6 ms·

Boeing calls to say hello...

Art9681 2y ago
All I know is more often than not, when I travel by air, I am more than likely going to be in a Boeing aircraft. I also know more planes fly today than ever. So it is no surprise that in a hyper connected world where everyone with a phone and a camera can document every single failure in any service or product, that it would be perceived that things are going backwards. If we had this in the 80's or 90's it wouldn't be much different. Did our quality and capability get worse or did everyone become a journalist that can document every flaw and distribute it globally in minutes? Hmmm....
- yubblegum 2y ago
  Hmmm... OK, Airbus calls to say hi, too.
- SecretDreams 2y ago
  QC hasn't scaled with volume and robustness introduced by better engineers (now retired) has been peeled back by juniors and managers that didn't understand the designs in the first place and are chasing mass and profit instead.
  - trollbridge 2y ago
    QC is one of the first things to get cut. In software eventually customers punish you when your software is so bad that they can’t really use it at all. Aircraft used to be regulated, but Boeing somehow carved out “self regulation”. It’s the same problem as how washing machines don’t last as long as they did 20 years ago.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Our capabilities didn't get worse. Management caused a shift in culture to make things worse by cheaper. We call it enshittification these days, but it'd decades in the making. All this discussion assumes that Boeing engineers didn't catch this stuff and weren't banging the alarm bells over how these completely failed inspection. The problem was the people in power ignored it. This is an entirely social issue constructed by business demands, not one lacking expertise nor standards.
anon-3988 2y ago
Yea lets take that flight with airplanes from 30 years ago shall we
- bronco21016 2y ago
  Check the registration on the next aircraft you take a ride on ;) 30 years may be a stretch but 20-25 certainly isn't.
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    Counter-intuitively this is especially true with international flights... The main stressor for a plane is not like a car, where it's miles driven/flown. Its in pressurization/depressurization. And so a plane doing domestic skips an hour or two away will wear out way faster than one doing transatlantic trips, and so you're more likely to see the shiny new plane on a short domestic trip than on a big international one. Incidentally this also applies similarly to risk issues. The biggest risk in a flight is not in flying, but in takeoff/landing. This is why the commonly cited deaths/mile metric is not only misleading but completely disingenuous by the people/organizations that release it, knowing full well that the vast majority of people don't understand this. If some person replaced their car with a plane (and could somehow land/take off anywhere), their overall risk of death in transit would be significantly higher than if they were using e.g. a car. 'Air travel being safer than cars' relies on this misleading and meaningless death/miles statistic.
    - laszlojamf 2y ago
      This is really interesting! Never thought of that. Do you have a source for these facts?
    - MaPi_ 2y ago
      Sure, replacing the car with a plane for your grocery shopping would be probably more dangerous, but do you have any data at what distances do the risks flip? When I see those statistics I think about flights like Austria to Finland and I imagine that is indeed safer by plane.
SR2Z 2y ago
This is an excellent example. The 737 used to crash a LOT MORE than it does now, and even the version with MCAS is a safer airplane than your average 1990s jetliner (which was also probably a 737, which is kind of my point)[1]. So it's a slightly less safe (in the grand scheme of things) airliner that's vastly more fuel efficient and cheaper to run than any in the past. Obviously this is of no comfort to the families of the people who died in the crash! But to suggest that Boeing has somehow regressed decades in technical capabilities is just plain wrong. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_Boeing_737 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...
- sidewndr46 2y ago
  When you look at how type acceptance works, all Boeing planes are going to be a "737". When you actually look at the 737 MAX and compare it to earlier aircraft, it's pretty obvious that they've created a whole new aircraft. Hence MCAS trying to pretend like that didn't happen & dead people.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- gcanyon 2y ago
  Thanks for that list/link. It's so easy to forget how awful the past was.
- oxfordmale 2y ago
  The problem isn't that Boeing is less safe; it is that the company's culture shifted to the extent that technical staff could no longer report perceived safety issues.
- ekianjo 2y ago
  This is an excellent example of design failure. So in reality, yes, Boeing has regressed as 90s Boeing would never have released a plane like that.
  - 2y ago

All I know is more often than not, when I travel by air, I am more than likely going to be in a Boeing aircraft. I also know more planes fly today than ever. So it is no surprise that in a hyper connected world where everyone with a phone and a camera can document every single failure in any service or product, that it would be perceived that things are going backwards. If we had this in the 80's or 90's it wouldn't be much different. Did our quality and capability get worse or did everyone become a journalist that can document every flaw and distribute it globally in minutes? Hmmm....

yubblegum 2y ago
Hmmm... OK, Airbus calls to say hi, too.
SecretDreams 2y ago
QC hasn't scaled with volume and robustness introduced by better engineers (now retired) has been peeled back by juniors and managers that didn't understand the designs in the first place and are chasing mass and profit instead.
- trollbridge 2y ago
  QC is one of the first things to get cut. In software eventually customers punish you when your software is so bad that they can’t really use it at all. Aircraft used to be regulated, but Boeing somehow carved out “self regulation”. It’s the same problem as how washing machines don’t last as long as they did 20 years ago.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
Our capabilities didn't get worse. Management caused a shift in culture to make things worse by cheaper. We call it enshittification these days, but it'd decades in the making. All this discussion assumes that Boeing engineers didn't catch this stuff and weren't banging the alarm bells over how these completely failed inspection. The problem was the people in power ignored it. This is an entirely social issue constructed by business demands, not one lacking expertise nor standards.

anon-3988 2y ago

Yea lets take that flight with airplanes from 30 years ago shall we

bronco21016 2y ago
Check the registration on the next aircraft you take a ride on ;) 30 years may be a stretch but 20-25 certainly isn't.
- somenameforme 2y ago
  Counter-intuitively this is especially true with international flights... The main stressor for a plane is not like a car, where it's miles driven/flown. Its in pressurization/depressurization. And so a plane doing domestic skips an hour or two away will wear out way faster than one doing transatlantic trips, and so you're more likely to see the shiny new plane on a short domestic trip than on a big international one. Incidentally this also applies similarly to risk issues. The biggest risk in a flight is not in flying, but in takeoff/landing. This is why the commonly cited deaths/mile metric is not only misleading but completely disingenuous by the people/organizations that release it, knowing full well that the vast majority of people don't understand this. If some person replaced their car with a plane (and could somehow land/take off anywhere), their overall risk of death in transit would be significantly higher than if they were using e.g. a car. 'Air travel being safer than cars' relies on this misleading and meaningless death/miles statistic.
  - laszlojamf 2y ago
    This is really interesting! Never thought of that. Do you have a source for these facts?
  - MaPi_ 2y ago
    Sure, replacing the car with a plane for your grocery shopping would be probably more dangerous, but do you have any data at what distances do the risks flip? When I see those statistics I think about flights like Austria to Finland and I imagine that is indeed safer by plane.

SR2Z 2y ago

This is an excellent example. The 737 used to crash a LOT MORE than it does now, and even the version with MCAS is a safer airplane than your average 1990s jetliner (which was also probably a 737, which is kind of my point)[1]. So it's a slightly less safe (in the grand scheme of things) airliner that's vastly more fuel efficient and cheaper to run than any in the past. Obviously this is of no comfort to the families of the people who died in the crash! But to suggest that Boeing has somehow regressed decades in technical capabilities is just plain wrong. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_Boeing_737 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...

sidewndr46 2y ago
When you look at how type acceptance works, all Boeing planes are going to be a "737". When you actually look at the 737 MAX and compare it to earlier aircraft, it's pretty obvious that they've created a whole new aircraft. Hence MCAS trying to pretend like that didn't happen & dead people.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
gcanyon 2y ago
Thanks for that list/link. It's so easy to forget how awful the past was.
oxfordmale 2y ago
The problem isn't that Boeing is less safe; it is that the company's culture shifted to the extent that technical staff could no longer report perceived safety issues.
ekianjo 2y ago
This is an excellent example of design failure. So in reality, yes, Boeing has regressed as 90s Boeing would never have released a plane like that.
- 2y ago