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Alaska Airlines flight 1282 NTSB preliminary report [pdf]

ntsb.gov

171–180 of 285 posts

Re: Alaska Airlines flight 1282 NTSB preliminary report [pdf]

#171

What is the analogy of leaving out all bolts from that door? 'Forgetting' to put in any of the screws holding a gas tank in place in a car? 'Missing' all welds in one of a skyscraper's lower columns? An 'oversight' of providing rendundant instruments in an airplane with natural tendency to stall? What a hopeless shitshow is going on there behind the company gates that these kind of things can happen in succession? A…

> 'Missing' all welds in one of a skyscraper's lower columns?

Or just throwing the rebar in at random maybe? [0]

[0] https://www.gr-us.com/%E2%80%9Chorror-at-the-harmon%E2%80%9D...

Re: Alaska Airlines flight 1282 NTSB preliminary report [pdf]

#172
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an emergency you can do anything you think is necessary to address it. Source: I’m a private pilot.

You're conflating the right to do something with whether it is advisable to do something. Sure, you are ~allowed~ to begin an immediate descent in an emergency, but it is not a good idea considering from the pilot's perspective, the bang is most likely an engine going out and altitude is always your friend in this condition.

The person everyone is replying to stated:

> You can't leave your assigned altitude/trajectory without coordinating with ATC.

They didn't not say it was advisable, but heavily implied it was required.

Re: Alaska Airlines flight 1282 NTSB preliminary report [pdf]

#173

A very thorough preliminary report. I've worked for a long time in quality systems, and this is a perfect example of a systemic failure. They've got work being handed off between Boeing employees and 3rd party contractors with insufficient controls in place to verify that very basic tasks are being performed. I'd be curious to know how many non-conformances they typically see during assembly of a plane and whether ma…

I have tendency to hope for unrealistic things too. Not a reliable trait of mine, no. But in my clear moments I am afraid that much sooner will come the world peace and union of all nations and religions than unimaginative but determined bean counters learn from millions of catastrophes of the past and future to come giving up pushing their core value and first rule of 'take more, give less' into the infinity and bey…

I think the hope is people of good conscience stop being political cowards.

If you believe in quality engineering, but refuse to engage in the political and business dimensions of an enterprise to fight for that view, then you are just virtue signaling — since you’re refusing to engage with the tools needed to make it happen.

Re: Alaska Airlines flight 1282 NTSB preliminary report [pdf]

#175

> The flight crew reported that the cockpit door had opened during the depressurization event. In a revision to the Flight Crew Operations Manual, issued on January 15, 2024, Boeing confirmed that the door functioned as designed. Interesting for terrorists. Cause a rapid decompression, and get easy access to the cockpit.

Causing rapid decompression is quite hard. Opening a normal door is very difficult during flight except at very low altitudes.

Re: Alaska Airlines flight 1282 NTSB preliminary report [pdf]

#176
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, biggest new thing here is discussion of witness marks showing no evidence of the bolts, and photo before the rivet repair showing that at least two of the bolts were present, and photo after the rivet repair during installation of the insulation showing at least 3 bolts missing. So this all just serves to confirm that report, and what people suspected for a while; the bolts were just missing, removed for removin…

> removed for removing the door plug there was apparently two (identical) procedures -- one for "removing" the door plug and one for "opening" the door plug -- but only one of them actually called for paper-work and quality inspection after it is done. It seems they decided to "open" the door plug instead of "remove" it to work on the sealing issue? -- and thereefore documentary record of the work performed and inspe…

I don’t think there were two approved procedures.

I think there was an approved procedure (“removing the plug”) and a deviance from process, justified with ad hoc semantic games.

Re: Alaska Airlines flight 1282 NTSB preliminary report [pdf]

#177
post #19

Depressurization happened around 17:12:33 PST but the aircraft continued to climb until 17:13:41 PST, and the autopilot was configured for 10k ft at 17:13:56 PST. Why did it take the pilots a full minute to begin an emergency descent after the failure? I would expect that the nature of the accident would be clear nearly immediately, at least in the need to descend the aircraft.

Let's assume that they did change the course when they were sure they can do that.

Pilots can't look at the rear view mirror, and see the whole plane. Accident reports on engine malfunctions routinely mention that someone had to check their appearance through the passenger window, and relay that to the pilots. In case of a blast so severe that the door flies off, it is safer to assume the worst. Say, that part of the plane disintegrated because of sudden collision. In such conditions, indications on what works and what doesn't are probably really messy and unreliable, and there can be not enough means to control the plane properly. Lower the nose too much, and you might not be able to pull it up any more.

Pilots probably did checklists with one eye on the instruments to check that they were not losing speed, that angles were correct, autopilot inputs resulted in stable flying, and so on, and deduced that everything still worked. By that time, they were probably informed that the plane was seemingly intact, although with a hole in its side.

Re: Alaska Airlines flight 1282 NTSB preliminary report [pdf]

#178
post #13

> The accident airplane was required to be equipped with a CVR that retained, at minimum, the last 2 hours of audio information, including flight crew communications and other sounds inside the cockpit. >The CVR was downloaded successfully; however, it was determined that the audio from the accident flight had been overwritten. The CVR circuit breaker had not been manually deactivated after the airplane landed follow…

The largest US pilots union opposes it on pilot privacy grounds. (To be clear, I think having an expectation of vocal privacy while you are in charge of an airliner is absurd.)

[deleted]

Re: Alaska Airlines flight 1282 NTSB preliminary report [pdf]

#179
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there is the theory and then there is the reality. Theory: having less privacy makes things easier for accident investigators, post-mortem. Reality: In this case, the pilots did their job and got the plane down safely despite rapid depressurization and literally having their headsets sucked off of their heads. It is extremely unlikely to be pilot-error that a door-plug ripped off the airframe at 16,000' or that…

That is a non-sequitur. Investigators should have access to accident data regardless of whether the pilots did their job. Root cause analysis isn't the only reason: it would be good for pilots to have this case study, as well as analysis on how systems responded to the abrupt change. Having this data is strictly better than not having it.

> Root cause analysis isn't the only reason: it would be good for pilots to have this case study, as well as analysis on how systems responded to the abrupt change.

Yep, could be used as a "this is exactly what you do in this scenario" example for future pilots, or a "what did they do wrong" type real-world exercise for pilots to review (with no blame given to the OG pilots in this scenario for example).

Re: Alaska Airlines flight 1282 NTSB preliminary report [pdf]

#180
post #168
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How did this pass Boeing QA? https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/safety/146074-boeing-inte...

It's crazy their supplier is delivering so many must-fix defects they have to have a warranty team on site to help fix them. Crazier that Boeing just let that get more and more out of hand instead of making Spirit get their shit together on their end. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIAfCupuZ3w Edit: Also that entire culture and dynamic between Boeing and Spirit on the production floor seems very toxic and driven by…

Spirit has no competition. How do you threaten the supplier who owns your production when you have no other options?
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