- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
Because Boeing were on such a good streak already…
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Between door bolts missing, virgin airlines missing wing bolts, this nose wheel, etc
It almost feels like some kind of related systemic error in the very thorough maintenance documentation required for aircrafts, or a large scale sabotage of some sort.
Any regulatory agencies that enforce this sort of stuff being defunded, understaffed, or de-toothed in the last 4-8 years?
That’s what this smells like, and we should really be getting ourselves ready for more of this in other industries.
It feels like they’re using the Lego sorting robots to assemble the kit for a plane…
the front fell off, you say?
It’s not supposed to do that?
Oh it’s very unusual!
Boeing laid off about 900 QA people back in 2019. Now they are reaping the rewards
Elsewhere: Airbus Christmas party budget doubles.
How is this Boeings issue? This is a maintenance problem with the airline. Tires get replaced by maintenance staff. That plane isn’t brand new.
Well, if proper maintenance was done and the part still failed due to a design or quality issue that was improperly QC’d (missed, skipped, etc) then yeah it could be Boeings fault.
They’re getting extra scrutiny right now because of all the incidents recently, and all the anecdotal stories of former employees talking about how a bunch of suits are destroying it from the inside to make a quick buck.
And frankly, they fucking deserve it.
And frankly, they fucking deserve it.
Except the suits aren’t going to be the ones hurt by the company going down in flames.
It never is, but it prevents them from continuing to build new planes were profit has priority over security and “accidentally” killing 100s of people
If I recall correctly, the aircraft manufacturer writes the maintenance guidelines.
This could be a Boeing issue, if it’s due to something that happened at the time the aircraft was built, or due to a foreseeable gap in the maintenance guidelines.
It could be a Delta issue, if they weren’t following the maintenance guidelines, or a maintenance contractor working for them wasn’t following them and they didn’t catch it.
It could also have been (very small but nonzero chance) the result of physical trauma to the plane that wasn’t foreseen, back in the 1990s when it was built, as something that might cause an issue of this magnitude. I haven’t yet seen any information on whether this particular aircraft has a history of hard landings or running over debris on the runway. Freak accidents do happen.
All of those have precedents in aviation history.
I remember watching this PBS Frontline segment on plane maintenance 10 years or so ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw0b020OFj4
I imagine we still have those problems and the recent news of counterfeit parts entering the market is scary.
Good thing these recent incidents ended up with no serious injuries or death. Perhaps this timing is good in some really weird way as the Supreme Court starts considering powers of regulatory agencies and concerns around government funding to highlight the importance and need for this government role.
On some Boeing aircraft, the nose wheel will actually come off when the autopilot system overcompensates during takeoff and crashes the plane straight into the ground. There were aome small news stories about it a few years back.
It’s even known that the nose itself can come off if the autopilot overcompensates while in flight and crashes the plane into the ground.
Are you sure? This makes it sound like every time the plane crashes into the ground because of autopilot overcompensation, its a good bet to assume the nose itself has already come off.
No worries, it has been towed outside of the environment.
I feel uncomfortable as a taxpayer having inadvertently supported Boeing and they are literally falling apart.
You think Airbus is gonna expand its capacity to build even more planes?
According the Airbus themselves, they finished 2023 with a backlog of 8598 orders, and they delivered 735 planes that same year. They are occupied for years ahead and it’s probably not so simple to increase production.
Edit: the source: Orders and deliveries / airbus.com
Clickbait. The FAA lists the plane number as N672DL and a quick flight registry check says that plane was made in 1992. This is a maintenance issue with Delta.
The title is “Nose wheel falls off Boeing 757 airliner waiting for takeoff” and that’s exactly what happened. That’s not clickbait, since it’s not deceptive, sensationalized, or otherwise misleading. It’s just news.
The only reason it’s being reported is because of the other Boeing incident. And if they were trying to be accurate, the headline would’ve read “Nose wheel falls off Delta airplane waiting for takeoff”. It’s clickbait.
I think you overestimate how much the average traveler who may die when parts fall off cares or is parsing whether it’s Boeing’s mistake or Delta’s. What I’m taking from the headline (we need to get our shit together before a bunch of people die) is different than what you seem to be worried about people taking from the headline.
You say and yet we both know if the headline was “nose wheel falls off Delta jet waiting to take off” it’d be identically accurate but would mean something else entirely
Isn’t Boeing QA supposed to inspect the plane and sign it off after maintenance?
No, they make the guides but don’t monitor them, which would be too costly (so much employees needed) and bureaucratic
I thought that there were specific “critical” operations that would require them (Delta, Boeing, or both) to record an entry in Boeing’s Collaborative Manufacturing Execution Systems (CMES) database. But I’m discovering this field, so I don’t know if they make a difference in this context between before and after delivery, and if the normal plane maintenance is covered by the same processes or not, and that’s why I’m asking, and not stating.
However, if one doesn’t know more than me, stating isn’t more correct.
Well, they probably register repairs in databases, but they definitely don’t send people to check every single thing. Airlines also might contract Boeing to do some bigger repairs.
I don’t see how a repair that causes the nose of a plane to “fall off” would not be considered a “bigger repair”…
I’m not saying that Boeing would be involved in the replacement of a tire from the landing gear. But something major enough to make the actual nose of the plane to literally fall off? That sounds important enough to me.
The wheel near the nose fell off, not the nose itself smh
OK I’m officially too tired to actually contribute to Lemmy. I’ll be on my way… 😭
If it’s Boeing, I’m not going.
Your trip is going to get complicated
Working for Boeings PR department must be absolute madness right now… imagine having to somehow excuse all those fuck ups and every week there is a new one
The company is still worth over 100 billions. They do something right.
Otherwise I agree with you. It’s almost hilarious to see fail after fail (as long as you are not in the plane).
What they do right is having a duopoly with Airbus, and great military contracts. So investors know that even if things are shit rn, they will probably get better again.
Furthermore, while I agree that Boeing probably will not go bankrupt over this, the valuation sometimes is not a great indicator of what’s going on internally. Enron was worth over 60 billion. Half a year later they were at zero. Now I’m not saying Boeing is nearly that bad, but they are in some trouble for sure.
The thing is, every Boeing plane that has any problem is going to make it to the news right now. So it’s very hard to see what is relevant and what is just “one of those things”. So, this will make them look worse than they really are.
Having said that, they have problems. My opinion is that cost-cutting has created all their recent actual problems (MCAS, missing bolts, loose bolts etc) and I’d argue that unless the actual location(s) responsible for these problems is identified, the safest thing to do would be to recall ALL aircraft recently (last 3 years AT LEAST) serviced, repaired or had their configuration changed at a Boeing owned or subcontracted location should be reviewed for substandard work.
My reasoning here is that if we have loose/missing bolts on the 737 Max 8/9 and -900ER. It won’t stop there, it is going to almost certainly be an institutionalised problem of quality control slippage that could affect any aircraft maintenance, repair, or adjustment operation.
But, I’m not an aviation expert, so my opinion is worth very little.
I agree with your comment, even though I have no idea on the technical aspects. What I can weigh in on is crisis management, especially communication.
Boeing needs to take control of the situation and actively start communicating and showing that they are working on fixing this thing. In Situational Crisis Communication Theory you would call it a rebuild approach. They tried denial, they tried downplaying, it’s not working. A rebuild strategy is usually the last resort, as things like admitting your mistakes and fixing them are rarely appreciated by investors. Furthermore it’s usually a huuuuge cost to do a recall on that scale. But Boeing need to show the public that they are actively working on improving the situation, to earn back their trust. So at least a partial recall should be considered.
You’re exactly right in your first paragraph about the news. The media and the public are very sensitive to Boeing quality issues rn. These articles won’t stop unless one of three things happen. Either Boeing gets their shit together and gets some effective crisis management and communication done, the company goes bust, or something else turns up in the news that replaces this. The third option will be the most likely, but it will also haunt them forever. It’s like that exploding galaxy note 7 situation. There were articles about that for every new generation of Galaxy Note, despite Samsung doing pretty well in investigating the issues. And while the following Note phones sold alright, the whole thing was a significant loss of trust and money for Samsung and enabled competitors like Huawai to catch up.
