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Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

bbc.com

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Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

#111

Post by ceejayoz »

service_bus wrote: post #67
xwvvvvwx wrote: post #42

How can I tell when I’m booking a flight if that plane will be boeing? I would like to avoid them (for the time being at least).

Most airlines typically try to purchase their fleet all from the same manufacturer if they can. There's a lot of additional cost that goes into maintenance, pilot training, pilot availability, etc. that has to be accounted for if you're mixing aircraft from different manufacturers. You can just look up the aircraft owned by an airline and it will give you a pretty good idea what to expect. You can also go on flight t…

> Most airlines typically try to purchase their fleet all from the same manufacturer if they can.

Most of the big ones have a mix of Boeing and Airbus (plus smaller Canadair/Embraer etc. ones for their regionals). Some of the budget airlines are notable for having a single aircrat or single manufacturer fleet - Ryan Air, Southwest, Jet Blue.

Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

#112

Post by xwdv »

MSeven wrote: post #110
torgian wrote: post #28

"""On the matter of parts being lost, in early 2017 a review by the Federal Aviation Administration upheld Mr Barnett's concerns, establishing that the location of at least 53 "non-conforming" parts was unknown, and that they were considered lost. Boeing was ordered to take remedial action""" That's not just bad; this is really, _really_ bad. In my eight years of the Navy, working on aircraft, parts and tool accounta…

Just last week i heard a story from an older friend about a fighter jet crash investigation he was involved in, where the cause basically was that an engineer wired down some bolts (as required) but trimmed the ends of the wires without recovering the trimmed part. That little piece eventually found its way into the main stick mechanics, causing enough resistance at the wrong moment, preventing the pilot from recover…

Do you think the pilot had any idea what happened or did he simply die never knowing?

Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

#113

Post by torgian »

maxden wrote: post #88
torgian wrote: post #28

"""On the matter of parts being lost, in early 2017 a review by the Federal Aviation Administration upheld Mr Barnett's concerns, establishing that the location of at least 53 "non-conforming" parts was unknown, and that they were considered lost. Boeing was ordered to take remedial action""" That's not just bad; this is really, _really_ bad. In my eight years of the Navy, working on aircraft, parts and tool accounta…

The US Air Force has/had problems with the KC-46 (767) being delivered from Boeing with FOD and tools left in the aircraft. So they could use some improvements in the quality control area.

I remember something similar happening to my squadron; an unopened can of oil was sitting in the engine compartment and we found it during our acceptance inspection.

We were all like, WTF. Photos were taken and sent; I really hope someone got fired.

This also led us to taking the aircraft completely apart and checking every nook and cranny. Found FOD and such in random places.

Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

#114

Post by lisper »

xwdv wrote: post #112
MSeven wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just last week i heard a story from an older friend about a fighter jet crash investigation he was involved in, where the cause basically was that an engineer wired down some bolts (as required) but trimmed the ends of the wires without recovering the trimmed part. That little piece eventually found its way into the main stick mechanics, causing enough resistance at the wrong moment, preventing the pilot from recover…

Do you think the pilot had any idea what happened or did he simply die never knowing?

Almost certainly the latter. :-(

Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

#115

Post by torgian »

kmlx wrote: post #34
torgian wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the meantime, people die, or have the potential to die. There's nothing preventing the FAA from proceeding with its own investigation, except for Boeing saying, "Nah, don't do that, we got our own thing going on here... btw, how's your bank account? Get that 250k yet?"

people always "have the potential to die" no matter what. i'd wait for the FAA before jumping to any conclusions, as unfashionable as this is in today's "speak first, think never" culture.

Then in this case, people have a higher potential to die while Boeing twiddles its thumbs and bars the FAA from running its own, separate investigation.

Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

#116

Post by Brakenshire »

londons_explore wrote: post #50
krn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems to me the FAA comes out of this looking terrible, even if the accusations are not grounded it seems absurd that no actions were taken to verify such a notice coming from a QA engineer in the company itself. This has been going for a long time now[1]: > Instead of being manufactured by the approved computerised process, Ducommun employees were cutting the parts by hand - literally using a felt-tipped pen to…

Cutting parts by hand isn't necessarily bad. But they should have gone to a design engineer and said "we're hand cutting these parts, and don't think we can get accuracy better than 1/32nd of an inch. Will that compromise the design?" The engineer will then run a few tests and simulations, green-light the change, a superior will check the maths, and they'll be good to go with making the part by hand.

These are core structural elements which rely on the quoted level of tolerance.

Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

#117

Post by martin_a »

xwdv wrote: post #112
MSeven wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just last week i heard a story from an older friend about a fighter jet crash investigation he was involved in, where the cause basically was that an engineer wired down some bolts (as required) but trimmed the ends of the wires without recovering the trimmed part. That little piece eventually found its way into the main stick mechanics, causing enough resistance at the wrong moment, preventing the pilot from recover…

Do you think the pilot had any idea what happened or did he simply die never knowing?

I think at the speeds we are talking about here, it's just an "the plane is not reacting to control input" and nothing else. Probably not enough time to think about what exactly went wrong (and will kill you in seconds).

Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

#118

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

mopsi wrote: post #80
iagovar wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say, as european, that all this storm of shit is good news for Airbus, but I hop on Boeing planes too, and I think competition is good news. Boeing is maybe too big to fail, but the reputation hit they are taking may lead to companies not buying their planes, thus pushing for least competition, which is bad news for everyone. Airbus being the kind of behemoth company it is, I am convinced that without Boeing'…

Airbus is no better. Investigation report about an incident in 2018 was just released: https://avherald.com/h?article=4b57c3dd/0000&opt=0 What happened there: wrong kind of oil was used in elevator and it went unnoticed because maintenance guides did not require any inspections of affected parts. Wrong oil caused delays in sensor triggering, which led to primary computers shutting down, believing that there was a pro…

> Airbus is no better.

Maybe, but the report you linked does not show that. The issue with Boeing is not that a plane crashed but that planes crashed despite earlier reports that people considered these planes unsafe. No such reports came out of Airbus about the A320 as far as I'm aware. Also the regulators did not delegate certification to Airbus.

Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

#119

Post by cmurf »

selectodude wrote: post #103
rimliu wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was not the problem with MAX in part due to Boeing trying to milk the old design?

More due to airlines demanding a new 737 instead of a new plane. Boeing already made a new 737, it’s called the 757 and nobody bought it.

This. The consternation and blame direct at Boeing, while appropriate, distracts from the real source of the problem: airlines. And Southwest Airlines was possibly one of the largest sources of the 737 MAX negative incentives, by having a contract reportedly require $1 million per airplane if a certain threshold of pilot training was exceeded. And to this day Southwest still doesn't think MAX specific simulator training is necessary for pilots.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-airplane-southwest...

https://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/news/2019/07/29/southwest...

That's especially incredible considering Southwest pilots' union says in a lawsuit that the 737 MAX is unsafe.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/in-sc...

Re: Boeing whistleblower raises doubts over 787 oxygen system

#120

Post by torgian »

MSeven wrote: post #110
torgian wrote: post #28

"""On the matter of parts being lost, in early 2017 a review by the Federal Aviation Administration upheld Mr Barnett's concerns, establishing that the location of at least 53 "non-conforming" parts was unknown, and that they were considered lost. Boeing was ordered to take remedial action""" That's not just bad; this is really, _really_ bad. In my eight years of the Navy, working on aircraft, parts and tool accounta…

Just last week i heard a story from an older friend about a fighter jet crash investigation he was involved in, where the cause basically was that an engineer wired down some bolts (as required) but trimmed the ends of the wires without recovering the trimmed part. That little piece eventually found its way into the main stick mechanics, causing enough resistance at the wrong moment, preventing the pilot from recover…

This is one of the reasons we never trimmed the ends of cut wire when we tied bolts down. We just twisted them and bent them inward. No excess cuts needed, and no tiny bits of FOD that you have to dig out.
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