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NYC-bound flight canceled when passenger notices missing bolts on plane wing
- anotherhue 3y agoShould passengers be breathalysing the pilots too? If cost cutting is affecting safety then maybe it's gone too far. Every missing bolt should trigger a $1MM reduction in an exec's bonus.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jupp0r 3y agoNot sure about you, but I'd appreciate a fellow passenger pointing out any missing bolts on any flights I'm on.
- andix 3y agoIf you notice the pilot being drunk you should speak up.
- otikik 3y agoI was, in fact, in a flight where one of the pilots didn’t seem… fit to flight when he was approaching the airplane at the airport. He was visibly wobbly. The flight was delayed until a replacement pilot arrived
- trhway 3y ago"The drunkennes of the pilot doesn't matter really, anyway the autopilot does the job" - that is how the representative of Aeroflot was trying to convince the passengers to proceed with the flight when he was called on board after the passengers refused to flight with the drunk crew (usually Russian passengers are fine with drunk pilots, the situation here was an exception because the actual passenger who felt entitled for sober crew and raised the noise was Ksenija Sobchak - the daughter of the guy who "godfathered" Putin when Putin was just a clerk in St-Petersburg city office)
- reisse 3y agoThat's probably the funniest klyukva I've ever heard.
- singleshot_ 3y agoI’ll bite: what does “cranberry” have to do with stories about Russians? The phrase “the old chestnut” to refer to a story about American history springs to mind…
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Every missing bolt should trigger a $1MM reduction in an exec's bonus One of the crowning achievements of the FAA has been resisting the American penchant for retribution. If a missing bolt triggers a $1mm fine for a senior manager, you won't find missing bolts.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoMoral panic hysteria, but this is a non-story. Airbus came out to defend that that particular panel is held by a hundred plus fasteners. Passengers should be concerned about shoddy bear straps on Boeing 737 NGs they can't see that were passed off as approved parts to make the production schedule. Boeing had the DOJ in their pocket making false statements about an ongoing NTSB investigation into AA 331 that broke up, likely due to substandard parts, when a 737 Classic would've likely remained intact in similar circumstances. 737 NGs are at variable unknown risk of breaking up on hard landings, runway overruns, and possibly even extreme turbulence. See also: Ducommun scandal.
- karolist 3y ago4 bolts missing, that gives all sorts of red flags. How would a passenger know the limit of number of bolts to be missing before failure? Or be sure other bolts are properly fastened after seeing missing ones? Calling off the flight is absolutely the correct decision.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoNo, it's hysteria. This is common practice on non-load-bearing access panels. I've seen many times on in-service commercial aircraft.
- karolist 3y agoSafety margins should be at their max before flight, I'm thankful engineers at Airbus put more bolts than required if they go missing mid flight, but before take-off it should be back at 100% safety margin.
- tjohns 3y agoNo aircraft would ever fly then. You'd be surprised how much equipment on every single flight is inoperative or scheduled for deferred maintenance. There's an engineered threshold at which an aircraft is deemed not airworthy. On airliners, this is managed through a Minimum Equipment List (MEL), which is a formal checklist that tells the crew which equipment is allowed to be broken (and for how long). This threshold is less than 100% by design, because little things break all the time. It can take days/weeks in the shop to fix issues, so you need to batch up all the maintenance. (Can you imagine if you had to take every aircraft offline for several days after every flight?) And that's okay, because there's still a large safety margin built in as long as the MEL is followed.
- fotta 3y agoThey should've slapped some speed tape over the holes
- bombcar 3y agoSpeed tape is 100 Approved. That stuff is INSANE.
- brokensegue 3y ago> Neil Firth, the Airbus local chief wing engineer for A330, added that the affected panel was a secondary structure used to improve the aerodynamics of the plane. ... Each of these panels has 119 fasteners, so there was no impact to the structural integrity or load capability of the wing, and the aircraft was safe to operate, he said.
- pohl 3y ago[flagged]
- kayodelycaon 3y agoThat's because Boeing doesn't make Airbus planes. :)
- Zandikar 3y agoNo but Spirit Aero makes both A330 and 737 parts, including fuselages and wing components among others, so while I know this thread was made in jest, the commonality is still worth acknowledging given the greater context.
- masklinn 3y agoI don't have full history so hard to know which plane it was exactly, but all the planes listed for VS127 at https://planefinder.net/data/flight/VS127 https://planefinder.net/data/flight/VS127 were delivered between 2011 and 2012, seems somewhat unlikely that it'd be an issue from back then even assuming Spirit was involved.
- altairprime 3y agoWhile it’s comforting to know that the ultimate outcome of this going unnoticed would have been non-fatal, we don’t yet know whether this was: 1) “after a series of maintenance and inspection failures, a passenger noticed something unusual”; or, 2) “the bolts had been inspected on an appropriate schedule and had since gone missing, and a passenger noticed a new defect before the next inspection was scheduled to occur for this non-critical part”. It matters whether it’s 1) or 2), or somewhere in between, and I don’t think we don’t know that yet. Public faith in airlines behaving safely is pretty low, and rightly so. I definitely support “treat as a process failure until determined otherwise” for airlines right now. Looking forward to that determination, regardless.
- coolThingsFirst 3y agoI love how it’s played like a minor thing but resulted in a cancelled flight.
- masklinn 3y agoIt can be both at the same time, delaying or cancelling the flight can be much safer brand wise than the complaints and negative publicity, even if technically there is no significant risk. It's common for people to complain enough to get free or comped stuff they did not deserve at any point. As the saying goes, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, that doesn't mean that's where the maintenance should go.
- Frost1x 3y agoEspecially after recent 737 Max incidents, people’s levels of concern are higher. I don’t know how much a typical canceled flight is in lost revenue but I suspect it’s much lower than what Alaska Airlines and others are dealing with now.
- masklinn 3y ago> I suspect it’s much lower than what Alaska Airlines and others are dealing with now. No doubt, given Alaska grounded all their MAX9 since Jan 5, and the FAA grounded all other MAX9 fleets the next day, they are still grounded to this day as far as I know (United has extended their cancellations to the 26th so far). That's some 170 planes not flying their routes or earning money. Although the FAA has apparently completed their inspection of the initial batch of 40 MAX9s.
- jpk2f2 3y agoIt can be minor but still cause a cancellation. It may be non-obvious to the immediate ground crew that it's trivial, and an abundance of caution is obviously ideal when it comes to flight safety.
- coolThingsFirst 3y ago
- AlbertCory 3y agoDid the flight attendant say, "Can I get you anything?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXHKDb0CNjA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXHKDb0CNjA
- lefixx 3y ago4 bolts (I actually think they are screws) is not a danger but it signals a failure in the maintenance pipeline.
- Johnny555 3y ago4 screws randomly distributed among the 109 might not be a danger, but these were 4 in a row, which seems like it would be more hazardous.
- dghlsakjg 3y agoYou ever seen what happens when a screw comes loose and hits another surface at 500 mph? I have had a small screw go through a plane propeller before. 1 missing screw, let alone 4, would terrify me.
- ungruntled 3y agoI’ve noticed missing bolts a few times when sitting in wing view seats. Didn’t realize that isn't supposed to be ok. This problem might be quite common.
- gpderetta 3y ago> You ever seen what happens when a screw comes loose and hits another surface at 500 mph well, obviously you are screwed. edit: to be more constructive "Felipe Massa's life-threatening crash "( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEt5pbyiIdM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEt5pbyiIdM )
- 3y ago
- vinni2 3y agoIt’s interesting that the flight was cancelled instead of flying without the concerned passenger.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- andix 3y agoAlways report anything suspicious to the flight attendants. In the past there were some accidents that could've been prevented if passengers spoke up. As a passenger you have no idea what is dangerous and what isn't. And the cabin crew is trained to take every report serious.
- o_nate 3y agoOnce I was flying with my wife. She was in the window seat and she noticed that one of the plastic panels on the wall had come loose. She called the flight attendant over and told them. Long story short, they held the flight at the gate until a service crew could come and fix it (which they did by duct taping it back in place). Do you think the other passengers appreciated her perceptiveness, or was there a lot of dark muttering about why she didn't keep it to herself? (Spoiler: it was dark muttering)
- nvm0n2 3y agoCase in point, Aloha Airlines Flight 243, in which part of the roof of the plane disintegrated mid-flight due to metal fatigue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243 > During an interview, passenger Gayle Yamamoto told investigators that she had noticed a crack in the fuselage upon boarding, but did not notify anyone.[3]: 5
- thegrim33 3y agoInteresting to see the obvious difference in coverage. Anything that has anything at all to do with Boeing would have Boeing in the title, the first sentence, plastered all over your eyeballs every chance they could get. But when it's not Boeing there's no mention of Airbus in the title and you have to read into the article for five paragraphs to see the first name drop of Airbus. But hey, to be fair, a negative story about Airbus actually made it onto a prominent position on HN, so that's good at least. Usually it would just be completely ignored and not mentioned.
- tennisflyi 3y agoAren't planes allowed to fly with a certain amount of "brokenness"?
- anderiv 3y agoYes, for each aircraft, the amount of brokenness is specified in its Minimum Equipment List: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_minimum_equipment_list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_minimum_equipment_list
- wolverine876 3y agoI once noticed a potential problem (I have zero expertise in the subject) on a commercial flight; I walked to the galley and privately, calmly told a flight attendant, emphasizing my level of expertise and that I'd leave it to them. The flight attendant later stopped by and said it was nothing. On my next flight, maybe a week later, the pilot announced that passengers may see this thing and that it's fine.
- jjackson5324 3y agoThat's the cool thing about aligned incentives. If the plane is fucked for you, then it's fucked for the flight attendants & pilots as well.
- wolverine876 3y agoSomeday, we might have remotely piloted (with AI!) commercial passenger planes. Probably it won't be accepted for a long time, but no doubt a PE-owned airline will propose it to cut employment and outsource remaining piloting to some lower-wage country, people on HN will repeat the airlines' talking point ('it only has to match the injury rate of in-person pilots!'). I hope you remember to repost your comment then.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> no doubt a PE-owned airline will propose it to cut employment and outsource remaining piloting to some lower-wage country Culture and history matter. Aviation in America is as safe as it is because the culture of piloting tends to put safety first. As long as there is general aviation and a forward-leaning FAA, I don't see a problem with automating more of air transport. > 'it only has to match the injury rate of in-person pilots!' If it does, it does. I don't see the problem.
- wolverine876 3y agoNobody has even proposed it, it's not even on the horizon, and you are already arguing about it. That is 'foward-leaning'!
- lulznews 3y agoHow many maintenance issues occur in Japan?
- alephnan 3y agoThe McDonald's ice cream machine always work in Japan.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoSo is this a case of widescale availability bias and now everyone is nitpicking airline fastener status? Or is this genuinely a widescale reduction in maintenance frequency, care and engineering? Could be a bit of both also I suppose However increasingly I have been asking a question to determine something like this: “If the overall system is improving, would we see more or less of these kind of events?” In my experience, it actually is that the level of responsibility that workers are taking for their jobs has plummeted since COVID. Understandably or not, a core backbone of our infrastructure - hope for the future - is basically gone. So that’s why to me it’s not just availability bias, you can see it almost everywhere and it’s well documented that “give a shit” is not improving, and that means core infrastructure is going to start failing rapidly.
- vineyardmike 3y ago> In my experience, it actually is that the level of responsibility that workers are taking for their jobs has plummeted since COVID. I have heard this repeated a ton. I see it too, but maybe I'm just being trained to see it. Is this an American thing, or do other people in other countries experience this too?
- Foreignborn 3y agoAnecdotally, I don’t feel this way about “giving a shit” in japan. We did have inflation and other issues, but I didn’t notice any big change of the sort here.
- 15457345234 3y agoThe Japanese nut hasn't cracked yet, they're trying pretty hard though. Stay strong.
- fxtentacle 3y agoI agree on the "not giving a shit" part and in my observation, the effect is also strong in Germany and Italy. But I believe it's not due to Covid. While Covid was happening, it became blatantly obvious that wealthy investors can still make 40% appreciation from their housing investments even while the majority of the population was struggling just to get by (and pay their rent). Similarly, investors profited handsomely from stock price increases while the same companies (whose market cap went up) were abandoning their employees, in some cases slashing an entire division with just a prerecorded Zoom call. In short, Covid showed everyone that there's 0 loyalty for the little man and that trickle down doesn't work. And I can easily understand how the realisation that hard work will almost never earn you a good place in society will lead to people avoiding the hard work.
- boppo1 3y agoI can't help but think all this media about airplane safety is related to efforts to get average people to reduce their carbon footprints.
- jan3024-2r 3y ago[dead]
- londons_explore 3y agoSo why were there 119 screws if it was fine to be missing 4 in a row? Aircraft are usually built with a factor of safety of 1.5-2 or so - meaning it's probably only in the design spec for one screw to be missing in a row...
- lupire 3y agoProbably for different parts of the assembly.