United finds loose bolts on plug doors during 737 Max 9 inspections • Hacker News Board

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

#741

Post by mike50 » Tue, Jan 09, 2024, 11:18 PM UTC

avidphantasm wrote: post #398

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More rampant speculation! Some quotes from this article: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/spirit-ae... > As part of the production process, Spirit builds fuselages for 737s and sends them by train with the special door assembly “semi-rigged,” one of the people said. > “They are fitted but not completed," the person said. > At its Renton, Washington, plant, Boeing typically removes the pop-out, or no…

I’m no MBA or aerospace engineer, but why sub-contract the fuselage? I get subbing engines, since engine designs can be used on/adapted to other (possibly non-Boeing) airframes, hence opening up economies of scale, etc. But the fuselage is most of the plane by mass and integral to the design of everything else. If you don’t like making fuselages, maybe you should get out of the aircraft business. Was this just a unio…

Boeing sold the division that makes the fuselages. Could have been for any number of reasons.

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

#742

Post by samstave » Tue, Jan 09, 2024, 11:58 PM UTC

samstave wrote: post #719

jacquesm wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd lose your money. The plug is inserted from the outside and retained with fasteners against cabin pressure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontrolled_decompression Look at causes of explosive decompression - look at the mass increase to add windows' struct infra to weight and mass to a plane, look at explosive bolts for emergencies * Explosive decompression is the most dangerous, and can cause severe injuries or death. It is caused by a sudden and catastrophic failure of the pressure vessel, such as a window blowing out o…

>>If a singular bolt was faulty - it wouldnt have been an explosive decomp

You dont know this about me. My Grandfather was the primary nuke designer behind Hanford.

Handed me my first engineering design book before I was 6 years old.

I drew every single design in that book before I was 7.

When I went into HighSchool (I am smoothing over a bunch of details) I had already drawn that book left-to-right.) (ABC's Of Autocad} and I went back and forth.

I am 2nd in the nation of the Cad Olympympics.

Might sound stupid - but imagine that in 1992.

3 Hour test finished in 35 minutes;

I designed the datacenters you feed off you dorks.

I was the principle designer for so many you touched.

I fucking hate how much so many people dont get cred.

Just look at Tiny. - We couldnt ever jump out of a plane without Tiny. A 5' woman fearless who invented the parachute....

Look at Kent (the mips designer) - youll never know about him - but why we use the word "fabric" on networking... (that you may never know... It was he and me on ... (he had a sexual deviency proclivity that was bad for computing vcs) - but when he was at MIPS we designed slot level rack computing in 1996

(If anyone wants to refute this, they can refute my claims of being aware of googles early mother board designs,etc...

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

#743

Post by samstave » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 12:07 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #242

samstave wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My money is on the window. It was compromised and then the plug/bolts/flanges structure was ripped out of the body.

You'd lose your money. The plug is inserted from the outside and retained with fasteners against cabin pressure.

Lets not forget when you attempted to sell me a simple domain for $75,000 just because you thought it was such.

We will go with your over-valuated opinion on [who gives a shit]

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

#744

Post by mikrotikker » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 12:22 AM UTC

goku12 wrote: post #669

rvba wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like the installer did their job poorly and the QA rubber stamped it without checking. Are the QAs required to make photos to prove that they did their job? Like those food delivery people. Alternative is wrong bolts, or sabotage. But more possible - one lazy QA ghosting.

They're finding problems on multiple aircrafts. This isn't one QA. In fact, forget QA missing this. Bolts on aerospace systems are supposed to be properly torqued and arrested in most cases. How do the assembly people make such big mistakes? In my experience, no one puts their job on the line over silly reasons like this, unless there is intense pressure (unrealistic deadlines, heavy workload and poor working conditi…

Perhaps DEI hires that don't have to do their full duties because expecting them to is racist or transphobic or something stupid and they'll be protected by their manager who got shafted in his last performance review because he had too many "white males" on staff.

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

#745

Post by drtgh » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 12:37 AM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #735

roelschroeven wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here we are again, this misconception just won't die. In the 737 MAX, the only way to disable auto-trim also disables powered trim (the thumb buttons). As grand parent says, at a certain step in the sequence it was not physically possible for a pilot to trim the plain back to stability manually. It simply can't be done. In the 737 ng, there was a button to do just that. That would have been useful. And that's even ig…

The thumb buttons would override MCAS. But then you'd have to disable the trim motors and trim manually (by hand-cranking a wheel). That part was not clearly understood by the pilots, because they were not told about MCAS.

How are pilots expected to disable a malfunctioning MCAS in an emergency, and balance manually by trial and error the aerodynamic extravagances of the angle of attack of such unbalanced aircraft in the middle of procedures?

The user of the parent comment is remarking about time.

The aircraft can be certified without MCAS?

By what I read, MCAS is there for to avoid entering into an aerodynamic stall when the aircraft is approaching a high angle of attack, due it's using larger motors for what classical 737 was designed for. It's balancing an unbalanced aircraft using software to repeatedly adjust the horizontal stabilizer.

It is not my field, but I'm not even sure if it should be called to trim, it sounds like a euphemism for what's going on.

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

#746

Post by coderenegade » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 1:06 AM UTC

fzingle wrote: post #552

vegetablepotpie wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it make sense to degrade the performance of good software teams because bad software teams exist? Ideally we’d always have good software teams, but in the real world sometimes you have to build software with bad teams. Leaders have options, they can do things like reduce scope, increase budget, increase schedule, or full on abandon or cancel the project. These are all options available to leaders, but they requi…

> Does it make sense to degrade the performance of good software teams because bad software teams exist? Consider the classic statistic "most drivers think they are above average". I posit that the same is true of software teams, almost every team will self-assess as above average, i.e. good. Those teams will then imagine that, being good, they build quality into the process and very little verification QA is done. I…

Depending on the shape of the distribution, most drivers could be above average. Average doesn't imply 50th percentile, that's what the median is for. A minority of tremendously poor drivers could certainly mean that most drivers are in fact better than average, in the same way that my friends on average have more friends than I do.

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

#747

Post by dotancohen » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 2:06 AM UTC

caycep wrote: post #717

rob74 wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the shareholders like the management? Cutting corners to increase (short-term) profits is more popular with them than focusing on quality. And now that the company has been in the red consistently since 2019 ( https://www.statista.com/chart/20660/boeing-earnings-loss/ ), of course the answer has to be to lower costs even more wherever possible in order to return to profitability...

So should something as mission critical as an aircraft manufacturing co have some ownership/oversight that's not public shareholders? Give the NTSB a few seats on the board

Who do you think the NTSB are?

The NTSB is staffed with people familiar with the industry - it has to be. Thus, a significant portion of these people are former Boeing employees. And historically, many NTSB staff have gone to work for Boeing (and other industry giants) after their stint at the NTSB as well. It's not that large of an industry after all. This is known as the Revolving Door.

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

#748

Post by dotancohen » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 2:10 AM UTC

rob74 wrote: post #606

siva7 wrote: post #598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're joking but it's the real meaning conveyed to their customers, the airliners.

Yeah, that's why the leading low-fare airlines (Southwest, Ryanair) love it - so it's up to the customers to say that they no longer want to fly with an over 50 year old design that was initially a regional airplane but is now being used for transatlantic flights.

  > that was initially a regional airplane but is now being used for transatlantic flights.

And had its engines moved to an unstable location 50 years after the type first flew, necessitating software controls to compensate for which, paradoxically, are there so that the pilots do not need to train on the new aircraft's inherent flight characteristics yet should be disabled by the pilots under some emergency situations.

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

#749

Post by chx » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 2:13 AM UTC

thsksbd wrote: post #718

chx wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know US pilots have been warning about the same issues that led to the deathly crashes later but were ignored. The thing is, one part of US commercial aviation being so safe is a lot of pilots responsible for the jet airliners are ex-military. Someone mentioned Southwest Airlines Flight 1380, yup, captain Tammie Jo Shults was one of the first Navy female fighter pilots. Miracle on the Hudson? Sully Sullenberger wa…

Let's assume American pilots are gods. They were shouting that their crafts were unsafe. No matter how good they are and how prescient, that doesn't help them if the aircraft computer decides it's stalling, forces a nose down and they cant fight the controls. But, even if we assume omnipotence from these American pilot gods, and assume they can fly outside the bird and Superman-style catch it, they are still only 30%…

> forces a nose down and they cant fight the controls.

But that's not what happened. According to every report, it is possible to take back control, it's just very much not intuitive and the situation was confusing.

According to the Seattle Times

> However on both accident flights, the angle-of-attack sensor failure set off multiple alerts causing distraction and confusion from the moment of takeoff, even before MCAS kicked in.

> On the Ethiopian Airlines flight, for example, a “stick shaker” noisily vibrated the pilot’s control column throughout the flight, warning the plane was in danger of a stall, which it wasn’t; a computerized voice repeating a loud “Don’t sink!” warned that the jet was too close to the ground; a “clacker” making a very loud clicking sound signaled the jet was going too fast; and multiple warning lights told the crew that the speed, altitude and other readings on their instruments were unreliable.

You can find some of the US reports complaining about MCAS here https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/5766398/ASRS-Reports-... and it includes

> I manually positioned the thrust levers ASAP. This resolved the threat

Then there's

> B737 MAX First Officer reported that the aircraft pitched nose down after engaging autopilot on departure. Autopilot was disconnected and flight continued to destination

> I called "descending" just prior to the GPWS sounding "don't sink, don't sink." The Captain immediately disconnected the autopilot and pitched into a climb

Another

> Takeoff and climb in light to moderate turbulence. After flaps 1 to "up" and above clean "MASI up speed" with LNAV engaged I looked at and engaged A Autopilot. As I was returning to my PFD (Primary Flight Display) PM (Pilot Monitoring) called "DESCENDING" followed by almost an immediate: "DONT SINK DONT SINK!" I immediately disconnected AP (Autopilot) (it WAS engaged as we got full horn etc.) and resumed climb

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

#750

Post by mikewarot » Wed, Jan 10, 2024, 2:33 AM UTC

unethical_ban wrote: post #510

mikewarot wrote: post #447

At this point, I believe Boeing needs to suffer the corporate death penalty, because it no longer operates as a net benefit to the public. It needs to be dissolved, and its assets sold off. Criminal charges should be pursued to the maximum support of the law against all of the corporate officers. Those in the FAA and other oversight agencies who failed to properly oversee them should also be prosecuted. Failing the a…

I'll be charitable and assume you suggest "assets sold off" includes divisions to support existing planes and infrastructure.

Sure, let a more reputable company buy them intact. If there aren't any suitable purchasers, and it's important to national security, then nationalize it.