Unexpected cracking found on critical Boeing 737 Next Generation part • Hacker News Board

Re: Unexpected cracking found on critical Boeing 737 Next Generation part

#51

Post by elif » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 10:30 PM UTC

sverhagen wrote: post #33

ReptileMan wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the questions I want to see answered in stimulation not in real life. There is a lot of discretionary flying, but there are place whose connection to the world is plane. You will also have route cancelations. And there will be social costs along the economical as well. All in all unpleasant situation. It will be good to have someone that understands airplanes to comment on how severe the issue is and p…

>There is a lot of discretionary flying, but there are place whose connection to the world is plane. Are you talking about far away towns in, say, Alaska? Those may not be the kind of planes for which we're discussion scarcity, but alas. Me and my colleagues were flown for training from Oregon to one of our offices in California, this week. So was the trainer. There's still a lot of room to optimize the need for air…

The Galapagos comes to mind. The entire economy is premised upon commercial jets landing there hourly. Puerto Rico, Bahamas, etc. Even Continental but remote tourism-driven places like Costa Rica.

I think the price response to a shortage of planes would be super-linear, given that those who fly regularly are not representative of the average economic means. Prices would more than double.

Re: Unexpected cracking found on critical Boeing 737 Next Generation part

#52

Post by kube-system » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #29

>> We're told this is very much an ongoing investigation, and that it's unclear whether or not this is a widespread issue. TL;DR: a crack in a critical part was found in one plane during a routine inspection. But you wouldn't know that unless you read all the way to the middle of the article. This is a non-story engineered to create outrage and clicks.

> Another source tells us Boeing quickly reported the issue with the single plane to the FAA last week, and now more planes with similar cracking have been found.

Re: Unexpected cracking found on critical Boeing 737 Next Generation part

#53

Post by oplav » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 10:31 PM UTC

m0zg wrote: post #29

>> We're told this is very much an ongoing investigation, and that it's unclear whether or not this is a widespread issue. TL;DR: a crack in a critical part was found in one plane during a routine inspection. But you wouldn't know that unless you read all the way to the middle of the article. This is a non-story engineered to create outrage and clicks.

>> Another source tells us Boeing quickly reported the issue with the single plane to the FAA last week, and now more planes with similar cracking have been found.

Looks to be more than just one plane.

Re: Unexpected cracking found on critical Boeing 737 Next Generation part

#54

Post by nutcracker46 » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 10:35 PM UTC

Stick a pickle fork in Boeing; it is cooked.

Re: Unexpected cracking found on critical Boeing 737 Next Generation part

#55

Post by ceejayoz » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 10:40 PM UTC

samstave wrote: post #48

ceejayoz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm indicates 79 fatal 737 incidents with about a quarter billion flights under their belt. https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/b-52-safety.htm indicates 76 B-52s destroyed in accidents across 7.5 million flight hours. They're not perfectly comparable sets of numbers, but the B-52s look substantially riskier on a per-hour basis.

Thank you for this! 76 machines destroyed, carrying (obstensibly) nukes.. from 7.5mm flight miles == .00001% risk of failure. Did I do the math correctly? With ZERO nuke detonations... And a flight carcass of nearly 70 years old now???

All aviation is pretty damned safe.

> With ZERO nuke detonations...

Chalk this up to the design of the weapons themselves, not the B-52s. It's actually quite difficult to have an accidental nuclear detonation.

> And a flight carcass of nearly 70 years old now???

Today's B-52s are largely Ships of Theseus. Not much in them is going to be original any more.

Re: Unexpected cracking found on critical Boeing 737 Next Generation part

#56

Post by ChuckNorris89 » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 10:44 PM UTC

gmueckl wrote: post #38

varjag wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One hour flights are fairly typical in most of the world. Yes, also in progressive Europe.

Yes, they exist in Europe, they ban be dirt cheap, executed by companies run by penny pinchers and mostly superfluous. Going by train is in many cases faster because it gets you from city center toncity center without any airport overhead. But it also costs a multiple of a plane ticket, which should not be the case.

Yes but the cases when taking such short flights instead of trains make sense is when you commute form a small city airport to an international hub for a layover to an international flight and that saves you lots of time as you've already been through security once and you're already inside the airport fairly close to your departure gate so you can arrive pretty close time wise to your next flight as opposed to having to commute from the train station to the airport and be there ~2 hours before the flight to clear security and all.

Nobody takes the plane for 30 min to get from city center to city center, we do it because we have to catch another flight from that city's airport and it's quicker by plane.

Re: Unexpected cracking found on critical Boeing 737 Next Generation part

#57

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 10:44 PM UTC

burnte wrote: post #41

brians wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not subjective; you just made it up. For one thing, B-52s seem to have substantial safety externalities for nearby cities.

>That’s not subjective; you just made it up. That's the definition of subjective. You're thinking objective.

That's not the definition of subjective. When GP says "That’s not subjective; you just made it up." it means that talking about airplane safety (which can obviously be objectively measured with things like crashes per landing/takeoff, crashes per mile, etc.) with the moniker "it's subjectively the safest" doesn't make any sense.

It would be like saying "That plane is subjectively the heaviest" or "Today is subjectively the hottest day on record" - no, it's not subjective, you just made it up.

Re: Unexpected cracking found on critical Boeing 737 Next Generation part

#58

Post by my_first_acct » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 10:51 PM UTC

samstave wrote: post #48

ceejayoz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm indicates 79 fatal 737 incidents with about a quarter billion flights under their belt. https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/b-52-safety.htm indicates 76 B-52s destroyed in accidents across 7.5 million flight hours. They're not perfectly comparable sets of numbers, but the B-52s look substantially riskier on a per-hour basis.

Thank you for this! 76 machines destroyed, carrying (obstensibly) nukes.. from 7.5mm flight miles == .00001% risk of failure. Did I do the math correctly? With ZERO nuke detonations... And a flight carcass of nearly 70 years old now???

A handy website [1] notes at least a couple of B-52 nuclear incidents. In 1961, a B-52 carrying nuclear weapons broke up in mid-air over North Carolina; the bombs did not detonate [2]. In 1966, a B-52 crashed due to a mid-air collision with a refueling tanker over Spain. In this case, the non-nuclear explosives in two of the nuclear weapons detonated, scattering radioactive material [3].

So I would not say "zero nuke detonations". And your .00001% failure rate (I didn't check your math) is not meaningful unless compared to the failure rate of other aircraft. The B-52 is impressive, but not flawless.

[1] http://www.atomicarchive.com/Almanac/Brokenarrows_static.sht...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1966_Palomares_B-52_crash

Re: Unexpected cracking found on critical Boeing 737 Next Generation part

#59

Post by dralley » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 10:55 PM UTC

samstave wrote: post #48

ceejayoz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm indicates 79 fatal 737 incidents with about a quarter billion flights under their belt. https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/systems/b-52-safety.htm indicates 76 B-52s destroyed in accidents across 7.5 million flight hours. They're not perfectly comparable sets of numbers, but the B-52s look substantially riskier on a per-hour basis.

Thank you for this! 76 machines destroyed, carrying (obstensibly) nukes.. from 7.5mm flight miles == .00001% risk of failure. Did I do the math correctly? With ZERO nuke detonations... And a flight carcass of nearly 70 years old now???

B52s were used for conventional bombing plenty often during their service lifetime.

And they came damn close to accidentally detonating on American soil on occasion.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash#La...

Re: Unexpected cracking found on critical Boeing 737 Next Generation part

#60

Post by samstave » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 11:10 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #57

burnte wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That’s not subjective; you just made it up. That's the definition of subjective. You're thinking objective.

That's not the definition of subjective. When GP says "That’s not subjective; you just made it up." it means that talking about airplane safety (which can obviously be objectively measured with things like crashes per landing/takeoff, crashes per mile, etc.) with the moniker "it's subjectively the safest" doesn't make any sense. It would be like saying "That plane is subjectively the heaviest" or "Today is subjective…

I completely disagree with this. I subjectively make my statement based on that data I have available to ME*

Objective would be I have failure data in front of me.

Now, I personally have heard of far fewer B-52 accidents in my lifetime, and the plane is almost double mine, and as such, I deem it safe as heck.

Also, guess what - B-52s carry nukes not passengers.

How many nukes have gone off for a B-52 crash vs how many lives have been lost via commercial crashes?

Also, I come from a nuke family, and an air force family. My grandfather was one of the designers of Hanford and my brother was head of the tenth medical wing and flight surgeon to the joint chiefs, and my dad best friend was sec of energy... in charge of nukes...

So, I stand by my words.