By the Leeham News Team Jan. 15, 2024, © Leeham News: It’s not supposed to happen. The door plug on the Boeing 737-9 MAX isn’t supposed to separate from the airplane in flight, as it did on Alaska... Read More
@dymaxion
☝️
Wow
"why did the left hand (LH) mid-exit door plug blow off of the 737-9 registered as N704AL? Simple- as has been covered in a number of articles and videos across aviation channels, there are 4 bolts that prevent the mid-exit door plug from sliding up off of the door stop fittings that take the actual pressurization loads in flight, and these 4 bolts were not installed when Boeing delivered the airplane, our own records reflect this."
@CassandraZeroCovid @dymaxion There's another comment on that article wondering what the justification for not removing Boeing's production certificate for the 737 is going to be.
I find myself wondering just how wide the investigation is going to go, and that the certificate surviving is not a certainty.
@StarkRG @kcarp @dymaxion Yes, they're effectively chartering another airliner—with crew—from someone else. But they can't generally do that from scratch at short notice, they have existing wet leasing contracts. If you're really worried about ending up on a 737 by mistake, maybe research the airline you're paying to fly with?
NB: right now, you're safer on a 737 than you were a month ago—the at-risk models are already grounded for safety checks: the shit has hit the fan.
@cstross @kcarp @dymaxion It does! I used it last night!
(My usual JetBlue doesn't even HAVE Boeings, just Airbus + Embraer, but was also unbelievably expensive, almost as if Alaska and United grounding tons of planes has done a supply/demand thing to ticket prices. Ended up on Delta-operated-by-Republic, which only has Embraer 170/175s.)
Ah hah hah I have a new jargon: "management visibilty tool"
"Yes! We're managers! We manage things! See these things we've managed??"
🤦
Would that this phenomenon was restricted to aerospace....
A reader at respected airline industry site Leeham News offered a comment that suggests they have access to Boeing’s internal quality control systems, and shares details of what they saw regarding the Boeing 737 MAX 9 flown by Alaska Airlines that had a door plug detach inflight, causing rapid decompression of the aircraft. The takeaway appears to be that outsourced plane components have so many problems when they show up at the production line that Boeing’s quality control staff can’t keep up with them all.
@dymaxion How can this kind of thing go on? How is this not a gigantic violation of a contract, at the very least?
> The Boeing QA writes another record in CMES (again, the correct venue) stating (with pictures) that Spirit has not actually reworked the discrepant rivets, they *just painted over the defects*.
@dymaxion You're right, of course.
When I wrote my comment, I had thought Spirit was supplying a door assembly. That's wrong; as I'm sure many readers here already knew, Spirit is building *the whole 737 fuselage*.
That's a really big partnership, and I guess there's no practical way for Boeing to summarily replace a supplier like that. It could be a years-long project to find (or create) a new fuselage builder.
So there are pressures involved that I didn't understand.
To me, this seems like a big, obvious argument against outsourcing so much, but I will admit that the only airplanes I've built have been the 8.5" x 11" variety.
@dymaxion There are so many details, any one of which should have been a show-stopper:
>...this check job that should find minimal defects has in the past 365 calendar days recorded 392 nonconforming findings on 737 mid fuselage door installations (so both actual doors for the high density configs, and plugs like the one that blew out).
Some sources say they're building about 40 737s per month, meaning about 480 per year. "392 nonconforming findings" would suggest *most* of the 737s they've been building needed post-QA re-work in this one area alone.
@dymaxion Classic outsourcing. Cost cutting to win a contract means the outsourcer doesn’t have the resources/time/skills to do the job properly, and customer won’t put the resources in to manage the failing outsourcer to meet bare minimum KPIs because the cost of that invalidates the outsource business case.
So everyone blames the other party for corporate accountability purposes and banks the profits on lousy work.
> Boeing CEO David Calhoun, while telling CNBC that he wasn’t pointing fingers, did precisely that. He said Spirit AeroSystems had a “quality escape,” adding that Boeing failed to catch it, so it also had a quality escape.
lol
@dymaxion
This reply is from recently retired US Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-OR), the former Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
By the Leeham News Team Jan. 15, 2024, © Leeham News: It’s not supposed to happen. The door plug on the Boeing 737-9 MAX isn’t supposed to separate from the airplane in flight, as it did on Alaska... Read More
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