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

theaircurrent.com

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

#621
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.

The MD "moles" managed to change the culture of Boeing pretty quickly from engineering- to sales-first. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing... https://archive.ph/vy5p7

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

#622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bolts can get unscrewed with vibrations. So probably a design error, they did not use the correct type of bolt (the one with the safety pin).

Don't they have many ways to prevent bolts from unscrewing? I know at least a few by doing mechanical stuff on motorcycles, and it seems that other planes don't have such problems (at least not within 2 months after the last inspection).

There are washers, or thread lock glue, but it is still a question of correct execution: has the glue been applied? Was the glue batch used before its shelf life? Were the parts degreased before glue application?

Or did anyone decided to cut corners by using an old batch/skipping degreasing/not putting glue because they were late on delivery?

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

#623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of good stuff in this comment but I'm confused about the +/- 30% accuracy quote, in my experience it is relatively easy to reach sub 10% accuracy based on comparing different (good quality) torque wrenches against each other and against a calibrated one. Is there something I am missing here?

It's easy to calibrate torque wrenches to +/-5% of each other for _torque_. Calibrating a torque value to _tension_ of a fastener depends not only on the accuracy of the tool, but on materials, lubrication, temperature, process, etc. +/- 30% actually depends on having a good process. This only accounts for variations in tolerance, surface finish, etc. If you add lubricant under the fastener head when you are not supp…

Ah, I see your point now, I thought you meant it to be a direct cause of the torque wrenches themselves to be off. That makes good sense and aligns with my experience.

After manufacturing tension tends to drop over time so starting off with a '+' may not be entirely bad assuming it isn't extreme and that it doesn't cause the materials to deform more than permitted. The way I understand it: you apply a certain torque to a fastener in order to get to minimum levels of tension and friction (which still have an engineering reserve) on the fastener itself to guarantee a seal and to stop the fastener from coming loose, so under-tension is far worse than over-tension as long as the over-tension does not result in damage to fastener or the materials, and the allowed tolerances for over-tension are quite large (up to +150% or so normally before any permanent deformation would occur).

Unless you are using 'stretch' bolts which tend to elongate to accommodate any over-tension to end up with something quite close to the intended value. This stretching tends to be non-elastic so you'd have to replace a stretch bolt every time you unfasten it or there is a pretty good chance that it will break and/or that the threads under the ending position of the nut will have deformed so that they end up being stripped if you refasten them because the nut will travel a bit further on every refastening.

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

#624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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

GP appears to have a bee in their bonnet about wokeness (see post history). Unless they provide some evidence to support their take, I see no reason to take it seriously.

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

#625

I was responsible for safe for flight inspections on military aircraft and the photo included in that post is completely insane to me. Those bolts being loose (and they are BIG bolts) would mean multiple people in the installation process didn’t do their jobs, and signed their life on the line saying they did. When I did maintenance, there was someone (QA) there to witness every torqued bolt, inspect every safety wir…

Bolts can get unscrewed with vibrations. So probably a design error, they did not use the correct type of bolt (the one with the safety pin).

My understanding is that the bolts did have castle nuts and retaining wires in the design. So either they were incorrectly fitted, or the bolts themselves were under specified with regard to strength.

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

#626
post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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 diversi…

[deleted]

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

#627

There were only 2 possible causes of the incident, either the bolts had been replaced with bolts made from an inappropriate material, so they broke, or the bolts had not been assembled correctly, and they became loose. It appears that the latter is what happened. Perhaps those who did the assembly of the doors at Boeing did not use the right kind of washers that are needed to prevent the unscrewing of the bolts, or t…

You should contact Boeing with that information, I'm sure they'll find it invaluable.

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

#629
post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree. I’m regularly critical of Boeing Defense (particularly space contracts where I’m a huge Boeing skeptic), but I think people are pretty off base if they think Boeing is just completely incompetent. Airliner safety is insanely good. Just vast seas of competence, but when there’s a super rare failure, the incorrect impression people get is that Boeing (or Airbus) is just full of incompetency. Almost nothing tha…

So much THIS

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

#630
post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it means the torque specs were a little too low, or too high and stripped, or the bolt threading was defective/spec’d wrong. Or bad metallurgy. Or the spec didn’t specify which order to tighten the bolts, so which direction you go causes different outcomes. Lots of stuff is assembled consistently and carefully “wrong”, but as specified.

A recent example of your points: Toyota recently had wheels literally falling off cars due to mistakes like those.

Just because I'm a pedant and had to check, I can't find anything saying that wheels had actually fallen off, the recall was just that they could :D
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