Is it just me or a lot of big names in various industries are dropping the ball on QA? From exploding Nike shoes to crashing Beings, to faulty MacBooks.
Hmm.. all made in China
Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
131–140 of 368 posts
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#132Any whistle blowers in Boeing who could come out & share facts on how employees of Boeing are reacting to these incidents?
Do we think they're all in conspiracy overdrive mode looking for ways to cover their asses and burning all the evidence?
Chances are better that (assuming they don't already know the answer) that a bunch of them are working long hours trying to find the cause and solution to this problem. I imagine every flight simulator at Boeing's disposal is being used to analyze this from every angle.
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would require more evidence than it sounds like there is. And that's assuming that you subscribe to the motivations put forward in this article. I generally follow Hanlon's razor - "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence". I have a hard time believing that a cover-up in Boeing was orchestrated over several years by a group of people all who didn't care about loss of life.…
> "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence" I don't see that that should be applied as a rule of thumb to investigations involving civil liability and possible criminal liability. We have a situation where there are literally piles of dead bodies, massive civil and possible criminal liability, and key evidence goes missing when in the possession of the party that was in the end…
> Never underestimate the power of a cliched thought terminating pithy statement.
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#134I don't understand the logistics but designing a new valve was so difficult that they decided to put their brand name on the line for years?
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
They write such great reports. Technical, but also accessible. I'm not a pilot and I find them interesting to read.
Agreed, the CSB has great reports too.
This!
The CSB has the most amazing youtube channel where they outline accidents including 3d renderings. I find it so fascinating how these accidents happen.
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#136I worked under a CEO who had worked at Boeing before, and he said before that at times there was a number that a life was worth when making decisions while he worked there, in a conversation about diminishing returns in quality. Now I’m not sure if he meant that literally and there’s a number in the Boeing employee handbook, but he had a point. He said they could make planes cost twice as much and save a few lives th…
this is a huge discussion and if seen with a cynic eye would lead to troubling results. For example telling someone to pay more for this flight so that is 1/100000 chance of dying becomes 1/1000001 .. this is a field of psychology even. Put this mixed with capitalism, profit etc. Not taking sides. I just find this extremely complex
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
They write such great reports. Technical, but also accessible. I'm not a pilot and I find them interesting to read.
Agreed, the CSB has great reports too.
And their videos are excellent too: https://www.youtube.com/user/USCSB
Think all the investigation shows on Discovery, but with zero filler.
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct. Not to play psychic, but I'm assuming the original poster chose to share this as a friendly reminder that as a general rule, Boeing does not have a track record of placing human lives above their continued corporate profitability. "If Boeing knew about a problem with the MCAS, they'd have told the FAA and corrected it" is not a hypothesis in-line with their past behavior, should anyone be holding that hypoth…
I don't understand this. Each of these scandals is a mortal danger to Boeing. One of them might someday finally put it out of business. Whereas if they reacted to each case by being committed to finding the problem whatever it is, they could greatly reduce their liability by reducing the ultimate number of fatalities due to any one problem.
Boeing had this scandal and is still here. In that sense, they're demonstrably not mortal dangers.
It's normalization of risk writ large over corporate lifecycle timescales. "Should we report this? Well, the last time we got 200 people killed, nobody went to jail, so..."
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed, the CSB has great reports too.
And their videos are excellent too: https://www.youtube.com/user/USCSB Think all the investigation shows on Discovery, but with zero filler.
I like the idea of a Discovery like channel ... but full those videos.
Discovery, the History Channel, used to be full of random filler like old military equipment videos that were just videos from demos and trade shows and someone who sounded like they were reading out of a Jane's book or something ;)
Same went for some disaster / failures videos done by (I forget who) some risk / aftermath assessment company.
I miss those days.
Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really. Aerospace is a very tight-knit oligarchy where the devil you know is entirely too often (historically shown to be) leagues better than the devil you don't. A company ceasing to be a Boeing customer over an issue like this runs the risk that the next company they work with is just as bad in different ways, but now they're ways the company's ground technicians are wholly unfamiliar with.
It may be an oligopoly, but it is in the airlines interests to keep them on their toes. If you're an airline of any size it would make sense to have relationships with multiple manufacturers, for the reasons you describe. They can decrease their Boeing orders and increase competitors orders, to maintain relationships and punish Boeing. If you single source your your fleet, you increase the odds of something like this…
I agree with your reasoning and I'm surprised that companies like Southwest seem to aim for monoculture.
... unless the risk and cost model they're looking at is that having multiple planes in the fleet increases the risk that spare parts are depleted for a particular model, ground crews aren't sufficiently cross-trained and errors on their part make flights less safe on average than in a monoculture, etc.