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It seems there's a sense of malaise falling over everything and everyone in the USA. People at large simply cannot be bothered to care about anything, including
by tuckerpo 3y ago
It seems there's a sense of malaise falling over everything and everyone in the USA. People at large simply cannot be bothered to care about anything, including torque specs for freakin' AIRLINERS
- xcv123 3y ago[flagged]
- aappleby 3y ago[flagged]
- xcv123 3y ago[flagged]
- threeseed 3y ago[flagged]
- xcv123 3y agoThat is not what I said But when you have a quota, then you must ignore better qualified applicants in order to satisfy the quota. It's a mathematical fact. I am not saying this is the reason why Boeing is turning to shit. But it's an interesting observation. I myself am a "minority/POC" and I'm also extremely competent at my job. So I'm not saying that minorities are incompetent, because I am not incompetent. When I interview candidates I give zero fucks about their colour/gender/whatever. If they are morons then I won't hire them.
- throwboatyface 3y ago[flagged]
- zilti 3y ago[flagged]
- btgeekboy 3y agoIt’s a current Fox News talking point. Don’t have a link at hand currently, but one host in a recent segment drew an explicit line between this disaster and DEI initiatives in general, with zero evidence. (As always, it was under the guise of “just asking questions.”)
- dang 3y ago"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- spike021 3y agoI know of a pretty famous car tuner in the US (I won't get too specific for various reasons) and despite most people in my community going to him for service over the years, multiple people have come out and proved he rarely if ever torques anything to spec. For the longest time he even allowed customers to watch in the shop space as he worked on their cars and he'd hand-torque many things that the car manual was very clear needed to be specifically torqued for safety and operational reasons. The fact that people would share this and it didn't curb the amount of business and referrals he got just proved to me what you've said for the longest time. People don't like to be troubled with details and they'd rather be ignorant of them.
- vidanay 3y agoProbably one of those guys that says "click!" whenever they tighten a bolt.
- eppp 3y agoHow many times are the torque specs available to me when working on my car? I have no idea what random bolts are supposed to be so they get the good n tight click.
- hef19898 3y agoWorkshop manuals are your friend.
- vidanay 3y agoBuy a service manual for your vehicle? I have yet to see an important fastener without a specification (torque and pattern). If you are a professional mechanic, it's your responsibility to obtain the specifications and follow them. This is especially true when it comes to a licensed and certified A&P mechanic and not your neighborhood shadetree mechanic.
- somerandomqaguy 3y agoTo be fair, manufacturers are trying to discontinue the ability to 'buy' a service manual and make you pay for x amount of time of access. And IIRC they don't format the page into something that's offline friendly. It's still doable to get the full manual off, just not easy anymore.
- Sparkyte 3y agoCulture problem as we hire people of a generation who were not educated or engrained with responsibility they avoid doing the right thing and this happens.
- bigbillheck 3y agoThe only cultural problem is in management.
- agubelu 3y agoYes, because no catastrophic defects have been present in airliners in the past 50 years.
- terminous 3y agoGet this generationalist BS out of here. It isn't supported by the facts. Airline safety has improved with each generation. There were many more plane crashes in the 1970s-1980s when boomers were in their prime. Five times as many!
- pixl97 3y agoHeh, I remember back then when they said "Airplane crashes come in threes", while I don't think that's exactly true, the number of large fatal crashes was much higher.
- fulladder 3y agoI don't think it's generational per se, but I've noticed a declining level of concern for safety in product design compared to even like 20 years ago. I think people got used to the idea that everything is generally very safe and now there's less of an emphasis, so given enough time we'll start seeing dangerous products again and the cycle will start anew.
- plagiarist 3y agoI agree. We need way younger CEOs (and legislators!). This current crop is perfectly fine rushing QA to ship defective products as long as it lines their own pockets. In industries where failures won't directly kill people they actually plan the obsolescence to happen. Leadership from a more environmentally-conscious and empathetic Gen Z would definitely have safer products that last longer.
- jasode 3y ago> People at large simply cannot be bothered to care about anything, including torque specs for freakin' AIRLINERS It may have not been operator error with the torque wrench. Maybe the torque wrench itself was miscalibrated. Maybe the bolt had a flaw in the metal. It seems too early to make conclusions. An example of flawed bolts on aircraft in an excerpt from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369702102011380 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136970210...: A bolt from an aircraft flap control unit fractured in the threaded region of the shank near the shoulder with the head upon installation after a major service. A metallurgical investigation was carried out to identify the cause of failure. The bolt was manufactured from cadmium-plated, high-strength steel. Material checks carried out on the bolt showed that it conformed to the required specification and was found to have an approximate ultimate tensile strength of 1380 MPa. The fracture surface of the failed bolt was examined using SEM to identify the mode of fracture and determine if pre-existing defects were present that could account for the unexpected failure. The fracture surface exhibited two distinct modes of failure. [...] The embrittlement in this case was attributed to the cadmium plating, which is applied to the bolts to provide corrosion protection to the steel. Hydrogen is evolved during the plating process, which becomes absorbed by the steel. The cadmium plating acts as a barrier to hydrogen diffusion at ambient temperature so that the hydrogen becomes ‘trapped’ in the steel. In high strength steels (>1100 MPa) this leads to embrittlement. To overcome this problem, high strength steel fasteners, which have been cadmium-plated, are baked at 175–205°C for 24 hours to allow hydrogen to diffuse through the cadmium. In this case, failure of the bolts was caused by insufficient baking after plating, which gave rise to hydrogen embrittlement.
- bob1029 3y ago> It seems too early to make conclusions. In this specific case, I would agree. I share much of the sentiment of the OP, but I wonder if it is simply my perspective changing as I take on more and more responsibilities. Maybe things have always kind of been this way. I would be hesitant to say it's all going to hell in a handbasket because that tends to be one of those self-fulfiling prophecies. I prefer to look at things as "challenging, but workable".
- thinkingtoilet 3y ago>People at large simply cannot be bothered to care about anything People care deeply about a lot of things, just not this. And why should they? When you have every business decision made either by private equity or public companies with a focus only on the next 90 days it turns out everything goes to shit. Wages are stagnant. Wealth inequality is massive. Our society is sick. Issues like this will only increase. Our rail ecosystem is experiencing the same issues for the same reason.
- leetrout 3y agoRandom aside: I looked up an Acela ticket this morning. $1000 for a first class ticket from DC to BOS. 6.5 hours. Same flight first class with Delta this week is $850. Also 6 hours with layover. Blows my mind first class rail travel is as much as first class air travel.
- CaptainMarvel 3y agoDo you mean that the train is _as cheap_ as taking a plane? In my experience, in the UK, taking a train is more expensive than taking a flight (or driving, for that matter).
- fulladder 3y agoWhy do people pay more for slower transportation?
- Max-q 3y agoTrain travel tend to be much more comfortable than bus, car or plane. Especially if the plane takes as long time due to airports being located outside the city, security hazel, lots of stress at the airport and so on. The train cost more, but you enter the train in the city centre, sit down and relax, go to the restaurant car and eat a nice dinner, relax som more and you arrive in the destination city. This works better in continental Europe, where you have shorter distances and high speed trains between the capitols, often making the train faster from city centre to city centre than air travel. Traveling from Chicago to SF by train is pleasant, but take a couple days, not a couple of hours.
- nostromo 3y agoYou're catastrophizing a bit. This isn't an America problem it's a Boeing problem. American air travel is safer than it's ever been. Going years without a single fatality is now the norm, not an exception. The airlines are well run and do care deeply about safety. The regulators aren't perfect but generally do a good job. The NTSB is world-class. Boeing will continue to lose marketshare to Airbus and feel some pain which is appropriate. Eventually they'll get their act together or they will continue to suffer real consequences.
- sschueller 3y agoWorking conditions in the USA have come to a point where many don't care because the company doesn't care about them. People are fired at will after working for 20+ years with zero shits given. There is zero loyalty and in return workers just don't care either. There are only so many checks and balances you can build in until this situation will catch up with you. Doesn't amazon have such a huge turn over that they are running out of possible candidate to replace those workers? Being pushed to deliver more and more packages in shorter time or inspect train cars in less time then required why would one care if a packages gets tossed or a rail car is not properly inspected? In most jobs the only consequence is to be fired which is already possible for no reason what so ever in many states.
- el-dude-arino 3y agoThanks, Jack Welch. May you burn in hell for making the 21st century worker-employer relationship so adversarial.
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoSorry, but habe you ever worked in an aero assembly plant? You're making it sound like it's just like any other warehouse sweatshops job where you need to pee in a bottle while you work to meet your quotas when it's the furthest thing possible from that. You definitely have enough time to work at leisurely pace and assemble every part right. There's not much rushing going on there. If workers get away with doing dodgy work you have a QA issue.
- jskrablin 3y agoOr use a few drops of threadlocker...
- lulznews 3y ago[flagged]
- 0max 3y agoSagaar from Breaking Points felt the same way in his monologue today.
- Nextgrid 3y agoI commented on another thread[1] but I feel like it would apply here: > My theory is that this is not limited to Boeing or even aircraft design, it's a much deeper and systemic problem affecting all kinds of fields. We've had a lot of industrial accidents lately. > When aircraft manufacturing was an emerging industry there were tons of undocumented safety margins and "slack" in the design and production pipeline. Over time, the beancounters start optimizing stuff, so these undocumented safety margins are eroded in the name of efficiency/profit (and sometimes even documented safety margins too). > Furthermore, workers back in the day had a much better life when it comes to purchasing power (especially when it comes to property), and so could actually "give more fucks" about the job than they do now which is a compounding factor. You used to get a lot of implicit quality assurance back then which you don't get now. > We've now reached a stage where these undocumented safety margins have been eroded enough that it actually starts to cause issues, and the safeguards that are supposed to catch them aren't good enough, either due to 1) they've never been good enough but just weren't really needed before or 2) they too have been eroded in the same way for the same reason. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38896457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38896457
- fzeroracer 3y agoThe 'malaise' is the rot coming from uncurbed late-stage capitalism. Just about every single company only cares about short-term forecasts which leads to enshittification because there is no long-term planning or allowance for things like quality control. Privately-owned companies or worker-owned companies are more resilient to this problem because the nature of their existence means a stronger focus on long term goals. Though there are still issues with publicly owned companies exerting enough influence to acquire and subsequently destroy private companies. For example, Rite-Aid acquiring Bartell Drugs then going bankrupt and proceeding to shutter most Bartell Drug stores leaving Seattle with a deficit of pharmacies.
- pixl97 3y ago“Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.” Welcome to the outcome. When companies look at employees and employee training as an expense, and when the only way to improve your salary is to go to a new company, expect to see these companies to be hollowed out shells of untrained people.