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One troubling aspect of this is that it appears Alaska had reason to believe something was wrong with this plane but basically ignored it. They were getting pr
by rootusrootus 3y ago
One troubling aspect of this is that it appears Alaska had reason to believe something was wrong with this plane but basically ignored it. They were getting pressurization warnings on prior flights, but the only action they took was restricting the plane from flying ETOPS routes.
They're the dominant carrier in my area, so these sorts of screwups make me nervous. I can't easily avoid using them without a fair amount of inconvenience.
- Xorlev 3y agoDo you have a source for that? I'm not denying it, just curious to read more.
- sidlls 3y agoIt will come out in the NTSB report, if it's true. Though that will take quite a bit of time.
- whycome 3y agocursory search: > Preliminary information about the accident remains scarce, though two people familiar with the aircraft tell The Air Current that the aircraft in question, N704AL, had presented spurious indications of pressurization issues during two instances on January 4. The first intermittent warning light appeared during taxi-in following a previous flight, which prompted the airline to remove the aircraft from extended range operations (ETOPS) per maintenance rules. The light appeared again later the same day in flight, the people said. https://theaircurrent.com/feed/dispatches/alaska-737-max-9-that-lost-deactivated-exit-had-recent-pressurization-issues/ https://theaircurrent.com/feed/dispatches/alaska-737-max-9-t... No idea about the accuracy of the site. And it seems like they have some script that prevents text highlighting for whatever reason (turn off Javascript).
- mlyle 3y agoWell, that's an interesting thing. During taxi-in, the cabin altitude should be the ground altitude; outflow valves open at touchdown. Hard to understand how an an incipient failure could manifest then (e.g. from increased leakage). Of course, there's warning lights for excessive cabin pressure, etc, too... which would point to a different theory of the problem than a structural manufacturing problem.
- I_Am_Nous 3y agoIs "sensor just no longer responding" a failure mode which could trigger the alarm?
- theYipster 3y agoJon Ostower is one of the best aviation reporters in the business and the Air Current is a site many professionals and executives in the industry trust.
- pbae 3y agoIt's too bad that asking "source?" comes across as hostile unless clarified to be otherwise. Maybe the internet should adopt something similar to the "/s" tag that signals that sentiment.
- heyoni 3y agoAsking for any sort of clarifying information inevitably leads to argumentation on Reddit. It’s like we’ve all learned to be so polite that the truth barely matters (I’m exaggerating of course).
- csours 3y agoThings like this are always alarming until you learn the base rate. Unfortunately, I cannot find a quick reference for this, but many many flights take off with some anomaly noted in the technical log book.
- thfuran 3y agoAnd it's not like driving is especially safe. It's just that traffic deaths are so routine that they're not generally widely reported, while pretty much every major issue with an airplane gets national attention. In the US, traffic deaths amount to the equivalent of a fully loaded 747 lost with all hands every couple days.
- laweijfmvo 3y agoWhether it’s true or not, I feel like I control my fate when driving a lot more than when flying. I can take precautions (defensive driving, avoiding bad conditions, etc.) but have little to no control once I board a plane.
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y agoWhen someone runs a red light at speed and t-bones you on your left you're dead no matter how defensively you drive. The illusion of control doesn't change your odds much.
- Miraste 3y agoI haven't trusted Alaska since the Flight 261 crash, where they failed to do basic maintenance for so long that the screw threads in the stabilizer system wore away and locked the plane in the "straight down" orientation. And fired and sued a mechanic who reported the problem. 100% fatalities.
- mertd 3y agoThat's more than two decades ago. People involved must have long left the company. They might even be working for other airlines.
- schiffern 3y agoThat's not how organizations work. You can't just slowly take out the "bad" people and replace them with "good" people and expect that to fix anything. It's the wrong mental model. Organizations are sticky. They get stuck in a rut, basically. The slow trickle of new people gets indoctrinated into the Company Way (or else selectively ejected), and the people that are able to leave often use it as a lesson of what not to do. In short, turnover isn't a magic bullet.
- TylerE 3y agoWhat do you call 8 bad cops and two good cops sitting at a table? Ten bad cops. Actual good cops wouldn’t associate with bad cops.
- willcipriano 3y agoWait until people figure this out about Washington.
- michaelcampbell 3y agoEveryone knows, but they also know its "the other guy". "Their guy" is the good one.
- wredue 3y ago[flagged]
- jcadam 3y agoI live in Alaska and Alaska Airlines (which isn't Alaskan - it's HQ is in Seattle) has a rather... notorious history with safety/maintenance issues. I fly Delta whenever possible when travelling to the lower 48.
- piloto_ciego 3y agoThere’s more than one of us up here that goes to hacker news!? Hello fellow northerner!
- xfitm3 3y agoAlaskan Airlines is notorious for taking maintenance shortcuts, this is likely not an inherent problem with the airframe but rather this operators SOP. Alaskan Airline flight 261 is one example. > The subsequent investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that inadequate maintenance led to excessive wear and eventual failure of a critical flight control system during flight. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261
- pc86 3y agoDo you have any examples that aren't from a quarter century ago?
- coddingtonbear 3y agoAlthough I can sympathize with the story, this particular aircraft had been in their hands just a couple months. Its first commercial flight was just a couple weeks back. Maintenance isn't the issue here, clearly.
- xvector 3y ago> Maintenance isn't the issue here, clearly. It is. Maintenance was aware of the pressurization warnings on this plane. They did nothing.
- habinero 3y agoNo, they logged it. Logging is not nothing. Planes are incredibly complex and have little problems like that all the time. It's not a safety issue. This was a brand new aircraft, this is almost certainly a manufacturing defect of some kind.
- stjohnswarts 3y agoFixing known problems as you learn of them is maintenance is it not? That's just as important as changing out the lubricants and checking that the working parts are working.
- dm319 3y agoDo we remember when the referenced article from here [1] hit the top of HackerNews soon after the Max crashes? [1] https://christinenegroni.com/irony-of-pilot-laying-blame-on-pilots-in-boeing-737-max-disasters/ https://christinenegroni.com/irony-of-pilot-laying-blame-on-...