4 ms·

Moral 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 c

Moral 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 ago
4 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 ago
  No, 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 ago
    Safety 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 ago
      No 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.
      - wkat4242 3y ago
        > Can you imagine if you had to take every aircraft offline for several days after every flight? That's exactly what the air force does. Most of their jets require tens of hours of maintenance for every flight hour!
        lostmsu 3y ago
        Maybe when they are not used for their main purpose in full capacity.
  - ikiris 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance
  - spuz 3y ago
    When the authorities you've placed your trust in have demonstrated they're incapable of doing their job to keep you safe, it's normal to take that authority back into your own hands. It would only be hysteria if the Boeing incident hadn't indicated a systemic failure in the air-safety system.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      > the authorities you've placed your trust in have demonstrated they're incapable of doing their job to keep you safe Who has done that? One plane lost a plug, with no injuries. Who else has gotten even injured in a commercial US flight in the last year?
    - deschutes 3y ago
      please. i'll take any odds that the vast majority of people on the plane are voluntarily flying for leisure. it's hysteria.
  - tjohns 3y ago
    Every aircraft has some missing screws. Literally every aircraft. That's why there's so many of them. Some of them matter, and the pilots keep a close eye on those during the preflight checks. Others, matter less so. (A single missing screw on a prop spinner - big problem. A missing screw on a non-structural plastic aerodynamic fairing - okay to defer, literally zero risk.)
- notaustinpowers 3y ago
  I worked in aviation for years when I was younger, specifically around aircraft maintenance. If you think 4 missing bolts out of 150 are a red flag then I recommend you do not look at what has to happen for a plane to be deemed not airworthy.
  - dghlsakjg 3y ago
    The more pertinent question, for me, is where are those screws? Are they on the ramp waiting to get ingested into an engine? Are they jammed in the flap tracks? Are they embedded into the leading edge of tail surface after flying off in flight at cruise speed? Its one thing to say that you can fly without those screws on the MEL. Its a whole other thing for parts to be falling off of an airplane in operation, even if they aren't required. A single piece of metal that fell off of a different airplane is what caused Concorde to crash.
    - wolverine876 3y ago
      How are those pertinent questions? Even with the answers, you (and I) would have no idea what we were talking about. The only pertinent question is: Do qualified mechanics certify that the plane is safe?
      - dghlsakjg 3y ago
        I’m a pilot, not an A&P, but I’ve seen what happens when a loose screw goes where it shouldn’t on an airframe. You should be very concerned about pieces of metal falling off of planes and going where they shouldn't. Its enough of a worry that just about every airport has procedures and a significant budget for managing FOD. Keeping screws (and other FOD) off the runway and taxiways is a multibillion dollar industry for a reason. A non-required screw that backs itself off and falls off in flight is a maintenance procedures failure (torque or locking compound was ignored). Screws don’t just fall off. Ignoring it because it is non-required is dangerous because it could possibly indicate that screws are being installed incorrectly, including required ones. Qualified mechanics certify every single non-experimental plane as safe. Yet somehow, planes still crash for mechanical reasons.
- jstanley 3y ago
  > How would a passenger know the limit of number of bolts to be missing before failure? They wouldn't. That's why passengers aren't tasked with being safety inspectors.
  - dap 3y ago
    Totally. But then you would expect no action would be taken based on a passenger reporting something like this. That action was taken suggests that the passenger was the first person to observe something that was a serious enough risk to cancel the flight — and that’s what’s surprising and alarming here.
    - zilti 3y ago
      No, it suggests that the company was afraid it'd negatively affect their image if they'd fly anyway.
aatd86 3y ago
That tells how good people care about safety... Or do you think that it's planted evidence? ;-)
Analemma_ 3y ago
Every time there's some actual disaster on something like a commercial airliner, in the ensuing investigation it turns out there were tons of warning signs - missing bolts, ignored reports, etc. And then people, rightfully, go "why were all these warning signs ignored?" And now here you are smugly telling us to ignore a bunch of missing bolts and that we're idiots for possibly thinking they could be indicative of a problem. Do you see how this is a big part of the answer to that perpetual question of "the signs were all there, why wasn't anything done?"
- thejohnconway 3y ago
  I have no horse in this race, but it’s possible that the answer to the first question of why were all the warning signs ignored is that there are a lot of trivial, spurious, or non-relevant reports, and no one retroactively looks at them in most cases because nothing happened. Upping the number of reports might make the problem worse.
  - pixl97 3y ago
    In airframe maintenance this is rarely true. In theory you should be proactively dealing with these issues before they are report generating (in the sense of said reports remaining open a long time, all maintenance generates logs in planes). If an excess number of reports are being generated there is an underlying issue, like work is being deferred for profitability reasons, or the maintenance team is being rushed because they are falling far behind.
bavent 3y ago
[flagged]

karolist 3y ago

4 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 ago
No, 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 ago
  Safety 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 ago
    No 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.
    - wkat4242 3y ago
      > Can you imagine if you had to take every aircraft offline for several days after every flight? That's exactly what the air force does. Most of their jets require tens of hours of maintenance for every flight hour!
      - lostmsu 3y ago
        Maybe when they are not used for their main purpose in full capacity.
- ikiris 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance
- spuz 3y ago
  When the authorities you've placed your trust in have demonstrated they're incapable of doing their job to keep you safe, it's normal to take that authority back into your own hands. It would only be hysteria if the Boeing incident hadn't indicated a systemic failure in the air-safety system.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    > the authorities you've placed your trust in have demonstrated they're incapable of doing their job to keep you safe Who has done that? One plane lost a plug, with no injuries. Who else has gotten even injured in a commercial US flight in the last year?
  - deschutes 3y ago
    please. i'll take any odds that the vast majority of people on the plane are voluntarily flying for leisure. it's hysteria.
- tjohns 3y ago
  Every aircraft has some missing screws. Literally every aircraft. That's why there's so many of them. Some of them matter, and the pilots keep a close eye on those during the preflight checks. Others, matter less so. (A single missing screw on a prop spinner - big problem. A missing screw on a non-structural plastic aerodynamic fairing - okay to defer, literally zero risk.)
notaustinpowers 3y ago
I worked in aviation for years when I was younger, specifically around aircraft maintenance. If you think 4 missing bolts out of 150 are a red flag then I recommend you do not look at what has to happen for a plane to be deemed not airworthy.
- dghlsakjg 3y ago
  The more pertinent question, for me, is where are those screws? Are they on the ramp waiting to get ingested into an engine? Are they jammed in the flap tracks? Are they embedded into the leading edge of tail surface after flying off in flight at cruise speed? Its one thing to say that you can fly without those screws on the MEL. Its a whole other thing for parts to be falling off of an airplane in operation, even if they aren't required. A single piece of metal that fell off of a different airplane is what caused Concorde to crash.
  - wolverine876 3y ago
    How are those pertinent questions? Even with the answers, you (and I) would have no idea what we were talking about. The only pertinent question is: Do qualified mechanics certify that the plane is safe?
    - dghlsakjg 3y ago
      I’m a pilot, not an A&P, but I’ve seen what happens when a loose screw goes where it shouldn’t on an airframe. You should be very concerned about pieces of metal falling off of planes and going where they shouldn't. Its enough of a worry that just about every airport has procedures and a significant budget for managing FOD. Keeping screws (and other FOD) off the runway and taxiways is a multibillion dollar industry for a reason. A non-required screw that backs itself off and falls off in flight is a maintenance procedures failure (torque or locking compound was ignored). Screws don’t just fall off. Ignoring it because it is non-required is dangerous because it could possibly indicate that screws are being installed incorrectly, including required ones. Qualified mechanics certify every single non-experimental plane as safe. Yet somehow, planes still crash for mechanical reasons.
jstanley 3y ago
> How would a passenger know the limit of number of bolts to be missing before failure? They wouldn't. That's why passengers aren't tasked with being safety inspectors.
- dap 3y ago
  Totally. But then you would expect no action would be taken based on a passenger reporting something like this. That action was taken suggests that the passenger was the first person to observe something that was a serious enough risk to cancel the flight — and that’s what’s surprising and alarming here.
  - zilti 3y ago
    No, it suggests that the company was afraid it'd negatively affect their image if they'd fly anyway.

aatd86 3y ago

That tells how good people care about safety... Or do you think that it's planted evidence? ;-)

Analemma_ 3y ago

Every time there's some actual disaster on something like a commercial airliner, in the ensuing investigation it turns out there were tons of warning signs - missing bolts, ignored reports, etc. And then people, rightfully, go "why were all these warning signs ignored?" And now here you are smugly telling us to ignore a bunch of missing bolts and that we're idiots for possibly thinking they could be indicative of a problem. Do you see how this is a big part of the answer to that perpetual question of "the signs were all there, why wasn't anything done?"

thejohnconway 3y ago
I have no horse in this race, but it’s possible that the answer to the first question of why were all the warning signs ignored is that there are a lot of trivial, spurious, or non-relevant reports, and no one retroactively looks at them in most cases because nothing happened. Upping the number of reports might make the problem worse.
- pixl97 3y ago
  In airframe maintenance this is rarely true. In theory you should be proactively dealing with these issues before they are report generating (in the sense of said reports remaining open a long time, all maintenance generates logs in planes). If an excess number of reports are being generated there is an underlying issue, like work is being deferred for profitability reasons, or the maintenance team is being rushed because they are falling far behind.

bavent 3y ago

[flagged]