Alaska Airlines Plane Appears to Have Left Boeing Factory Without Critical Bolts::undefined
Engineer: “Measure twice, cut once!”
Accounting: “But what if we don’t even cut? Then we save all that money on measuring and any problems can be our supplier’s fault.”
Also accounting: cut QA to raise profit
Accounting doesn’t cut costs or do anything except counting money accurately. Those decisions are made by the operations department.
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WTH? There is gross negligence being done by people who work at Boeing. This can’t be fixed by retraining, they should fire the people responsible.
This is the result of decades of having management full of people with finance degrees rather than technical degrees. They cut costs because they don’t understand worth. Same thing happened with Southwest Airlines.
There have been credible leaks that this was a management level problem.
They specifically didn’t want the aircraft to be inspected - as it had already been inspected and doing it again would have delayed delivery… so they had a policy in place where the door was worked on “off the books” so to speak, and therefore almost nobody even knew that the work was being done. Including the people who were responsible for checking if it had been done properly.
Boeing management originally blamed Spirit for the mistake because at first glance of the work log Spirit were the only engineers who worked on the door. It was only when they checked a second backchannel work log that they discovered maintenance had been done which required removing the door even though according to the log the door was never removed (the leak is someone at Boeing replaced the rubber seal that sits in between the door and the cabin…).
Yes, someone forgot to insert the bolts however the reality is mistakes happen and telling people not to make mistakes doesn’t work. You need to create an environment where mistakes don’t get anyone killed and management has failed to do that.
An engineer should not do any work at all unless they have been instructed, in writing, on a well defined schedule, to do that work. And that task should be left open until it has been fully checked to verify it was done properly. That didn’t happen here, and apparently it’s a regular thing.
Sure, 99.999% of the time those checks are a waste of time. But when you’re doing thousands of jobs a day those checks will find problems regularly and that should be all the motivation management needs to make sure the inspections are never skipped.
Yes, someone forgot to insert the bolts however the reality is mistakes happen and telling people not to make mistakes doesn’t work. You need to create an environment where mistakes don’t get anyone killed and management has failed to do that.
This is true in most engineering/technical/build industries. You need to create an environment where finding and preventing mistakes is celebrated and rewarded rather than penalizing those who make them. We’re all human, errors are unavoidable. You just need to put systems into place to reduce, detect, and fix them when they happen. Ideally before a catastrophic failure.
Not going to lie, I’ll be avoiding flights on a Boeing for a while
Me too, but because I can’t justify the cost of flying when I have a family. In fact, flying alone might be the better financial decision since I have life insurance.
Don’t even need life insurance with that lawsuit.
Alaska Airlines Plane Appears to Have Left Boeing Factory Without Critical Bolts Regulators put limits on Boeing 737 MAX production; grounded MAX 9 jets have resumed flying after required inspections
By Andrew Tangel
Updated Jan. 29, 2024 12:03 pm ET You may also like Here’s a time line of what occurred after the aircraft’s midair incident. Photo: National Transportation/Planet Pix/Zuma Press
Bolts needed to secure part of an Alaska Airlines jet that blew off in midair appear to have been missing when the plane left Boeing’s BA -0.14%decrease; red down pointing triangle
factory.
Boeing and other industry officials increasingly believe the plane maker’s employees failed to put back the bolts when they reinstalled a 737 MAX 9 plug door after opening or removing it during production, according to people familiar with the matter.
The increasingly likely scenario, according to some of these people, is based partly on an apparent absence of markings on the Alaska door plug itself that would suggest bolts were in place when it blew off the jet around 16,000 feet over Oregon on Jan. 5.
They also pointed to paperwork and process lapses at Boeing’s Renton, Wash., factory related to the company’s work on the plug door. A hole from an Alaska Airlines plane’s blown-off door plug is covered. Photo: patrick t. fallon/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The National Transportation Safety Board has been conducting metallurgical analysis of the plug door but hasn’t released the results of the testing. Laboratory tests might show whether the bolts were in place or not there at all. An update in the NTSB probe is expected as soon as this week.
New evidence could later emerge before accident investigators reach final conclusions. It couldn’t be determined how many people were involved with work on the plug door at Boeing’s 737 factory.
Supplier Spirit AeroSystems delivered the 737 fuselage to Boeing’s factory with the door plug installed. The plug door itself was constructed in Spirit’s Malaysian factory, while the fuselage was assembled in Wichita, Kan.
Boeing opened or removed the door plug after the 737 MAX 9 jet’s fuselage arrived at the plane maker’s Renton, Wash., factory for final assembly, The Wall Street Journal and other news outlets have reported.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D., Ill.), chair of a key Senate panel on aviation safety, said she met with Boeing Chief Executive David Calhoun last week and discussed the probe into what went wrong.
“It is going to show that there has been lack of documentation when it comes with how and when those pins were installed or removed and whether or not they were reinstalled or not,” said Duckworth. “He assured me that they were going through that entire process to make sure that they are able to track on their aircraft when these things are happening.”
The Federal Aviation Administration last week put limits on Boeing’s production of 737 MAX jets, while also clearing the way for grounded jets to resume flying after airlines complete inspections.
Airlines have discovered loose hardware on some MAX 9 jets, and air-safety officials are probing Boeing’s manufacturing practices.
The Alaska accident has renewed scrutiny of problems with Boeing’s quality controls and supplier oversight, which have surfaced in recent years on various commercial and military aircraft. While the company has pushed to improve its factory operations, Calhoun has said Boeing must acknowledge “our mistake” in the Alaska accident.
The FAA’s increased regulatory scrutiny could slow Boeing deliveries and plans to ramp up production, as well as add to delays in certifying new 737 MAX variants awaiting regulatory approvals.
Sharon Terlep contributed to this article.
Write to Andrew Tangel at andrew.tangel@wsj.com
I travel a lot for work and one pro-tip that has saved my bacon more times than I can count is to always be sure to check that your 737 Max Jet has both wings attached BEFORE boarding.
What did people expect when Boeing is allowed to self-certify? That everything will be checked and tested?
Classic L4s paywall link
There should be a community rule that requires posting an. archive link in the body if one is available.
Agreed.
Hell, I have a Macrodroid macro to submit links to archive.ph, and for my own ArchiveBox at home.
agreed
Really the post link should be the archive link and the body should have the original link if there’s a paywall or even an obtrusive cookie popup.
Another idea, the 3rd party app developers should just add it as a view mode.
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It’s a lack of supervision, mostly. They assigned Jim to do the bolting that day but didn’t check his qualifications or work. At least this explains the hours of security footage discovered early in the investigation showing Jim sprinting back and forth between the work stations.
