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FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

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Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#391

Post by hinkley »

majormajor wrote: post #346
hinkley wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an engineer who got fired for worrying publicly about the fire safety of the carbon fiber hulls during the 787 leadup. It turned out I worked in the same building he had, and I found his old office. Word is after he left they locked it up, like a crime scene. I think they were worried his whistleblowing would turn to leaks and I guess they thought his office would have some sort of evidence? It was an inter…

> It turned out I worked in the same building he had, and I found his old office. Word is after he left they locked it up, like a crime scene. I think they were worried his whistleblowing would turn to leaks and I guess they thought his office would have some sort of evidence? It was an interior office so no big loss real estate wise, but that was a super weird chapter. If they were worried about a lawsuit from him t…

I believe I was the only one who found it weird or noteworthy. But it was locked for years.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#392

Post by smcin »

shihab wrote: post #350
wkat4242 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched a documentary on Netflix recently that alleged that a lot of this change came from importing McDonnell Douglas management into Boeing after the acquisition. I wonder if the book concurs on that, I don't have time to read it right now. If this is the case I wonder if it could be reversible.

After seeng your comment, I just went ahead and watched the doc, and I frankly I find myself in a state of rage right now. From my limited understanding, I had this impression this was an engineering failure. And you know, when you have a complicated machine, sometimes shit happens. But it wasn't that at all. Boeing knew clearly what the dangers of MCAS system were, they went to great lengths to completely hide the p…

You have to view all US regulatory goings-on wrt Boeing through the lens of Airbus-Boeing/EU-US trade rivalry (plus China's COMAC as a new entrant).

Boeing is the US's largest exporter (defense + civilian), and also the 65th largest US stock overall. Any US regulator action against Boeing would affect all that, plus US stock markets. You have to wonder how independent the FAA head can afford to be from Congressional interference, in the current setup. In the US, the FAA head is appointed (or, in recent admins, left vacant) by the Senate.

Back in the 2018/9 first 737MAX scandal [0], it was the Canadian, EU and Chinese regulators which were more aggressive about investigating and grounding, meanwhile the US FAA dragged its feet on taking action against Boeing while its donees like Congressman Sam Graves (R-MO 6) [1] continued to blame foreign pilot training, which was dishonest and adding insult to injury.

PS consider also in 2020, Rep. Mike Garcia (R-CA 27) secretly sold $50K Boeing stock ahead of his committee's damning 737MAX report; then avoided election scrutiny by simply blowing the deadline to report the stock sale... When he finally did disclose the sale, it was two weeks after the 2020 general election votes were cast, and three days after Garcia declared victory. He won by 333 votes. [2]

There's some scrutiny of Congressmen insider-trading biotech/pharma stocks esp. which their own committees (gasp) regulate, but really not a lot of scrutiny on aerospace. [3] Compare to George Santos, who wasn't implicated in a coverup that actually killed hundreds of people.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings#2019

[1]: https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/sam-graves/s...

[2]: https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-rep-mike-garcia-secretly-s...

[3]: NYT 2022/09 : These 97 Members of Congress Reported Trades in Companies Influenced by Their Committees https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/13/us/politics/c...

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#393

Post by rtkwe »

acdha wrote: post #276
jes5199 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve heard variations on this story a few times, successful company swallows failing company and gets infected by failing-culture. Isn’t that what happened to Netscape?

Google bought DoubleClick in 2008. Pretty much everything they started after that point has failed because the focus has been on selling ads rather than building something normal people enjoy using.

On the other hand how much of the things Google has built/bought and grew today we enjoy could exist without the firehose of money that ads represented? I'm not sure Youtube happens without the ad money.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#395

Post by extractionmech »

101008 wrote: post #374
nerdjon wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have made the decision that unless I absolutely can’t avoid it I am avoiding Boeing for the near future entirely. But a 737 max is full no go for me no matter what the situation is. I will do multiple stops before stepping foot on one. Personally I fly exclusively JetBlue in the US and they use Airbus almost exclusively. They have a few of whatever that other brand is. No Boeing.

I have booked a 10 hours flight to NYC with Americna Airlines and I think the craft is a 772-boeing 777. Should it be OK? I am scared now...

The ancients reached for divination methods when reason failed them. You on the other hand can write a quick python script with a random number source in it.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#396

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

alphanumeric0 wrote: post #367

I've been following this story for a bit. I'm traveling to Mexico soon and the last leg is on a 737 MAX 9. I'm looking into contacting Aeromexico to see about changing flights to a different airplane.

I've been thinking the same thing.

Boeing is doubling down on its disgraceful behavior with shit like this: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boein...

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#397

Post by kazen44 »

ethbr1 wrote: post #152
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has there been any push to break up Boeing?

The problem with breaking up Boeing is Airbus. Nowadays, to realistically restore competiveness in an industry, you'd have to coordinate a worldwide breakup of similarly-integrated competitors.

which will never happen. Airbus is a pan european political project asmuch as a competitor to boeing. (also, one which is hugely important for independence of european airtransport).

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#398

Post by AdrianB1 »

mihaaly wrote: post #361
akira2501 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird how you can be a "key manufacturer" yet "go bankrupt." Perhaps they should have just been auctioned off and other investors given an opportunity to create new lines of business out of the incompetent mess they had become. Taking the mess and wholesale buying it into another company and then keeping the management that created the problem in the first place is astronomically dumb.

What is even weirder to me is how could you be key manufacturer, go bankrupt, cause forcing a merger, then being promoted to Boeing to 'carry on!' ...

That is the definition of "failing upwards". It's the fashion of the past 50 years in business.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#399

Post by ShadowBanThis01 »

mrandish wrote: post #35
intunderflow wrote: post #2

At least Airbus seems to be competent in building safe aircraft. I would not be surprised though if Boeing's sales drop if the US government brings in tariffs or etc to try and force companies to buy their flying coffins.

> At least Airbus seems to be competent in building safe aircraft. Prior to new models released in the last ~10yrs-ish, Boeing made the safest planes in the sky (as measured by passenger miles). Many of those planes are still flying and still doing great. For me the interesting question is what changed in Boeing's design, testing and/or manufacturing processes which is apparently resulting in worse safety performance…

Read this: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-coming-boeing-bailout

One of the tenets of the article is that the breakdown of the once-impermeable wall between civilian and military divisions has resulted in disaster.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#400

Post by plorg »

krisoft wrote: post #271
derefr wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends. You can’t do e.g. crystallographical analysis of metals inside an engine if the engine is already put together. You have to trust your vendor that they built the engine correctly and checked the materials themselves. Or at most send auditors to the vendor.

> You can’t do e.g. crystallographical analysis of metals inside an engine if the engine is already put together. QA is not forced to only deal with assembled components. They can be embeded before the assembly process to QA the parts. For example they could peform crystallographical analysis on a subset of blades which are ready for assembly. They can also take apart a certain percentage of randomly selected engines…

Titanium fan disks, for example are all required to be inspected not just when installed but also at regular engine maintenance intervals. The inspection requires essentially complete disassembly of the fan (so it is required during particular engine maintenance events) followed by the application of penetrating dye and inspection at a narrow granularity.

This kind of maintenance and inspection actually can be required and performed, it just costs more time and money. If we want to be all market capitalism about this we could require tests necessary to ensure safety and let engineers, business people, and executives make decisions that price in the cost of dangerous and risky designs that require constant and invasive inspection and maintenance.

The only real difference with today would be regulators having a spine and/or more than pro forma power to enforce their decisions.

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