Boeing Keep your seatbelt low and tight in flight, especially when seated next to a plugged door

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The discussion centers around a recent incident involving an Alaska Airlines 737 MAX-9 that lost a door plug mid-flight, fortunately with no passengers injured. Concerns are raised about the structural integrity of the aircraft, particularly regarding the bolts that secure the door plug, with suggestions that multiple bolts may have failed or been improperly installed. Participants express skepticism about Boeing's quality control practices and the potential for counterfeit parts contributing to the failure. The grounding of affected aircraft for inspections has caused significant disruptions, leading to discussions about the safety of air travel and the implications for passenger confidence. Overall, the situation highlights serious concerns about aircraft safety and manufacturing standards.
  • #51
berkeman said:
Great video, thanks @DaveE

And "loose bolts"? The Cotter pins would have to have been missing for that to happen, no? I suppose if Boeing reused the Cotter pins after the reinstallation, they could have failed and allowed the nuts to back off, but I can't imagine the technicians reusing Cotter pins.

@Flyboy -- You aren't allowed to reuse Cotter pins during maintenance, right?
You are correct on both fronts. You never, EVER reuse cotter pins because of the risk of fatigue failures. They're like a penny a piece, why not get a fresh one?
That said, I've seen cotter pins fail from other, non-reuse causes, too. Had one let go on a throttle linkage on a business jet a few months back. We knew it had been installed because two separate people looked at it before we cowled it up and sent it, and when it came back it was gone. Best we could figure was that it was just a bad pin and it cracked loose, but we could never prove it.

We scrapped that entire batch of cotter pins out of an abundance of caution after that.
nsaspook said:
No, never.
View attachment 338346
You use a bent nail instead.
... I swear to god I will murder someone if I caught them doing stuff like that.
 
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  • #53
Vanadium 50 said:
As far as being restricted from flying over water, would you feel better if it weren't so restricted?
Greg Bernhardt said:
I'd feel better if they'd take it out of service and get it air worthy. If they are so nervous about getting to an airport in time, it aint air worthy.
Vanadium 50 said:
One can say "We want 500 hours (or whatever) of overland flying before we take it over the ocean." I think that may even be reasonable. But you can't say "We want 500 hours of overland flying before we take it over the land." ...What more do you want?
russ_watters said:
Passengers. It's about the passengers.
We'll see if this failure was related to the pressurization system errors, but if so, the plane was in service for a little less than a month or perhaps 250 flight hours before the problem manifested that eventually resulted in this incident. There's a set of flight tests performed that lasts a certain number of hours, in a "shakedown" period before a plane is accepted and allowed to carry passengers. How many hours is that? 100? 500? Is there a probationary period after?

Airliners are safe in large part because they have redundant systems, and allowing a plane to fly with a redundant system disabled/malfunctioning is a conscious choice to accept a higher safety risk. No doubt this has been calculated in a risk assessment to be an acceptable risk.

But yeah, maybe the standard isn't stringent enough for an early-manifesting failure. We're in the "infant mortality" section of the Bathtub Curve just like the MCAS failure was. Yes, maybe an unexplained failure of a critical passenger safety system in a low hours plane should trigger grounding of that plane until the cause of the failure is figured out and the failure is rectified.

[edit]
I've lost a lot of confidence in Boeing since the MCAS debacle, but I'm cognizant of the...risk.... in this being overblown. Airliners are safe, but nothing is completely safe. I don't want airliners to become the new nuclear power where they are so safe that a single accident is held up as evidence they are unacceptably, irredeemably unsafe.
 
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  • #55
Borg said:
That link gives a permission error for non-Mentors.
Yea. I'd really like to be able to view that post.
 
  • #59
russ_watters said:
There's a set of flight tests performed that lasts a certain number of hours, in a "shakedown" period before a plane is accepted and allowed to carry passengers. How many hours is that? 100? 500? Is there a probationary period after?
Who does that?
The airplane operator, or some other agency?

If one leases or buys a plane from a manufacturer, should not the manufacturer already have the plane designated as being air worthy and transfer the certificate to the buyer upon possession of the airplane.
 
  • #60
256bits said:
Who does that?
The airplane operator, or some other agency?

If one leases or buys a plane from a manufacturer, should not the manufacturer already have the plane designated as being air worthy and transfer the certificate to the buyer upon possession of the airplane.
I'm not sure of the specifics, but at least the manufacturer will do a set of acceptance tests, and the airline will do their own. I don't think it's directly supervised by the FAA, just reported to the FAA. There was a crash once in Europe where the pilot's crashed the plane during such a check for an airline(no passengers). I'll see if I can find it.
 
  • #62
Borg said:
This one?

XL Airways Germany Flight 888T​

Yep, that's the one I was thinking of. It was an "acceptance flight" of a plane that had been overhauled and was changing lessees, as opposed to a new plane delivery. It was attended by the CAA (Kiwi equivalent of FAA). I'm not sure how that would compare to a new airplane delivery (if anything, it was probably a lighter test, and it was just one flight).
 
  • #63
LOL, from Facebook today:

1704987491728.png
 
  • #64
NTSB update and a surprising fact about the cockpit door...

1704991232356.png

https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/...fWKojFotjw36qNJzw74bjPBCqsqg9RVEQXToDa0IFZfzo

Boeing to make changes in manual ​

Homendy said the board found that the cockpit door of the B737-9 MAX was designed to open during rapid decompression and that the flight crew was not made aware of this feature. She added that Boeing will need to update its B737-9 MAX manual.

During the January 5, 2024 incident, the aircraft’s cockpit door opened violently mid-flight due to the decompression, and a flight attendant made three attempts to close the door. A laminated quick reference checklist used in emergencies flew out while the door was open.

“We found today that the cockpit door is designed to open during rapid decompression. However, no one among the flight crew knew that. They were not informed. So Boeing is going to make some changes to the manual which then hopefully will translate to procedures and information for the flight attendants and crew in the cockpit,” Homendy said.
 
  • #65
...checklist used in emergencies flew out while the door was open.

Checklist? They don't need no stinking Check List when they be tryin' to stay alive!
:cry:
 
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  • #67
I was talking to someone who works for, um, a Major US Air Carrier that operates the 737 Max-9 And In Not Alaska. I realize this is not an approved PF source, but what they're saying (or rather, being told by their management) makes some sense.

It seems that the working theory is not the simultaneous failure of four bolts. The working theory is that two bolts failed, allowing the plug to slightly disengage from the fuselage and move out into the aistream. Now the forces on the plug are very large, which caused the other two bolts to fail and send the plug on its merry way.

More speculative is the question of how the first two failed. It is possible that one failed a long time ago and the second held it in place. Thus far, inspections have found loose bolts but no damaged or defective bolts. Another (IMHO more likely) possibility is that one of the failed, transferring the load to the other, causing it to fail as well.

I also learned that the "16000 feet" you read about is the maximum altitude the plane reached. The incident occurred at 14800 feet. (This is published, just no very widely) The aircraft is normally pressurized to about 8000 feet, but of course this is not reached instantaneously. So the failure occurred in minutes and at much lower pressure differential than the last successful flight. We knew this qualitatively. Now we have some numbers. It is odd that it failed, essentially, as soon as it could.
 
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  • #68
New slogan for Alaska Airlines from Saturday Night Live.

Alaska_Airlines.jpg
 
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  • #69
Yeah, that's pretty much my slogan.
 
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  • #70
Borg said:
New slogan for Alaska Airlines from Saturday Night Live.

View attachment 338926
"This is now their second coolest story" o0)
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...ight-taking-magic-mushrooms-questi-rcna124745
The off-duty Alaska Airlines pilot accused of trying to shut down the engines of an airborne plane last month after taking magic mushrooms thought he was dreaming and had questioned if he was in hell, he said in an interview published Saturday.

Joseph Emerson, 44, told The New York Times in a jailhouse interview in Portland, Oregon, that when he took the psychedelics around a campfire — which he had never taken before — on Oct. 20, two days before the incident, he dwelled on events in his past.
 
  • #71


Better if played on YouTube. . . . :smile:
 
  • #72
Alaska 2059 is a different story.

I think the pilot's attorney has done an excellent job for his client by muddying the waters with tales of personal loss and a "bad trip" from the hallucinogens. But when you sweep away the distractions, the pilot made some criminally bad decisions and tried - twice - to kill everyone on board.
  1. He chose to take illegal drugs after being told they wouldn't show up if he were tested.
  2. He chose to save $263 (I just looked it up) by jumpseating instead of buying a ticket.
Putting the lives of 80+ people in jeopardy in order to save $263 is pretty much the definition of depraved indifference. If convicted, he should never see another day of freedom in his life.

That's a very different situation than this one, although if an individual were responsible - say by selling counterfeit bolts - I would be entirely OK with criminal charges as well.
 
  • #73
Vanadium 50 said:
He chose to save $263 (I just looked it up) by jumpseating instead of buying a ticket.
Unfair, IMO. Jump seats are a really common way for pilots to commute. I doubt this was a decision as much as doing the normal thing. $263 is the most inconsequential part of this story. OK, but just the jump seat, not the rest of it.

Also, not to defend this guy, but there are real issues with the FAA regs discouraging pilots from seeking medical treatment for conditions that aren't uncommon in the rest of the population. Which would you rather fly with, a pilot hiding and not seeking help for a medical condition, or a pilot getting help from professionals to recover? Note that I'm not offering the choice of only flying with pilots that don't have issues, because they might not be that common over an entire career, and, anyway, how would you know?
 
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  • #74
DaveE said:
Jump seats are a really common way for pilots to commute.
And so is driving. That doesn't make it OK to take illegal drugs and get behind the wheel of a car. And this is worse.

This is not a mental health issue - and I am sensitive to that, because I was in the Alps when Germanwings 9525 crashed. I was about 20 miles from the impact site when it happened, and there were investigators at the hotel I was at. (20 miles in the Alps is not like 20 miles in the suburban US)

But this isn't a case of untreated mental illness. It's a case of illegal drug use and then flying a plane - a jumpseater is legally part of the crew. I might even agree with you that FAA regs are not doing the right thing with respect to mental illness, but this is irrelevant. The pilot took recreational drugs he shouldn't have, joined the crew of an airplane, and tried to kill everybody. Twice.
 
  • #75
A whistleblower has some pretty bad things to say about the critical bolts.
 
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  • #76
… yeah, jives with what I’ve heard about the culture at Boeing. Absolutely stupid that they haven’t had the FAA basically come in and drop the executioner’s axe on the whole program unless they can fix the systemic issues.
 
  • #77
It's amazing to me that it stayed in place that long with apparently no bolts installed.
mfb said:
A whistleblower has some pretty bad things to say about the critical bolts.
The parts about arguing over paperwork, choosing the path that generates the least paperwork even when it's the wrong one, and painting over missing rivets really do tell a troubling story.
 
  • #78
Amazing how these million dollar leaders don’t understand that you don’t risk a generational brand collapse for a bit extra short term profit.
 
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  • #79
Alaska has completed their inspections and has returned their 9max's to service.

At the earnings call Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun "took accountability" on Wednesday. This accountability to did not extend to reducing his compensation, because that would just be crazy talk. Whose job is it again to make sure that the planes don't fall apart mid-flight?

Bloomberg has reported that the official log does not show that the door plug was ever removed, but the unofficial log (ah...two sets of books. Had Al Capone thought of that, he never would have gone to jail) shows it was. The possibility exists that the bolts were never reinstalled.
 
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  • #80
Greg Bernhardt said:
Amazing how these million dollar leaders don’t understand that you don’t risk a generational brand collapse for a bit extra short term profit.
I would argue that they do understand that, and have negotiated compensation packages and employment contracts that shield them from as much liability as possible, long term consequences for the company be damned. They’re not in the business of making long-term sustainability a priority anymore. There’s more profit to be made for the shareholders by wringing every bit of savings/cost cutting out of the company as possible. And if you don’t do that, then the shareholders will bounce your ass to the curb faster than a Seattle lawyer can say “class action lawsuit”. 😒
 
  • #81
Flyboy said:
There’s more profit to be made for the shareholders by wringing every bit of savings/cost cutting out of the company as possible. And if you don’t do that, then the shareholders will bounce your ass to the curb faster than a Seattle lawyer can say “class action lawsuit”.
Is this really true? I mean, is it universally true? I can imagine companies exist where long-term goals are taken seriously.
 
  • #82
Amazon reinvested rather than pay a dividend for a long time (maybe they still do). So there are companies that prioritize long over short term.

Boeing, unfortunately, has had a history of ethical issues in upper management, going at least as far back as Stonecipher. It doesn't do much good for firing a CEO for ethical lapses and a lack of focus on the long game if everybody waiting in the wings thinks the same way.
 
  • #83
1707259734886.png

1707259749798.png

https://s3.documentcloud.org/docume...aviation-investigation-preliminary-report.pdf
On January 5, 2024, about 1714 Pacific standard time, Alaska Airlines flight 1282, a Boeing
737-9, N704AL, returned to Portland International Airport (PDX), Portland, Oregon, after the left
mid exit door (MED) plug departed the airplane leading to a rapid decompression. The airplane
landed on runway 28L at PDX without further incident, and all occupants (2 flight
crewmembers, 4 cabin crewmembers, and 171 passengers) deplaned at the gate. Seven
passengers and one flight attendant received minor injuries. The flight was operated under
Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations(CFR) Part 121 as a scheduled domestic passenger flight
from PDX to Ontario, California (ONT).
Figure 1 below shows the location of the missing MED plug from inside and outside the
airplane. The separation of the MED plug from the airplane adversely affected the
pressurization performance of the airplane and the damage to the MED plug adversely
affected its structural strength, requiring replacement of the MED plug, resulting in a
classification of substantial damage in accordance with Title 49 CFR Part 830.
 
  • #84
"The separation of the MED plug from the airplane adversely affected the
pressurization performance of the airplane..."

Ya think??? Maybe a humorous easter egg from the NTSB?
 
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  • #85
DaveE said:
"The separation of the MED plug from the airplane adversely affected the
pressurization performance of the airplane..."

Ya think??? Maybe a humorous easter egg from the NTSB?
"Good evening ladies and gentleman. This is your Captain Obvious at the controls tonight. We will be leveling off at 16,000 feet momentarily on our climb to 35,000 feet..." :smile:
 
  • #86
DaveE said:
Maybe a humorous easter egg from the NTSB?
I don't think they have any sense of humor.

Even the airlines don't. I knew a FA who got in trouble for saying "Secure your mask before helping small children with theirs. If you are travelling with two small children, you should figure out now which one has the most potential."
 
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  • #89
Vanadium 50 said:
Boeing, unfortunately, has had a history of ethical issues in upper management, going at least as far back as Stonecipher. It doesn't do much good for firing a CEO for ethical lapses and a lack of focus on the long game if everybody waiting in the wings thinks the same way.

Following the merger (or reverse takeover) of Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas, quality and QC took repeated hits.

John Oliver more or less gives an accurate assessment with quite a few F-bombs. I heard confirmatory statements from former Boeing employees, in addition to other independent sources.




QC requires a commitment to do it right - all the time - in design, manufacturing and operation. However, some folks cut corners, apparently hoping nobody catches on, until someone does, or something fails.

Counterfeit products are a major concern in nuclear, aerospace and other industries related to critical infrastructure.
 
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  • #91
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  • #92
morrobay said:
A former Boeing employee known for raising concerns about the firm's production standards has been found dead in the US.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68534703
Looks like it was a suicide. Maybe he had more demons in his mind than he could deal with. Unfortunately, this loss of information could slow the process of fixing things at Boeing.

It said the 62-year-old had died from a "self-inflicted" wound on 9 March and police were investigating.
 
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  • #94
berkeman said:
Looks like it was a suicide.
That's just what they want you to think...

It's tragic, but probably unrelated, other than that the change in corpoarte culture, as they say, did not go well. The realy question is whether the owners of the company will fix things. Boeing is owned primarily by institutions in the form of mutual funds. Many owners of these funds are motivated by bottom lines as well" I suspect many don't know if they own Boeing indirectly or not. (Full disclosure - I do. There are very few US companies I do not own a tiny piece of)

Calhoun has caused the company to lose $50B worth of value. That's 10x the development cost of the MAX. I would argue that to maximize shareholder value, the Board should fire as many of the leaders of the company it can. But I doubt that's going to happen.
 
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  • #95
Vanadium 50 said:
Boeing is owned primarily by institutions in the form of mutual funds.
This is the root of their problem. They operate in a market capitalist economy that values short term performance over long term investment for longevity or greater returns later. McDonnell Douglas understood this and that's why they took over the C-suite. The gigantic capital investment required to compete at this level precludes other domestic competitors. The US is too large and too free market oriented for the government to invest (although their military business sort of addresses this), and the private sector won't do it either.

The 737 max (et. al.) had to be done or Airbus would own that market. Lacking the foresight many years ago to invest in a new platform, they are desperately trying to keep up. I truly believe they would love to have high quality manufacturing operations, but I suspect they can't afford it from a short term perspective. At least that's how they behave.

Don't get me started on executive compensation in corporate America, except to say it's all about short term performance on Wall Street. That's what investors want.
 
  • #96
Vanadium 50 said:
It's tragic, but probably unrelated, other than that the change in corpoarte culture, as they say, did not go well. The realy question is whether the owners of the company will fix things. Boeing is owned primarily by institutions in the form of mutual funds. Many owners of these funds are motivated by bottom lines as well" I suspect many don't know if they own Boeing indirectly or not. (Full disclosure - I do. There are very few US companies I do not own a tiny piece of)

DaveE said:
This is the root of their problem. They operate in a market capitalist economy that values short term performance over long term investment for longevity or greater returns later.
That's something I really don't get. They behave and CEOs seem to be judged on short term value changes, but most institutional investors are investing for the long-term. I can see how a small layoff can seem like a good profit move that won't backfire, but shifting from an engineer-run to a businessman-run company seems pretty obviously foolhardy. I mean, I'm sure the businessmen are delusional enough to think it won't matter, but it's tough to believe the investors are. That said, these things going on at Boeing are pretty fraud-adjacent.
 
  • #97
Mutual funds are under the same pressures as everybody else. Am I going to go with CREF over Fidelity if one portfolio has 2% and another 1.9%? Probably not. What if one has a return after fees of 8.9% vs 9.0%? I'd be thinking really hard about that - over 30 years that tiny difference adds up.

You might say that well-run companies make more money in the long run, but the evidence is that the fees needed to pick funds that pick well-managed companies is larger than the cost differential.

You also might argue that fund managers can put their feet down and insist that all companies are well-managed. This is good for the economy as a whole, but individual fund managers are compensated based on how they do relative to their peers. A rising tide lifts all boats...except theirs.
 
  • #100
morrobay said:
criminally accountable
In the US one cannot jail people for being bad. They have to have actually committed a crime. What crime should they be charged with?
 

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