6 ms·

United Airlines Jet Loses Wheel in Repeat of March Incident

26 points by rntn 2y ago

rntn 2y ago
https://archive.ph/UK0E7 https://archive.ph/UK0E7
taylodl 2y ago
Dang! Boeing airplanes are literally falling apart in normal operation! I'm not an aviation expert by any means, but are all these "little problems" indicative of a bigger problem at Boeing? Are we just getting lucky that so far the things that have been failing haven't had disastrous consequences? Can someone who knows about these things enlighten me?
- kelseyfrog 2y ago
  > are all these "little problems" indicative of a bigger problem at Boeing? It depends on the exact way you phrase the question, but if it were "Is the rate of accidents per flight for Boeing aircraft significantly different between 2004-2014 and 2014-2024?" then you could run for example a one-sample poisson test against the data. The accident data is available from https://www.ntsb.gov/Pages/AviationQueryv2.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/Pages/AviationQueryv2.aspx and I'm sure you could find a source for number of Boeing flights for each time period.
  - taylodl 2y ago
    Thank you for enlightening me instead of downvoting like some others did.
    - jryle70 2y ago
      So what did you learn from going through that list? do you still think "all these little problems indicative of a bigger problem at Boeing"?
      - taylodl 2y ago
        It's hard to say. Boeing has had 3.8x times the number of flights resulting in fatalities since 2010 than has Airbus, for example. Therefore, Airbus is safer, right? Well, hold on - we need to know the number of miles flown by each type of plane in that interval and scale these numbers appropriately. In short, this is going to take some digging and I haven't had the time to do the serious digging this requires. A cursory search reveals that nobody else has done this kind of research either. While I'm sure this statement isn't true, it's not easy to find, either.
bell-cot 2y ago
> a Boeing 757-200 From a peek at Wikipedia, the airplane involved is probably 2+ decades old. However tempting it might be to blame Boeing...it sounds far more like the techs at LoBidCo or Slipshod Maintenance Ltd. need to re-certify in Basic Lug Nut Tightening. Again.
- 10u152 2y ago
  Realistically it’s a united flight and they’re ultimately responsible for maintenance.
  - pylua 2y ago
    I wonder if employees across the board are silently reciprocating the lack of support from businesses by doing subpar work, given that corporations have started to run down employees in the name of expanding profits. It feels like a new phenomenon , and it feels very wide spread.
    - BobaFloutist 2y ago
      Either that, or tired, stressed, overworked, understaffed employees just naturally do worse work.
      - pylua 2y ago
        That’s a better way to look at it. I wonder what the average tenure of people at Boeing / maintenance techs is.
    - DoesntMatter22 2y ago
      So basically "I don't like the company so I'll not do my job and if people die they die"?
      - rootbeerdan 2y ago
        Wait til you hear about hospitals
nullindividual 2y ago
Obligatory VAS Aviation: https://youtu.be/iPkPHR1KoF0 https://youtu.be/iPkPHR1KoF0 And when the plane landed at it's destination, another United jet sucked in a bird on take off. At least there's no mechanic to blame for that.
- t0mas88 2y ago
  Probably only hit that bird with the wing. Tower asked "are you going to continue" and they replied. That sounds like low speed (high speed you wouldn't reply that quickly, focus on takeoff first). And at low speed if it went through the engine you would abort the takeoff. With most airlines the rule is "below 80kt stop for any warning or caution, above 80kt only abort for engine failure, fire, or unable to fly"
  - damiankennedy 2y ago
    When a plane reaches V1 (which depends on the model, weight, runway length, temperature etc) the pilot has 2 seconds to abort takeoff or they are too fast to stop before the end of the runway. At V1 a multi-engine plane will take-off even with one engine out. The pilot will normally wait until Vr or V2 to rotate as this ensures a climb rate of 2.4 degrees. If the runway is long enough V1 will be higher than V2 but commercial aircraft will de-rate the engines and make use of the available runway to avoid running the engines at maximum.
    - blerb795 2y ago
      That doesn't sound exactly correct per the definitions I'm familiar with -- a multi-engine plane with a failure will not safely climb at V1, that's what V2 defines (the speed at which an engine-out aircraft can climb at 200ft/s, with at least 35ft of altitude at the end of the runway). Vr should be when the pilot begins rotation unless an engine is out; I don't believe there's any guidance to wait until V2.
    - inoffensivename 2y ago
      This two second number is not found in Part 25 of the Federal Aviation Regulations, what is your source? Is this a non-US definition, or is it specific to a carrier? Also in Part 25, V2 cannot be less than Vr which cannot be less than V1. They call all be equal, but V2 cannot be less than V1 by definition. Pilots will wait until at least Vr but not before making sure the airplane is tracking straight down the runway before lifting the nose wheel off the runway. At least that's how my airline teaches it...
exabrial 2y ago
blows my mind people post boeing after boeing problem online and all over reddit... but literally this stuff happens _every day_ to all manufacturers.
- autoexec 2y ago
  Which other manufacturers recently had a huge hole open up in the plane mid-flight? Which other manufacturers are guilty of conspiring to defraud the FAA? Which other manufacturers installed software that resulted in deadly crashes because pilots weren't even aware it existed and/or weren't trained on it? It's possible that there really are other manufacturers with these exact same problems, but either way it looks like Boeing has more than earned all the scrutiny and criticism they're getting. I'm all for naming and shaming other manufacturers that make deliberate choices to routinely put profits over human life though.
  - jryle70 2y ago
    He said "this stuff happens _every day_ to all manufacturers". That's unquestionably true - [0], since this was an operational issue handled by the airlines. You then rebuffed his post with your rant about manufacturing issues at Boeing, which is completely different. > I'm all for naming and shaming other manufacturers that make deliberate choices to routinely put profits over human life though. Empty and cringeworthy. There is a saying "Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands". Doing something in the most efficient manner and cost effective is the tenet of great engineering. The trick is doing it while still prioritizing safety. That's what Boeing failed at. Not because they tried to save money. HN of all place should be well aware of that. No wonder populism is in vogue. [0] - https://avherald.com/ https://avherald.com/
    - autoexec 2y ago
      > He said "this stuff happens _every day_ to all manufacturers". That's unquestionably true - [0], Specifically he said, "blows my mind people post boeing after boeing problem online and all over reddit... but literally this stuff happens _every day_ to all manufacturers." My reply highlighted only a few of the many reasons why it shouldn't be surprising that so many of Boeing's problems are being frequently talked about both in the news and on social media while also demonstrating that Boeing's problems are not always things that happen to "all manufacturers" Even if we look only at the problem in this specific instance (and I'd argue that "this stuff" means we shouldn't), while it is true that over the many 10s of thousands of commercial flights that take place every single day in the US mechanical problems happen frequently (even daily), it is not true that losing a landing gear wheel while taking off is a daily occurrence. > Doing something in the most efficient manner and cost effective is the tenet of great engineering. The trick is doing it while still prioritizing safety. That's what Boeing failed at. Not because they tried to save money. According to the lawsuit against them and their own internal communications it is exactly because they tried to save money. Greed was the motivation for their actions which undermined safety and even when they knew about the dangers they actively hid those dangers from regulators for that same reason. For more information see: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/boeing-charged-737-max-fraud-conspiracy-and-agrees-pay-over-25-billion https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/boeing-charged-737-max-fraud-... https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/beyond-the-macho-pilot-trash-talk-737-max-documents-reveal-how-intensely-boeing-focused-on-cost/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/beyon... https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/boeing-fifth-estate-costs-safety-1.5426571 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/boeing-fifth-estate-costs-s...
mensetmanusman 2y ago
This is what the labor shortage feels like.
- mindslight 2y ago
  Labor shortage caused by the decades-long capital-manager strike against skilled labor. Invest in educating employees, pay them enough to remain engaged in their job, empower them with some authority, cost of living increases to keep up with inflation plus their own growing value, etc? Nah, keep clipping coins from the productive part of the business so line go up, even though the MBA spreadsheet automatons doing this end up embezzling most of the savings as their own salaries/bonuses. It's endemic across the whole economy. Workers who are essentially nothing more than flesh peripherals for the computer. Commoditize your complement, where the complement of middle management was competent workers. The consequences are just finally hitting industries with traditionally larger margins. If this were about automobiles I'd guess manufacturers would add two more wheels for redundancy (paying the mechanics a dollar an hour more to get the kind of people who care whether nuts are properly torqued would be capitulating). But you can't really do that with airplanes now, can you?

26 points by rntn 2y ago

rntn 2y ago

https://archive.ph/UK0E7 https://archive.ph/UK0E7

Dang! Boeing airplanes are literally falling apart in normal operation! I'm not an aviation expert by any means, but are all these "little problems" indicative of a bigger problem at Boeing? Are we just getting lucky that so far the things that have been failing haven't had disastrous consequences? Can someone who knows about these things enlighten me?

kelseyfrog 2y ago
> are all these "little problems" indicative of a bigger problem at Boeing? It depends on the exact way you phrase the question, but if it were "Is the rate of accidents per flight for Boeing aircraft significantly different between 2004-2014 and 2014-2024?" then you could run for example a one-sample poisson test against the data. The accident data is available from https://www.ntsb.gov/Pages/AviationQueryv2.aspx https://www.ntsb.gov/Pages/AviationQueryv2.aspx and I'm sure you could find a source for number of Boeing flights for each time period.
- taylodl 2y ago
  Thank you for enlightening me instead of downvoting like some others did.
  - jryle70 2y ago
    So what did you learn from going through that list? do you still think "all these little problems indicative of a bigger problem at Boeing"?
    - taylodl 2y ago
      It's hard to say. Boeing has had 3.8x times the number of flights resulting in fatalities since 2010 than has Airbus, for example. Therefore, Airbus is safer, right? Well, hold on - we need to know the number of miles flown by each type of plane in that interval and scale these numbers appropriately. In short, this is going to take some digging and I haven't had the time to do the serious digging this requires. A cursory search reveals that nobody else has done this kind of research either. While I'm sure this statement isn't true, it's not easy to find, either.

bell-cot 2y ago

> a Boeing 757-200 From a peek at Wikipedia, the airplane involved is probably 2+ decades old. However tempting it might be to blame Boeing...it sounds far more like the techs at LoBidCo or Slipshod Maintenance Ltd. need to re-certify in Basic Lug Nut Tightening. Again.

10u152 2y ago
Realistically it’s a united flight and they’re ultimately responsible for maintenance.
- pylua 2y ago
  I wonder if employees across the board are silently reciprocating the lack of support from businesses by doing subpar work, given that corporations have started to run down employees in the name of expanding profits. It feels like a new phenomenon , and it feels very wide spread.
  - BobaFloutist 2y ago
    Either that, or tired, stressed, overworked, understaffed employees just naturally do worse work.
    - pylua 2y ago
      That’s a better way to look at it. I wonder what the average tenure of people at Boeing / maintenance techs is.
  - DoesntMatter22 2y ago
    So basically "I don't like the company so I'll not do my job and if people die they die"?
    - rootbeerdan 2y ago
      Wait til you hear about hospitals

nullindividual 2y ago

Obligatory VAS Aviation: https://youtu.be/iPkPHR1KoF0 https://youtu.be/iPkPHR1KoF0 And when the plane landed at it's destination, another United jet sucked in a bird on take off. At least there's no mechanic to blame for that.

t0mas88 2y ago
Probably only hit that bird with the wing. Tower asked "are you going to continue" and they replied. That sounds like low speed (high speed you wouldn't reply that quickly, focus on takeoff first). And at low speed if it went through the engine you would abort the takeoff. With most airlines the rule is "below 80kt stop for any warning or caution, above 80kt only abort for engine failure, fire, or unable to fly"
- damiankennedy 2y ago
  When a plane reaches V1 (which depends on the model, weight, runway length, temperature etc) the pilot has 2 seconds to abort takeoff or they are too fast to stop before the end of the runway. At V1 a multi-engine plane will take-off even with one engine out. The pilot will normally wait until Vr or V2 to rotate as this ensures a climb rate of 2.4 degrees. If the runway is long enough V1 will be higher than V2 but commercial aircraft will de-rate the engines and make use of the available runway to avoid running the engines at maximum.
  - blerb795 2y ago
    That doesn't sound exactly correct per the definitions I'm familiar with -- a multi-engine plane with a failure will not safely climb at V1, that's what V2 defines (the speed at which an engine-out aircraft can climb at 200ft/s, with at least 35ft of altitude at the end of the runway). Vr should be when the pilot begins rotation unless an engine is out; I don't believe there's any guidance to wait until V2.
  - inoffensivename 2y ago
    This two second number is not found in Part 25 of the Federal Aviation Regulations, what is your source? Is this a non-US definition, or is it specific to a carrier? Also in Part 25, V2 cannot be less than Vr which cannot be less than V1. They call all be equal, but V2 cannot be less than V1 by definition. Pilots will wait until at least Vr but not before making sure the airplane is tracking straight down the runway before lifting the nose wheel off the runway. At least that's how my airline teaches it...

exabrial 2y ago

blows my mind people post boeing after boeing problem online and all over reddit... but literally this stuff happens _every day_ to all manufacturers.

autoexec 2y ago
Which other manufacturers recently had a huge hole open up in the plane mid-flight? Which other manufacturers are guilty of conspiring to defraud the FAA? Which other manufacturers installed software that resulted in deadly crashes because pilots weren't even aware it existed and/or weren't trained on it? It's possible that there really are other manufacturers with these exact same problems, but either way it looks like Boeing has more than earned all the scrutiny and criticism they're getting. I'm all for naming and shaming other manufacturers that make deliberate choices to routinely put profits over human life though.
- jryle70 2y ago
  He said "this stuff happens _every day_ to all manufacturers". That's unquestionably true - [0], since this was an operational issue handled by the airlines. You then rebuffed his post with your rant about manufacturing issues at Boeing, which is completely different. > I'm all for naming and shaming other manufacturers that make deliberate choices to routinely put profits over human life though. Empty and cringeworthy. There is a saying "Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands". Doing something in the most efficient manner and cost effective is the tenet of great engineering. The trick is doing it while still prioritizing safety. That's what Boeing failed at. Not because they tried to save money. HN of all place should be well aware of that. No wonder populism is in vogue. [0] - https://avherald.com/ https://avherald.com/
  - autoexec 2y ago
    > He said "this stuff happens _every day_ to all manufacturers". That's unquestionably true - [0], Specifically he said, "blows my mind people post boeing after boeing problem online and all over reddit... but literally this stuff happens _every day_ to all manufacturers." My reply highlighted only a few of the many reasons why it shouldn't be surprising that so many of Boeing's problems are being frequently talked about both in the news and on social media while also demonstrating that Boeing's problems are not always things that happen to "all manufacturers" Even if we look only at the problem in this specific instance (and I'd argue that "this stuff" means we shouldn't), while it is true that over the many 10s of thousands of commercial flights that take place every single day in the US mechanical problems happen frequently (even daily), it is not true that losing a landing gear wheel while taking off is a daily occurrence. > Doing something in the most efficient manner and cost effective is the tenet of great engineering. The trick is doing it while still prioritizing safety. That's what Boeing failed at. Not because they tried to save money. According to the lawsuit against them and their own internal communications it is exactly because they tried to save money. Greed was the motivation for their actions which undermined safety and even when they knew about the dangers they actively hid those dangers from regulators for that same reason. For more information see: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/boeing-charged-737-max-fraud-conspiracy-and-agrees-pay-over-25-billion https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/boeing-charged-737-max-fraud-... https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/beyond-the-macho-pilot-trash-talk-737-max-documents-reveal-how-intensely-boeing-focused-on-cost/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/beyon... https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/boeing-fifth-estate-costs-safety-1.5426571 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/boeing-fifth-estate-costs-s...

mensetmanusman 2y ago

This is what the labor shortage feels like.

mindslight 2y ago
Labor shortage caused by the decades-long capital-manager strike against skilled labor. Invest in educating employees, pay them enough to remain engaged in their job, empower them with some authority, cost of living increases to keep up with inflation plus their own growing value, etc? Nah, keep clipping coins from the productive part of the business so line go up, even though the MBA spreadsheet automatons doing this end up embezzling most of the savings as their own salaries/bonuses. It's endemic across the whole economy. Workers who are essentially nothing more than flesh peripherals for the computer. Commoditize your complement, where the complement of middle management was competent workers. The consequences are just finally hitting industries with traditionally larger margins. If this were about automobiles I'd guess manufacturers would add two more wheels for redundancy (paying the mechanics a dollar an hour more to get the kind of people who care whether nuts are properly torqued would be capitulating). But you can't really do that with airplanes now, can you?