Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 267 posts

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#221

Post by charlie0 »

vic-traill wrote: post #203
pavel_lishin wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of the Gimli Glider, and the incredible coincidence of having an experienced glider pilot as the Captain of that flight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

>Reminds me of the Gimli Glider This was a very Canadian accident, in that they ran out of fuel halfway through their cross-country flight because of (in the end) conversion errors in calculating the required fuel amount for the then-new metric 767. Canada was still in the conversion process from imperial to metric, and the airline industry was a relative latecomer to that change.

I'm always surprised by stuff like this, don't airplanes have fuel gauges like cars do?

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#222

Post by rpmisms »

neilv wrote: post #139
tim333 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not exactly counterfeit parts. It's that the paperwork for the titanium supplied wasn't right. So I guess it could be ok titanium with just bad paperwork rather than bad titanium. Also I guess it costs a lot to change.

IIUC, the paperwork is a major part of the part.

Yes, but if the paperwork is good, you don't have to replace a ton of parts, so investigating that first seems prudent.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#223

Post by jandrese »

charlie0 wrote: post #221
vic-traill wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Reminds me of the Gimli Glider This was a very Canadian accident, in that they ran out of fuel halfway through their cross-country flight because of (in the end) conversion errors in calculating the required fuel amount for the then-new metric 767. Canada was still in the conversion process from imperial to metric, and the airline industry was a relative latecomer to that change.

I'm always surprised by stuff like this, don't airplanes have fuel gauges like cars do?

It was more confusion. One system was broken, and the alternate was taken out of service. The pilot was then confused because flying with only one sensor was considered acceptable, but he was asking about a both sensors out situation instead. So they did it the old school way with dipsticks, but the conversion formula written on the sheet was wrong because they were in the process of switching. Also, the person who's job it is to get this right didn't exist on the 767 and Air Canada had not finished figuring out how to divvy up the duties when that seat wasn't filled. It's one of those Frogger failures, so many things have to line up just right at this one point in history for the problem to happen. Luckily in this case everyone came out ok.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#224

Post by somat »

charlie0 wrote: post #221
vic-traill wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Reminds me of the Gimli Glider This was a very Canadian accident, in that they ran out of fuel halfway through their cross-country flight because of (in the end) conversion errors in calculating the required fuel amount for the then-new metric 767. Canada was still in the conversion process from imperial to metric, and the airline industry was a relative latecomer to that change.

I'm always surprised by stuff like this, don't airplanes have fuel gauges like cars do?

The fuel gauges were inoperative. Apparently this condition does not ground the plane, however the crew has to maintain awareness of the fuel level via alternate means. on the ground you put a stick in the tank and in flight you know how much fuel was loaded and you know much was burned(airplanes tend to have good fuel per hour meters). Only this time the amount of fuel requested was in gallons and the amount loaded was in liters.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

But absolute respect to the pilot for getting it down in one piece. I mean on one level he was just doing his job. but sometimes that is all it takes to be a hero, to do your job in the face of adversary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=686xoeQAVA4

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#225

Post by Dylan16807 »

filleduchaos wrote: post #194
Dylan16807 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's more like you got your croissants but without a name brand or receipt. No, because the structural integrity might not be there. A food analogy doesn't really work well, but the effect of mixing up different titanium manufacturing processes could easily be as extreme as having a completely different type of food. But much harder to test for!

Titanium is an elemental metal. You don't "manufacture" it so much as extract it, and like any other metal it has clear, known, rather easily testable qualities. So do its alloys. The analogy didn't just not "really work well", it made zero sense. Like, in the first place a counterfeit of anything has to actually pass for the thing , and haggis most certainly does not pass as a croissant.

> Titanium is an elemental metal. You don't "manufacture" it so much as extract it, and like any other metal it has clear, known, rather easily testable qualities. So do its alloys.

You manufacture pieces, and you do so in very specific ways. This wasn't just a pile of titanium in a box. Scraps don't need the same kind of certificates.

> The analogy didn't just not "really work well", it made zero sense. Like, in the first place a counterfeit of anything has to actually pass for the thing, and haggis most certainly does not pass as a croissant.

You misread me. I said a food analogy. The general idea of any food analogy, including yours, doesn't work well.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#227

Post by silisili »

7thaccount wrote: post #219
hangonhn wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They replaced vertical integration with circular blame. Not sure if you came up with that line but it's gold.

I'm glad someone noticed my rare zinger here :) The Boeing documentaries I've seen have all been great. It really shows the issues with the Jack Welch model of business that only cares about short term quarterly profits. My father used to complain that every new CEO at his company would first fire a bunch of people to make stock go up even knowing the long term implications would be disastrous. He used to say you cou…

> My father used to complain that every new CEO at his company would first fire a bunch of people to make stock go up

Yup. My last company had a disastrous CEO who used public layoffs as his only lever. It worked once, despite a total of four pulls. The engineering departments were gutted and nobody really knew how everything worked anymore.

Somehow the company is still alive, though with a share price now about 1/20th what it was and 1/60th its typical highs.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#228

Post by iancmceachern »

jrockway wrote: post #186
rpmisms wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airlines have figured out that people suck at multitasking.

Airlines are almost "lucky" in the sense that when they mess up training and processes, people die. As a result, they are somewhat motivated to fix it. In other industries, we say "that didn't work, VCs, can I have another $2M" and are just told "yup, of course!" As a result, we learn slow. Personally, I stole checklists from aviation and love it. I remember one week I was on vacation and we needed to do a complicate…

Plus one for checklists. Checklists are secret sauce

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#229

Post by codedokode »

tim333 wrote: post #84
neilv wrote: post #45

> Spirit is trying to determine where the titanium came from, whether it meets proper standards despite its phony documentation, and whether the parts made from the material are structurally sound enough to hold up through the projected life spans of the jets, company officials said. Spirit said it was trying to determine the most efficient way to remove and replace the affected parts if that ended up being necessary…

It's not exactly counterfeit parts. It's that the paperwork for the titanium supplied wasn't right. So I guess it could be ok titanium with just bad paperwork rather than bad titanium. Also I guess it costs a lot to change.

If the material was good, they would not need to make fake documents, right? Either it is low quality, or it is high quality, but from Russia.

Re: FAA investigating how counterfeit titanium got into Boeing and Airbus jets

#230

Post by inemesitaffia »

darby_nine wrote: post #210
ironmagma wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a concept of a “moral minimum” where having a regulation might produce worse work than if the regulation didn’t exist, because companies will frequently work up to the minimum required by law and no more.

This strikes me as an extremely weak argument for removing regulation. Like yea that's a nice thought if you already believe in efficacy of private organizations, but on the other hand trust in any organization goes out the window the second a profit motivation is introduced.

Sesame Seeds
Post reply on HN