Ace-Garageguy Posted March 9 Share Posted March 9 (edited) Last one was here in Atlanta. Though the one above is a Boeing 757, it's NOT a Boeing issue. Much more likely distracted or incompetent maintenance personnel...which is scary. I've worked with an FAA licensed A&P "mechanic" who was that bad, so they're out there. It could also be intentional sabotage, which is scarier. Boeing 777 this time... Edited March 9 by Ace-Garageguy 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldscool Posted March 9 Share Posted March 9 A lot of people just don't seem to care about how well they do their jobs anymore. No longer a standard of excellence in the workplace. Of course you are already well aware of this. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobthehobbyguy Posted March 9 Share Posted March 9 Rather than speculating on the possible cause I'll wait to hear what the investigation determines. My guess is it a combination of factors rather than just one. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ace-Garageguy Posted March 9 Author Share Posted March 9 18 minutes ago, bobthehobbyguy said: Rather than speculating on the possible cause I'll wait to hear what the investigation determines. My guess is it a combination of factors rather than just one. Parts generally fall off of machines because of incompetence somewhere along the line. It's really pretty simple. Determining exactly who was incompetent and at what point(s) is the tricky bit. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stitchdup Posted March 9 Share Posted March 9 new logo soon..... 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ace-Garageguy Posted March 9 Author Share Posted March 9 (edited) 1 hour ago, stitchdup said: new logo soon..... Funny...but to be fair, BOTH of the wheel-falling-off episodes have been older aircraft where design or manufacturing deficiencies would most likely have shown themselves much earlier. That's not to excuse the NEW aircraft failures of the MCAS system or the fuselage door-plug blowout, and the alarming number of manufacturing QA/QC and process issues the FAA is uncovering...but the wheel-excursion episodes appear to be, initially at least, symptoms of entirely different shortcomings, most probably maintenance-related...which is NOT Boeing's dog. Unfortunately, most of the news outlets staffed with people who know zip about aviation or engineering are more than content to lump everything that occurs with a Boeing product together under the same heading. EDIT: Anyone interested in taking a deeper dive into the MCAS mess from a couple years back, click here: https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-the-boeing-737-max-disaster-looks-to-a-software-developer Edited March 9 by Ace-Garageguy 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stitchdup Posted March 9 Share Posted March 9 I watch a lot of the aircrash investigation type shows and the thing that sticks out to me is its usually something insignificant that causes the crashes, from a badly installed screen to a loose nut. The nearest i've been to aircraft maintenance was cleaning the hanger for loganairs islanders. It wasn't that big a hanger (held 2 britten norman islanders of saab 340) but it was a twelve hour cleaning job twice a week. Its the only cleaning job i've had where i was told not to worry about the bogs or offices and just concentrate on the hanger. I was allowed to move things to clean under them, but only if the parts were clean, if they were dirty there was more chance that it was being worked with, but everything had to put back in the same place, no ifs, and or buts. But those guys had to be that way for their job, they are keeping 45 year old planes in daily use (also working with a welsh company to make them electric). I've cleaned in hospitals and the hanger was far more strict on standards. I had to sign my items down in a book when i took them into the hanger to be sure i took the same items out again. They also almost deafened me when they did a full run engine test and forgot i was in the hanger too but thats a whole other story, lol 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobthehobbyguy Posted March 10 Share Posted March 10 6 hours ago, stitchdup said: I watch a lot of the aircrash investigation type shows and the thing that sticks out to me is its usually something insignificant that causes the crashes, from a badly installed screen to a loose nut. Very true. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobthehobbyguy Posted March 16 Share Posted March 16 And yet another plane shedding parts. Might be time to start wearing a hard hat all the time. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/16/united-airlines-boeing-plane-loses-external-panel-in-flight Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobss396 Posted March 17 Share Posted March 17 Can you say sabotage? I knew you could. That is my take, either to debase yet another iconic US business or force-feed us yet another thinly veiled agenda. There is just too many recent incidents, which may be elevated out of scale by the media. Granted Boeing does make quite a few planes used all over the world. But nothing on Airbus that also makes lots of planes. I looked at Boeing stock, since the 1st of the year it had dropped from $250 to $180 a share. That is a easy 25% drop. Follow the money. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck Most Posted March 30 Share Posted March 30 (edited) Here's the thing. Airliners are, essentially, fleet vehicles. Having driven a few of those, I know that companies are loathe to do maintenance, and always happy to cut corners. They'll stretch the schedules, use replacement parts of questionable quality, and hire the contractors who will do the job as fast and cheap as possible. If you don't buy that, just look into American 191, where an engine broke off during takeoff because the airlines were too cheap to buy a special sling for engine removal and just used a forklift, which damaged the mounting pins... or Alaska 261, where the airline stretched the maintenance schedules so far that lubricant on the jackscrew wore off and caused the vertical stabilizer to fail in flight. And those are just two instances I can think of where maintenance caused a fatal crash. There have to be more. I seem to remember a windshield blowing out in flight because a mechanic reinstalled it with the wrong fasteners but I think that plane actually managed to land safely. And that's an honest accident, which is a whole 'nother ballgame. And that's before you even dig in to any ...shall we say.... Compromises in the design and/or construction of the aircraft. I really do believe the people who design, build, and fly these things have good intentions. But once the thing has to earn it's keep and generate revenue for the owner, lots of stuff can go sideways. Edited March 30 by Chuck Most 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobthehobbyguy Posted March 30 Share Posted March 30 All great points. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ace-Garageguy Posted March 30 Author Share Posted March 30 (edited) 1 hour ago, Chuck Most said: Here's the thing. Airliners are, essentially, fleet vehicles. Having driven a few of those, I know that companies are loathe to do maintenance, and always happy to cut corners. They'll stretch the schedules, use replacement parts of questionable quality, and hire the contractors who will do the job as fast and cheap as possible... Thing is, there's nobody overseeing ground "fleet vehicles" like the FAA is supposed to. And ground "fleet vehicle" mechanics aren't required to have extensive training and licenses like aviation mechanics are supposed to. There was a time when shortcutting aviation maintenance procedures was a big deal if you were caught, and could get you shut down, grounded, out of business. But both the FAA reps and the standards aviation mechanics are performing at have been deteriorating for decades. When everyone was qualified and did his or her job reasonably well, everything worked pretty well. Today not so much. And I speak as someone who's seen it from the inside. The laws and regs are all in place to insure against aviation "accidents" pretty effectively, but just like in a lot of other arenas today, if laws and regs aren't enforced for whatever reason, bad things happen. There HAVE been catastrophic airliner events in days past, like the De Havilland Comets literally exploding in flight as the result of metal fatigue in fuselages operating in flight regimes never encountered previously, or the wing failures of Lockheed Electras that, again, experienced conditions nobody had seen previously and so failed to engineer for. But these disasters taught engineers how to build the safest commercial aircraft humanly possible. The problems arise when shortcuts or excessive cost savings or misplaced priorities creep into the chain...from drawing board on out. Again, IF everyone is properly qualified AND does his or her job right...and those are BIG ifs. Edited March 30 by Ace-Garageguy 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck Most Posted March 30 Share Posted March 30 14 minutes ago, Ace-Garageguy said: Thing is, there's nobody overseeing ground "fleet vehicles" like the FAA is supposed to. And ground "fleet vehicle" mechanics aren't required to have extensive training and licenses like aviation mechanics are supposed to. There was a time when shortcutting aviation maintenance procedures was a big deal if you were caught, and could get you shut down, grounded, out of business. But both the FAA reps and the standards aviation mechanics are performing at have been deteriorating for decades. When everyone was qualified and did his or her job reasonably well, everything worked pretty well...except for things like wings folding up on Electras when the spars fatigued earlier than predicted by the builders. Today not so much. And I speak as someone who's seen it from the inside. The laws and regs are all in place to insure against aviation "accidents" pretty effectively, but just like in a lot of other arenas today, if laws and regs aren't enforced for whatever reason, bad things happen. And... That's why I didn't get into the laws/regulations part of things. They're so relaxed it's almost like not having any, so it seems. And then you arrive at the point where that 737 is basically being treated like the local NAPA store's Chevy Colorado that's running around on bald tires, has the same oil in the crankcase that it had last summer, and nobody's even sure if the headlights work because "we only make deliveries in the daytime, right". And even when the FAA is onto something, they'll often look the other way for any number of reasons. If I remember that's basically how Chalk's International kept flying ancient Grumman Mallards into the early 2000s. The "FAA guy" who's job it was to look into their operations basically assumed "bah...these guys know what they're doing", meanwhile the mechanics are slathering epoxy on a plane suffering from major structural damage. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stitchdup Posted March 30 Share Posted March 30 boeing built the plane. its all very well blaming the faa but they only inspect the planes, thay dont build them or turn bolts during maintenance. if boeing worried less about the stock prices and went back to bulding the best planes the quality would start going up again, but like every other big company they outsource everything to save money. to save the company they need to hire the qc folks from lego, everything they make has a tolerance of 0.01mm and has done since they started making bricks. a 30 year old lego part will still fit a brand new one, you cant even say that about graded bolts now 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ace-Garageguy Posted March 30 Author Share Posted March 30 (edited) 7 hours ago, stitchdup said: boeing built the plane. its all very well blaming the faa but they only inspect the planes, thay dont build them or turn bolts during maintenance. if boeing worried less about the stock prices and went back to bulding the best planes the quality would start going up again, but like every other big company they outsource everything to save money... The FAA is certainly not solely to blame, but everyone who is part of a chain of events that results in a catastrophic failure shares some of the responsibility. Boeing's internal executive incentive focus has changed from emphasizing quality and passenger safety, but I can't elaborate on it here because of its "political" nature. Simply put, priorities directed away from building the best possible product are simply irrational...insane...when the product flies through the air at 500+ MPH with hundreds of people onboard. But the FAA's role was always intended to be the oversight that would protect the flying public from greed, stupidity, incompetence, and sub-standard work. The current trend towards allowing "self reporting" concerning critical engineering issues and construction procedures is rather like letting the fox run the henhouse, and thinking everything will be OK because the fox promised to be a good boy. Edited March 30 by Ace-Garageguy CLARITY 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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