Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/01/24/alaska-airlines-ceo-says-they-found-many-loose-bolts-on-its-boeing-737-max-9-planes-after-mid-air-blowout.html
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Boeing: “It’s NOT us it’s THEM!”
Boeing issued a bulletin to its suppliers late last week that laid out practices to ensure bolts are properly torqued after multiple airlines reported loose hardware during inspections of the grounded 737 MAX 9,
Last I checked the Boeing 737 was a Boeing airplane.
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My dad spent years working on a jet engine component. He’s retired, but told me he paid attention to the field, and breathed a sign of relief when the part he’d worked on was eventually phased out in favor of newer tech, and is no longer in use anywhere. Not because there was anything wrong with the component, but he just wanted to make sure he wasn’t part of a plane coming down.
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Manufacturing of the fuselage is outsourced to Spirit AeroSystems, which owns a former Boeing factory in Kansas.
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Just a reminder that you can, if you choose to for whatever reason, filter out various airplane models when executing a Kayak search.
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One video I saw said that when Spirit delivers the fuselages to Boeing they intentionally don’t fully install the door plugs because the final configuration (whether the position has door plugs or actual doors installed) may change at the factory depending on customer needs. And clearly it’s Boeing’s responsibility to check things like that either way. This is 100% on Boeing.
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“Most of our planes are built so that the bolts don’t fall off.“
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“But the wheels? Well…”
Seems like just a matter of time before we see another crash with many deaths. After it was looking like those were a thing of the past. 
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Here’s SNL’s take on Alaska Airlines:
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As much as i’d like to blame other than the ‘original’ Boeing shops, it appears the problem was right there. They, in turn, are apparently going to blame Covid and staffing issues (as well as the on-going hint at “the older generation engineering experience isn’t available in the next generation…”??) Here’s today’s Seattle Times article which blames ‘Renton’ …Renton being one of the fairly original Boeing sites. -sigh-
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Something all manufacturers can honestly say, but it’s somehow not entirely reassuring.
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The takeaway appears to be that outsourced plane components have so many problems when they show up at the production line that Boeing’s quality control staff can’t keep up with them all.
The Boeing QA writes another record in CMES (again, the correct venue) stating (with pictures) that Spirit has not actually reworked the discrepant rivets, they just painted over the defects.
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Well not their current quality control staff, anyway.
(These layoffs happened in 2019, so they can’t be blamed on covid)
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Back when I was getting my MBA, Boeing’s 737Max was already a case study for how to fuck up a massively complex project. Instead of building large new facilities to make key parts, entire sub-assemblies were built around the world, wherever Boeing already had factories, and shipped to Everett for assembly. As a result, there were constant issues with things not quite matching up because of different measurements, tolerances, standards, etc. at the different source facilities.
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That is pretty damning.
I used to work at a hospital, which gave me insights that dramatically lowered my faith in doctors. Reading that article did the same for flying.
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All Boeing and it’s subcontractors need to do is replace its workforce with the people who work at tire shops. Those people know how to make sure you can never ever get the bolts (well ok pedants lug nuts) off.
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We watch Air Disasters all the time, I could never be an airplane mechanic because I’d be terrified I missed something that would hurt or kill someone.
I have keys and alarm codes to quite a few places and a couple private homes. I can’t tell you how many times I get dressed in the middle of night and go check on some place because I can’t remember if I locked a door or set an alarm or left something on.
I can’t imagine waking up worried but instead of a lock I couldn’t remember if I tightened a bolt on the wing of an airplane.
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Is that so you can see how fast your magic wand is casting spells?
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How fast you can torque the torque.
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