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I was responsible for safe for flight inspections on military aircraft and the photo included in that post is completely insane to me. Those bolts being loose
by MarkMarine 3y ago
I was responsible for safe for flight inspections on military aircraft and the photo included in that post is completely insane to me.
Those bolts being loose (and they are BIG bolts) would mean multiple people in the installation process didn’t do their jobs, and signed their life on the line saying they did.
When I did maintenance, there was someone (QA) there to witness every torqued bolt, inspect every safety wire and installed part.
There is something rotten in Boeing.
- RF_Savage 3y agoThe management imported from McDonnel-Douglas? The same management that drove it to ground? The fish rots from the head. And these constant problems sure do sound like a new company culture of cutting corners instead engineering first.
- rvba 3y agoLooks like the installer did their job poorly and the QA rubber stamped it without checking. Are the QAs required to make photos to prove that they did their job? Like those food delivery people. Alternative is wrong bolts, or sabotage. But more possible - one lazy QA ghosting.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mywacaday 3y agoI would doubt one lazy QA, more likely a over worked and time short QA in a company culture that does not allow them to speak up when they need additional support.
- legacynl 3y agoExactly. This is a failure of management.
- goku12 3y agoThey're finding problems on multiple aircrafts. This isn't one QA. In fact, forget QA missing this. Bolts on aerospace systems are supposed to be properly torqued and arrested in most cases. How do the assembly people make such big mistakes? In my experience, no one puts their job on the line over silly reasons like this, unless there is intense pressure (unrealistic deadlines, heavy workload and poor working conditions) that makes mistakes like this inevitable. I wouldn't be surprised if an honest independent review of either company found ridiculous cost-cutting measures and/or emotional overload.
- mikrotikker 3y agoPerhaps DEI hires that don't have to do their full duties because expecting them to is racist or transphobic or something stupid and they'll be protected by their manager who got shafted in his last performance review because he had too many "white males" on staff.
- goku12 3y agoDo you have any reasonable justifications to base that speculation on, or are you just using this as an opportunity to target people racially or based on orientation? This sounds oddly similar to how Boeing tried to save their own skin by pinning the blame on foreign-trained foreign pilots when their own mismanagement in the form of 737 Max 8 MCAS killed hundreds of passengers.
- mikrotikker 3y agoI am extrapolating from the DEI stuff exposed by Ashley St Claire at United Airlines and I'm using this to target patronizing and dangerous DEI initiatives, not individuals. Boeing should be held liable for hiring based on skin colour and orientation instead of merit, this risking lives.
- goku12 3y agoSo you're 'extrapolating' an unrelated incident in a different company to target DEI initiatives at Boeing? If you remember the MCAS saga, you'll note that rot occurred at the exceedingly white executive level while the company was trying to pin the blame on foreign pilots. This is even supported by voice clips and email transcripts. Some of those were outright arrogant. It clearly shows a pattern consistent with profiteering work culture and nothing related to any race. In fact, this is one pattern I've seen with such racist dog whistles - blame the marginalized groups and target DEI measures without any good justification to save the image of the privileged. It propagates the sinister implication that an employee is definitely bad if they are a DEI hire. We're talking about a dangerous situation again with the potential to cause loss of life. It warrants serious contemplation as it might affect us some day. The fact that some people will hijack the discussion to advance their racist agenda is beyond disgusting.
- joquarky 3y agoPerhaps the installer and/or QA person should be required to be a passenger on the plane after their inspection and before they can mark the task complete.
- markdown 3y ago> The management imported from McDonnel-Douglas? I've heard this since they killed hundreds of people in the two crashes. Why are they being protected? They have names.
- kakwa_ 3y agoIt's not necessarily a question of persons (and the CEO did a resigned after the Max crashes). It's more a question of culture (oversimplifying, sales vs engineering) and this is harder to change most of the time. Apparently, even the Max debacle was not enough.
- markdown 3y ago> and the CEO did a resigned after the Max crashes That was a funny one. They replaced him with his chairman... hence, more of the same.
- aredox 3y agoThe MD "moles" managed to change the culture of Boeing pretty quickly from engineering- to sales-first. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing-lost-its-bearings/602188/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing... https://archive.ph/vy5p7 https://archive.ph/vy5p7
- sushibowl 3y agoSome of these executive quotes read (admittedly with the benefit of hindsight) like satire. > But the nearest Boeing commercial-airplane assembly facility would be 1,700 miles away. The isolation was deliberate. “When the headquarters is located in proximity to a principal business—as ours was in Seattle—the corporate center is inevitably drawn into day-to-day business operations,” Condit explained at the time. Oh man, wouldn't want that to happen. > With ethics now front and center, Condit was forced out and replaced with Stonecipher, who promptly affirmed: “When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm.” Indeed.
- 3y ago
- leptons 3y agoThe "MAX" in 737 MAX means "maximum profit", not "maximum safety".
- siva7 3y agoYou're joking but it's the real meaning conveyed to their customers, the airliners.
- rob74 3y agoYeah, that's why the leading low-fare airlines (Southwest, Ryanair) love it - so it's up to the customers to say that they no longer want to fly with an over 50 year old design that was initially a regional airplane but is now being used for transatlantic flights.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dotancohen 3y ago> that was initially a regional airplane but is now being used for transatlantic flights. And had its engines moved to an unstable location 50 years after the type first flew, necessitating software controls to compensate for which, paradoxically, are there so that the pilots do not need to train on the new aircraft's inherent flight characteristics yet should be disabled by the pilots under some emergency situations.
- glcihgnwe 3y ago[flagged]
- boxed 3y agoYou can prop up a bad system for many years by having a lot of workers still around from the old system. It takes time to fully drive a company as good as Boeing into the ground. Managers think they are the reason anything happens, but fortunately in this case this is a delusion. In places where a great manager tries to turn a business around that is broken that's a bad thing.
- yftsui 3y agoI heard a similar story regarding Boeing’s North Charleston factory due to that push, it leads to some Boeing customers request the last inspection done in the Everett factoryinstead before delivery. My bigger worry is 787 as apparently it is moving to SC.
- matthewmacleod 3y ago“This aircraft failed because Boeing is too woke” is a pretty amazing take, I’ll grant you that.
- didntcheck 3y ago"because they were prioritizing other factors instead of competency" That's not a particularly outlandish take, and the other factor is orthogonal
- foldr 3y agoGP appears to have a bee in their bonnet about wokeness (see post history). Unless they provide some evidence to support their take, I see no reason to take it seriously.
- Snow_Falls 3y agoDo you believe that other factor is wokeness, or is it maximising profit
- lvl102 3y ago[REDACTED]
- throwup238 3y ago737 Max 9s are made in Renton, WA.
- em1sar 3y ago[dead]
- giardini 3y agoWby the rush to judgement ("The fish rots from the head."). What was done and not done will be traced and the causes determined with good old engineering and detective work. Responsibility will be revealed and the proper parties punished. Rushing to judgement merely obscures the true responsibilities.
- browningstreet 3y agoGiven Boeing’s success in getting passes directly from Congress, that could be plausibly too rational given the current circumstances. Boeing got to where they are because your outcomes didn’t actually happen.
- cyanydeez 3y agothe point is maintenance personnel might be directly signing off but that doesn't mean they're directly responsible if their management set unrealistic timetables. that's the point, systems are as accountable as individuals but often individuals are easier to indict and scapegoat.
- whatever1 3y agoBolts can get unscrewed with vibrations. So probably a design error, they did not use the correct type of bolt (the one with the safety pin).
- gregoriol 3y agoDon't they have many ways to prevent bolts from unscrewing? I know at least a few by doing mechanical stuff on motorcycles, and it seems that other planes don't have such problems (at least not within 2 months after the last inspection).
- aredox 3y agoThere are washers, or thread lock glue, but it is still a question of correct execution: has the glue been applied? Was the glue batch used before its shelf life? Were the parts degreased before glue application? Or did anyone decided to cut corners by using an old batch/skipping degreasing/not putting glue because they were late on delivery?
- MarkMarine 3y agosafety wire and cotter pins are preferred methods on aircraft.
- lobsterthief 3y agoYes. For mission-critical bolts and nuts, absolutely safety wire and cotter pins should be used.
- MarkMarine 3y agoThe engineers at Bell also thought that blind bolts you couldn’t inspect in dailies should be wired.
- somewhereoutth 3y agoMy understanding is that the bolts did have castle nuts and retaining wires in the design. So either they were incorrectly fitted, or the bolts themselves were under specified with regard to strength.
- stjohnswarts 3y agoDid you torque every bolt every time before every flight?
- defrost 3y agoEvery scheduled maintainance that had that on the punch list, yes. With a seperate follow through by another party to check the work. That's SOP for US | AU | UK | EU military air mechanical crews.
- MarkMarine 3y agoEvery bolt you could see was checked before every flight yes. Every important bolt you couldn’t see during inspection was torqued, witnessed by QA, secured via safety wire or cotter pin, and secondary torque holding was then inspected by QA. This thing is obviously not just an interior part, look at the meat in those castings, and it’s obviously safety critical, look at the cotter pins on other bolts. Sounds like it was going to be installed behind interior paneling and not inspected every day. For something like that, every important bolt should be secured by secondary methods, torqued and witnessed installed correctly. This looks like a failure in engineering (not having wire on this bolts), then a profound failure in assembly with multiple people not doing their jobs (not torquing, not witnessing, faking logs), risking the lives of passengers. If this happened at cruising altitude and speed, people would have died. I can’t find the flight number but I believe 9 people died when a jet lost cabin pressure and a piece of the plane while decompressing during cruising altitude over water.
- thebiss 3y agoCorrect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_811 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_811
- DANmode 3y ago> signed their life on the line Clearly this is hyperbole.
- MarkMarine 3y agoIt wasn’t in the military. Doing this would land you in Leavenworth.
- DANmode 3y agoWhat I mean is: clearly that's not the case in the civilian world. Though it should be!
- MarkMarine 3y agoI think if someone falsified records of witnessing torque on these bolts when they didn’t, they could easily be held criminally liable had someone died in this incident. I’m not a lawyer but my plain reading of involuntary manslaughter seems to fit this.
- storf45 3y agoFrom when I worked as an engineer on the assembly line for smaller jets, know that there would be a record trail of exactly who completed the work, who signed off on it and what the work order steps were for anything related to these assemblies and components. This would include the work done at Boeing and their suppliers. Will be interesting to ultimately hear the root cause here.
- x86x87 3y agoLet me ask this: assuming they did not tighten the bolts correctly and qa didn't check it, what are the odds they keep an accurate paper trail?
- burnerthrow008 3y agoClose to zero, but that doesn’t help them. If the paperwork was falsified to say that everything was tightened and verified, and Boeing stands behind that, now Boeing has to investigate and come up with a plan to prevent these bolts from “mysteriously loosening” (because everything was fine when it left the factory)… which will be an even bigger pain in the ass than just fixing the QA process.