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United finds loose bolts on plug doors during 737 Max 9 inspections

theaircurrent.com

611–620 of 773 posts

Re: United finds loose bolts on plug doors during 737 Max 9 inspections

#611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a guy holding the drill CAN cause this issue, that means there's ALSO a drill calibration issue, a bolt inspection issue, an inspection recordkeeping and doublechecking issue, etc. Humans make mistakes. The whole point of modern manufacturing is to make products better than any human can make them, by layering processes and procedures to catch those mistakes before they get out the door, and continually improve th…

Spot on, this is exactly the problem: you can't have 'just loose bolts', it's a whole raft of other issues.

In The Design of Everyday Things Donald Norman mentions the swiss-cheese model, whereby multiple layers in a process need to align correctly for a mistake to lead all the way to an incident: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model

Re: United finds loose bolts on plug doors during 737 Max 9 inspections

#612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The management imported from McDonnel-Douglas? The same management that drove it to ground? The fish rots from the head. And these constant problems sure do sound like a new company culture of cutting corners instead engineering first.

[flagged]

I heard a similar story regarding Boeing’s North Charleston factory due to that push, it leads to some Boeing customers request the last inspection done in the Everett factoryinstead before delivery. My bigger worry is 787 as apparently it is moving to SC.

Re: United finds loose bolts on plug doors during 737 Max 9 inspections

#613
post #371
post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine the quality of the manufacturing and QA / final inspection to have that kind of issue.

I expect even at its worst, software development could learn a lot from aircraft QA. Especially since most shops have pretty much tossed professional career QA out the window.

At it's best, software QA and related methods should be equal to airline manufacture.

Think of railway signalling systems, control-by-wire bits of modern cars, medical equipment, etc. Where the design of the software is formally proven, and the implementation verified to ensure it fits the design.

Re: United finds loose bolts on plug doors during 737 Max 9 inspections

#614

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these false door panels are not. It's not a control surface, but it is a "moving part." That's what's baffling to me, that they spent a lot of effort building this hinge and pin roller system, and designed the door to hinge open up to 15 degrees. It makes me wonder if there's maintenance procedures that at some point would require the operation of that door to successfully complete. Otherwise, the mechanism itself…

It's built to be an actual emergency exit. It needs to be usable depending on how many passengers the interior is configured for. So it has all of the door bits there. Maybe some parts like the emergency escape slide are not installed. e: I should be clear that it's not usable as an emergency exit, as configured by Alaska. However the operator could choose to activate it later and install a usable exit.

This is not true. It's designed to be opened when inspecting the fuselage for corrosion or stress cracks at the opening. To open it you have to remove the interior plastic panels and undo the 4 bolts that this accident is about

Re: United finds loose bolts on plug doors during 737 Max 9 inspections

#615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The management imported from McDonnel-Douglas? The same management that drove it to ground? The fish rots from the head. And these constant problems sure do sound like a new company culture of cutting corners instead engineering first.

[flagged]

“This aircraft failed because Boeing is too woke” is a pretty amazing take, I’ll grant you that.

Re: United finds loose bolts on plug doors during 737 Max 9 inspections

#616
post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The management imported from McDonnel-Douglas? I've heard this since they killed hundreds of people in the two crashes. Why are they being protected? They have names.

It's not necessarily a question of persons (and the CEO did a resigned after the Max crashes). It's more a question of culture (oversimplifying, sales vs engineering) and this is harder to change most of the time. Apparently, even the Max debacle was not enough.

> and the CEO did a resigned after the Max crashes

That was a funny one. They replaced him with his chairman... hence, more of the same.

Re: United finds loose bolts on plug doors during 737 Max 9 inspections

#617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The expense for retraining pilots falls on the airline. Retraining has its own problems. No matter how well retraining is done, pilots still make mistakes from doing the right thing for the previous plane that is the wrong thing for the one they are currently flying. Adjusting airplanes to fly the same way is a major safety advantage.

If a pilot can't be expected to maintain the pitch of a plane on takeoff, he has no business flying ANYTHING. What Boeing did (and is STILL doing) is expect pilots to know or remember obscure NON-PILOTAGE (and in the case of MCAS, BURIED) trivia to prevent disaster. Now... what's the more-responsible approach? Expect pilots to pilot, or expect them to recall an ever-growing list of workarounds to incompetent system d…

The whole MCAS was just unnecessary feature (bug fix). Without it the plane would have worked just fine. The pilots would just have had to go some amount of training scenarios to get the certification on how the MAX plain flies.

Re: United finds loose bolts on plug doors during 737 Max 9 inspections

#618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The management imported from McDonnel-Douglas? The same management that drove it to ground? The fish rots from the head. And these constant problems sure do sound like a new company culture of cutting corners instead engineering first.

[flagged]

this site, yikes. In summary, we don’t know what happened yet, but you assume it’s the direct and obvious outcome of ? And that ?

In that’s the game, then, I suspect the Spotify team was onsite to record a behind the scenes at Boeing podcast, and in the process replaced the locking nuts with Joe Rogan stickers.

Re: United finds loose bolts on plug doors during 737 Max 9 inspections

#619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

“This aircraft failed because Boeing is too woke” is a pretty amazing take, I’ll grant you that.

"because they were prioritizing other factors instead of competency"

That's not a particularly outlandish take, and the other factor is orthogonal

Re: United finds loose bolts on plug doors during 737 Max 9 inspections

#620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The management imported from McDonnel-Douglas? The same management that drove it to ground? The fish rots from the head. And these constant problems sure do sound like a new company culture of cutting corners instead engineering first.

[flagged]

The MD merger is the reason quality nosedives. Management is responsible for ensuring a robust quality culture. If (if!) a few DEI trainings are enough to destroy that quality culture, then something is very wrong at Boeing anyway, and it was only a question of time.

But of course, the parent comment isn't made in good faith. The 737 MAX crashes happened end 2019-2020, and Boeing didn't release its first-ever diversity report more than a year later: https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2021/04/30/boeing...

As for why it didn't nosedive immediatly after the merger, these kind of bankruptcies tend to happen "Gradually, Then Suddenly".

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