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Alaska Airlines grounds Boeing 737 Max 9 planes after mid-air window blowout
- usui 3y agoSeems like the Boeing 737 MAX series of planes can’t catch a break especially after what happened in 2019. Unless—how often does an airline company ground a particular model?
- Dalewyn 3y agoIt's Boeing that can't catch a break. Starliner? Delays and cancellations. KC-46? That POS still isn't reliably refueling, and if I understand correctly USAF is rumored to be looking for a replacement. F-15EX? It can't use conformal fuel tanks the F-15E has been using for almost 40 bloody years. No, that means it can't achieve its major selling point of carrying 22 missiles either. 737 MAX? Clearly maximum kek given this and that whole comedy about safety exemptions yesterday. I want to like Boeing, but I feel it's justifiable to tell them to go fuck themselves at this point. EDIT: I also forgot that V-22 Osprey that crashed into the sea off Japan back in November, killing all on board. As far as I'm aware, that led to a complete grounding of all Ospreys by all US military branches and also the JSDF pending investigation findings.
- KolmogorovComp 3y agoYou’ve forgotten the numerous delays for the 777X
- Dalewyn 3y agoI forgot 777X was even a thing.
- sitkack 3y agoIt is a beautiful and very quiet plane. I saw it do a close approach over the beach in Seattle last summer. https://blog.geaerospace.com/technology/second-boeing-777x-makes-first-flight-powered-by-ge9x/ https://blog.geaerospace.com/technology/second-boeing-777x-m...
- atoav 3y agoThe number one reason the planes start to have issues is essentially a lack of effective oversight. Not sure how much blame boeing gets for this, but this is a prime example for a certain amount of effective regulation having a positive impact on the safety culture within a corporation. The MAX should never have been accepted as being the same airframe as the original 737.
- oivey 3y agoI agree that a lack of oversight is a core issue, but it also isn’t the job of the government to make your products good. The government can set same rules, but it’s on Boeing to execute. Of course, besides that, Boeing itself is maybe THE major force reducing oversight.
- umactually1 3y ago> but it also isn’t the job of the government to make your products good A century of progress in domestic automotive sector would disagree with your opinion, here. If it wasn't for the gub'ment infringing on the liberties of the little guys (corporations), we'd still be driving cars without airbags, seatbelts, and proper fuel tank safety regulations.
- oivey 3y agoI think we’re in agreement on that. I wasn’t saying that regulations shouldn’t exist. I was saying that if Boeing makes shitty products that kill people, then it is entirely their fault if they go out of business. The person I was replying to seemed to be shuffling some of the onus onto the government. I think it’s to a significant degree the government’s fault that air travel wasn’t safe and people got killed, but it is entirely Boeing’s fault that their products suck and kill people and are losing them money.
- midasuni 3y agoWhy would they go out of business? Unless of course they are actually banned from flying death traps. Besides, Boeing as the only US aircraft manufacturer is too big to fail, especially with China aircraft increasing in number globally.
- exo762 3y agoBrain drain caused by SpaceX? (shooting in the dark here)
- somerandomqaguy 3y agoEven funnier because Boeing tried being cute with the Canadian aerospace industry, and instead shot themselves in the foot with a shotgun. Boeing tried to screw Canada's Bombardier out of the C series aircraft by getting the US Gov to throw on tariffs for an aircraft they had no competitor for. Everything was already done AFAIK that point too; certifications, and everything, the plane was entering into production to fufill US airline orders. It cost $1.3 billion Canadian to develop the plane. I suspect Boeing thought that'd be the end of it. Airbus had other ideas. They got the whole Bombardier C series aircraft for about $550 million and opened an assembly plant in Alabama in Mobile, about 350 miles from Boeing's assembly plant in Huntsville. Along with the orders from US airlines (I think for 130 aircraft). No more tariffs because these planes are now US made. As a Canadian it stings a little, but I can't help but cackle at the fact that Boeing execs handed their one major competitor several billion in revenue on a silver platter. And Boeing will need years if not decades to come up with a competitor. So from Canada: Get fucked sideways Boeing.
- ahartmetz 3y agoSad for Canada and Bombardier, but good for the plane: With Airbus's money, marketing, stability and reputation, the amount of planes made will, I think, be a multiple of what it would have been with Bombardier. It's a really good plane, too. Comfy, efficient, reliable so far. And a spectacular own goal for Boeing that they deserved so much :D
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- light_hue_1 3y agoThis version of the story is too generous to Bombardier who really screwed up the development of the CS100/A220. Even if Boeing hadn't done anything they would have needed many more bailouts from the government to get anywhere. Development costs doubled from 2 billion to 4 billion. Then when they went well over 5 billion and the federal government + Quebec had to bail them out to the tune of 1.5+ billion. Even without Boeing, had Airbus not stepped in, it's unlikely the CS100 would have succeeded. European buyers had already started to cancel orders seeing the debacle unfold. Despite having many orders on the books, banks refused to lend to Bombardier because they expected them to make a loss on the airplane. So yeah, screw Boeing who played really dirty and Trump helped them (the tariffs were reversed a year later when a more independent body reviewed them). But had Bombardier not been in a massive financial hole this wouldn't have mattered.
- hef19898 3y agoKC-46: The USAF had Airbus tankers on order, before Boeing sued and the cinzract was, surprise, awarded to Boeing again. So the USAF and Boeing share equal blame here. I have to read up on the F-15EX, generally so these kinds of upgrades are basically new designs and as such prone to delays and a bunch of technical issues. Especially for military aircraft. Nothing to add on the MAX that wasn't said already. Boeing sure has its work cut out developing a new version, the existing 737 design is beyond its design life by now. Well, if a plane crashes for unonown reasons, it is quite normal to ground the fleet, nothing special about Boeig here.
- Dalewyn 3y agoUSAF was (and I suspect still is, given KC-46) happy to go with Airbus, it was GAO[1][2] who intervened alleging corruption and mishandling to give Boeing the platter instead. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Accountability_Office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Accountability_Offi... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-X
- hef19898 3y agoThanks for reminding me, this is such old history facts get fuzzy in my memory. Not to say that Airbus military plane record is spot less, but the A330 MRTT seems to be a decent plane. I hate to see Boeing having all these problems, most of which are totally unnecessary.
- itsoverjpg 3y ago[flagged]
- flybrand 3y agoThe Boeing Max is safe and effective.
- lessbergstein 3y ago[flagged]
- kylebenzle 3y agoI want to know that any airplane I fly on was designed and built by the most diverse group of people possible, the patriarchy be damned!
- Etheryte 3y agoA bit of a stretch to interpolate one company cutting too many corners to save costs to a whole country.
- sitkack 3y agoIt is absolutely true for cloud.
- pb7 3y agoAmerica invented cloud.
- mschuster91 3y agoThe problem is that the perverse incentives of the financial markets are pervasive across American society. The cancer of quarterly-driven management has even spread across Europe, particularly after the '00s.
- kylebenzle 3y ago
- terramex 3y agoIt was not a "window and chunk of fuselage blowout" but a safety door blowout. In case 737MAX-9 is configured with maximum possible seat count then additional safety door have to be added. On lower seat count configs (like on that incident flight) those extra door are still present but locked, hidden and not visible from inside.
- MichaelMug 3y agoIs there a citation or source for that? Not doubting you just interested.
- the_mitsuhiko 3y agoYou can see the disabled door here in the picture. It’s behind the window that has more spacing: https://www.planespotters.net/photo/1483230/n969ak-alaska-airlines-boeing-737-9-max https://www.planespotters.net/photo/1483230/n969ak-alaska-ai... Inside there is no exit: https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Alaska_Airlines/Alaska_Airlines_Boeing_737-900_D.php https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Alaska_Airlines/Alaska_Air...
- londons_explore 3y ago> still present but locked, hidden and not visible from inside. Well that seems like a massive waste of weight...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pcl 3y agoI wonder if real door maintenance is better understood than dummy door maintenance, though.
- sitharus 3y agoThe fuselage opening for the door is still present as it’s a common part. The door is replaced with a window panel to seal the space, there is no door there. Any mechanical component - even if unused - requires servicing and maintenance. No airline would want to pay for that and the fuel cost on every flight to carry a door they don’t want.
- HL33tibCe7 3y agohttps://nitter.net/avgeekjake/status/1743462030366085387?s=20 https://nitter.net/avgeekjake/status/1743462030366085387?s=2..., it appears to have been the mid-aft door (this is what it usually looks like: https://nitter.net/jonostrower/status/1743466899869147549?s=20 https://nitter.net/jonostrower/status/1743466899869147549?s=...)
- Dalewyn 3y agoBoeing probably isn't gonna get that safety exemption from FAA.
- jbverschoor 3y agoI’d hope.
- kingTug 3y agoDeploy the lobbyists!
- cududa 3y agoThat seems optimistic
- DoingIsLearning 3y agoQuestion to the Airline people on HN: I recall that following the 2019 deaths that Boeing was going to rebrand the Max with some number series or similar, so that passengers didn't get nervous flying in it. How do I as a passenger identified all the rebranding permutations of the Max so that I make sure my family is not flying in them?
- bagels 3y agoJust fly Airbus.
- ant6n 3y agoJust take the train or boat.
- ksjskskskkk 3y agopassenger boats are way overdue for a come back. don't even mention nasty cruises which only cover coastal routes, like some paleolithic dingy.
- admissionsguy 3y agoNot sure if you are serious, but I agree. I like to take a train+ferry whenever possible even if it adds a day or two to the journey. Did lots of trips on the Amsterdam-Newcastle and Sweden-Poland routes. Uncomparably good memories compared to plane travel which is uniformly awful. I have been scouting cruise websites for ways to also replace transatlantic flights, but they are way too sparse.
- bartread 3y agoFerry routes have really taken a pounding in the UK over the past decade or two unfortunately. Combination of the channel tunnel and low cost airlines I would making former routes uneconomical to run is, I would imagine, where the majority of the blame lies. One example: I've always wanted to do a motorcycle tour around Scandinavia, particularly Norway, but it's a heck of a ride from Calais all the way up there. For many bikes, far enough that you'd need to organise a service and tyre change at least once whilst on the trip. At the time when I was first thinking about this I had a bike with a 3750 mile service interval, although I could generally squeak 4000 - 5000 miles out of tyres. So my plan back in 2014 had been to ride up from East Anglia to Aberdeen, get on the ferry to Lerwick, and then get a ferry from Lerwick to Stavanger in Norway to cut off a lot of "transit" riding. Unfortunately it turned out the website with this ferry route listed was lying to me, and that actually it had been retired in something like 2008. (You can still find this route listed on some websites today, but it's long since gone.) Nowadays I'm not even sure it's possible to get a ferry from the UK to Germany. I've never done it but you used to be able to get a ferry from Harwich (very convenient for me) to Bremerhaven: no more, sadly.
- lazystar 3y agorelated discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38887840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38887840
- consumer451 3y agoDoes this data need to be updated? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38884778 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38884778
- seydor 3y agothis coming in the same week when an airbus 250 crash and burned without anyone getting hurt ... is not a good look for boeing
- pb7 3y agoHow many people were hurt here?
- AndroTux 3y agoIt’s like comparing a car crash with a car that suddenly without any operator error bursts into flames. Causalities aren’t the point to this argument.
- School-Cotton 3y agoThat plane literally crashed into another plane. You make it sound like it burst into flames for no apparent reason.
- jamincan 3y agoI think their point is that this incident and the incident in Japan aren't comparable as that one was caused by a runway incursion and this was caused by some sort of failure in the aircraft itself.
- School-Cotton 3y agoTrue, I think I might have responded to the wrong comment.
- seydor 3y agois this a serious question?
- cherryteastain 3y agoThat was a runway incursion, nothing Airbus could have done about it anyway. Except building their plane as safe as possible, of course. That said, no one died in this incident either.
- jbverschoor 3y agoIn-flight video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaONLEa8LFE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaONLEa8LFE
- pizza 3y agoJesus. And that accidental cinematography what with the video showing the 787 Max safety flyer in the filmer's seat pouch..
- isp 3y agoPrevious related(?): - Yesterday (Friday 2024-01-05): "Boeing wants FAA to exempt MAX 7 from safety rules to get it in the air" (417 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38882358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38882358
- epolanski 3y agoTwo different variants and two different kind of failures.
- bjelkeman-again 3y agoI would think it is the same type of failure. Management failure.
- hosteur 3y agoIt is the same (defunct) company, though. So, I would say this is highly relevant.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- fifteen1506 3y agoNothing to worry about. Market will fix it after lots of people die and people return to using buses and boats for long-distance travels.
- epolanski 3y agoPart of me wants to never get on any of the Max variants, on the other hand, so many have been ordered around the world that it's impossible to avoid the plane.
- midasuni 3y agoDepends on the continent. Between easyJet and BA you can get most places in europe without risking a Max (BA run boeing long haul) Do all US carrier rally have Max planes?
- Redoubts 3y agoIt’s certainly common, but there’s a lot of airbus a320/321/321neo for domestics too
- theonlybutlet 3y agoThe A320neo is such a comfortable plane to fly on. A380 was great too.
- epolanski 3y agoRyanair has ordered 210 of them so they are going to be a workhorse in Europe too.
- midasuni 3y agoNot if you avoid Ryanair. Neither Ba nor easyJet have max.
- megamix 3y ago[flagged]
- pts_ 3y agoAre they following agile or what?
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago[flagged]
- pimpampum 3y agoIdea for a startup, a website that sells plane tickets exclusively avoiding Boeing planes. You have a customer waiting.
- jonatron 3y agoKayak already has an aircraft filter, the many other flight comparison sites could easily add the same.
- hef19898 3y agoPerfect use for VC money: Reimburse customers when the airline switches planes or flights in perfectly legal manner and customers end up with a Boeing plane anyways.
- yreg 3y agoAll the other Boeing plane models are quite flight proven. And also, airlines can switch planes at any time, you won't find out for sure what plane you are taking until you sit on it.
- midasuni 3y agoUnlikely an airline that doesn’t own or lease a max will swap one in. Sadly the majority of people will choose the cheapest result and voting with your wallet doesn’t work. Which is why we need regulation and can’t leave things to the free market, despite what the libertarians say.
- hef19898 3y agoSure, book an airline that doesn't have MAXes in their fleet. Only to find out that their partner airline do in fact.
- pimpampum 3y ago> All the other Boeing plane models are quite flight proven. Until they install a half-assed update coded by some underpaid Indian freelancer.
- w3ll_w3ll_w3ll 3y agoPassenger Diego Murillo, who had been on his way to Ontario, California, said the gap was "as wide as a refrigerator" and described hearing a "really loud bang" as the oxygen masks dropped from above. He told KPTV: "They said there was a kid in that row whose shirt was sucked off him and out of the plane and his mother was holding onto him to make sure he didn't go with it." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67899564 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67899564
- MOARDONGZPLZ 3y agoFor any other Americans like myself trying to conceptualize exactly how wide this hole was, imagine about 1/150th of a football field.
- williamcotton 3y agoCan you put that in units of elephant so I can truly grasp the magnitude? :D
- xattt 3y agoAfrican or Indian?
- Kye 3y agoAn unladen, spherical, metric elephant, of course.
- williamcotton 3y agoI actually needed some help putting a smile on my face this morning, so thank you for this delightful little banter!
- davrosthedalek 3y agoSorry, only have chickens: https://imgur.com/sMUgkTM https://imgur.com/sMUgkTM
- aledalgrande 3y agoAlmost every flight that doesn't cross the ocean on Air Canada is on a Max. Great to see this as they are not going to ground them as well... PS: the documentary Downfall: The Case Against Boeing was very eye opening, and really shows what happens when a company goes from a Jobs-like CEO to a Ballmer-like CEO, lesson to keep in mind
- williamcotton 3y agoYou mean when they replace an aerospace engineer experienced with the actual business operations and administration with someone who doesn’t know anything about aerospace engineering and learned about business management purely from a financial perspective that quality suffers? Next you’ll tell me that EBITDA isn’t a good metric for internal accounting and value costing!
- raverbashing 3y ago> doesn't cross the ocean on Air Canada is on a Max. Great to see this as they are not going to ground them as well... If they use the same kind of plug on their Max aircraft then I'd say grounding is merited. But if not then it shouldn't matter. Unless it's an unknown issue or possibly too generic (like the case of the MCAS) then ADs/grounding/etc take into account the specific failure.
- throw0101d 3y ago* https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/646497/flying-blind-by-peter-robison/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/646497/flying-blind...
- fennecbutt 3y agoLmao you think Jobs was focused on technical/safety stuff. He was a marketing guy. Read Woz's biography, they shows glimpses of the real jobs, even tho it's still toned down since they were "friends".
- astrange 3y agoPeople seem to think "marketing" means "making ads for an already completed product". That is not what it means.
- midasuni 3y agoIf it’s Boeing, I ain’t going.
- sschueller 3y agoIs this rupture of the hul possibly caused by that new deicing system that was mentioned in the other HN thread?
- Someone1234 3y agoNo. The engine cowling didn't fail on this aircraft.
- yellow_lead 3y agoIf you're a passenger on a flight like this, how much compensation could you be looking at?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dudeinjapan 3y agoDepends on whether your lawyer is Johnnie Cochran or Lionel Hutz. “If the plane has a hole, the airline must dole!”
- voakbasda 3y agoAlso known in the US by the saying: you can only get as much justice as you can afford.
- alistairSH 3y agoNot much? What’s your damage claim? Delay? Stress? The airline should probably give you some bonus miles/free tickets as a sign of goodwill, but not sure why they’d owe you beyond that. If you get sucked out and die, or injured, there’s a claim. But neither happened here.
- yellow_lead 3y agoEmotional distress can reward a lot. Although there were no casualties on this flight, having a near death experience is certainly stressful, and can result in ptsd. This can end up costing a lot in therapist bills.
- cf1241290841 3y agoFor reference: earlier fuselage failure in 737: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243 edit: Earlier door failures happened to two McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10 after they changed their locking mechanism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_96 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_96 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_981 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_981 Situation back then was made worse as it sucked part of the floor out with the door.
- light_hue_1 3y agoYeah, if by earlier you mean 35 years ago. In a totally different airplane design. Literally nothing in common with this flight.
- cf1241290841 3y agoIt was a fuselage failure, those dont happen all too often. Back then it was because of a lack of maintenance. It was before i read it was the door though. edit: In case its not obvious, would be great if you could post other examples. These events in the air are rather rare and i am rather curious for the upcoming ntsb report of this one. edit1: Apparently the newer one is a 737 from Southwest from 10 years ago, also maintenance issues. But like similar ones it was rather small https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_812 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_812
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- KoftaBob 3y agoPrimary source of the announcement: https://news.alaskaair.com/alaska-airlines/operations/as-1282/ https://news.alaskaair.com/alaska-airlines/operations/as-128...
- kmarc 3y agoI fly quite frequently, 320 flights so far based on my diary. The MAX accidents back then obviously made me a bit uncomfortable. Until a week ago, I had't actually flown with a MAX; but on January 1st, I took an Air Mexico flight which happened to be one. I wasn't scared (in the sense I know about myself when I'm scared), but rather curious, so, funnily enough, I came to HN and searched for the MAX articles from back then, because I expected that I'd find insights, good technical conversations and in-deep articles about the topic. On the other hand, I do have one fear. On longer flights, the large aircrafts that have three batches of seats per row, I prefer an aisle seat in the middle: there is a lower chance that I'm gonna be the one woken up when the middle seater has to go to the bathroom. On a smaller aircraft (that usually fly for less than 3h, so I don't have to use the bathroom myself) I always prefer a window seat (1) My nightmare is that once the window breaks, or a panel (that you can see the sealing points of) gets ripped off. This only ever happened a couple times, so I very well know there is practically zero chance that this would happen to me. And now this, in the news, coincidentally. (1) and I always check which side that window seat should be so I have the better view(2), like more mountains etc (2) but honestly, I usually don't have a good view, since I prefer a seat oat the middle of the wings' height so that my ride is less bumpy.
- belter 3y ago"Which Airlines Fly The Most Boeing 737 MAX?" - https://simpleflying.com/boeing-737-max-airlines/ https://simpleflying.com/boeing-737-max-airlines/ "Boeing 737 MAX 9 Production List" - https://www.planespotters.net/aircraft/production/boeing-737-max-9 https://www.planespotters.net/aircraft/production/boeing-737... The need for this post, shows the pathetic of the situation.
- phil21 3y agoThis is somewhat amusing, and at risk of a "me too" low value post... When I started regularly flying, I would actually search NTSB reports for the airframe in question in the airport lounge. I don't really know why exactly, but I think the engineering related discussion and the dryness of those accident reports were quite comforting - reading about those crashes really drove home how safe air transport really is. I'm sure I raised a few eyebrows though for anyone glancing at my screen. I also have the semi-irrational fear of where I sit. However mine is in relation to the engine nacelle - I don't want to be within 4 or 5 rows from where the fan blades are in case they explode into the cabin. Same with prop aircraft - I highly prefer to not be seated in the aisle next to the prop. So, there are at least two of us out there!
- tw1984 3y agoThis is what happens when your economy got de-industralized to favor those gamblings of the wall st.
- tw1984 3y agoMust be hurting to see such truth. Why bother doing engineering when there is quick & dumb money to be made in all those Ponzi schemes of the wall st.
- chinathrow 3y agohttps://www.aeroinside.com/19018/alaska-b39m-at-portland-on-jan-5th-2024-emergency-exit-and-panel-separated-in-flight https://www.aeroinside.com/19018/alaska-b39m-at-portland-on-...
- josemanuel 3y agoI really want badly to boycott Boeing. It's seems impossible that on some routes we do not have alternative to Boeing planes. Consumers should be allowed to decide with their wallet. Isn't that the whole purpose of the Capitalist system?!
- phil21 3y agoThis, combined with the recent news that Boeing wants to correct a design flaw on the engine nacelle anti-icing system by putting it on the pilots leads me to simply no longer trust this aircraft. The first couple crashes were sobering, but I thought Boeing would recover and a single issue like that would get corrected and not happen again. The fact they are still trying to "blame" pilots for aircraft design flaws though is beyond the pale and shows they learned absolutely nothing. I was trying to put my finger on it last night. I got on a MAX a few weeks ago and I absolutely noticed and felt mildly uncomfortable for a minute. I was chiding myself for feeling irrational fear. The reason was in front of me the whole time. It's actually rational after all: I simply do not trust the people who designed this aircraft.
- brnt 3y agoThere's been enough written about the cultural changes since MD and Boeing, and goes to show that incidents are unlikely just that. Indeed, incidents keep coming.
- hengheng 3y agoStatistically they're still rare, fortunately. There's a lot of these planes in the air every day, and it's far more likely to be involved in a car crash caused by somebody not paying attention, than it is to be on one of these flights. That said, I don't really want to live with the nature of all these flaws. This is not their rocket science that is failing, but it rather reeks of complacency. I still remember the wrenches found in early Dreamliners. Noone died, but I mean, come on.
- belter 3y agoHow is this even technically possible? When reading the multiple stories of crazies, that show up in the news once in a while, where someone tries to open doors or emergency exits mid flight ...There is always a reassuring expert comment, that he/she would not be able to, due to the higher pressure inside the airplane, and the fact these devices only open inwards. It seems for the MAX they blow outwards as easily?
- astrange 3y agoIt wasn't at cruising height yet so there wasn't as much pressure difference. Also in this case it didn't open inward, it fell off.
- nilsbunger 3y agoI was wondering the same thing. I’d think these door plugs would be designed the same way as a door, so they can only be removed by pushing them into the plane.
- by_Ruben 3y agoIt does seem to be an emergency exit that blew. "An emergency exit and whole panel at the left hand side of the aircraft was missing." Check for further detail and pictures: https://avherald.com/h?article=51354f78&opt=0 https://avherald.com/h?article=51354f78&opt=0
- justinclift 3y agoThat's pretty much sealing its fate as a cursed model from Boeing.
- belter 3y agoMessage to Boeing or Alaska Airlines...I have a door on my garden. Email me to discuss terms, or it shows up on Ebay tomorrow...
- sva_ 3y agoMakes me feel good about flying the 737 Max 8 in a few days...
- jtdev 3y ago[dead]
- avar 3y agoWith MCAS the MAX is already a flying flight simulator for earlier 737 versions. Fixing this should be trivial: Fit passengers with VR headsets to simulate there not being a giant hole in the fuselage.
- intunderflow 3y agoAnyone else actively avoiding Max aircraft after this, plus the previous two crashes, and the post from yesterday that Boeing were seeking another exemption from safety rules? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38882358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38882358 (If this means refusing to board after an aircraft swap then at least in my case: so be it, I don't trust Boeing's safety record on these aircraft anymore)
- xyst 3y agoIt’s hard to find an airline not deploying them in their fleet but most do provide the type of plane you will be flying in prior to ticket purchase.
- intunderflow 3y agoI live in Europe so I guess this is significantly easier over here (except for Ryanair of course)
- xyst 3y agoWhy does anybody continue to trust anything manufactured by this company now? How many incidents/lives is it going to take before airlines just blacklist this manufacturer? Forget the fines. Leadership at Boeing needs to be criminally prosecuted. Send them to a federal penitentiary. Send a message to those wanting to cost cut on mission critical items. Regulators in this country are asleep at the wheel
- terminous 3y agoBecause Boeing is 'too big to fail', proven in the last 737 Max case with MCAS. If there were no leadership prosecuted for that travesty and tragedy, none will ever be for this one. Proper accountability would cripple both the civilian and military sides of the US aerospace sector, which is dominated by Boeing. So Southwest is all-in on not just Boeing, but 737s. That's their entire fleet. It makes a lot of things simpler. Could they boycott and switch to Airbus? Possibly, but at massive cost and logistics nightmares. Given their logistics failures elsewhere, they'd be fools to try to exit Boeing over this.
- snowwrestler 3y agoSouthwest is not just all-in with 737s, they have an excellent safety record flying 737s. It’s an interesting question. Something seems clearly rotten at Boeing related to their recently designed 737 variants. Does the rot extend to older variants of the airframe? It has historically been considered very capable and reliable… the U.S. military still uses it to fly VIPs around the world.
- terminous 3y agoIt's a deep cultural rot that has apparently taken over in the 2010s, not a physical rot with older variants. There is no more of the classic Boeing engineering culture. Read these emails and chats from Boeing employees in charge of safety and compliance, who brag to each other about pulling a "Jedi mind trick" on the regulators and how they deserve to get paid more for all the money they're saving the company. https://fortune.com/2020/01/10/designed-clowns-supervised-monkeys-internal-boeing-messages-slam-737-max/ https://fortune.com/2020/01/10/designed-clowns-supervised-mo... https://seekingalpha.com/article/4316117-are-disturbing-internal-emails-boeing-just-released-737-max https://seekingalpha.com/article/4316117-are-disturbing-inte...
- dboreham 3y agoSo doing engineering with business school theory doesn't work so well.
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- rafaelero 3y agoNot every Boeing 737 Max but always a Boeing 737 Max.
- jcdavis 3y agoFor folks who want to feel better: this particular design feature (the unused plug exit) dates back to the 737-900 which has been around since 1997 For folks who want to feel worse: Highly recommend "Flying Blind" (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08P98854S https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08P98854S) - its a good book about how Boeing's engineering culture went to shit after the MD merger and the shortcuts used to get the Max delivered.
- Cacti 3y agoThe book couldn’t have been that good if it never got across to you that an airplane hitting production in 1997 was necessarily designed YEARS BEFORE 1997 (and hence the merger). Boeings problems were long in work before the MD merger. Many commercial aerospace people in Seattle, particularly ones with parents who worked at Boeing, have struggled to come to terms with that, and there are a lot of rose colored glasses around here of what 1995-1997 Boeing looked like.
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- orwin 3y agoIt's likely this particular issue is from a lack of quality control, and you cannot blame that on 1997 Boeing. Quality control degradation in my experience and from stories i've heard are exclusively the fault of bean counters and exec pushing for cost cuts (unlike design flaws where the engineers share the blame). I've heard a story about an industrial machine amputating someone because the new joints couldn't handle the pressure (in france, pre 2019, i don't have the specifics). The maintenance guy wanted to replace the joints with high quality one (like the original were), but they were deemed "too expensive" so they bought new joints at half cost, to gain 10€ on the maintenance of the 400k machine. Less than a week later, the machine broke, someone lost an arm or something (don't have specifics), and a new machine had to be shipped and given for free, i don't know who paid the the amputated guy.
- ramesh31 3y ago>Boeing's engineering culture went to shit after the MD merger and the shortcuts used to get the Max delivered. QA is always the very first neck on the chopping block when the bean counters take over. Seen it time and time again.
- politelemon 3y agoI'm guessing other airlines are feeling pretty nervous right now too, wondering if they should ground or not. What normally happens here, are other airlines going to wait for AA's report or do their own investigation?
- el-dude-arino 3y agoAA will do their own investigation but it's the FAA's investigation that actually matters. Doubtful much will happen though. The FAA allowed Boeing to do the FAA inspections on the MAX planes they produced, and the FAA rubber stamped the certifications. Fuck Jack Welch and fuck his devil spawn, the likes of Boeing CEO's Dave Calhoun and James McNerney, and sycophant Dennis Muilenburg.
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- idlephysicist 3y agoI know that the air accident rate is pretty much at its lowest since records began. I have heard a lot about grounding aircraft in recent years, though being a relatively young person, I am wondering is this new or was this always the procedure?
- marcodiego 3y agoI think competition increased the number of occupied seats, also margins are way lower now and news fly way faster. A single crash now may mean the end of an airline company.
- dragontamer 3y agoThe 737 Max is looking to be an incredibly accident prone airplane. Note that USA has extremely safe airplanes, probably the safest in the world. But when a singular design (737 Max) has so many issues, it means we need to look at our safety process and think how Boeing could let so many mistakes through.
- cyborgrising 3y agoGrounding aircraft types when there is a significant airworthiness concern has been a phenomenon from the very beginning of commercial jet aviation during the 1950s. The pioneering DeHavilland Comet, the very first jet airliner, suffered ironically similar failures of the pressurized cabin, albiet more serious than the pictured incident. Just like the current article, airlines at the time voluntarily grounded their Comet fleets in 1954. The only difference is an uptick in risk aversion. It took multiple serious incidents to trigger the grounding of the comet, but here we see grounding after one moderate incident. Then again, the greedy and selfish decision by Boeing executives to install only a single angle of attack sensor without redundancy as a cost cutting measure, which caused fatal crashes when paired with poorly designed software - on this very model, I believe - took multiple fatal crashes before a grounding occurred.
- edhelas 3y ago2024 will be a good year for Airbus... again
- idlephysicist 3y agoI know that the air accident rate is pretty much at its lowest since records began. I have heard a lot about grounding aircraft in recent years, though being a relatively young person, I am wondering is this new or was this always the procedure?
- steveBK123 3y agoBoeing is a good example of how screwed up management can ruin a company culture and therefore products with bad incentives. Contrast recent products like the 737MAX with the absolute workhorse and nearly unbreakable 777 designed 20 years earlier. Really a shame.
- gukov 3y ago"They don't build them like they used to anymore" applies to pretty much everything these days. +1 for the Downfall documentary on Netflix. Answers a lot of questions.
- steveBK123 3y agoOne of my random theories of engineering is that as we’ve gotten better and more precise in our computer modeling we’ve also gotten overconfident in our own modeling abilities. So we no longer over design with random “engineering factors” added in for the unknown, saving on costs. This of course falls apart when reality differs in some unexpected way from our modeling and it turns out our “just cost optimally regulation safe enough” design actually “just shy of being actually safe”. The 737max debacles seem like patches on patches on patches trying to thread that needle.
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- Scubabear68 3y agoMaybe I need to rethink sitting in the exit row.
- don_neufeld 3y agoNot an exit row in this seating configuration. If you were sitting inside, you probably wouldn’t notice a difference.
- SwiftyBug 3y agoIf you have your seat belt buckled, as you should, you would be fine. A little chilly, maybe, but fine.
- oxqbldpxo 3y ago[dead]
- timw4mail 3y agoI understand some unease about this, but this appears to be an isolated incident. Until it's shown not to be, I don't see how this makes the MAX family any more dangerous. Lest Alaska airlines be given too much of a free pass: they had a deadly incident due to lack of maintenance, where a DC-9-family jet lost elevator control entirely. Regardless, an incident like this is not the worst outcome: nobody was hurt, and the aviation industry can learn lessons from the situation. That includes learning whether this is an isolated incident, or a systemic one, and where the issue actually came from.
- jamwil 3y agoThe plane is two months old and experienced an airframe failure. The only way this is on Alaska is if they backed a truck into it.
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- nceasy 3y agoquestion is: should we worry? now i just have a new fear that i dind't have before
- mdaniel 3y agoPresumably the panel landed in in some farmer's field, otherwise we'd hear the news report about someone's roof getting an unexpected emergency exit addition? Come to think of it, I bet that's something the NTSB investigators will track down so they can do forensics on the debris
- georgeplusplus 3y agoI wonder if the engineers are being more risk tolerant because if I had to guess an engineer that says “no don’t do this” is not appreciated by management but an engineer that says yes we can do it is lauded as finding solutions than saying no. I’ve seen this in my role in a large company in cybersecurity. I also worked at Boeing early in my career and I remember them having a pretty cut throat leadership ladder where reporting an issue might get you passed over for that promotion.
- nickdothutton 3y agoThe whole premise of the Max was that it didn’t need full certification because it wasn’t a new aircraft. The engineers knew this was nonsense, many of them quit the company rather than work on it. The Max will go down as a textbook example of what happens at an engineering company when the engineers are overruled, silenced, ignored, and finally quit.