Airbus's production rate for just A320 family jets is insanely high, 2.5 a day, every day of the year.
>Consolidation and a duopoly were considered the only way to preserve <so>profit margins</so> jobs and US airlines were strongarmed into continuing to buy Boeing.
The mistake Boeing made was to focus on profits, not market share. The company has been "successful" in the eye of investors because they've made profits. However, it's easy to make profits in a growing market where one's competitor has insufficient capacity to supply the whole market. John Leahy at Airbus took a different approach; he chased market share as the key metric for company success. He's the one who made Airbus equip itself to be able to take a large market share off Boeing. His point was that it would be easier to sell lots of jets if everyone thought Airbus could actually make lots of jets. Conversely, it would be hard to sell any jets at all, if customers thought they'd be delivered very slowly. And, he was right.
Looked at from a market share point of view, Boeing's performance since 1990 has been woeful. The mess they're in today is also traceable to short term profiteering; the surprise announcement of the A320neo bumped them into launching the MAX program instead of concentrating on a new design. What a mistake to make.
The result is that Airbus has now got them penned in from all angles; A320neo seems to have 737MAX licked (simply by not crashing a lot). A321XLR and A330neo has removed any market for Boeing's aborted NMA. 787 is reputed to be struggling to achieve good sale prices as the A330neo is easily cost competitive with it and costs Airbus a whole lot less to manufacture. The A350 is doing well at the top end of the market whilst 777X (which is rumoured to be a whole 40 tons heavier) is still not in service. And even the "pointless White Elephant" A380 seems to have come roaring back into large scale use, and now everyone is wondering when (not if) Airbus will be obliged to deliver an upgraded model.
Plus, Airbus now has the A220 program for $1, possibly the finest small jet that has ever existed, a hit with the passengers and airlines, and has a whole market segment all to itself that Boeing hasn't even begun to think about filling. Considering that Bombardier looked initially to Boeing to partner on it, one can only say that this was a significant miss by Boeing.
Just briefly, I'm not trying to downplay the farce of the MAX launch and the deaths of the two crashes. These were down to regulatory collusion in a broken certification process desgined solely to get the planes to market as quickly as possible. But even then, by the metrics with which these things are calculated, Boeing still has a good record. It's arguable this is down to the regulator generally doing a good job. Like I said, I'm sure there are plenty of businesses who'd like more "light touch" regulation, possibly including cheap tickets which would indemnify airline and manufacturer in the event of unexpected disassembly.
On the rest, I'm with you all the way: a good example of short term profits over everything, with the active support of US politics.
I think that you're mistaking "Boeings generally do not crash", for, "Boeing has a good record".
Reading between the lines of many reports of problems, it seems that an awfully large number of operational problems have been nipped in the bud by airline operators' own engineers, post delivery. It seems fairly well established practice that the first thing a lot of airlines do on receipt of a new Boeing aircraft is that they send their own engineers crawling all over looking for the FOD, problems in general. Boeing does have a reputation for leaving everything ranging from metal shavings all over wiring, to partially eaten hamburgers, to whole step ladders inside brand new aircraft's fuel tanks, all of which has the potential to bring an aircraft down either immediately or eventually. There's been several reports of customers (ranging from airline companies to the US Army) that have sent brand new aircraft straight back, having had a look at what had just been delivered.
That Boeing's crash record isn't worse is probably mostly down to the diligence of its customers, not the efficacy of Boeing's QA processes of late.
The thing that should be very concerning is that faults like mis-drilled holes in pressure bulkheads are just as likely to cause a plane to crash (if it's been done just a little bit too badly), but are far harder to pick up in post delivery inspections. Worse, such faults generally aren't looked for very often during operational use; one cannot easily see such things without stripping out a lot of stuff at the back of the aircraft, so it's only looked at as per the inspection schedule. This is drawn up on the assumption that the aircraft was built perfectly; bit of a shame if it wasn't. So for faults like this, that customer inspection at the last-chance saloon before a plane enters service is missing.
Given the multiplicity and wide extent of Boeing's QA failings, does the fact that no one has looked at it since it was drilled make one feel safe?!
To be fair, if this issue was with Airbus we never would have heard of it. It would be a minor thing, and other than customers being notified about the delays for the multi million/billion dollar orders they're waiting on the average person would never know or care.
It is only because any news coming out of Boeing that is in any way negative is going to spread far and wide for a while. And deservedly so.
That's probably true; the system is working as intended. Boeing screwed up, so the company is now under increased scrutiny from customers, regulators, the media, and shareholders. The extra scrutiny will continue until the Boeing re-earns the trust that has been lost. And deservedly so, as you said.
How is an article telling us about rivet hole issues in the 737 Max "slandering without any proof?" Are you claiming the Reuters article is lying? If so, where's your proof? Because I will trust Reuters one hell of a lot more than some rando called "CowHorseFrog".
They'd have found the problem and told the customer "sorry, we found a defect and your delivery will be delayed while the part is remanufactured"
Which is what Boeing has done. The difference is that because Boeing has badly tarnished its formerly good name with the Max 9 issues and now the door plug thing, anything negative about them (that would be ignored if it was Airbus or other aircraft manufacturers) is getting worldwide press attention.
RIchard: They meant Airbus wouldn't have let it out of the factory.
cow:
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/cover-up
> any action, stratagem, or other means of concealing or preventing investigation or exposure.
Doesnt sound or mention fixing the problem...its about being dishonest and bullshittting the two qualities of all leadership particularly American corporate leadership.
No I didn't claim Airbus would cover it up, I'm saying that if this happened to Airbus it wouldn't have made the worldwide press because they're all focused on any negative news about Boeing. If negative news came out about Airbus the press wouldn't care, because Airbus didn't just have an incorrectly installed door plug blow in one of their airplanes.
If it was Airbus, we'd see exactly the same inspections and bans on flying. But, in the case of the plug, this wouldn't happen because this cost-cutting option isn't available, precisely because it introduces risk. You see this reflected in the customer profiles of both manufacturers.
To keep their common certification Boeing also kept the de-icing system in the 1950s. The 737 is a short two engine version of the 707 which first flew in 1957 but was a production version of the 367-80 which first flew in 1954 and was itself derived from 1940s designs. So anyway, the overhead panel, which controls fuel, hydraulics, electrical systems, and bleed air, among other things, is from the original 737. It has had additions, but you can see to look at it that it is a history of switch and display technologies. Nothing significant was ever moved or removed.
So the 737 MAX has manual de-icing controls. In the past the engine inlets were metal. De-icing air is passed through them and heats them up so ice can't form. Two things have changed though, as engines become more efficient they also run hotter, and the inlets were changed to composite. On Airbus that's no real problem, Airbus has automatic de-icing, so when ice is detected the de-icing is switched on and the cold wet air cools the inlets. But on Boeing you have to watch the temperature and conditions and switch de-icing on when appropriate. But if you forget to switch it off the deicing when not in icing conditions you cook the composite inlet, because the hotter engine gives hotter bleed air, and the composite inlet can't stand the same abuse as metal. The cooked composite isn't as strong as it once was and can fail, blowing parts into the engine, which then deconstructs itself.
How should they have done it? Automatic anti-ice, like the 777 and 787. It's not that they don't have the tech, it's just that the aircraft is stuck in the 1950s because some big customers don't want to have a second type rating required.
The Wright Flyer had no windshield and so no requirement for windshield wipers.
Since the Boeing 737 is really just a development of the Boeing 000 (aka the Wright Flyer) there is no requirement for it to have windshield wipers.
All McDonald Douglas Boeing had to do was find who owns the Wright Aircraft company today, buy it and do some renaming
Now that it seems that the US flying public (and therefore US airline execs) have woken up to the problems MAX has, it seems like some of those big customers are beginning to vote with their cheque books and are actively looking elsewhere. It's a major screw up by Boeing.
One can see why Boeing would have been anxious to pander to a couple of big customers' desires to avoid pilot re-training. Had they crossed the "training required" rubicon, that would have then opened up the possibility that airlines like SWA would take a look at Airbus. The problem with that is that, seemingly, once an airline gets a taste for Airbuses the cockpit commonality that Airbus already has across their entire line up and the FBW flight characteristics all being the same (A318 all the way up to A380) tends to result in airlines buying more Airbuses.
The real answer is that Boeing should have gone for cross-fleet cockpit commonality long, long ago, back in the 1990s when it first became evident that Airbus were doing that and what it would bring. That would likely have meant scrapping the 737 long ago (the cockpit is pretty narrow, apparently). That would have been a pretty big hit, but nothing like as big a hit if they tried to do it nowadays.
Doesn't Airbus have a "break' in their cockpit commonality in that the A350 and A380 are in a class together, and the rest of the A3xx are in a class together? Presumably the A220 is also it's own class because it was originally developed by Bombardier and I doubt Airbus had the chance to completely switch cockpit to an Airbus cockpit so late in the development.
This Simple Flying article has a nice graphic. A330/350 are nearly identical.
You need do only a short CCQ 13 day course to go between any of the Airbus aircraft types. This makes it practical to have a large fraction of one's pilot staff qualified on multiple Airbus types, able to fly an A320 one day and an A380 the next. This is useful for all-Airbus airlines (it's the ultimate in flexibility). It also makes recruitment simpler - any Airbus qualified pilot is a serious contender, no matter what they've flown and what your company operates.
The other (often overlooked) aspect is cabin crew training; there's far, far more to it than knowing how to pour a decent G&T. I think that here too Airbuses are substantially the same, meaning that your cabin crew can be flexibly deployed too.
It probably means that airlines are also somewhat flexible on delivery date. As with any conversion training, there's no point doing it too early because it'll have been forgotten. If the conversion course were lengthy, there'd be a greater emphasis on the training completion coinciding with aircraft being delivered. However, if the conversion training is short, it doesn't matter as much if there is a delivery delay or advance. It's not like you've had an expensive cadre of pilots going through months of wasted training if the delivery is badly delayed. Similarly, your new plane isn't going to be stuck on the runway pilotless for very long, if it turns up early.
It's a matter of speculation, but this probably gives Airbus some wiggle room in adjusting deliveries quite late on if a burning need arises elsewhere. For example, Airbus can pay a customer to take a delivery delay, it's not a massive issue for the customer in terms of staff training (if any), and Airbus can sell planes earlier at higher prices to other desparate airlines like United or American who are now want to get Airbuses, any Airbuses, at any price ASAP instead of waiting for Boeing to get their act together. The delayed customer is then earning money (at United's expense) from an aircraft they haven't even got yet. Neat trick. Those long established Airbus customers who have long established positions on the delivery schedule are essentially sitting on a gold mine before their plane even exists. It would be a lot harder to do this, if there wasn't cockpit / cabin commonality.
It's this kind of thing that probably makes it very easy for airlines who have been Airbus customers once to remain so.
The A220 is indeed different, though I have read that because that too is a FBW system a lot of what you learn qualifying for that is transferable (and vice versa). The same can probably be said for 787, 777, but most definitely not for 737.
This is called "Grandfathering". It's not allowed in Europe, but the Americans of course love it. But because if the FAA approved something EASA had to accept it, so it gets through.
At uni, we did a thought experiment with grandfathering, and were able to get from a wooden biplane to the equivalent of DC3, all on one route certificate. Make the changes smaller enough and often enough and you can get away with anything.
I would hope that the FAA finally look at this issue, and get rid of grandfathering, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Boeing would never survive without it...
On Airbus that's no real problem, Airbus has automatic de-icing, so when ice is detected the de-icing is switched on and the cold wet air cools the inlets.
Just to clarify, the reason this doesn't affect Airbus aircraft is because they use a different inlet and a different version of the LEAP engine which won't melt if you fly with the engine anti-ice on in non-icing conditions.
Boeing can make working ice detection (ish, it mostly works on the Dreamliner but has a few bugs), they never fitted it to the 737.
Make the engineers, software developers, QA, their supervisors and executives ride a pre-delivery test flight of every aircraft they make. No parachutes allowed. It'd be good PR to show confidence in the product, inspire better attention to getting it right, and if any of them screwed up, natural selection would eliminate the problems. Icon because Boeing.
While I get your point, I'm not sure the engineers, devs, and QA can be entirely blamed other than for just doing what management told them to do. I think loading up the entire plane with managers and executives, especially executives, would accomplish what you wanted. Because then every one else doing the actual work would suddenly be allowed to care about quality again.
While agreeing wholeheartedly with the sentiment the problem with it is that fatal flaws don't tend to occur on flight one. How many times had that door flown before flying off? How many times did a 737Max fly before the MCAS issue became obvious? Even the Comet did hundreds of flights before running into the metal fatigue problem.
>No make the executives liable for premeditated manslaughter for any crashes caused by cut backs.
But the problem wasn't Boeing it was a totally independant supplier spun off from Boeing
The WhiteStar line can't be held responsible for the Titanic because look-out services was outsourced to a gig worker in the Crow's nest
YAAC: But the problem wasn't Boeing it was a totally independant supplier spun off from Boeing
cow: those suppliers were selected based on policies and costs allowed and mandated by B corporate leadership.
Without those cut backs the process and outcome woul dhave been completely different.
Dont believe me, the executives themselves took millions in bonuses for these very actions, it doesnt get any more evident than their own words from their own speeches.
...and political lobbying. Thanks to that, both political parties have at various times been more than content to reduce the FAA's funding, reigning in its ability to supervise Boeing.
I don't think the USA / US politicians quite realise what damage they've inflicted on their own country. When an overseas airline buys a Boeing product, it's only of any use to them if their own regulator accepts the FAA's word that it's fit to fly. It doesn't matter one jot what the FAA says; if your own regulator says "can't fly" you've got tons of costly aluminium sat on a runway not earning its keep. For overseas regulators, the MAX crisis was the last straw, with all but the FAA taking the decision to ground the aircraft. I don't think the FAA never actually did ground it - the Presidential administration ordered it out of the skies first.
And with the latest door blow out - well, I'd not be surprised if a few overseas regulators had phoned up the FAA and asked, "what gives?" in a pointed manner.
737 Max - problems- how long have you got?
777X - long delay, cargo door failure - lets's see, maybe 2026
787 - unbelievable quality problems in South Carolina
Engineers in charge == lower profits
Bean counters in charge == Well...see above!!
Sad really........but I will try very hard NOT to fly Boeing.......
No that was the shitty piece of Russian quality control on a Russian segment. Nothing to do with Boeing.
There's enough actual shit to be hitting Boeing with at the moment (the Calamity Capsule, for example), no need to make up fake bollocks.
And if you truly believe an astronaut would drill a hole in their own spaceship, then you Sir, are a moron...
Don't know. Rear bulkhead repairs on a 747 that were done badly lead to a Japan Airlines 747 flying into the side of a mountain, so it'd definitely something to be done properly.
It would be pretty bad for Boeing if it were found that in-service aircraft had actually been damaged beyond repair during construction in the factory. I suspect that, knowing that, Boeing will find a way of repairing them no matter what.
This happened too in 787. Rememer all those battery problems? Not long afterwards an Ethiopean Airlines 787 caught fire at Heathrow airport, thanks to a lighting battery that let go and set fire to the rear of the aircraft. It looked terrible, like a complete write-off. However it seemed that Boeing were totally determined not to suffer a hull-loss to a failed battery, and did what is probably one of the biggest ever carbon fibre repairs ever. Bear in mind that the 787 fuselage is made out of enormous one-piece CF barrels, and the rear one of these had burned away at the top/rear. Not just a simple patching job.
This is all you really need to know about he sad demise of Boeing.
It started 25yrs ago ... but its just taken this long for those particular birds to come home to roost.
Brilliant book of investigative journalism from a Seattle native.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Flying-Blind-Tragedy-Fall-Boeing-ebook/dp/B08SGZ3916
