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More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

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Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#151
post #53
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is irrational. Since November 2001, there has been one death aboard a major airline operating in the U.S.[1]. That was a Southwest flight where an entire engine self-destructed. It was an issue with the CFM engine, Not with anything Boeing did. You might choose to include one more. An Asiana flight tumbled end over end after arriving short at SFO. Everyone survived the crash, but a passenger was killed when an eme…

Your own link doesn't back that up. A Delta Connections commuter flight killed 49 in Lexington, KY in 2013.

Also Colgan Air 3407, a codeshare for United, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgan_Air_Flight_3407, which crashed with no survivors in February 2009.

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#153

I do get the impression that the current Boeing CEO is attempting to turn the culture around, to a more "admit the problem and fix it" kind of attitude. The problem is that, if you are doing this after many years of "deny the problem and ship it", the number of apparent problems is actually going to go up for a while. I wonder if Boeing's customers and shareholders will have enough patience for him to complete the tr…

For what it's worth, in "Flying Blind", the book written about the first round of 737 max issues, the author has a pretty negative outlook on Calhoun as being mostly aligned with Muilenburg. > Robison, however, finds little reason for optimism. While Boeing has now accepted responsibility for one of the crashes as part of a settlement, no one at the company besides Forkner has been charged with a crime. Muilenburg wa…

Ya, Calhoun has been there four years already, so he's had plenty of time. Also, he decided to continue outsourcing to Spirit despite Spirit's known issues. Everything in your post indicates he's not inclined to make fundamental alterations to the post Stonecipher strategy which fits with all this.

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing needs to dump the CEO and install someone from an engineering lineage if they want to build their reputation back. An engineering company run by a longtime manager with a background in accounting is in large part how Boeing got here. Fire the guy and get someone with a technical background in there.

> Boeing needs to dump the CEO and install someone from an engineering lineage if they want to build their reputation back. I'd argue they need an effective engineering culture , and leadership that enables and values and fights for it, not a former-engineer figurehead. Good engineers within Boeing need to be enabled to do their job properly, within normal business constraints, and bad engineers need to be removed. T…

Move headquarters back to Puget Sound. It’s the only way.

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#155
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Musk is an interesting standards bearer for sanity. Think what you will about Musk, but SpaceX has completely revolutionized space travel and will be in the history books a hundred years from now.

And dozens of his projects have utterly failed. Remember The Boring Company? Hyperloop? The-site-formerlly-and-forever-known-as-Twitter-until-Musk-ruined-it? Throw an unlimited supply of darts and you're going to get a few bulleyes. Doesn't make you the worlds greatest dart's player.

> And dozens of his projects have utterly failed. Remember The Boring Company? Hyperloop? The-site-formerlly-and-forever-known-as-Twitter-until-Musk-ruined-it?

You say dozens and name two, one of which (X) is still up and running with active user engagement. Many people have thrown darts, none have developed self-landing reusable rockets and outcompeted ULA or developed a satellite based global internet provider. Not even Google at its peak was able to come up with anything better than Project Loon. I’ll concede there’s a little luck in every venture, but what Musk and SpaceX have accomplished is well beyond luck and quite remarkable.

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#156
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just about safety, it's about the flying experience and environmental responsibility. If you think "flying sucks" it's probably because you've flown in a 737 and similar (A320) aircraft. Many people find it highly stressful to fly in a 737-class airplane because the curve of the fuselage is circular. My neck starts to lock up just thinking about it, but you don't have the same problem riding in a car, bus, o…

> domestic flyers in the U.S. deserve something better than a 1967 design. Or maybe the market has spoken. Similar to how people complain about lack of legroom but proceed to book with airlines that have less legroom because it's cheaper, they're happy to fly on 1967 design planes to save a buck.

Airlines can just pass higher operating costs onto customers rather than making a capital investment that would make service more economical in the long term.

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#157
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to wonder if they're using this opportunity to dump all of their known bad production issues so they don't get sued for misleading shareholders later. The kind of stuff that wouldn't have ever come to light if the door hadn't fallen off that Portland flight. Maybe it's even something they can try to spin as improving quality control practices for brand rehabilitation. Or maybe I am just imagining things.

There is a pretty good chance (about 100%) that after that door fell off they are reviewing a lot of stuff and that is why this has been found, not so they can 'dump all of their known bad production issues' but simply because they are becoming aware of them and are legally mandated to report those issues. > Or maybe I am just imagining things. Quite possibly. I'm as cynical as they come but I'm actually happy that t…

> I'm as cynical as they come but I'm actually happy that they report these issues and I hope that they will do this exhaustively until they have a proper inventory of what went wrong so they have a chance to really repair both the issues and their culture, and hopefully before there is another incident.

Sure, me too.

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#158
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes the fantasy that an IC can just magic this all away. This would likely result in a CEO with no pull and a CFO that had all the hard power to call the shots. The reality seems to be, for some reason, building profitable and safe planes in America is becoming increasingly difficult. A company most be able to do both: build a quality and safe product and make a margin. It can’t exist without revenue. I’m guessing…

No matter how profitable building good planes is, building slightly worse planes that are bought in equal numbers is more profitable. The profit maximizing move is to lower quality until sales suffer more than profitability is increased. And if you have a strong reputation, and feedback cycles on product quality are long, lower quality might take a long time to actually be noticeable in sales. Boeing profits and sale…

The trick is building worse planes may result in future costs to fix the problems. It's much less costly to bolt the door plug in before it falls out.

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, in "Flying Blind", the book written about the first round of 737 max issues, the author has a pretty negative outlook on Calhoun as being mostly aligned with Muilenburg. > Robison, however, finds little reason for optimism. While Boeing has now accepted responsibility for one of the crashes as part of a settlement, no one at the company besides Forkner has been charged with a crime. Muilenburg wa…

Ya, Calhoun has been there four years already, so he's had plenty of time. Also, he decided to continue outsourcing to Spirit despite Spirit's known issues. Everything in your post indicates he's not inclined to make fundamental alterations to the post Stonecipher strategy which fits with all this.

Calhoun's been at Boeing as a Director since 2009. Dude's definitely seen some things.

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Boeing’s unforced errors have not killed many people on US soil is no excuse for shoddy manufacturing practices. We should no more accept plane doors falling off due to mismanagement, than we should accept railroad cars derailing due to mismanagement. Boeing made several billion dollars a year of profits for ten years prior to Covid, but failed to reinvest it in their manufacturing practices to prevent unforced…

It is absolutely no excuse for these issues. At the same time, not flying on Boeing planes out of fear of safety is completely irrational.

One needs to ignore a lot of stuff to believe these newer planes are very safe, so I'm not sure if it's completely irrational.

You have a long list of fairly recent problems... the stuff around MCAS that killed people, misdrilled holes, loose or missing bolts, debris inside fuel tanks, etc.

And the reason why no one died on the Alaska flight was more luck than anything. I'm not sure if everyone would be alive today had it happened later in the flight when some people remove their seat belt.

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