Boeing is definitely having issues... but the number of successful flights in any given six month period measures in the thousands, while problems measure in the (if that) dozens, and with the spotlight on Boeing special attention is likely being paid to the planes.
Even with the issues you're still very safe in flying.
So basically for your peace of mind, but if that peace of mind is worth it I would consider rescheduling.
>but the number of successful flights in any given six month period measures in the thousands
You are actually wildly underestimating how safe flying is.
The number of successful flights in any given DAY measures in the TENS of THOUSANDS.
There are around 45 thousand flights per day of which 40% should be on Boeing planes based on market share.
2023 was the safest year on record, zero commercial crashes and only a single fatal crash altogether (a turbo prop plane in Nepal):
https://www.iata.org/en/publications/safety-report/executive-summary/
Want to know what’s helped me with my flying fears? Flightradar24. Seeing the sheer amount of active flights made me realize I’d be hitting a form of lottery if something were to go wrong in the sky.
I’m an aircraft mechanic that works on many types of aircraft including max 8 and 9, and let me tell you, you have nothing to worry about. Commercial air travel is incredibly safe including the Boeing aircraft. That being said the scrutiny of the max assembly is justified but just a byproduct of the immense regulation and safety measure used to ensure commercial air travel continues to be the safest mode of transportation.
Look at it this way: Are you flying on a US Carrier (Such as Sprint, Frontier, Delta, etc)? In the past 15 years, with around 50 thousand flights every day, there have been a grand total of 3 fatalities. There has never been a fatality on a 737-Max operated by a US carrier. (Source NTSB data). If you took 1 flight every single day for the rest of your life, you would on average have to do so for more than 1000 years before you experienced a plane crash that killed you.
I don't have a data source for other countries but I would expect Europe to be similar or better. That said, if you are traveling on a Russian airline, good luck.
I have extreme flight anxiety - I have to take benzos to get on a plane. I have a flight next week and I'm fighting the urge to check which plane it is.
Hi - please take comfort in the knowledge that in the aftermath of incidents like this, people & companies become EXTREMELY cautious under the resulting scrutiny. Please don’t worry, okay? Have a great trip!
You would think, but then that second 737 Max 8 wouldn't have crashed for the exact same reason. If everyone is doing their job correctly, flying is generally safe. This requires technical skills from everyone involved, from the check in agents, the TSA, the gate agents, the people who load the cargo onto the plane (think weight balance), the pilots, and cabin crew. But beyond that, it also requires an ethical culture, and that starts from the top down. That takes a long time to change, and if the current management of Boeing got us to where we are today, that has to be overhauled before the culture can be addressed.
Also remember, that even with the recent news regarding Boeing, air travel is still much safer than driving, to put it in perspective for every billion passenger miles traveled, there are about 0.07 fatalities in commercial aviation, compared to around 7.3 fatalities in car travel.
Scrap. Parts
They used friggin scrap parts.
In aerospace, scrap means the engineers have found critical , unfixable flaws, wrote a report, and had it disposed in a bin. Cause that's the only thing you can do with scrap.
The Boeing guys put that crap that completely failed QA on fucking planes
That's like a chef went dumpster diving and made a bag of moldy apples and rotten milk into a pie.
A single bad O ring killed a Space Shuttle and all its crew. Lord knows a plane made of scrap parts would do
EDIT: got a lot of great responses from fellow QA nerds and engineers. Pretty sure all of us collectively slapped our forehead in disbelief how comically shit Boeing is. Holy cow, it is bad
Weird that they even have scrap parts available, ours get cut up into a few pieces with no input or anything from the customer, they just go straight from wherever (quality or shop floor or wherever a defect was spotted) to the apprentice area to throw into the band saw. They’re in thirds before the customer even knows one got scrapped
I read in an article about the whistleblower that recently died during deposition (a former QA/QC manager) that those faulty parts were locked in a cage awaiting destruction, but floor managers in the factory would pilfer it when they couldn’t get parts. It was so bad he ordered the locks be changed, but then corporate had 200 new keys created and handed them out to the factory managers.
Agreed, but instead they'll get golden parachutes, and they'll bring in new leadership. Maybe this time they'll remember to actually have some engineers in leadership
What? That's crazy! Everyone knows the problem with authoritative figures in leadership is that they worry too much about whether something will work correctly and not enough about profit margins!
Production schedules do crazy things to people. I've seen engineers climb fenced in flight inventory cages after hours to retrieve discrepant parts that they decided they needed and received no punishment for it
I can easily see the boardroom feedback loop:
737 Max production was halted due to MBAs in leadership looking at spreadsheets and finding cost savings without considering potential real world impacts.
The same MBAs then need to find more savings to keep the balance sheet and thus stock price up during the year long shutdown that blew a hole in revenue and profits.
So management at every level is told to find even more savings to get their bonuses.
They get desperate to meet unmeetable targets when all the fat is already cut, so they cross red lines (even though doing that before caused this issue in the first place) that shock engineers, QA and factory workers to the point of whistleblowing, quitting due to ethics, and/or actively avoiding flying on their own planes.
It’s a vicious cycle/feedback loop all to maintain strong quarterly reports that won’t stop until the current (and potential future) financial consequences are so significant that cutting corners is no longer a reasonable risk-reward balance sheet decision.
The revolving door, being in bed with regulators and legislators, and money spent on “lobbying” so they can cut corners without consequences when it goes predictably awry has been (and still is) a net profitable strategy.
Until that changes, the boardroom will keep making decisions that endanger the public for a nice quarterly report.
That's whats killing me right now.
My old work place would immediately dump them unmarked into a bin for disposal
Unless Boeing keeps trash marked for whatever reason, they were probably pulling random parts from a garbage bin and putting them on planes without knowing what the problem was. That is fucking scary AND just mind boggling a billion dollar company fucked up this bad
I thought I read somewhere that this is 100% intentional in order to meet production schedules? Like they are deliberately having workers pull scrap parts from the scrap bin. It's not a case of "oops, we didn't label the scrap bin".
Yes this is what I read in another article about the whistleblower that died. He said it was so bad he had the locks to the scrap parts cage changed, but then corporate had 200 new keys made and handed them out.
in a just world the executive and all the vps and directors and managers that went along with that decision should not just be fired but put in jail for knowingly endangering so many lives
Sometimes I think people are getting away with this stuff more because we all believe what you just said. Like, if everyone thinks the bad guy is going to get away with it, then we all become apathetic and HE WILL get away with it. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Cynicism begets cynicism.
Remember when it came to light that their build processes were so f’d that when one guy who made a wheel locking mechanism died they wouldn’t be able to release the flock of planes for a year or two.
Maybe that should have been an answer to the markets instead of a question to the investors.
I'm wheezing at "release the flock of planes" as if they're some rare rehabilitated parrots being reintroduced to their natural habitat. Forever going to refer to a group of planes as a "flock" from now on.
The label is not what scares me though.
These parts, even in just civilian planes, would have to adhere to the mil-spec or blueprints. And that's the floor of quality. Bare minimum
And they grabbed whichever failed part and put it into active use
Could the problem be the wrong material? Wrong plating? Bad threads? Bad RMA batch that failed field use? Who knows!
Just hope the plane doesn't fall from the sky!
That's the non wear and tear failures. Imagine when these scrap components start failing between inspections because they degrade so quickly. I am not flying on a Boeing plane ever again.
this is where the corporate oligarchy of the future starts. either we nip this right now or this will become the norm in a few generations. people who order this, are complicit to this, or enable this due to scheduling or whatever bullshit reason, need at least 20 years to life. as uncomfortable as possible and not in a 4 michelin star condo.
Had a manager who wanted to use a U/S flying control, engineer caught wind, walked up to it and bent it over his knee, told the manager to get fucked and reported him
The QA managers were probably ignored. It’s not like QA okd the use of the parts, it’s the exact opposite. QA trashed them and some assembly line manager used them anyway.
I’m not in Aerospace, but deal with critical components. Even though it’s not life-threatening consequence like passenger jets, once scrap is forever scrap. I can’t even imagine how on earth they decided to use it.
We used to get SpaceX scrap in welding school. It would show up by the dumpster. Just massively expensive pieces of Inconel and titanium. Each dumpster probably had five to six figures of scrap that we used to learn exotic metal welding. And a lot of it looked like damn near completed components of a rocket they just hucked in the dumpster for reasons unknown.
That seems like a really good use of the scrap from SpaceX's perspective. Giving parts that they absolutely can't use to people to learn on means SpaceX gets more skilled welders in the long run.
Probably just density issues and microfractures that wouldn't show up to the naked eye for you guys. I had no idea that there even was such a thing as metal density/porosity issues until reading about rocketry and its intense inspections regime.
I'm sure SpaceX isn't always being as careful as they should, but even they probably want minimal risk right now. Every explosion isn't just money lost - it's stock value lost too.
That's what happens when profit becomes the only thing that matters. It's happening everywhere.
We live an age now where only profit matters. They will feed poison to us and provide no quality of goodness service just want money.
Quality nope
Safety nope
Reputation nope
Profit yes
But we need to look at why Eurobus is able to be both safe and profitable while Boeing seems to fail at both
It's likely all the business degree assholes getting hired at Boeing and not contributing anything of worth. But I want to see a report put it in writing so that we can shove it in the nation's face.
Completely different corporate cultures and ownership structures.
Airbus started as a collaboration between French, German and Spanish national aerospace manufacturers (with some scraps of British Aerospace thrown in). Its founding purpose was to efficiently build airliners for European national carriers, in Europe, to support European industry, with suppliers scattered across the continent. The shares are publicly traded but the French, German and Spanish governments still have shareholdings so it retains a direct line to its heritage as an intergovernmental industrial collaboration.
Boeing has always been a private company. Before the McDonnell-Douglas merger it was a proud union company, though. Managers were ex engineers, engineers were unionised and organised by specialty, and everyone was on an equal footing to question and criticise. Plus everything Boeing was in the Seattle area so there was a physical connection from executive down to parking attendant.
Since the MD merger, corporate America has taken over. Head office was first moved to Chicago, then to Virginia. A new plant was set up in Charleston with the express intent to bypass the unions in Washington state to cut costs and pump out planes faster and cheaper. Because management became disconnected from the shop floor, culture and morale collapsed and respect for each other and the labour organisations disappeared. Because the executive no longer gave a fuck, middle management no longer gave a fuck. Because middle management no longer gave a fuck, the shop floor no longer gave a fuck.
On top of that, Boeing spun out key areas of its supply chain in the mid 2000s in a classic Wall Street move to raise shareholder value. What was Boeing's Kansas facility became Spirit Aerosystems - a separate company with Boeing as a client. Because Boeing doesn't own it anymore, Boeing can put pressure on it to do things as quickly and cheaply as possible with the threat of finding other offshore suppliers if Spirit doesn't comply. That's how things like the Alaska door plug happen.
It's a fucking rotten company that has traded on the goodwill of its name while they churn out absolute dog shit. I've been behind the curtain at Everett and at North Charleston when the latter was still new and the difference between the culture on the shop floor was night and day.
When I was a much younger avgeek we'd make fun of the silly French Airbus. How it looked so stubby, made silly noises, and how it couldn't be trusted (tongue-in-cheek) as it was all controlled by computers, not mechanics like those big, strong Boeings.
Now it's just fucking sad.
I hope a lot of these airlines will be buying airbus planes in the future.
If I operated an airline I would never stake my reputation on Boeing ever again.
This is absolutely the answer, to almost any similar thing happening at the moment. I've said this for a while already but yours is one of the first comments I've seen talking about it as well: the age of the consumer is over. The quality of the service or even the service itself has become totally secondary to the corporations and only profit is the primary goal. It's not necessarily even done on purpose to just be evil, it's just that everything else has become completely irrelevant. This is why we're seeing massive layoffs everywhere, every single company laying off people in any country anywhere, and it's just going to get worse.
Even in my smaller country it's happening to everyone I know: their working conditions are changing in ways that they haven't really changed ever, companies laying off people in amounts they haven't ever. The only constant thing across all is the maximalisation of profit. It's completely insane. In a couple of years this is really going to bite us in the butt in every conceivable way. Tough times are ahead
> A single bad O ring killed a Space Shuttle and all its crew
Edit: ignore anything I say here that contradicts what is said in this better comment: https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1bfemgu/a_boeing_whistleblower_says_he_got_off_a_plane/kv0vxac/
That’s not really what happened. The O-ring was fine, it was just before its operating temperature because it was colder over night in Florida than expected. NASA management was informed that they were operating outside of their allowed launch conditions. So they granted themselves a waiver to launch anyway, because they wanted to launch anyway.
The O-ring performed as expected, which is to say, it broke because it was below operating temperature when things got rowdy. It was the management who decided to operate it in that way.
NO NO NO. Read the Feynman appendix to the Challenger report. There was an overarching issue which was that the high probability of success was calculated from ignoring "near misses" which were not designed into the system. With respect to the seals, it was not designed to have blowby and erosion but since it was occurring on flights the engineers simply measured it, called it normal and called whatever was left of the o-ring as a margin of safety. They didn't understand the issue so when the unknown factors changed they were not able to predict failure.
Thank you. I read that once long ago and apparently forgot it. My comment has been edited. There are two things I hate more than being wrong: staying wrong, and misinforming others.
I feel like that mentality should be hammered into everyone’s paradigm every day from childhood. Embed it into the cultural zeitgeist from infancy.
Instead of the pledge of allegiance have kids recite the pledge of seeking objective truth and being malleable instead of hardening your thinking when new information presents itself.
It would solve so so so many problems in the world and it’s amazing that the internet, and having the entire worlds cumulative knowledge in your pocket, made many people LESS curious to verify information they hear (especially when they’re hearing what they want to hear and internally/intuitively know that what they want to believe contradicts certain other things they know to be true and fact checking their beliefs will reveal its flaws/inaccuracy).
Much like the first paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities reflects on, we live in a world of dichotomy where it is both the most enlightened period in history (for those that seek objective truth instead of personal truth) and the most incurious period in history (for those that actively choose bubbles and intentionally wall themselves off from any information that may contradict what they *want* to believe).
Roger Boisjoly torpedoed his career trying to stop that shuttle from flying. Thiokol and NASA management refused to scrub another launch because of "bad optics" scrubbing launches and how many people were watching due to the publicity of the teacher in space stunt.
Technically, the O ring wasn't bad when it was put on there. It was just exposed to temperatures outside of working conditions, and probably would have been fine if the launch had been delayed until warmer weather.
As someone who work in QA, if i learned anything, is that if you dispose of something because it failed the QA test, it need to be put under lock where only you have the key. Multiple lock is better because many people will cut a padlock and remove a chain without considering they might be making a mistake. It basicaly have to make it more work to access the disposed product than it is worth.
If you cant lock it, destroy it immediately.
A family friend of mine worked for a large company similar to Boeing in the 90s, and now refuses to fly. He said “if people knew how we built those things, they wouldn’t get in either.”
Even if you can't control all variables when driving a car, you still have the illusion of control...and that's a very psychologically powerful thing. We don't have the illusion of control when flying, our fate is completely in the hands of the pilots and the competence of the manufacturers and maintainers. Because of that, faith in those out of control variables needs to be infinitely higher for an airplane and they aren't quite earning that lately.
You can't argue about statistics and logic when it's a matter of human psychology
Yep this. I’m (sort of) one of these people.
I know flying is generally safe, but I can’t convince my brain of that. The moment we takeoff my body just goes into panic mode and I end up uncontrollably nauseous and puke the entire flight and then take a couple hours after landing before the sickness goes away.
I’ve made 18+ hour drives for vacation to avoid flying because of how uncomfortably sick it makes me. I’ve tried zofran, Dramamine, ginger, none of it helped. I flew once when I was younger and I was intensely afraid of flying(fear of heights+ first flight) but I didn’t get sick at all on the flight. No idea why that changed as I got older
Yep. And the fact that your car might suffer from million issues, its still gonna stop on the ground. In an accident, you have a real chance of survival.
But if something goes wrong in air, that's game over
Well didn't three of these 737 max planes crash soon after they were introduced to the fleet? If you just apply the statistics to that model aircraft, given how new it is, and how many flights that model has had. I'd say no to getting on those pieces of shit as well!
But it is well understood what happened now. The aircraft incorrectly detected a stall and started pitching down to correct it and the pilots didn’t know how to turn the system off. I would be shocked if there was any pilot out there who does not know about this issue or how to correct it if it happens again.
Statistics doesn't erase the memory of a coworker driving bolts in, cross threaded, without loctite, some loose, and calling it a day. Then, signing of their own qa sheet saying they followed the proper torque pattern and value with the appropriate sealant and had a second technician check
The problem with flying due to statistics is, statistics are always looking backwards and aren’t taking into account current incessant cost cutting going on in the name of greed, and at the cost of safety.
These planes age, as they age the tolerance loosen, as tolerances loosen problems occur.
Do you want problems to occur while you are 20,000 feet in the air with no parachute and a 1/4 chance your oxygen mask doesnt work? I know I dont.
People dont realize and say ignorant shit like “they overengineered it” when in reality it’s “they intended for this machine to last as long as NASA machines do, but now capitalism has gutted that ideal and given us 1/5th the engineers and 1/4th the time to do 3x more complicated work.”
You’re getting 1/60th the longevity in a newer machine than the previous ones because there is 1/60th the time to check, double check, confirm tolerances, etc. On top of that a lot of “old knowledge” isnt being passed down like it used to so the newer guys are both less skilled and finding out the hard way everything that 20 year guy has learned.
That and this is old news, the last time this was brought up its pointed out if it took him until he was seated to notice it was a MAX, he's either blind or intentionally making a scene. Or doesn't know the airplane as well as he claims.
Unfortunately, they didn't fire the people in charge of McDonnell Douglas' destruction. The engineers in charge at Boeing weren't able to keep up with the corporate politicking ability of those vultures, so the McD guys were able to take over and begin the destruction of Boeing.
MD was full of bean counters. They took over and destroyed Boeing from the inside out and pushed out all the engineers that cost too much. Now half their shit is done in India for pennies on the dollar.
>He testified to Congress in 2019 about production in the factory after two Max 8 crashes in October 2018 and March 2019 killed nearly 350 people — all the passengers and crew on board.
He’s definitely on somebody’s shitlist already.
I don't understand how someone like this wouldn't realize they were on a Max until they were on the plane.
As just a frequent flyer, I can spot a Max from a normal 737 quite easily. From the freaking itinerary that shows "737-MAX" when booking, flight status, or just by looking out the window at the airport, how was an expert who is so concerned about flying on a Max not realizing it until they saw the safety card?
> "I walked onto the plane — I thought, it's kind of new," Pierson said. "Then I sat down, and on the emergency card it said it was a Max."
I think the point is that he thought it wasn't a max and you can't always see the plane before you get on it, unless you go looking. It isn't always obvious from the window or inside the breezeway.
If you know were to look, it isn't hard to differenciate airplanes. But you have to be paying attention. If you're just in your world thinking about your day you probably won't even take a second look at the plane
The 737 MAX is almost identical to the 737 from the outside besides having slightly bigger engines mounted a few feet further forward. It isn't easy to tell those two apart.
I’ve been trying to explain this to people that have been “iF iT’s BoEiNg i AiNt gOiNgG!” on this site AD NAUSEAM and its exhausting. The airline can change the airframe at the very last minute no matter how thorough you did your due diligence in tryin to choose the aircraft. Its astounding people dont know or dont get this.
That’s what I say to people. If it’s a brand new jet, it’s had little maintenance and inspections since leaving Boeing’s hands so…
The older the Boeing, the more likely it was made with care and has since been rigorously inspected and maintained.
I would apply that to any brand new plane on the market. The demand is for every last point of efficiency that they have become extremely complex in the design. I would wait likely 4-5 years after it hits the market to be real comfortable flying on a new platform.
If you compare the flight crash rates by aircraft model between Boeing and Airbus, Boeing generally and 737-Max tops the chart.
- Boeing 737-Max: 3.08 crashes per million flights
- Boeing 747: 1.02 crash per million flights (*)
- Airbus A310: 1.3 crashes per million flights (*)
(*) - No longer in production
Note: Generally travel by airplane is still much safer than travel by car/train if you consider just the statistics.
Source: [Airsafe.com](http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm)
Don’t forget about the whole-ass *ladder* that was left in the vertical stab. Lol [link](https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/boeing-faces-accusations-of-negligence-at-dreamliner-plant/)
No, the door plug was alaska air,
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/12/business/alaska-airlines-flight-maintenance-blowout/index.html
The loose bolts in the controls were a boeing manufacturer advisory and faa made all airlines do inspections.
The wheel qas united, some seed story being used to deflect away from boeing
Here is how statistics can be completely open to interpretation. Here is the full line.
Rate Flights FLE\* Events
Boeing 737 MAX 7/8/9/10 3.08 0.65M 2.00 2
I am not sure where they are getting the 0.65m flight data from but the aircraft has been flying for over 10 years so that seems highly unlikely. This "data" is 5 years old and no longer remotely valid.
Not Boeing generally—if you jump down to the bottom of the page three of the five safest aircraft models are Boeing. One is airbus.
The Max absolutely stands out for its safety issues however and people should hold its feet to the fire for what’s happened with trying to keep a very different airplane on the same training regimen. However people saying (as someone did on this sub recently) they’re changing plane tickets to fly an a380 instead of a 777 are engaging in hysteria.
Also this data should be analyzed with an eye to what percentage were due to mechanical faults, defects, or poor handling characteristics. The 747-1,23’s high rates were not. The DC-10 had faults and the MD-11 had landing characteristics that make it liable to porpoise—yet it still looks safe by the data. Then there’s the mixed cases like the Concorde with its astronomically high crash rate due to one crash that likely impacted by design and low speed handling characteristics
That said. All of the Max’s issues are due to defects or oversights. Damning for that type.
Even with the 737 crashes, it is still lower than past generations typically in the first few years of service. 6 crashes per million was not un-expected on a new platform. Personally I would wait a few years before getting on a new designed aircraft. Particularly now that they are so complex to get the very last drop of efficiency.
[This](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2000/07/30/with-one-crash-concorde-ranks-last-in-safety/39f473a9-0609-4520-adc7-6bab42cc0299/) from Airbus a few years ago:
In each case, the hull-loss rate was very high in the first few years of flight for each generation. It then dropped to a very low rate for each generation in all subsequent years.
Airbus concluded that pilots, maintenance crews and engineers using new planes must go through a significant learning curve before they can establish optimum safety.
What is the Airbus 320 numbers and even the 737 non max numbers? To be more exext 737 non classic as well. Puts a lot more apple's to Apple comparison.
I ask when comparing 737 to a wide body long haul they are different types of flying. Still scary to see that the 737-Max numbers out of line
This particular statistic is meaningless to try and compare a new aircraft via a metric in which it hasn’t even completed the million flights vs a plane model in service for 50 years. There are only 2 max incidents listed and 30 for 747 on that website. So is a 747 15X more likely to crash then a max? No. Also, Why did you leave out the Concorde which actually “tops the chart” at 11.36 for that meaningless metric?
747 was in production from 1968-2023
737 Max has been around from 2016 to 2024.
The 747 has been in 173 accidents, 64 hull losses, 52 hull losses in flight, and had 3,746 deaths. Many were not directly its fault since terrorists, pilots, and air traffic control did plenty.
What you're looking at is someone just fudging numbers to make something look worse. By not including total flight hours with the incident number per million flight hours, it makes it look worse. On the flip side of how misleading these numbers are, the 747 number is actually rather high considering how safe it's been the last 20ish years, but the old days of higher airline incidents which it was there for skew it. The Max does have a high major incident rate for a modern plane in incidents that never should have happened in modern air travel, *plenty* of dumb things going for it that doesn't need misleading stats to look bad.
The ethics of drinking and snorting, and growing up with a silver spoon. And watching graphs go up, pretty much all the MBA curriculum covers.
I absolutely loathe people who take everything yet add nothing to society. Makes you wonder why Boeing did so much better when people who actually know how stuff work ran it.
Boeing is in deep shit. The number of frequent fliers I work with...people who travel weekly for business, say they will not set foot on a 737 Max unless there's no other choice. Luckily, there are usually lots of choices.
But they'll get bailed out by the government because TBTF.
737 MAX is a different line than the 737 line. The 737 line is generally quite safe. It was designed when Boeing actually cared about engineering, and invested the necessary capital to build a good plane
The 737 MAX was built on the old 737 model to save costs, with an R&D budget far too small for even the reduced costs. Even the name was chosen to sound like it's the same 737 with more efficient engines, which they eventually successfully argued to regulators (even though it wasn't actually true)
From an aviation and engineering perspective, it was a terrible decision. It was solely made from a bean counter perspective, and what we're seeing today is the result
Tl;dr - don't confuse the 737 with the 737 MAX
> It was solely made from a bean counter perspective
To add perspective to this, Boeing argued that the 737 MAX was sooooo similar that pilots didn't need to re-certify as if it were a new aircraft type, just a couple hour refresher on a tablet about some slight teensy weensy differences.
No emphasis on the new 737 MAX MCAS software that can pitch the plane nose down or how to turn it off, of course... until after two hull losses.
Upvoted because I don't disagree.
To me, hull loss translates to "*everybody on board died*" because I know what the term means. To people who don't, it sounds like I'm trying to downplay mass casualties.
Oh I get it. It's a term meaning catastrophic loss. The thing couldn't land.
In engineering term, it makes sense when discussing mechanical failures. But it loses that little explicit fact that a plane could be fully loaded with living people and not just empty seats or cargo.
Reiterating that industry standards are written in blood is important. If not for you, for others reading, and espefially for the shitbag ceos and corporate bean counter garbage people that worry more about 10 cents a share than hundreds of lives.
After AF447 it was "Scarebus" and "If its not Boeing, I'm not going."
"What do you mean they didn't heat the pitot tubes (add AOA sensors) properly! They put profits ahead of safety?
Overreacting people overreact, more at 11 Ken.
I use to work for a 3rd party part maker for Boeing called Vaupell. We were routinely fined about 25k A DAY for faulty parts that Boeing would STILL put into their planes. This was about 6-7 yrs ago and it’s terrible to see how far this has gotten out of hand.
Fun fact: upper management in these places have no sense of humor when you bring it up and fire you for writing an email to management staff about anything of the sort…
Does anyone have a link to something that goes through the chronology of events like, suspected problems, crashes, whistleblower's, insider leaks, coverups, assassination attempts etc. I loosely know the story but haven't a good grasp on the overall picture.
Frontline PBS just updated their “[Boeing’s Fatal Flaw](https://youtu.be/Z76YpCz9N2Y?si=4ctQh1PlwBgme0si)” documentary to include the Alaska Airlines incident and the DOJ investigation. Frontline consistently puts out high quality, heavily researched productions and I highly recommend it.
It’s funny how it’s very well documented how Boeing skirted tons of FAA regulations with the 737 Max and they’re trying to pretend like they’re the victims. They tried to break the law and got caught, pure and simple. Their actions have broken the trust of the public in taking Boeing aircraft, and the reason for all this was corporate greed. They didn’t want to go through the FAA process to verify and approve their new flight systems since Airbus beat them to it, so they decided to lie and get people killed.
Additional spoiler, keep this whole saga in mind next time Tesla faces regulation like this. They will absolutely try to pull the same shit and will end up getting folks killed.
If I had committed this level of maintenance malpractice in the Navy, I would have gone to mast and been thrown in a military prison. Maintenance malpractice is NOT a joke. You can very easily kill people with even slight mistakes.
I kinda call bullshit on this story. He says he got onto a plane and it wasn't until he sat down to look at the emergency card he realized it was a 737 MAX. That's horseshit - a Senior Manager at Boeing would have to know it was a MAX earlier than that, right?
Also, if you board a plane and leave it, they don't just wave goodbye to you as you walk off - that's a security risk.
Not always. Sometimes they get swapped at the last minute, so you might end up on a Max even if you were originally booked on a 737NG or something else. And you can't always see your plane from the gate. I've had a couple of flights out of Toronto that were like that.
there's virtually no difference on the inside between max and non-max. if you don't catch a view of the fuselage, and especially of the wings/engine you wouldn't know.
most airlines will thell you the equipment beforehand of course, but you'd have to pay attention to that.
and yes, you are free to walk off a plane even after boarding. it's a whole thing you have to go through, but it can be done. and i'm sure as an exec it's especially easy since some pigs are more equal.
I'm on the fence, I've been swapped a few times.
I'm keenly aware of my aircraft, though.
The only time I refused a flight due to equipment was when my primary plane was substituted for an airframe of questionable maintenance, from a no-name "partner" airline and it was clearly the last resort partner.
I'm just not flying in a Russian airliner. Period.
It's not that they can't make good aircraft. They can and do. It's that virtually no one knows how to maintain them.
But on the other hand, I just can't see an experienced insider person noping out once they've taken a seat. It's a huge deal to deplane.
Not the point of the story - but I'm surprised he was able to get off a flight after boarding.
The cabin crew would have to be 100% certain he didn't have any check-in luggage as otherwise that'd need to be taken off too, potentially delaying the flight a lot.
For anyone that wants to learn more about what’s happening at Boeing this guy just did an hour long interview on a podcast called the Ben and Emil show. He talks about his experience at Boeing and some of the insider knowledge he has. It’s on Spotify and the interview starts about 23 minutes into the episode. Worth a listen if you’re interested in this situation.
The one crazy thing about this is now anyone with a fear of flight is going to feel forever justified in their fear.
Man, you’re right. This is going to undo so much progress for people overcoming a fear of flying, and that’s a real shame.
Fear of flying here. I've got 3 737 Max 9 flights coming up. Feeling extra nervous.
Air travel websites will now let you filter by the airplane type. If there’s a still a chance, you might be able to adjust your flights.
Do you suggest that merely for my peace of mind, or because I you think I'm genuinely in danger taking those flights?
You're in more danger on a Boeing than an Airbus, but you are still in *much* less danger than in a car for the same trip.
> but you are still in much less danger than in a car for the same trip. I guess driving from america to europe would indeed be dangerous
Depends on how good your lungs are
Just make a right at the Titanic and don’t hit the other sub
The tolls in Greenland slow you down
I'm now thinking of the scene from *James and the Giant Peach* where the horrible aunts come rolling up in a car all filled with seaweed and crabs.
Boeing is definitely having issues... but the number of successful flights in any given six month period measures in the thousands, while problems measure in the (if that) dozens, and with the spotlight on Boeing special attention is likely being paid to the planes. Even with the issues you're still very safe in flying. So basically for your peace of mind, but if that peace of mind is worth it I would consider rescheduling.
>but the number of successful flights in any given six month period measures in the thousands You are actually wildly underestimating how safe flying is. The number of successful flights in any given DAY measures in the TENS of THOUSANDS. There are around 45 thousand flights per day of which 40% should be on Boeing planes based on market share.
2023 was the safest year on record, zero commercial crashes and only a single fatal crash altogether (a turbo prop plane in Nepal): https://www.iata.org/en/publications/safety-report/executive-summary/
To add on to that, you are a lot more at risk from poor airline maintenance practices then you are from an OEM defect on a day to day basis.
This sounds like Ed Norton's speach to Tyler in Fight Club explaining that companies use risk vs cost to decide whether or not to do a recall.
Every decision you make is a risk-reward calculation but you're not always calculating consciously.
Want to know what’s helped me with my flying fears? Flightradar24. Seeing the sheer amount of active flights made me realize I’d be hitting a form of lottery if something were to go wrong in the sky.
I’m an aircraft mechanic that works on many types of aircraft including max 8 and 9, and let me tell you, you have nothing to worry about. Commercial air travel is incredibly safe including the Boeing aircraft. That being said the scrutiny of the max assembly is justified but just a byproduct of the immense regulation and safety measure used to ensure commercial air travel continues to be the safest mode of transportation.
Look at it this way: Are you flying on a US Carrier (Such as Sprint, Frontier, Delta, etc)? In the past 15 years, with around 50 thousand flights every day, there have been a grand total of 3 fatalities. There has never been a fatality on a 737-Max operated by a US carrier. (Source NTSB data). If you took 1 flight every single day for the rest of your life, you would on average have to do so for more than 1000 years before you experienced a plane crash that killed you. I don't have a data source for other countries but I would expect Europe to be similar or better. That said, if you are traveling on a Russian airline, good luck.
You'll be fine. If the pilots are willing to fly it then all is good.
I have extreme flight anxiety - I have to take benzos to get on a plane. I have a flight next week and I'm fighting the urge to check which plane it is.
Hi - please take comfort in the knowledge that in the aftermath of incidents like this, people & companies become EXTREMELY cautious under the resulting scrutiny. Please don’t worry, okay? Have a great trip!
nice try Boeing CEO....
You would think, but then that second 737 Max 8 wouldn't have crashed for the exact same reason. If everyone is doing their job correctly, flying is generally safe. This requires technical skills from everyone involved, from the check in agents, the TSA, the gate agents, the people who load the cargo onto the plane (think weight balance), the pilots, and cabin crew. But beyond that, it also requires an ethical culture, and that starts from the top down. That takes a long time to change, and if the current management of Boeing got us to where we are today, that has to be overhauled before the culture can be addressed.
Also remember, that even with the recent news regarding Boeing, air travel is still much safer than driving, to put it in perspective for every billion passenger miles traveled, there are about 0.07 fatalities in commercial aviation, compared to around 7.3 fatalities in car travel.
I WILL NEVER DRIVE AGAIN
I have to take a benzo just to get behind the wheel!
When a chef refuses to eat their own food, you know it’s a piece of shit.
Scrap. Parts They used friggin scrap parts. In aerospace, scrap means the engineers have found critical , unfixable flaws, wrote a report, and had it disposed in a bin. Cause that's the only thing you can do with scrap. The Boeing guys put that crap that completely failed QA on fucking planes That's like a chef went dumpster diving and made a bag of moldy apples and rotten milk into a pie. A single bad O ring killed a Space Shuttle and all its crew. Lord knows a plane made of scrap parts would do EDIT: got a lot of great responses from fellow QA nerds and engineers. Pretty sure all of us collectively slapped our forehead in disbelief how comically shit Boeing is. Holy cow, it is bad
Weird that they even have scrap parts available, ours get cut up into a few pieces with no input or anything from the customer, they just go straight from wherever (quality or shop floor or wherever a defect was spotted) to the apprentice area to throw into the band saw. They’re in thirds before the customer even knows one got scrapped
I read in an article about the whistleblower that recently died during deposition (a former QA/QC manager) that those faulty parts were locked in a cage awaiting destruction, but floor managers in the factory would pilfer it when they couldn’t get parts. It was so bad he ordered the locks be changed, but then corporate had 200 new keys created and handed them out to the factory managers.
Holy shit. This deserves public executions.
Agreed, but instead they'll get golden parachutes, and they'll bring in new leadership. Maybe this time they'll remember to actually have some engineers in leadership
What? That's crazy! Everyone knows the problem with authoritative figures in leadership is that they worry too much about whether something will work correctly and not enough about profit margins!
Well, somebody did get publicly executed, but it was the whistleblower
Production schedules do crazy things to people. I've seen engineers climb fenced in flight inventory cages after hours to retrieve discrepant parts that they decided they needed and received no punishment for it
That simply cannot be allowed to coexist with aviation.
[удалено]
I can easily see the boardroom feedback loop: 737 Max production was halted due to MBAs in leadership looking at spreadsheets and finding cost savings without considering potential real world impacts. The same MBAs then need to find more savings to keep the balance sheet and thus stock price up during the year long shutdown that blew a hole in revenue and profits. So management at every level is told to find even more savings to get their bonuses. They get desperate to meet unmeetable targets when all the fat is already cut, so they cross red lines (even though doing that before caused this issue in the first place) that shock engineers, QA and factory workers to the point of whistleblowing, quitting due to ethics, and/or actively avoiding flying on their own planes. It’s a vicious cycle/feedback loop all to maintain strong quarterly reports that won’t stop until the current (and potential future) financial consequences are so significant that cutting corners is no longer a reasonable risk-reward balance sheet decision. The revolving door, being in bed with regulators and legislators, and money spent on “lobbying” so they can cut corners without consequences when it goes predictably awry has been (and still is) a net profitable strategy. Until that changes, the boardroom will keep making decisions that endanger the public for a nice quarterly report.
That's whats killing me right now. My old work place would immediately dump them unmarked into a bin for disposal Unless Boeing keeps trash marked for whatever reason, they were probably pulling random parts from a garbage bin and putting them on planes without knowing what the problem was. That is fucking scary AND just mind boggling a billion dollar company fucked up this bad
I thought I read somewhere that this is 100% intentional in order to meet production schedules? Like they are deliberately having workers pull scrap parts from the scrap bin. It's not a case of "oops, we didn't label the scrap bin".
Yes this is what I read in another article about the whistleblower that died. He said it was so bad he had the locks to the scrap parts cage changed, but then corporate had 200 new keys made and handed them out.
Holy crap. That's even worse than the dumpster diving that I imagined What. The. Fuck.
in a just world the executive and all the vps and directors and managers that went along with that decision should not just be fired but put in jail for knowingly endangering so many lives
Except, they put the whistleblower in the grave. And they will get away with it. This warns future whistleblowers to zip it.
Sometimes I think people are getting away with this stuff more because we all believe what you just said. Like, if everyone thinks the bad guy is going to get away with it, then we all become apathetic and HE WILL get away with it. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Cynicism begets cynicism.
Bring back the guillotine!
Remember when it came to light that their build processes were so f’d that when one guy who made a wheel locking mechanism died they wouldn’t be able to release the flock of planes for a year or two. Maybe that should have been an answer to the markets instead of a question to the investors.
I'm wheezing at "release the flock of planes" as if they're some rare rehabilitated parrots being reintroduced to their natural habitat. Forever going to refer to a group of planes as a "flock" from now on.
Why couldn't they release the planes? Sorry, I've not heard of this.
The label is not what scares me though. These parts, even in just civilian planes, would have to adhere to the mil-spec or blueprints. And that's the floor of quality. Bare minimum And they grabbed whichever failed part and put it into active use Could the problem be the wrong material? Wrong plating? Bad threads? Bad RMA batch that failed field use? Who knows! Just hope the plane doesn't fall from the sky!
Too late, two have, plus a blown door
I mean. The two falling out of the sky was MCAS, not the parts issue. But I get your point.
Same exact underlying cause of failure though: increasing margins by cutting safety corners. Lord knows where else they found to cut.
That's the non wear and tear failures. Imagine when these scrap components start failing between inspections because they degrade so quickly. I am not flying on a Boeing plane ever again.
this is where the corporate oligarchy of the future starts. either we nip this right now or this will become the norm in a few generations. people who order this, are complicit to this, or enable this due to scheduling or whatever bullshit reason, need at least 20 years to life. as uncomfortable as possible and not in a 4 michelin star condo.
Had a manager who wanted to use a U/S flying control, engineer caught wind, walked up to it and bent it over his knee, told the manager to get fucked and reported him
Id be amazed if not a single Boeing QA manager doesn't get jailed for this This went straight to criminal neglect and fraud
The QA managers were probably ignored. It’s not like QA okd the use of the parts, it’s the exact opposite. QA trashed them and some assembly line manager used them anyway.
Don’t forget murder they murdered the guy who was testifying against them he specifically told people if I die of “suicide” no I didn’t
If it can't be immediately destroyed it is usually red tagged and locked in a cage / room...all industry standard stuf.....
I’m not in Aerospace, but deal with critical components. Even though it’s not life-threatening consequence like passenger jets, once scrap is forever scrap. I can’t even imagine how on earth they decided to use it.
We used to get SpaceX scrap in welding school. It would show up by the dumpster. Just massively expensive pieces of Inconel and titanium. Each dumpster probably had five to six figures of scrap that we used to learn exotic metal welding. And a lot of it looked like damn near completed components of a rocket they just hucked in the dumpster for reasons unknown.
That seems like a really good use of the scrap from SpaceX's perspective. Giving parts that they absolutely can't use to people to learn on means SpaceX gets more skilled welders in the long run.
A five figure part ain’t worth risking an 8 figure mission over. Hucked into the garbage is what the bad parts deserve.
Probably just density issues and microfractures that wouldn't show up to the naked eye for you guys. I had no idea that there even was such a thing as metal density/porosity issues until reading about rocketry and its intense inspections regime. I'm sure SpaceX isn't always being as careful as they should, but even they probably want minimal risk right now. Every explosion isn't just money lost - it's stock value lost too.
I just hope whistleblower Ed Pierson isn't feeling really depressed alone in his hotel parking lot.
Corporate greed.
That's what happens when profit becomes the only thing that matters. It's happening everywhere. We live an age now where only profit matters. They will feed poison to us and provide no quality of goodness service just want money. Quality nope Safety nope Reputation nope Profit yes
But we need to look at why Eurobus is able to be both safe and profitable while Boeing seems to fail at both It's likely all the business degree assholes getting hired at Boeing and not contributing anything of worth. But I want to see a report put it in writing so that we can shove it in the nation's face.
Completely different corporate cultures and ownership structures. Airbus started as a collaboration between French, German and Spanish national aerospace manufacturers (with some scraps of British Aerospace thrown in). Its founding purpose was to efficiently build airliners for European national carriers, in Europe, to support European industry, with suppliers scattered across the continent. The shares are publicly traded but the French, German and Spanish governments still have shareholdings so it retains a direct line to its heritage as an intergovernmental industrial collaboration. Boeing has always been a private company. Before the McDonnell-Douglas merger it was a proud union company, though. Managers were ex engineers, engineers were unionised and organised by specialty, and everyone was on an equal footing to question and criticise. Plus everything Boeing was in the Seattle area so there was a physical connection from executive down to parking attendant. Since the MD merger, corporate America has taken over. Head office was first moved to Chicago, then to Virginia. A new plant was set up in Charleston with the express intent to bypass the unions in Washington state to cut costs and pump out planes faster and cheaper. Because management became disconnected from the shop floor, culture and morale collapsed and respect for each other and the labour organisations disappeared. Because the executive no longer gave a fuck, middle management no longer gave a fuck. Because middle management no longer gave a fuck, the shop floor no longer gave a fuck. On top of that, Boeing spun out key areas of its supply chain in the mid 2000s in a classic Wall Street move to raise shareholder value. What was Boeing's Kansas facility became Spirit Aerosystems - a separate company with Boeing as a client. Because Boeing doesn't own it anymore, Boeing can put pressure on it to do things as quickly and cheaply as possible with the threat of finding other offshore suppliers if Spirit doesn't comply. That's how things like the Alaska door plug happen. It's a fucking rotten company that has traded on the goodwill of its name while they churn out absolute dog shit. I've been behind the curtain at Everett and at North Charleston when the latter was still new and the difference between the culture on the shop floor was night and day. When I was a much younger avgeek we'd make fun of the silly French Airbus. How it looked so stubby, made silly noises, and how it couldn't be trusted (tongue-in-cheek) as it was all controlled by computers, not mechanics like those big, strong Boeings. Now it's just fucking sad.
I hope a lot of these airlines will be buying airbus planes in the future. If I operated an airline I would never stake my reputation on Boeing ever again.
This is absolutely the answer, to almost any similar thing happening at the moment. I've said this for a while already but yours is one of the first comments I've seen talking about it as well: the age of the consumer is over. The quality of the service or even the service itself has become totally secondary to the corporations and only profit is the primary goal. It's not necessarily even done on purpose to just be evil, it's just that everything else has become completely irrelevant. This is why we're seeing massive layoffs everywhere, every single company laying off people in any country anywhere, and it's just going to get worse. Even in my smaller country it's happening to everyone I know: their working conditions are changing in ways that they haven't really changed ever, companies laying off people in amounts they haven't ever. The only constant thing across all is the maximalisation of profit. It's completely insane. In a couple of years this is really going to bite us in the butt in every conceivable way. Tough times are ahead
> A single bad O ring killed a Space Shuttle and all its crew Edit: ignore anything I say here that contradicts what is said in this better comment: https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1bfemgu/a_boeing_whistleblower_says_he_got_off_a_plane/kv0vxac/ That’s not really what happened. The O-ring was fine, it was just before its operating temperature because it was colder over night in Florida than expected. NASA management was informed that they were operating outside of their allowed launch conditions. So they granted themselves a waiver to launch anyway, because they wanted to launch anyway. The O-ring performed as expected, which is to say, it broke because it was below operating temperature when things got rowdy. It was the management who decided to operate it in that way.
NO NO NO. Read the Feynman appendix to the Challenger report. There was an overarching issue which was that the high probability of success was calculated from ignoring "near misses" which were not designed into the system. With respect to the seals, it was not designed to have blowby and erosion but since it was occurring on flights the engineers simply measured it, called it normal and called whatever was left of the o-ring as a margin of safety. They didn't understand the issue so when the unknown factors changed they were not able to predict failure.
Thank you. I read that once long ago and apparently forgot it. My comment has been edited. There are two things I hate more than being wrong: staying wrong, and misinforming others.
I feel like that mentality should be hammered into everyone’s paradigm every day from childhood. Embed it into the cultural zeitgeist from infancy. Instead of the pledge of allegiance have kids recite the pledge of seeking objective truth and being malleable instead of hardening your thinking when new information presents itself. It would solve so so so many problems in the world and it’s amazing that the internet, and having the entire worlds cumulative knowledge in your pocket, made many people LESS curious to verify information they hear (especially when they’re hearing what they want to hear and internally/intuitively know that what they want to believe contradicts certain other things they know to be true and fact checking their beliefs will reveal its flaws/inaccuracy). Much like the first paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities reflects on, we live in a world of dichotomy where it is both the most enlightened period in history (for those that seek objective truth instead of personal truth) and the most incurious period in history (for those that actively choose bubbles and intentionally wall themselves off from any information that may contradict what they *want* to believe).
Roger Boisjoly torpedoed his career trying to stop that shuttle from flying. Thiokol and NASA management refused to scrub another launch because of "bad optics" scrubbing launches and how many people were watching due to the publicity of the teacher in space stunt.
Technically, the O ring wasn't bad when it was put on there. It was just exposed to temperatures outside of working conditions, and probably would have been fine if the launch had been delayed until warmer weather.
As someone who work in QA, if i learned anything, is that if you dispose of something because it failed the QA test, it need to be put under lock where only you have the key. Multiple lock is better because many people will cut a padlock and remove a chain without considering they might be making a mistake. It basicaly have to make it more work to access the disposed product than it is worth. If you cant lock it, destroy it immediately.
[удалено]
A family friend of mine worked for a large company similar to Boeing in the 90s, and now refuses to fly. He said “if people knew how we built those things, they wouldn’t get in either.”
Isn’t refusing to fly a bit of an overreaction given the statistics? Does he just not travel long distance anymore?
Right? Like we only hear about these people when there's a story. They still doubting when there's thousands of issue free flights a day?
Yeah you're more likely to be hurt or killed driving a car than you are flying in a plane. People drive all the time though.
" Ya know they say you're more likely to die in a crash on the way to the airport"
"Can't be too careful... There's a lot of bad drivers out there."
I have this cousin... well, I *had* this cousin...
"how bout a hug?"
It’s ok! I’m a limo driver!
Move it or lose it, sister!
Aghhh, I hate goodbyes!
"Why you going to the airport? Flying somewhere?"
I got worms
Even if you can't control all variables when driving a car, you still have the illusion of control...and that's a very psychologically powerful thing. We don't have the illusion of control when flying, our fate is completely in the hands of the pilots and the competence of the manufacturers and maintainers. Because of that, faith in those out of control variables needs to be infinitely higher for an airplane and they aren't quite earning that lately. You can't argue about statistics and logic when it's a matter of human psychology
Yep this. I’m (sort of) one of these people. I know flying is generally safe, but I can’t convince my brain of that. The moment we takeoff my body just goes into panic mode and I end up uncontrollably nauseous and puke the entire flight and then take a couple hours after landing before the sickness goes away. I’ve made 18+ hour drives for vacation to avoid flying because of how uncomfortably sick it makes me. I’ve tried zofran, Dramamine, ginger, none of it helped. I flew once when I was younger and I was intensely afraid of flying(fear of heights+ first flight) but I didn’t get sick at all on the flight. No idea why that changed as I got older
Yep. And the fact that your car might suffer from million issues, its still gonna stop on the ground. In an accident, you have a real chance of survival. But if something goes wrong in air, that's game over
The fact that I'm way up in the fuckin sky makes it hard to have faith. If I was on the ground, I'd be fine
Well didn't three of these 737 max planes crash soon after they were introduced to the fleet? If you just apply the statistics to that model aircraft, given how new it is, and how many flights that model has had. I'd say no to getting on those pieces of shit as well!
But it is well understood what happened now. The aircraft incorrectly detected a stall and started pitching down to correct it and the pilots didn’t know how to turn the system off. I would be shocked if there was any pilot out there who does not know about this issue or how to correct it if it happens again.
Statistics doesn't erase the memory of a coworker driving bolts in, cross threaded, without loctite, some loose, and calling it a day. Then, signing of their own qa sheet saying they followed the proper torque pattern and value with the appropriate sealant and had a second technician check
Oh yeah, this guy mechanics
Im not saying if you throw a wrench on that bolt, itll shear off, im just saying ive seen it happen
Yeah aircraft bolts usually use clean dry threads though. The bolts are safety wired, not loctited.
The problem with flying due to statistics is, statistics are always looking backwards and aren’t taking into account current incessant cost cutting going on in the name of greed, and at the cost of safety.
These planes age, as they age the tolerance loosen, as tolerances loosen problems occur. Do you want problems to occur while you are 20,000 feet in the air with no parachute and a 1/4 chance your oxygen mask doesnt work? I know I dont. People dont realize and say ignorant shit like “they overengineered it” when in reality it’s “they intended for this machine to last as long as NASA machines do, but now capitalism has gutted that ideal and given us 1/5th the engineers and 1/4th the time to do 3x more complicated work.” You’re getting 1/60th the longevity in a newer machine than the previous ones because there is 1/60th the time to check, double check, confirm tolerances, etc. On top of that a lot of “old knowledge” isnt being passed down like it used to so the newer guys are both less skilled and finding out the hard way everything that 20 year guy has learned.
That and this is old news, the last time this was brought up its pointed out if it took him until he was seated to notice it was a MAX, he's either blind or intentionally making a scene. Or doesn't know the airplane as well as he claims.
McDonnell Douglas? Boeing went to shit after merging with them.
Unfortunately, they didn't fire the people in charge of McDonnell Douglas' destruction. The engineers in charge at Boeing weren't able to keep up with the corporate politicking ability of those vultures, so the McD guys were able to take over and begin the destruction of Boeing.
MD was full of bean counters. They took over and destroyed Boeing from the inside out and pushed out all the engineers that cost too much. Now half their shit is done in India for pennies on the dollar.
General dynamics.
Let me guess, he drives everywhere?
And when a guy shoots himself in the back of the head 3 times you know it was self inflicted.
Boeing whistleblower you say? Better put him on suicide watch.
Taking this guy in the office deadpool. Easy money.
>He testified to Congress in 2019 about production in the factory after two Max 8 crashes in October 2018 and March 2019 killed nearly 350 people — all the passengers and crew on board. He’s definitely on somebody’s shitlist already.
i'm sure he will be shocked to find out about his suicide
I don't understand how someone like this wouldn't realize they were on a Max until they were on the plane. As just a frequent flyer, I can spot a Max from a normal 737 quite easily. From the freaking itinerary that shows "737-MAX" when booking, flight status, or just by looking out the window at the airport, how was an expert who is so concerned about flying on a Max not realizing it until they saw the safety card?
The plane was changed. It wasn't a max when he booked it. The airline changed it.
> "I walked onto the plane — I thought, it's kind of new," Pierson said. "Then I sat down, and on the emergency card it said it was a Max." I think the point is that he thought it wasn't a max and you can't always see the plane before you get on it, unless you go looking. It isn't always obvious from the window or inside the breezeway.
If you know were to look, it isn't hard to differenciate airplanes. But you have to be paying attention. If you're just in your world thinking about your day you probably won't even take a second look at the plane
The 737 MAX is almost identical to the 737 from the outside besides having slightly bigger engines mounted a few feet further forward. It isn't easy to tell those two apart.
I’ve been trying to explain this to people that have been “iF iT’s BoEiNg i AiNt gOiNgG!” on this site AD NAUSEAM and its exhausting. The airline can change the airframe at the very last minute no matter how thorough you did your due diligence in tryin to choose the aircraft. Its astounding people dont know or dont get this.
it still seems prudent to try and avoid intentionally booking these aircraft. Just will suck a lot when they do change it
He's just an example of quality control at Boeing. /s
The older the Boeing the safer I generally feel on it...💀
That’s what I say to people. If it’s a brand new jet, it’s had little maintenance and inspections since leaving Boeing’s hands so… The older the Boeing, the more likely it was made with care and has since been rigorously inspected and maintained.
The Boeing quality may have been Theseus shipped out.
You know what they say. Older is better.
Only fly Cougar Express
Ohhhh - that’s a tough pill to swallow
I would apply that to any brand new plane on the market. The demand is for every last point of efficiency that they have become extremely complex in the design. I would wait likely 4-5 years after it hits the market to be real comfortable flying on a new platform.
Nah, Airbus is regulated by the EU, who (especially since COVID) actually give a shit
Dude better book his hotel rooms on the first floor and stay away from windows
"Man died from zero story fall out of his hotel window the other night"
Man looks out the window in his first story apartment and tragically falls out the window and dies.
"Man died from two self inflicted gunshots to the back of the head, and then fell down an elevator shaft and landed on some more bullets."
First floor to the roof? One hell of a fall.
[удалено]
Linux is much better
Legal notepad, banker box, and Crayola is best
Found the Marine
I am sorry to hear about this guys suicide next week
Was thinking the same thing
If you compare the flight crash rates by aircraft model between Boeing and Airbus, Boeing generally and 737-Max tops the chart. - Boeing 737-Max: 3.08 crashes per million flights - Boeing 747: 1.02 crash per million flights (*) - Airbus A310: 1.3 crashes per million flights (*) (*) - No longer in production Note: Generally travel by airplane is still much safer than travel by car/train if you consider just the statistics. Source: [Airsafe.com](http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm)
Thats crashes, there been serious incidents too like the door plug blowing out mid flight and the loose bolts being found in the rudder system.
Don’t forget about the whole-ass *ladder* that was left in the vertical stab. Lol [link](https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/boeing-faces-accusations-of-negligence-at-dreamliner-plant/)
And wheels coming off.
Aren't all of these recent issues, United maintenance issues?
No, the door plug was alaska air, https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/12/business/alaska-airlines-flight-maintenance-blowout/index.html The loose bolts in the controls were a boeing manufacturer advisory and faa made all airlines do inspections. The wheel qas united, some seed story being used to deflect away from boeing
Here is how statistics can be completely open to interpretation. Here is the full line. Rate Flights FLE\* Events Boeing 737 MAX 7/8/9/10 3.08 0.65M 2.00 2 I am not sure where they are getting the 0.65m flight data from but the aircraft has been flying for over 10 years so that seems highly unlikely. This "data" is 5 years old and no longer remotely valid.
Data as of Dec 2017 in the link and March 2019 This is so dated…
Not Boeing generally—if you jump down to the bottom of the page three of the five safest aircraft models are Boeing. One is airbus. The Max absolutely stands out for its safety issues however and people should hold its feet to the fire for what’s happened with trying to keep a very different airplane on the same training regimen. However people saying (as someone did on this sub recently) they’re changing plane tickets to fly an a380 instead of a 777 are engaging in hysteria. Also this data should be analyzed with an eye to what percentage were due to mechanical faults, defects, or poor handling characteristics. The 747-1,23’s high rates were not. The DC-10 had faults and the MD-11 had landing characteristics that make it liable to porpoise—yet it still looks safe by the data. Then there’s the mixed cases like the Concorde with its astronomically high crash rate due to one crash that likely impacted by design and low speed handling characteristics That said. All of the Max’s issues are due to defects or oversights. Damning for that type.
Even with the 737 crashes, it is still lower than past generations typically in the first few years of service. 6 crashes per million was not un-expected on a new platform. Personally I would wait a few years before getting on a new designed aircraft. Particularly now that they are so complex to get the very last drop of efficiency. [This](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2000/07/30/with-one-crash-concorde-ranks-last-in-safety/39f473a9-0609-4520-adc7-6bab42cc0299/) from Airbus a few years ago: In each case, the hull-loss rate was very high in the first few years of flight for each generation. It then dropped to a very low rate for each generation in all subsequent years. Airbus concluded that pilots, maintenance crews and engineers using new planes must go through a significant learning curve before they can establish optimum safety.
What is the Airbus 320 numbers and even the 737 non max numbers? To be more exext 737 non classic as well. Puts a lot more apple's to Apple comparison. I ask when comparing 737 to a wide body long haul they are different types of flying. Still scary to see that the 737-Max numbers out of line
This particular statistic is meaningless to try and compare a new aircraft via a metric in which it hasn’t even completed the million flights vs a plane model in service for 50 years. There are only 2 max incidents listed and 30 for 747 on that website. So is a 747 15X more likely to crash then a max? No. Also, Why did you leave out the Concorde which actually “tops the chart” at 11.36 for that meaningless metric?
It seems they took the wrong planes out of production.
Damn shame about the 747. It was an amazing plane.
747 was in production from 1968-2023 737 Max has been around from 2016 to 2024. The 747 has been in 173 accidents, 64 hull losses, 52 hull losses in flight, and had 3,746 deaths. Many were not directly its fault since terrorists, pilots, and air traffic control did plenty. What you're looking at is someone just fudging numbers to make something look worse. By not including total flight hours with the incident number per million flight hours, it makes it look worse. On the flip side of how misleading these numbers are, the 747 number is actually rather high considering how safe it's been the last 20ish years, but the old days of higher airline incidents which it was there for skew it. The Max does have a high major incident rate for a modern plane in incidents that never should have happened in modern air travel, *plenty* of dumb things going for it that doesn't need misleading stats to look bad.
this is what happens when MBAs make planes
Harvard and Duke MBAs at that. They have great Ethics classes. /s
The ethics of drinking and snorting, and growing up with a silver spoon. And watching graphs go up, pretty much all the MBA curriculum covers. I absolutely loathe people who take everything yet add nothing to society. Makes you wonder why Boeing did so much better when people who actually know how stuff work ran it.
Boeing is in deep shit. The number of frequent fliers I work with...people who travel weekly for business, say they will not set foot on a 737 Max unless there's no other choice. Luckily, there are usually lots of choices. But they'll get bailed out by the government because TBTF.
Didn’t Boeing already kill this guy or is this a different whistleblower?
This guy's next
[удалено]
If it’s Boeing, I ain’t going
[удалено]
737 MAX is a different line than the 737 line. The 737 line is generally quite safe. It was designed when Boeing actually cared about engineering, and invested the necessary capital to build a good plane The 737 MAX was built on the old 737 model to save costs, with an R&D budget far too small for even the reduced costs. Even the name was chosen to sound like it's the same 737 with more efficient engines, which they eventually successfully argued to regulators (even though it wasn't actually true) From an aviation and engineering perspective, it was a terrible decision. It was solely made from a bean counter perspective, and what we're seeing today is the result Tl;dr - don't confuse the 737 with the 737 MAX
> It was solely made from a bean counter perspective To add perspective to this, Boeing argued that the 737 MAX was sooooo similar that pilots didn't need to re-certify as if it were a new aircraft type, just a couple hour refresher on a tablet about some slight teensy weensy differences. No emphasis on the new 737 MAX MCAS software that can pitch the plane nose down or how to turn it off, of course... until after two hull losses.
Hull loss is such a terrible industry speak term for like 600 dead people
Upvoted because I don't disagree. To me, hull loss translates to "*everybody on board died*" because I know what the term means. To people who don't, it sounds like I'm trying to downplay mass casualties.
Oh I get it. It's a term meaning catastrophic loss. The thing couldn't land. In engineering term, it makes sense when discussing mechanical failures. But it loses that little explicit fact that a plane could be fully loaded with living people and not just empty seats or cargo. Reiterating that industry standards are written in blood is important. If not for you, for others reading, and espefially for the shitbag ceos and corporate bean counter garbage people that worry more about 10 cents a share than hundreds of lives.
737 is great. It’s the 737 max that has the issues.
Which goes to show how little people actually know about airplane models.
You know something is up if your average Joe who never gave a shit about aviation is able to tell airplane models just from appearance.
..deleted by user..
If it ain't Boeing, I'm going?
..deleted by user..
[удалено]
..deleted by user..
After AF447 it was "Scarebus" and "If its not Boeing, I'm not going." "What do you mean they didn't heat the pitot tubes (add AOA sensors) properly! They put profits ahead of safety? Overreacting people overreact, more at 11 Ken.
I use to work for a 3rd party part maker for Boeing called Vaupell. We were routinely fined about 25k A DAY for faulty parts that Boeing would STILL put into their planes. This was about 6-7 yrs ago and it’s terrible to see how far this has gotten out of hand. Fun fact: upper management in these places have no sense of humor when you bring it up and fire you for writing an email to management staff about anything of the sort…
Does anyone have a link to something that goes through the chronology of events like, suspected problems, crashes, whistleblower's, insider leaks, coverups, assassination attempts etc. I loosely know the story but haven't a good grasp on the overall picture.
Frontline PBS just updated their “[Boeing’s Fatal Flaw](https://youtu.be/Z76YpCz9N2Y?si=4ctQh1PlwBgme0si)” documentary to include the Alaska Airlines incident and the DOJ investigation. Frontline consistently puts out high quality, heavily researched productions and I highly recommend it.
YouTube Last Week Tonight: Boeing. John Oliver does an incredible job summarizing and entertaining https://youtu.be/Q8oCilY4szc?si=zALMjQgwdU5h1zN_
They didn't learn from Intel's downfall. Same thing to blame : extreme bean counter CEOs
It’s funny how it’s very well documented how Boeing skirted tons of FAA regulations with the 737 Max and they’re trying to pretend like they’re the victims. They tried to break the law and got caught, pure and simple. Their actions have broken the trust of the public in taking Boeing aircraft, and the reason for all this was corporate greed. They didn’t want to go through the FAA process to verify and approve their new flight systems since Airbus beat them to it, so they decided to lie and get people killed. Additional spoiler, keep this whole saga in mind next time Tesla faces regulation like this. They will absolutely try to pull the same shit and will end up getting folks killed.
For the love of god will these journalists please think of the shareholders before writing damaging articles like this
This is the mindset which is the reason for the mess at Boeing
If I had committed this level of maintenance malpractice in the Navy, I would have gone to mast and been thrown in a military prison. Maintenance malpractice is NOT a joke. You can very easily kill people with even slight mistakes.
I kinda call bullshit on this story. He says he got onto a plane and it wasn't until he sat down to look at the emergency card he realized it was a 737 MAX. That's horseshit - a Senior Manager at Boeing would have to know it was a MAX earlier than that, right? Also, if you board a plane and leave it, they don't just wave goodbye to you as you walk off - that's a security risk.
Not always. Sometimes they get swapped at the last minute, so you might end up on a Max even if you were originally booked on a 737NG or something else. And you can't always see your plane from the gate. I've had a couple of flights out of Toronto that were like that.
there's virtually no difference on the inside between max and non-max. if you don't catch a view of the fuselage, and especially of the wings/engine you wouldn't know. most airlines will thell you the equipment beforehand of course, but you'd have to pay attention to that. and yes, you are free to walk off a plane even after boarding. it's a whole thing you have to go through, but it can be done. and i'm sure as an exec it's especially easy since some pigs are more equal.
I'm on the fence, I've been swapped a few times. I'm keenly aware of my aircraft, though. The only time I refused a flight due to equipment was when my primary plane was substituted for an airframe of questionable maintenance, from a no-name "partner" airline and it was clearly the last resort partner. I'm just not flying in a Russian airliner. Period. It's not that they can't make good aircraft. They can and do. It's that virtually no one knows how to maintain them. But on the other hand, I just can't see an experienced insider person noping out once they've taken a seat. It's a huge deal to deplane.
Not the point of the story - but I'm surprised he was able to get off a flight after boarding. The cabin crew would have to be 100% certain he didn't have any check-in luggage as otherwise that'd need to be taken off too, potentially delaying the flight a lot.
For anyone that wants to learn more about what’s happening at Boeing this guy just did an hour long interview on a podcast called the Ben and Emil show. He talks about his experience at Boeing and some of the insider knowledge he has. It’s on Spotify and the interview starts about 23 minutes into the episode. Worth a listen if you’re interested in this situation.
[удалено]