Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/08/southwest-boeing-plane-stuns-passengers-when-engine-cover-flies-off-crew-declares-emergency-video.html
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Anybody get the feeling that the US manufacturing mantra of planned obsolescence is happening quickly for Boeing aircraft?
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Is this a Boeing problem, or a Southwest AIrlines maintenance problem?
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I would theorize the answer lies somewhere in the middle.
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Southwest Airlines pilot problem, probably. They’re supposed to check that the latches are closed when doing their walk around before flight. Airbus had a problem before where it wasn’t visually obvious that they were latched, and had cowlings frequently fly off until they changed the latch design. Second fault is the maintenance, because they should have latched them as well.
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And Southwest has had this plane since 2015, so it’s a bit past the warranty period. I’m inclined to give Boeing the benefit of the doubt on this one, especially since Southwest has had 3-4 similar kinds of issues recently.
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FAA and the ‘revolving door’?
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This is one problem that Airbus has at least as often as Boeing.
There are a couple of third-party companies that make nearly all engine-surround structures (inlet, cowl, thrust reverser, and nozzle) for both Boeing and Airbus airplanes.
And if you look at unscheduled maintenance actions on airliners, a disproportionate fraction of them comes from the engine-surround structure - which is to say, the products from those couple of companies could do a better job holding together. In fact, in order to increase airplane reliability, Boeing is in the process of “firing” those companies and instead starting to use engine-surround structures designed and built in-house.
Even if you look just at A320s, this kind of thing happens a couple times a year.
If you read about these incidents, you’ll see they’re caused by all kinds of things, from design/manufacturing problems (e.g. A330 engine inlets disbonding i.e. basically coming apart for no good reason) to maintenance problems (i.e. people forgetting to latch the covers properly).
For example…
Again: Lots more where that came from, a couple per year totaling over 40.
And, ok, I should be fair and do some Boeing ones too:
… but, to be honest, I can find a lot more examples of this happening to Airbus airplanes than to Boeing airplanes. If anyone can find any additional Boeing examples, please post them.
I also found one turboprop example:
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For how much they likely cost, I’d expect a warranty of at least 10 years, if not more.
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@PurpleVortex was probably not being serious… but, in any case, it’s easy to look up (e.g. here, here, here, here…) that Boeing’s Design Service Objective is formulated around 20 to 30 years of flying.
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We’re getting close, Southwest…
My last several flights over the past 12 months or so have either been on an 800 or a Max.
Though the last 2 were on 700s…
The Aerossurance article is an excellent read, thanks.
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FWIW, some quick googling reveals that 737-700s were still being made in 2018, maybe 2019. The last 737NG (pre-Max, and not counting US Navy 737s/C-40s/P-8s) was delivered in 2020.
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