Six loose bolts on the other side
Here's a most interesting update about the latest Boeing MAX jet disaster:
Boeing personnel tightened six loose fasteners on the fuselage structure around the plug exit opposite the one that was later violently expelled from an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 at altitude last Friday, The Air Current has learned.
The work took place at Boeing's Renton, Washington factory after the fuselage was shipped by rail from supplier Spirit AeroSystems' factory in Wichita, Kansas, which supplies 70% of the 737's parts to Boeing.
Shame on everyone involved.
To date there is no evidence the bolts on the port side (left) were ever there. I guess if the bolts are not there they don’t need to be tightened?
ReplyDeleteYeah, well, profits are lower on civilian stuff, lots of way sleazier competition on the military stuff, spoke & hub went belly up/turns out when you deregulate air travel to the point it sucks so much it barely works and americans work a bunch of hours and will just pay the 30% more to fly on a smaller plane direct & they spread out their production line to the dirty south & Kansas to avoid actual skilled Seattle Boeing machinist strikes, what do you expect?
ReplyDeleteSome of the inside videos & expose’ of workers in the south ‘would you fly on this scab labor thing?’
‘Nah’
It’s a rush job, FAA doesn’t look great.
Boeing isn’t looking great, but like Intel making chips for desktop & laptop PCs, they’re struggling to hang on to the juicier military stuff compared to the competition, spent a bunch of $ avoiding labor action & band-aided an existing airframe last minute when it turned out there was less demand for larger planes to be flown on a spoke and hub model.
My first question would be "who's job was it to tighten the bolts?" Did Boeing expect the bolts to be tight to spec on arrival? Or did Spirit believe their job was to simply make sure the bolts were installed and Boeing would do the final tightening at their plant? My Spidey sense says there's a whole lotta "that's good enough" happening between Kansas and Renton.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, the popular travel site Kayak allows users to filter out flights with the Max 8 and Max 9. A useful feature going forward.
Max stands for profit, right?...
ReplyDeleteAnd let's not forget that instead of redesigning the wing, they moved the Engines forward (creating an unstable aircraft) so that they would not drag on the ground. Then they tried to fix that issue with Software.
ReplyDeleteCorrect and all to save $1b which is the estimated cost to create and certify a new airplane.
DeleteRead “Flying Blind” for the entire story.
Keep the “suits” away from any engineering/design function.
ReplyDelete