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Two planes crashed. That's four years ago and that was root caused to a single issue which has since been addressed. Before that the 737 had a great safety reco

Two planes crashed. That's four years ago and that was root caused to a single issue which has since been addressed. Before that the 737 had a great safety record. In fact it still does. Not perfect but pretty amazing considering it's the most widely use plane ever produced. After that there have been a few incidents, including the non fatal one with the door. But nothing out of the ordinary. Here's a list of all the incidents with the 737 over the years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_Boeing_737 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident... If anything, this decade is looking pretty good so far. I'm not saying there's nothing going on at Boeing in terms of management and quality control. But hadn't it been for the issues a few years ago, this would barely register in the news as anything else than the minor incident this was. But because that was in the news, now any Boeing related news is causing world + dog to panic. And that apparently includes FAA leadership and management at major airlines. They are apparently more worried about how it reflects on them than about the actual facts. I think the grounding of the aircraft has much more to do with politics and appearances than with actual safety. It was premature and probably overkill. People insisting on expensive audits and other draconian measures have basically persuaded the FAA to do what they otherwise wouldn't dream of doing: ground loads of planes over an issue that can probably be excluded with a simple, straightforward inspection. There hasn't been a lot of detail about what exactly went wrong. Nobody waited for that to be revealed even. But I bet it's something straight forward like a missing bolt or something similarly easy to check and verify. If you are an airline and you own anything even mildly resembling a 737 and you haven't at this point checked if the bloody doors are fine, you should not be operating planes at all. At least, claiming ignorance after all the attention in the news is not a thing. You shouldn't be waiting for the FAA to tell you to do this as it's both obvious and you are responsible for your fleet.

snapcaster 3y ago
On one hand I agree with you that people are likely overreacting, but i disagree that anyone is acting irrationally. Boeing has lost _all_ credibility amongst the public and we're not all aviation experts so we don't know that a 4-bolt-gap is fine or whatever their current issue is. >But hadn't it been for the issues a few years ago By "issues" you mean hundreds of people being killed by a known manufacturing/training issue? Where does your faith in these people come from?
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  > Where does your faith in these people come from? The unchanged safety record. Yes, it's tragic when planes crash. Thankfully it's not happening a lot. And as I've argued, it actually seems safer than ever. People seem to insist there are all sorts of issues with Boeing. Except that doesn't seem to be translating into a major increase in accidents or incidents. So, the attention and paranoia seems a bit over the top. People who know nothing whatsoever about any of this calling for CEOs and boards to be fired and the FAA to do this or that. You know what's not happening? A lot of pilots, mechanics, airlines, etc. reporting doors with the same issue. Just not a thing. And all of them are aware and looking. That's 100% guaranteed. Nobody needs to be told to start looking. These doors are probably safer than they've ever been because world+dog has been looking at them for the last few weeks. This article is about an airline finding loose bolts. That's a serious issue of course. Exactly the kind of thing an inspector should notice on countless inspections that happen to planes throughout their life. There are of course many bolts in airplanes and torquing them correctly kind of is a big deal to the point where companies are keeping detailed records about who torqued them, when, and how strongly. Airlines are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing: inspecting their airplanes on the off chance there might be something wrong. I expect most pilots would also care to look at the door panel in question when they do their routine inspection of the plane before taking off. I know I would; and I'm not even a pilot. Maybe not in depth and just a cursory glance. But they'd be aware and on the lookout for trouble. After all, it's their job to make sure the plane is safe before taking off. This mentality is ingrained in the aviation industry. Which is why safety records are so good. It's rare for something this bad to go unnoticed.
  - hughesjj 3y ago
    > The unchanged safety record. What do you specifically mean by this?
happytiger 3y ago
I thought Mr. Travis’s write up was excellent about what some of the issues are, and why they are different in this series (max program variants). https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-the-boeing-737-max-disaster-looks-to-a-software-developer https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-the-boeing-737-max-disaster-lo...

snapcaster 3y ago

On one hand I agree with you that people are likely overreacting, but i disagree that anyone is acting irrationally. Boeing has lost _all_ credibility amongst the public and we're not all aviation experts so we don't know that a 4-bolt-gap is fine or whatever their current issue is. >But hadn't it been for the issues a few years ago By "issues" you mean hundreds of people being killed by a known manufacturing/training issue? Where does your faith in these people come from?

jillesvangurp 3y ago
> Where does your faith in these people come from? The unchanged safety record. Yes, it's tragic when planes crash. Thankfully it's not happening a lot. And as I've argued, it actually seems safer than ever. People seem to insist there are all sorts of issues with Boeing. Except that doesn't seem to be translating into a major increase in accidents or incidents. So, the attention and paranoia seems a bit over the top. People who know nothing whatsoever about any of this calling for CEOs and boards to be fired and the FAA to do this or that. You know what's not happening? A lot of pilots, mechanics, airlines, etc. reporting doors with the same issue. Just not a thing. And all of them are aware and looking. That's 100% guaranteed. Nobody needs to be told to start looking. These doors are probably safer than they've ever been because world+dog has been looking at them for the last few weeks. This article is about an airline finding loose bolts. That's a serious issue of course. Exactly the kind of thing an inspector should notice on countless inspections that happen to planes throughout their life. There are of course many bolts in airplanes and torquing them correctly kind of is a big deal to the point where companies are keeping detailed records about who torqued them, when, and how strongly. Airlines are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing: inspecting their airplanes on the off chance there might be something wrong. I expect most pilots would also care to look at the door panel in question when they do their routine inspection of the plane before taking off. I know I would; and I'm not even a pilot. Maybe not in depth and just a cursory glance. But they'd be aware and on the lookout for trouble. After all, it's their job to make sure the plane is safe before taking off. This mentality is ingrained in the aviation industry. Which is why safety records are so good. It's rare for something this bad to go unnoticed.
- hughesjj 3y ago
  > The unchanged safety record. What do you specifically mean by this?

happytiger 3y ago

I thought Mr. Travis’s write up was excellent about what some of the issues are, and why they are different in this series (max program variants). https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-the-boeing-737-max-disaster-looks-to-a-software-developer https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-the-boeing-737-max-disaster-lo...