Boeing reported another problem with fuselages on its 737 jets that might delay deliveries of about 50 aircraft in the latest quality gaff to plague the manufacturer.
Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Stan Deal said in a letter to Boeing staff seen Monday that a worker at its supplier discovered misdrilled holes in fuselages. Spirit AeroSystems, based in Wichita, Kansas, makes a large part of the fuselages on Boeing Max jets.
"While this potential condition is not an immediate safety issue and all 737s can continue operating safely”
‘bUT iT’s sAFE’
I know Boeing is kind of fucking everything up right now, but safety delays are an indicator of safety, not the opposite.
They can also be a sign of poor quality control and/or poor quality in general, which makes them newsworthy to people (potentially) entrusting their lives to the workmanship involved.
Not to mention… didn’t Boeing also help with the Ospreys? Those things are known for eating Marines throughout its development cycle. Gotta wonder if this complete lack of engineering may be a reason.
This is kind of a survivorship bias kind of thing (with the WW2 bombers): NOT getting the news is the actual indicator of lack of quality control. Getting reports of them finding things is an indicator they’re actually looking. We know they had problems due to the whole, you know, planes falling out of the sky.
Of course it’s not black and white, what’s in the news isn’t really the important thing either way. It’s just what we can see.
Yes, but actually no. They are looking NOW, because they are being forced to look. They apparently weren’t before, which is a sign of bad QA, and the scary part for the potential passengers.
Misdrilled holes in the fuselage aren’t really a safety concern, they are a personnel concern tho. Sometimes you fuck up and have to eat shit, hopefully before you fuck up 50 fucking jets.
deleted by creator
Without knowing specific locations it’s hard to say exactly, but it likely wouldn’t keep me out of the airplane. They pressure test them, so that’s at least verified.
deleted by creator
No worries - so long as they don’t forget all the rivets in integration the fuselage won’t split in half. They’d have to forget way more than four fasteners lol
This is the same article that’s been going around for a couple days now.
So far we’ve got the missing bolts that caused the door cover to be blown out, and now these incorrect holes. I don’t think anything else… yet.
I know they have contacts to respect, but out of safety, they should completely stop production and offer an alternative to honor their contracts.
The FAA is kinda doing that, but I agree they probably need to go further - https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-halts-boeing-max-production-expansion-improve-quality-control-also-lays-out-extensive
What’s crazy is this is after the many news articles over the past few months, and their commitment to safety.
Which means… Either they are doing a lot of changes and things creep through, or they’ve been lying.
Being in IT, the only analogy I can make is that when a software design is crappy, it doesn’t matter how many bug fixes or vulnerability patches you add, it’s still going not going to work properly.
You have to go back to the drawing board and apply good, proven design guidelines and restart from there.
Lotus notes
What exactly is the relationship between spirit aero systems and Boeing? Who owns which responsibilities between these types of fuck ups? Is it Boeing design? Spirit manufacturing? Boeing inspection? The buck stops with Boeing, but since they deliver the final product, but wtf is going on at Spirit.
deleted by creator
I used to work for a company that was Spirit’s largest supplier. Spirit contracts a bunch of parts out to smaller manufacturing companies. We would manufacture parts, process them (paint and anodizing), then assemble them at all of our facilities, then they would get shipped to Wichita for further assembly by Spirit. The 737 MAX has been Boeing’s fastest selling plane in recent history, so you can imagine the pressure on the manufacturing contractors to get their parts out the door. After seeing everything from the inside, I personally wouldn’t fly on a 737 MAX. I would stick with Boeing’s older models or choose an airline that has primarily an Airbus fleet.
deleted by creator
The union workforce was let go and had to apply to be rehired with the sale of the division. They ended up taking a 10% pay cut.
Originally from the Seattle area. This was my assumption right here. About everything they’ve done in the last few decades has seemed to be around removing union labor.
Look I’m all for the “Fuck Boeing” circlejerk but as someone who actually works QA at an aircraft manufacturer this is likely a whole lot of nothing.
I’d be shocked if you could find a single aircraft of any make in service that didn’t have dozens of misdrilled holes.
Without any context this is just fear mongering.
Fair enough, I think boeing has fucked up so much that even something benign is being taken seriously, which is good imho, but it is also kinda scary, what else did they get away with?
Again, I understand the sentiment but this is not an example of them “getting away” with anything.
If anything this is indicative of a healthy Quality Management System given that this condition was identified and contained prior to any impacted articles entering into service.
Dealy Stan: Reeling in the Yeets
I get that reference.
It’s ironic that it’s 737 of them
Removed by mod
