this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
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"I solve practical problems. Like where all the necessary holes should be on passenger aircraft, and when they should appear."

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[–] [email protected] 156 points 10 months ago (6 children)

Calling it right now, it had little to do with the engineers and almost everything to do with corporate cost cutting at the expense of people.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They marginalized all the engineers and hired MBAs. If you want to blame someone, blame Wall Street.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

If you want to blame someone, blame Wall Street.

I like how this sentence applies to like 90% of the problems in this world

[–] [email protected] 34 points 10 months ago

Pretty much when an engineering thing goes wrong. It was because of managers and bureaucracy. It happened with NASA's Challenger mission and this one is probably another incident like it. The engineers are the most technical, precise, accurate people ever. It is very rare that something catastrophic will go buy unnoticed.

https://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/space-disasters/challenger-disaster/challenger-management-failure/

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It's also possible that the problem had nothing to do with engineering and everything to do with improper maintenance/safety checks. Which could still be corporate cost cutting, but at Alaska rather than Boeing.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's unlikely that the plug door came off for maintenance in the first three months of the plane's life.

I used to do maintenance (specifically on Alaska 37s) at an mro as an A&P. I worked on Alaska planes for about 5 years and compared to other airlines that I worked on, Alaska was almost always conforming to higher standards, they required more inspection buy offs, and were more likely to replace parts that technically were airworthy.

Also after Alaska had their jackscrew run-in, they overhauled their maintenance program and effectively handed it off to the FAA.

I agree that the problem is likely not with engineering, my opinion is that it lies with manufacturing and QC at Boeing though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Looks like you're right:

The findings aboard the five United aircraft will likely significantly widen the fall-out from the grounding, intensifying the focus on Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems. The pair together is responsible for the assembly, installation and quality checks of the aircraft structure.

It seems that panel would have been installed by the manufacturer and probably not altered by any airline maintenance teams, and fleet inspections have found several of them with loose hardware.

What does "inspection buy offs" mean?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Inspection buy offs are an industry term related to getting an inspectors approval on work accomplished, sorry I shouldn't have used it since it doesn't really translate.

So Alaska required more inspector intervention than other airlines I worked on.

We use the term 'selling' and 'buying' to refer to presenting the work and demonstrating that it is airworthy (before we go to lunch, let's try to sell this to inspection, or, I won't buy that until you verify that it is torqued properly)

Think of it like you saying you cleaned your room, and your parents going 'i don't buy that'.

It has nothing to do with money.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Boeing lost all respect when they opend a production plant in North Carolina so they didn't have to follow as strict labor laws as they do in WA. It's no coincidence we're seeing more groundings more frequently since then, company priorities on full display.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Fr. I think they're trading on a lot of previously-earned good will that no longer accurately applies to the company today. The standards that made Boeing what they are simply aren't the same today as when the reputation was built.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 10 months ago

You don't need to call it that. When designing the airplane they changed the location of the engines, which also changes how the airplane handles. Normally that would require retaining the pilots, but that's expensive. So what they did is they solved it in software to emulator old behavior and didn't tell it to the pilots.

What I find interesting is that in 2018 (one year before the crash) trump mentioned it if nowhere that there was no single plane crash during his presidency. Kind of crazy thing to mention, when we got used to planes generally not crashing.

I have feeling that around that time sometime graded his hand and he pulled some strings in FAA and forced them to approve it.

Another thing that makes me thing he was involved is that after the crashes, he started suggesting that Boeing should rebrand the plane to recover publicly. I mean, why does he care so much about that plane success if he was not involved with it in any way?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago

Someday maybe people won't use attractiveness as a symbol for intelligence and morals, but not today...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Its more like "we need you to do a 2 week engineering job in 3 days"

Although to be fair there was some serious "adjustments" to internal policies after several hundred people died.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Oh, this is about shoddy craftsmanship. I thought it was about that other thing boing engineers like to do

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

If you want to know what Boeing engineers are REALLY like just google Mr. Hands (please dont)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

More like messing with horses.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

You mean Boeing managers and stakeholders.