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The Disturbing Truth About How Airplanes Are Maintained Today (2015)
- chaostheory 3y agoThis is likely a repost, but it is very relevant today. Boeing is still at fault, but so are US airlines.
- avalys 3y agoUS airlines are trying to reduce their costs so they can offer lower fares, for which there is intense competition. You may have noticed that airlines are not a hugely profitable business, with profit margins of a few percent. US regulators are at fault for not setting regulations which define whatever behavior you think is missing here.
- wmidwestranger 3y agoJust a few percent profit on 100+ Billion gross, how can they make it work?
- Tempat 3y agoLess planes and more expensive tickets?
- wmidwestranger 3y agoSorry, should have flagged as sarcasm. American Airlines yearly reporting said they had ~52 billion gross for 2023 and that is just one airline. At a 2% profit, that is 1 billion (or 1,000 million) in profit for the year, just for them. Not sure what the gross revenue for the entire industry is.
- 1over137 3y agoMany parties can be at fault simultaneously.
- Razengan 3y agoUltimately it’s down to how human civilization is structured and trained: To optimize money over everything else.
- hobo_in_library 3y agoNot human civilization, but places that have adopted modern capitalism.
- Boatfaceing 3y ago[dead]
- oivey 3y agoOver regulation: the government’s fault. Under regulation: the government’s fault. Airlines run the planes, and it is their duty not to kill their passengers. It’s their fault. If they kill people, that’s their fault, and they should go to jail for it. The lack of regulation can in no way be used an excuse by dangerous businesses to avoid responsibility for their dangerous behavior. I do agree the government should increase airline regulation. The airlines ran the lobbying campaigns to deregulate to begin with. That should also be made illegal.
- freefaler 3y ago> The airlines ran the lobbying campaigns It was the entrants who wanted deregulation. The old-time airlines did not welcome the competition. (as mentioned in Southwest history in US and Virgin's in the UK and etc...) The system works pretty well for the amount of flights it carries, compared to the olden days when it was more risky.
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- fuzzfactor 3y agoRoger. This is a 2015 snapshot of how it was before almost a decade of further decline to where we are now . . .
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- doctor_eval 3y ago> where the mechanics who take the planes apart (completely) and put them back together (or almost) may not even be able to read or speak English Maybe I’m missing something but wtf does being able to speak English have to do with the ability to maintain an aircraft? Is everyone at Embraer or Airbus or Bombardier expected to speak English? I’m starting to feel like this is some kind of gaslighting. Boeing aircraft have had major design flaws that have resulted in the death of hundreds of people, why suddenly are we seeing discussions about maintenance?
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> wtf does being able to speak English have to do with the ability to maintain an aircraft? If the maintenance crew speaks one language, and airline management, pilots and regulators speak another, that’s a problem.
- thegrim000 3y agoWhat's the name for this logical fallacy? The last few months the trend has been that every single problem that affected a Boeing plane in any way, 99.9% of which are maintenance issues, are blasted far and wide all over HN, Reddit, mainstream media, everywhere, and every single one of them is taken as some condemnation of the company and their planes as a whole. Now, we get an article pointing out worrying maintenance patterns and the response is "so what? don't look at that, why do we care about maintenance issues?". Tomorrow some mechanic will forget to tighten down an engine cowling and it'll come loose in flight and the video will be front page on HN and the comments will be about how horrible Boeing is. So yes, I do care about maintenance issues and their causes.
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- thegrim000 3y ago4 hours after I posted that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39967474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39967474
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- jwkpiano1 3y ago(2015)
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- cbhl 3y agoWas surprised to see the piece mention US Airways, which merged with American years ago (in 2013). Then I saw the date on the article: 2015 (nearly ten years ago). I think for the planes in the air now I'd want to know what kind of refurbishment happened for planes that had to be put in long-term storage during 2020, and what pressures the crews that did those rebuilds were under to get planes back in the air quickly, as opposed to routine offshoring from 10 years ago.
- _s 3y agoSomething that I didn’t see mentioned clearly - A “licensed” mechanic needs to “certify” or sign off on the paperwork that a given task was done to a given standard following a given procedure. The person certifying the work does not have to be the one that did the actual work, but it’s their license on the line so they tend to make sure it was done correctly. This is how unlicensed mechanics / apprentices actually learn and eventually get their “license”. There are varying levels and abilities for these licensed mechanics too in terms of what they are allowed to do, and also the organisation licenses too they’re working for. It’s not quite as sinister or as “Wild West” the author wants to make it out, but outsourcing was inevitable in the airlines economic model.