6 ms·

The Disarray Inside Boeing's 737 Factory Before the Door Plug Blowout

41 points by impish9208 3y ago

impish9208 3y ago
Sorry for the link, it seems like archive.is is no longer able to bypass the paywall for the WSJ.
- thriftwy 3y ago
  I believe that archive.is is whatever you've archived into it. If you pressed the button when looking at the paywall, that's what it will carry.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    No, they run their own crawler against the URL you provide (IIRC, it's a headless Google Chrome [1]). For some special / often-requested (?) sites the people behind the project have: - implemented post-processing to strip ads and tracker beacons - bought legitimate accounts that they use to bypass paywalls (some of them show up as remnants in the archived pages' code, some of them show up when you request an archive of the site's account management portal, some show up as HTTP traces during the archival process - the crawler will dump every URL it requests on a "WIP" page, and for some, auth information like JWTs is passed in the URL) - implemented anti-nagwall features (some sites are "vulnerable" in their paywall/"you read X articles, end of free limit" by pressing the ESC key to disrupt the JS of the site) [1] https://blog.archive.today/post/618635148292964352/what-scraper-or-headless-browser-are-you-using-it https://blog.archive.today/post/618635148292964352/what-scra...
- top_sigrid 3y ago
  This one is working: https://archive.ph/WYdVW https://archive.ph/WYdVW
  - impish9208 3y ago
    Thanks!
pirate787 3y ago
Here's the article on MSN: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/the-disarray-inside-boeing-s-737-factory-before-the-door-plug-blowout/ar-BB1kUFFP https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/the-disarray-insid...
- laborcontract 3y ago
  Side question: does anyone know how msn seems so impossible to scrape? What’s the magic they’re doing that other sites aren’t?
  - tgv 3y ago
    For starters, everything loads via javascript. I have JS enabled, but use uBlock Origin, and the page is just empty.
    - laborcontract 3y ago
      Yeah they do some other shenanigans. Once you open inspect element the site just blanks out. It's the only website I've ever seen do anything like this.
impish9208 3y ago
Last year, work inside Renton, Wash., factory stalled on a future 737 MAX jet then known as Line No. 8789. Pressure was building. More than two weeks had passed since workers on Sept. 1 flagged damaged rivets on a fuselage that needed fixing. The section had been assembled by supplier AeroSystems in Wichita, Kan., and shipped by train to Boeing’s plant. Targets for completion came and went before employees escalated the situation to “Tier 3” priority, a move intended to get high-level attention at the factory, according to an internal Boeing log of employees’ push to finish the jet—the same one that would later lose its door plug panel in a near tragedy in flight just months later. Punctuating how the situation was escalating with dollar signs, an internal message read: “$$TIER-CHG: 2 – 3 $$,” according to a Sept. 17 entry in the Shipside Action Tracker, or SAT, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The SAT is like a factory Slack channel for fixing a production problem. The communications of the Boeing employees working on the door plug, previously unreported, help illuminate why it blew off during an Alaska Airlines flight on Jan 5. The factory was in disarray. Crews were unable to keep a schedule and apparently didn’t follow procedures, and production pressure mounted as delays piled up, according to entries in the SAT, people who have reviewed the logs and interviews with Boeing employees who worked on the plane. In their logs, workers extended 50 times the estimated time for completing work on the damaged rivets around the frame of the door plug. The delays ranged from a half-hour to days. The work was finally signed off on and officially completed by the morning shift on Sept. 20, after a final quality check was requested the previous day, the records show. The production breakdown had stunning consequences: The jet’s door plug blew off in flight, triggering an explosive loss of cabin pressure that risked the lives of passengers who could have been sucked out midair. It has sparked federal probes, including a criminal investigation, and hastened the exit of senior leaders including Chief Executive David Calhoun, who had vowed to improve Boeing’s safety and quality. A Boeing spokesman said the company is prohibited by federal rules from discussing the investigation and referred to recent remarks by executives that they will slow down the factories to focus on quality and will take new steps to prevent problems from being pushed down assembly lines. The company is in talks with Spirit to acquire the company in an effort to rein in the supplier’s quality issues and also recently changed its bonus plan for 100,000 workers to emphasize quality and safety over meeting financial targets. “For years, we prioritized the movement of the airplane through the factory over getting it done right,” Brian West, Boeing’s finance chief, said at a recent investor conference. “That’s got to change. The leadership team got it in the immediate aftermath of January 5.” The SAT logs show that a fix for the damaged rivets was in the works for days, and that workers had to wade through layers of management to get the problem addressed. That task required opening or removing the door plug, which was installed in place of an unused emergency exit. The workers discussed what documentation was required if they opened or removed the plug. “If removal needed, a removal needs to be written first,” one staffer wrote on Sept. 17. Altering airplane parts requires documentation in the heavily regulated and safety-focused world of aerospace manufacturing. No such documentation appears to exist, however, Boeing has told U.S. lawmakers and accident investigators who have since been probing why the door plug blew off. The National Transportation Safety Board has said workers appear to have failed to replace four critical bolts needed to keep the panel in place. The SAT records show a manager communicated that a mechanic was opening the door plug, however. The NTSB has said investigators haven’t been able to interview the manager who oversees the team of Renton employees responsible for door work. The safety board has said the manager is out on medical leave. Starts and stops When Calhoun, a Boeing director and former GE executive, took over as Boeing’s CEO in January 2020, he promised change by improving safety and engineering. “It’s going to last for a long time, and it’s going to be healthy,” he told reporters at the time. Two 737 MAX jets had crashed, taking 346 lives and grounding hundreds of Boeing planes for 20 months. Then the pandemic grounded flights and halted factories at Boeing, rival Airbus and suppliers such as Spirit. By 2022, they were straining to meet a surge in demand for new jets as travel boomed. Boeing hired thousands of new staff and steadily increased 737 MAX production, and Calhoun issued financial targets that relied on plans for higher output. Last year, the factories were still running with stops and starts as the company worked to return to production levels seen before the MAX crashes. Boeing delivered 580 737s in 2018, the year of the first crash.
fifteen1506 3y ago
I think we all agree management can't be blamed. Factory workers did not execute the expected steps and failed to properly escalate issues as soon as possible. Management had no information of what was going on the factory floor, and the change of the headquarters away from the factory, while reducing management overhead with day-to-day issues, required workers to escalate issues properly instead of tip-toing around the issues.
- kd5bjo 3y ago
  > Management had no information of what was going on the factory floor This statement represents a fundamental failure of management to do its job— To know the whole picture, recognize systemic hazards (both internal and external), and correct them before they become real problems.
  - fifteen1506 3y ago
    Workers must self-manage and take decisions based on company documentation.
    - Ekaros 3y ago
      Then there is clear failure in somewhere in the process. Could be that managers have written incorrect documentation. Thus they should be held responsible for documentation that is not being followed.
    - forgetfreeman 3y ago
      K so if employees can self-manage and all of the documentation is in place then what, exactly, are managers paid for? Why do they exist?
    - constantcrying 3y ago
      Management must ensure that this is actually the case.
    - consumer451 3y ago
      In this case, management set goals which were clearly unattainable with the resources, which management provided. If executives face no risk for their decisions, then why do they get such high rewards? I thought the deal was high-risk/high-reward.
apollo_mojave 3y ago
So how do you even fix a problem like this? It seems the company had some procedures in place, particularly the documentation of "removals," but the line employees didn't follow that process in this case. One reason appears to be the tremendous pressure they were under to get planes out of the factories. The article also mentions a possible lack of experience, since some of the workers could be very new to the company...though they could also have been quite experienced as well. It is so, so very hard to evaluate risk and causation.
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  Dig a little deeper and you should come across some backstory that details how the company purged itself of most of it's senior engineering, machining, and inspection staff. Pretty much anyone with the experience to spot a problem and the balls to say something got the chop. Boeing senior management decided to take a page from the private equity playbook and tried to run one of the most complex manufacturing concerns on the planet like a fast food restaurant, with predictable results.
  - MilStdJunkie 3y ago
    On the lines themselves, word on the street is that the powers-that-be greatly relaxed the "greeenlight" process post-COVID, which is a way to get a job outside your specific job code. To remove the Boeing-speak, they made it easier for the janitor to be the electrician. The really cool thing about greenlighters is that they never make quite as much money, and there is a substantial period - as long as two years - where they keep making their janitor salaries while they're doing the higher spec work. Win-win!
- constantcrying 3y ago
  >So how do you even fix a problem like this? Slow down production, increase oversight and focus on training. Make sure that many employees stay for a long time and that they are encouraged to share their knowledge with new hires.
  - 3y ago
cyclecount 3y ago
Has there been any update on the whistleblower who died under suspicious circumstances?
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  [flagged]
- amiga386 3y ago
  He remains dead. However, this article about him, and the behaviour of Boeing management at Charleston factory, is a pretty good eulogy. RIP Swampy. https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/ https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-2...
nolok 3y ago
Lots of details on how they kept pressure up, skipped on important checks and procedure because it might slow things down, production numbers were way lower than planned ... But is there any definite source or elements about why the numbers were so down ? Were the projection unrealistic ? And if yes was it because they pulled them out of their ass or because they needed the unrealistic high ones to get the sales ? Or were the numbers realistic but working with so many externalized subcontrators slowing things down ? I think I read something about, eg how they had to refuse so many of spirits' produce that it was slowing everything down, but by that much ? Another reason could be that the plane was harder to produce than expected but while I could buy that for the 787 I don't see how it can be remotely true for the MAXes, they were supposed to be a known quantities.
- constantcrying 3y ago
  One major reason for the pressure was the ebb and (still ongoing flow) of of demand for jet airplanes. During the pandemic air traffic was hit hard and the entire industry (which is much larger than Airbus and Boeing) started to prepare for a slowing down, including firing staff, retiring products and such. That slow down never really happened, instead there was a massive upswing in demand. Both Airbus and Boeing are currently racing to build as many planes as they can, as their customers are begging them to give them planes as soon as possible and as many as they can. This is exactly the kind of situation in which mistakes happen. Boeing and their suppliers needed to rehire staff and train them while having a huge pressure to get planes out of their factories. Somewhat funnily both Airbus and their suppliers have a much harder time firing staff, due to stricter EU employment regulations, meaning that they unintentionally were better off when demand started up again, nevertheless Airbus and suppliers are currently hiring massively as well.
  - seszett 3y ago
    > Somewhat funnily both Airbus and their suppliers have a much harder time firing staff, due to stricter EU employment regulations, meaning that they unintentionally were better off when demand started up again, nevertheless Airbus and suppliers are currently hiring massively as well. I don't think stability is unintentional. You can see how France economically always "lags behind" other economies in good times, but is also barely affected in bad times. On average, over time, it just performs like the rest of the EU.
top_sigrid 3y ago
https://archive.ph/WYdVW https://archive.ph/WYdVW
TheOtherHobbes 3y ago
If I was running an airline that had just taken delivery of 737s, I'd be terrified. And very very unhappy.
- Havoc 3y ago
  I wonder what insurance rates on these look like now
  - ItCouldBeWorse 3y ago
    Like the price for a brand new plane with pilot recertification, but in rates.
Havoc 3y ago
Painting over damaged rivets is surely deep into criminal charges territory? Mistakes happen but that’s pretty intentional
- MilStdJunkie 3y ago
  If an A&P mechanic did that on a live aircraft that is very deep into felony territory.
ItCouldBeWorse 3y ago
At this point, wouldn't a penetration tester stance by the state be more effective? Basically the institutions try to subvert the production process by sabotaging via infiltration, and then look for the corresponding paper-trail, fixed product, caught pentest. It would keep everybody on there toes, every process functional and the regulators working without getting caught.
- CaptainOfCoit 3y ago
  Depends on what the goal is. If the goal is safety, that might make sense. But according to what Boeing been doing for the last decade or so, the goal is no longer safety but higher production numbers, then doing something like that would work against getting there.
- 542458 3y ago
  It’s an interesting idea, but I don’t think it quite solves the problem here, at least as I understand the problem. The system isn’t designed to protect against actively hostile/sabotaging elements inside the factory, nor was that the problem (i.e., if you have factory floor access, you could go and sabotage the plane by drilling holes in a part after it’s been installed and inspected, but that’s not the issue at hand). The issue here is skipping or skirting existing process in the name of efficiency. People aren’t trying to destroy planes, they’re just not doing their job “correctly”. Some sort of process inspector is typically what you’d use here.
  - peteradio 3y ago
    If you've worked on building any simple little object you know King Murphy sabotages all steps. The problem with Mr. Murphy is that he doesn't tell you when he's going to strike. Having a Murphy Larper would at least give you an insight to the processes that are supposed to thwart Herr Murphy. I'm not sure what a Process Inspector does. Do they work nights and weekends? Are they protected from reporting failures in process? Who holds responsibility for every process failure?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
amiga386 3y ago
This thoroughly vindicates what the anonymous whistleblower on the internet was saying: https://leehamnews.com/2024/01/15/unplanned-removal-installation-inspection-procedure-at-boeing/#comment-509962 https://leehamnews.com/2024/01/15/unplanned-removal-installa... > Current Boeing employee here – I will save you waiting two years for the NTSB report to come out and give it to you for free: the reason the door blew off is stated in black and white in Boeings own records. It is also very, very stupid and speaks volumes about the quality culture at certain portions of the business. > A couple of things to cover before we begin: > Q1) Why should we believe you? A) You shouldn’t, I’m some random throwaway account, do your own due diligence. Others who work at Boeing can verify what I say is true, but all I ask is you consider the following based on its own merits. > Q2) Why are you doing this? A) Because there are many cultures at Boeing, and while the executive culture may be throughly compromised since we were bought by McD, there are many other people who still push for a quality product with cutting edge design. My hope is that this is the wake up call that finally forces the Board to take decisive action, and remove the executives that are resisting the necessary cultural changes to return to a company that values safety and quality above schedule. [...] > However, more critical for purposes of the accident investigation, the pressure seal is unsurprisingly sandwiched between the plug and the fuselage, and you cannot replace it without opening the door plug to gain access. All of this conversation is documented in increasingly aggressive posts in the SAT, but finally we get to the damning entry which reads something along the lines of “coordinating with the doors team to determine if the door will have to be removed entirely, or just opened. If it is removed then a Removal will have to be written.” Note: a Removal is a type of record in CMES that requires formal sign off from QA that the airplane been restored to drawing requirements. > If you have been paying attention to this situation closely, you may be able to spot the critical error: regardless of whether the door is simply opened or removed entirely, the 4 retaining bolts that keep it from sliding off of the door stops have to be pulled out. A removal should be written in either case for QA to verify install, but as it turns out, someone (exactly who will be a fun question for investigators) decides that the door only needs to be opened, and no formal Removal is generated in CMES (the reason for which is unclear, and a major process failure). Therefore, in the official build records of the airplane, a pressure seal that cannot be accessed without opening the door (and thereby removing retaining bolts) is documented as being replaced, but the door is never officially opened and thus no QA inspection is required.

41 points by impish9208 3y ago

impish9208 3y ago

Sorry for the link, it seems like archive.is is no longer able to bypass the paywall for the WSJ.

thriftwy 3y ago
I believe that archive.is is whatever you've archived into it. If you pressed the button when looking at the paywall, that's what it will carry.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  No, they run their own crawler against the URL you provide (IIRC, it's a headless Google Chrome [1]). For some special / often-requested (?) sites the people behind the project have: - implemented post-processing to strip ads and tracker beacons - bought legitimate accounts that they use to bypass paywalls (some of them show up as remnants in the archived pages' code, some of them show up when you request an archive of the site's account management portal, some show up as HTTP traces during the archival process - the crawler will dump every URL it requests on a "WIP" page, and for some, auth information like JWTs is passed in the URL) - implemented anti-nagwall features (some sites are "vulnerable" in their paywall/"you read X articles, end of free limit" by pressing the ESC key to disrupt the JS of the site) [1] https://blog.archive.today/post/618635148292964352/what-scraper-or-headless-browser-are-you-using-it https://blog.archive.today/post/618635148292964352/what-scra...
top_sigrid 3y ago
This one is working: https://archive.ph/WYdVW https://archive.ph/WYdVW
- impish9208 3y ago
  Thanks!

pirate787 3y ago

Here's the article on MSN: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/the-disarray-inside-boeing-s-737-factory-before-the-door-plug-blowout/ar-BB1kUFFP https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/the-disarray-insid...

laborcontract 3y ago
Side question: does anyone know how msn seems so impossible to scrape? What’s the magic they’re doing that other sites aren’t?
- tgv 3y ago
  For starters, everything loads via javascript. I have JS enabled, but use uBlock Origin, and the page is just empty.
  - laborcontract 3y ago
    Yeah they do some other shenanigans. Once you open inspect element the site just blanks out. It's the only website I've ever seen do anything like this.

impish9208 3y ago

Last year, work inside Renton, Wash., factory stalled on a future 737 MAX jet then known as Line No. 8789. Pressure was building. More than two weeks had passed since workers on Sept. 1 flagged damaged rivets on a fuselage that needed fixing. The section had been assembled by supplier AeroSystems in Wichita, Kan., and shipped by train to Boeing’s plant. Targets for completion came and went before employees escalated the situation to “Tier 3” priority, a move intended to get high-level attention at the factory, according to an internal Boeing log of employees’ push to finish the jet—the same one that would later lose its door plug panel in a near tragedy in flight just months later. Punctuating how the situation was escalating with dollar signs, an internal message read: “$$TIER-CHG: 2 – 3 $$,” according to a Sept. 17 entry in the Shipside Action Tracker, or SAT, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The SAT is like a factory Slack channel for fixing a production problem. The communications of the Boeing employees working on the door plug, previously unreported, help illuminate why it blew off during an Alaska Airlines flight on Jan 5. The factory was in disarray. Crews were unable to keep a schedule and apparently didn’t follow procedures, and production pressure mounted as delays piled up, according to entries in the SAT, people who have reviewed the logs and interviews with Boeing employees who worked on the plane. In their logs, workers extended 50 times the estimated time for completing work on the damaged rivets around the frame of the door plug. The delays ranged from a half-hour to days. The work was finally signed off on and officially completed by the morning shift on Sept. 20, after a final quality check was requested the previous day, the records show. The production breakdown had stunning consequences: The jet’s door plug blew off in flight, triggering an explosive loss of cabin pressure that risked the lives of passengers who could have been sucked out midair. It has sparked federal probes, including a criminal investigation, and hastened the exit of senior leaders including Chief Executive David Calhoun, who had vowed to improve Boeing’s safety and quality. A Boeing spokesman said the company is prohibited by federal rules from discussing the investigation and referred to recent remarks by executives that they will slow down the factories to focus on quality and will take new steps to prevent problems from being pushed down assembly lines. The company is in talks with Spirit to acquire the company in an effort to rein in the supplier’s quality issues and also recently changed its bonus plan for 100,000 workers to emphasize quality and safety over meeting financial targets. “For years, we prioritized the movement of the airplane through the factory over getting it done right,” Brian West, Boeing’s finance chief, said at a recent investor conference. “That’s got to change. The leadership team got it in the immediate aftermath of January 5.” The SAT logs show that a fix for the damaged rivets was in the works for days, and that workers had to wade through layers of management to get the problem addressed. That task required opening or removing the door plug, which was installed in place of an unused emergency exit. The workers discussed what documentation was required if they opened or removed the plug. “If removal needed, a removal needs to be written first,” one staffer wrote on Sept. 17. Altering airplane parts requires documentation in the heavily regulated and safety-focused world of aerospace manufacturing. No such documentation appears to exist, however, Boeing has told U.S. lawmakers and accident investigators who have since been probing why the door plug blew off. The National Transportation Safety Board has said workers appear to have failed to replace four critical bolts needed to keep the panel in place. The SAT records show a manager communicated that a mechanic was opening the door plug, however. The NTSB has said investigators haven’t been able to interview the manager who oversees the team of Renton employees responsible for door work. The safety board has said the manager is out on medical leave. Starts and stops When Calhoun, a Boeing director and former GE executive, took over as Boeing’s CEO in January 2020, he promised change by improving safety and engineering. “It’s going to last for a long time, and it’s going to be healthy,” he told reporters at the time. Two 737 MAX jets had crashed, taking 346 lives and grounding hundreds of Boeing planes for 20 months. Then the pandemic grounded flights and halted factories at Boeing, rival Airbus and suppliers such as Spirit. By 2022, they were straining to meet a surge in demand for new jets as travel boomed. Boeing hired thousands of new staff and steadily increased 737 MAX production, and Calhoun issued financial targets that relied on plans for higher output. Last year, the factories were still running with stops and starts as the company worked to return to production levels seen before the MAX crashes. Boeing delivered 580 737s in 2018, the year of the first crash.

fifteen1506 3y ago

I think we all agree management can't be blamed. Factory workers did not execute the expected steps and failed to properly escalate issues as soon as possible. Management had no information of what was going on the factory floor, and the change of the headquarters away from the factory, while reducing management overhead with day-to-day issues, required workers to escalate issues properly instead of tip-toing around the issues.

kd5bjo 3y ago
> Management had no information of what was going on the factory floor This statement represents a fundamental failure of management to do its job— To know the whole picture, recognize systemic hazards (both internal and external), and correct them before they become real problems.
- fifteen1506 3y ago
  Workers must self-manage and take decisions based on company documentation.
  - Ekaros 3y ago
    Then there is clear failure in somewhere in the process. Could be that managers have written incorrect documentation. Thus they should be held responsible for documentation that is not being followed.
  - forgetfreeman 3y ago
    K so if employees can self-manage and all of the documentation is in place then what, exactly, are managers paid for? Why do they exist?
  - constantcrying 3y ago
    Management must ensure that this is actually the case.
  - consumer451 3y ago
    In this case, management set goals which were clearly unattainable with the resources, which management provided. If executives face no risk for their decisions, then why do they get such high rewards? I thought the deal was high-risk/high-reward.

apollo_mojave 3y ago

So how do you even fix a problem like this? It seems the company had some procedures in place, particularly the documentation of "removals," but the line employees didn't follow that process in this case. One reason appears to be the tremendous pressure they were under to get planes out of the factories. The article also mentions a possible lack of experience, since some of the workers could be very new to the company...though they could also have been quite experienced as well. It is so, so very hard to evaluate risk and causation.

forgetfreeman 3y ago
Dig a little deeper and you should come across some backstory that details how the company purged itself of most of it's senior engineering, machining, and inspection staff. Pretty much anyone with the experience to spot a problem and the balls to say something got the chop. Boeing senior management decided to take a page from the private equity playbook and tried to run one of the most complex manufacturing concerns on the planet like a fast food restaurant, with predictable results.
- MilStdJunkie 3y ago
  On the lines themselves, word on the street is that the powers-that-be greatly relaxed the "greeenlight" process post-COVID, which is a way to get a job outside your specific job code. To remove the Boeing-speak, they made it easier for the janitor to be the electrician. The really cool thing about greenlighters is that they never make quite as much money, and there is a substantial period - as long as two years - where they keep making their janitor salaries while they're doing the higher spec work. Win-win!
constantcrying 3y ago
>So how do you even fix a problem like this? Slow down production, increase oversight and focus on training. Make sure that many employees stay for a long time and that they are encouraged to share their knowledge with new hires.
- 3y ago

cyclecount 3y ago

Has there been any update on the whistleblower who died under suspicious circumstances?

forgetfreeman 3y ago
[flagged]
amiga386 3y ago
He remains dead. However, this article about him, and the behaviour of Boeing management at Charleston factory, is a pretty good eulogy. RIP Swampy. https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/ https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-2...

nolok 3y ago

Lots of details on how they kept pressure up, skipped on important checks and procedure because it might slow things down, production numbers were way lower than planned ... But is there any definite source or elements about why the numbers were so down ? Were the projection unrealistic ? And if yes was it because they pulled them out of their ass or because they needed the unrealistic high ones to get the sales ? Or were the numbers realistic but working with so many externalized subcontrators slowing things down ? I think I read something about, eg how they had to refuse so many of spirits' produce that it was slowing everything down, but by that much ? Another reason could be that the plane was harder to produce than expected but while I could buy that for the 787 I don't see how it can be remotely true for the MAXes, they were supposed to be a known quantities.

constantcrying 3y ago
One major reason for the pressure was the ebb and (still ongoing flow) of of demand for jet airplanes. During the pandemic air traffic was hit hard and the entire industry (which is much larger than Airbus and Boeing) started to prepare for a slowing down, including firing staff, retiring products and such. That slow down never really happened, instead there was a massive upswing in demand. Both Airbus and Boeing are currently racing to build as many planes as they can, as their customers are begging them to give them planes as soon as possible and as many as they can. This is exactly the kind of situation in which mistakes happen. Boeing and their suppliers needed to rehire staff and train them while having a huge pressure to get planes out of their factories. Somewhat funnily both Airbus and their suppliers have a much harder time firing staff, due to stricter EU employment regulations, meaning that they unintentionally were better off when demand started up again, nevertheless Airbus and suppliers are currently hiring massively as well.
- seszett 3y ago
  > Somewhat funnily both Airbus and their suppliers have a much harder time firing staff, due to stricter EU employment regulations, meaning that they unintentionally were better off when demand started up again, nevertheless Airbus and suppliers are currently hiring massively as well. I don't think stability is unintentional. You can see how France economically always "lags behind" other economies in good times, but is also barely affected in bad times. On average, over time, it just performs like the rest of the EU.

top_sigrid 3y ago

https://archive.ph/WYdVW https://archive.ph/WYdVW

TheOtherHobbes 3y ago

If I was running an airline that had just taken delivery of 737s, I'd be terrified. And very very unhappy.

Havoc 3y ago
I wonder what insurance rates on these look like now
- ItCouldBeWorse 3y ago
  Like the price for a brand new plane with pilot recertification, but in rates.

Havoc 3y ago

Painting over damaged rivets is surely deep into criminal charges territory? Mistakes happen but that’s pretty intentional

MilStdJunkie 3y ago
If an A&P mechanic did that on a live aircraft that is very deep into felony territory.

ItCouldBeWorse 3y ago

At this point, wouldn't a penetration tester stance by the state be more effective? Basically the institutions try to subvert the production process by sabotaging via infiltration, and then look for the corresponding paper-trail, fixed product, caught pentest. It would keep everybody on there toes, every process functional and the regulators working without getting caught.

CaptainOfCoit 3y ago
Depends on what the goal is. If the goal is safety, that might make sense. But according to what Boeing been doing for the last decade or so, the goal is no longer safety but higher production numbers, then doing something like that would work against getting there.
542458 3y ago
It’s an interesting idea, but I don’t think it quite solves the problem here, at least as I understand the problem. The system isn’t designed to protect against actively hostile/sabotaging elements inside the factory, nor was that the problem (i.e., if you have factory floor access, you could go and sabotage the plane by drilling holes in a part after it’s been installed and inspected, but that’s not the issue at hand). The issue here is skipping or skirting existing process in the name of efficiency. People aren’t trying to destroy planes, they’re just not doing their job “correctly”. Some sort of process inspector is typically what you’d use here.
- peteradio 3y ago
  If you've worked on building any simple little object you know King Murphy sabotages all steps. The problem with Mr. Murphy is that he doesn't tell you when he's going to strike. Having a Murphy Larper would at least give you an insight to the processes that are supposed to thwart Herr Murphy. I'm not sure what a Process Inspector does. Do they work nights and weekends? Are they protected from reporting failures in process? Who holds responsibility for every process failure?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

amiga386 3y ago

This thoroughly vindicates what the anonymous whistleblower on the internet was saying: https://leehamnews.com/2024/01/15/unplanned-removal-installation-inspection-procedure-at-boeing/#comment-509962 https://leehamnews.com/2024/01/15/unplanned-removal-installa... > Current Boeing employee here – I will save you waiting two years for the NTSB report to come out and give it to you for free: the reason the door blew off is stated in black and white in Boeings own records. It is also very, very stupid and speaks volumes about the quality culture at certain portions of the business. > A couple of things to cover before we begin: > Q1) Why should we believe you? A) You shouldn’t, I’m some random throwaway account, do your own due diligence. Others who work at Boeing can verify what I say is true, but all I ask is you consider the following based on its own merits. > Q2) Why are you doing this? A) Because there are many cultures at Boeing, and while the executive culture may be throughly compromised since we were bought by McD, there are many other people who still push for a quality product with cutting edge design. My hope is that this is the wake up call that finally forces the Board to take decisive action, and remove the executives that are resisting the necessary cultural changes to return to a company that values safety and quality above schedule. [...] > However, more critical for purposes of the accident investigation, the pressure seal is unsurprisingly sandwiched between the plug and the fuselage, and you cannot replace it without opening the door plug to gain access. All of this conversation is documented in increasingly aggressive posts in the SAT, but finally we get to the damning entry which reads something along the lines of “coordinating with the doors team to determine if the door will have to be removed entirely, or just opened. If it is removed then a Removal will have to be written.” Note: a Removal is a type of record in CMES that requires formal sign off from QA that the airplane been restored to drawing requirements. > If you have been paying attention to this situation closely, you may be able to spot the critical error: regardless of whether the door is simply opened or removed entirely, the 4 retaining bolts that keep it from sliding off of the door stops have to be pulled out. A removal should be written in either case for QA to verify install, but as it turns out, someone (exactly who will be a fun question for investigators) decides that the door only needs to be opened, and no formal Removal is generated in CMES (the reason for which is unclear, and a major process failure). Therefore, in the official build records of the airplane, a pressure seal that cannot be accessed without opening the door (and thereby removing retaining bolts) is documented as being replaced, but the door is never officially opened and thus no QA inspection is required.