Boeing 737 MAX family NEWS ONLY

Last week tonight with John oliver just did a pretty scathing piece on Boeing and b737 max in particular.

So I wonder, could such shows for mass audiences have a visible impact on business performance or stock price of a large company such as Boeing?
 
Obviously, this would incur further costs, both in production, and in service, but what price an accident ?
Per IATA: "Under MC99 carrier liability is limited to: SDR* 113,100 for death or injury of passengers. To defend claims in excess of that amount, the carrier must show that the damage was not due to the negligence/wrongful act of the carrier or solely due to the negligence/wrongful act of another person. SDR 19 per kilogram for destruction, loss or damage of cargo."

* "MC99 liability limits are expressed in Special Drawing Rights (SDR). The value of the SDR is determined by the value of a basket of currencies important to the world’s trading and financial systems."
 
Per IATA: "Under MC99 carrier liability is limited to: SDR* 113,100 for death or injury of passengers. To defend claims in excess of that amount, the carrier must show that the damage was not due to the negligence/wrongful act of the carrier or solely due to the negligence/wrongful act of another person. SDR 19 per kilogram for destruction, loss or damage of cargo."

* "MC99 liability limits are expressed in Special Drawing Rights (SDR). The value of the SDR is determined by the value of a basket of currencies important to the world’s trading and financial systems."
1 SDR is almost exactly $.75 at the moment, so SDR 113.1K = $149,830.

This is why you get victims and families of victims doing stuff like sue the pilot's flying school, because flying schools don't fall under the Montreal Convention limits on liability.

Incidentally, the US has legislated in the past to get around the Montreal Convention limits where they don't reflect reality, the Air Carrier Access Act mandated full compensation for wheelchairs damaged or destroyed on domestic flights, not the SDR 1,100 limit from the Convention.

But the issue for Boeing is it isn't protected by the Montreal Convention, it's the manufacturer, not the carrier, and a manufacturer with a decade and a half long record of major quality issues and deferred prosecution agreements is basically in an impossible position if it finds itself being sued. Or prosecuted.
 
I was doing a pit of googling WRT my previous post and found a report on the verdict from when the Lion Air and Air Ethiopia families sued the US DOJ to vacate the deferred prosecution agreement over the 737 Max crashes between DoJ and Boeing.

In the ruling, O’Connor said the facts didn’t support the argument that Boeing was a continued threat to public safety

I think Boeing just* opened up grounds for appeal over and above whatever the families already planned to use (case filed with the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on the 15th December, 2023 if I'm reading this right).

* Well, for values of 'just' that stretch to 5th January.

 
This is getting crazy. Can we please stop the tik tok maniac stance and see that every airliners face hair raising incident...

That's why you add pink flesh in the front. Not for ballast.
 
It's our job as engineers to stop 'hair raising incidents' before they happen. The fall-out from what happens when that isn't done can include legal liability. In the eyes of the law, many of us here are not 'the man on the Clapham omnibus', we're held to a higher standard, so it behooves us to pay attention to these things.

I was once asked to spend an afternoon rewording our QA standards so a change coming in from the US branch wouldn't leave our MD personally liable for anything that went wrong on any project, anywhere. This kind of 'tik tok maniac stance', as you so charmingly worded it, can be directly relevant to our day jobs.
 

The “six-week audit of Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems… found multiple instances where the companies allegedly failed to comply with manufacturing quality control requirements”, the agency said in an update released 4 March.

“The FAA identified non-compliance issues in Boeing’s manufacturing process control, parts handling, and storage and product control,” it adds.

The FAA says it has provided Boeing and Spirit with summaries of the audit’s conclusions, but the regulator has not released details and did not respond to a request for comment.

So looks like the FAA has no intention of making its detailed findings public (interesting contrast to the expert panel findings), be interesting to see how the politicians on the hill react to that.
 
It's our job as engineers to stop 'hair raising incidents' before they happen. The fall-out from what happens when that isn't done can include legal liability. In the eyes of the law, many of us here are not 'the man on the Clapham omnibus', we're held to a higher standard, so it behooves us to pay attention to these things.

I was once asked to spend an afternoon rewording our QA standards so a change coming in from the US branch wouldn't leave our MD personally liable for anything that went wrong on any project, anywhere. This kind of 'tik tok maniac stance', as you so charmingly worded it, can be directly relevant to our day jobs.

It's also the job of a crew to be alert and adequately responsive when being noticed of abnormal noise such as whizeling and airstream flowing into the cabin (their answer was that the problem was not showing-up on their instrument panels, think about that Dave!).
I fear this is the same story as with the Max stick pusher: inadequate safety awareness and general aerospace knowledge from the pilots.

Back in 50s 60s, nearly every flight had a minor mechanical incident crossing long distances. Yet, the vast majority of them went through.
 

NTSB tells Senate hearing that for two months into the investigation Boeing repeatedly refused to provide the NTSB with a list of the 25 employees that worked on door panels at the factory or the identity of their Manager, blocking the NTSB's attempts to interview them, Boeing said the Manager was not available to be interviewed as they were on medical leave. Boeing have also not provided the documentation for the removal and reinstallation of the door plug or even confirmed that said records were kept and said in their defence that the documentation might not exist. Security camera footage of the assembly line which would have showed who was working on the aircraft was deleted after 30 days.
 
It's also the job of a crew to be alert and adequately responsive when being noticed of abnormal noise such as whizeling and airstream flowing into the cabin

There's nothing in the NTSB preliminary report, or any reporting I can find, to say the crew of Flight 1282 were notified of abnormal noise, nor is the cabin pressurization "Auto Fail" indicator stated to have triggered. There's nothing I can find in relation to any flight of the aircraft to allege "airstream flowing into the cabin" (It would have been out of the cabin if it had happened).

WRT the Auto Fail illuminating on/after previous flights (one was on the ground), NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy stated in her press conference on 8th January: "At this time, we have no indications whatsoever that this correlated in any way to the expulsion of the door plug and the rapid decompression."

See
View: https://youtu.be/kGWLBLb9Pm4
at c8:30 on, with the statement at c10:30

Claims of a whistling noise on a previous flight appear to come from the attorney suing Alaska and Boeing on behalf of some of the passengers, there's no official confirmation of that, and it's obviously irrelevant to the reactions of the crew of Flight 1282.

The crew who were notified of the whistling issue reportedly confirmed there wasn't a cabin pressurization issue* and then ignored it, that's entirely the correct response WRT Aviate, Navigate, Communicate; CRM; and sterile cockpit rules. There's plenty of crews have talked themselves into trouble trying to troubleshoot non-critical issues; all too often fatally.

Alaska responded to the auto pressurization fails by restricting the aircraft from flight over water - which I presume means it had dropped below the ETOPS minimum dispatch list, or was considered at risk of it, but not the non-ETOPS MDL (Homendy confirms the MDL allows flight with one channel failed) - and scheduling it for further investigations. The fact one of those failures occurred with the aircraft on the ground would seem to argue it wasn't a pressure-related failure. In any case it's normal for aircraft to fly with issues awaiting repair or investigation, that's why we have minimum dispatch lists.

The root cause is Boeing reassembled a door plug leaving out the four bolts meant to hold it in place, and their sign-off procedures weren't good enough to make someone wonder, "Why do we have four big bolts left over?"

Back in 50s 60s, nearly every flight had a minor mechanical incident crossing long distances. Yet, the vast majority of them went through.

Depressurization of a passenger aircraft at 16,000ft with 177 people aboard is not "a minor mechanical incident". If you want an early equivalent, it's Dan Air Flight 240, brought up here , we're just lucky this time the door missed the tail.

* We need to remember airliner pressure cabins aren't sealed pressure vessels, they're deliberately leaky pressure vessels, with the actual internal pressure determine by balancing inflow and outflow valves. Air flow through the cabin is happening all of the time. Just because you can hear a whistle doesn't mean it was inside to outside leakage of air, it could have been flow noise internal to the ducting. We need to see what NTSB make of this to know if it was relevant, not what a lawyer who's professionally mandated to be biased in favour of his clients says in relation to a non-specified flight and non-specified witnesses.
 
Back in 50s 60s, nearly every flight had a minor mechanical incident crossing long distances. Yet, the vast majority of them went through.
That and hijackings of the 70's, wind-shear losses. We need some of that backbone back.
 
Claims of a whistling noise on a previous flight appear to come from the attorney suing Alaska and Boeing on behalf of some of the passengers, there's no official confirmation of that, and it's obviously irrelevant to the reactions of the crew of Flight 1282.

The crew who were notified of the whistling issue reportedly confirmed there wasn't a cabin pressurization issue* and then ignored it, that's entirely the correct response WRT Aviate, Navigate, Communicate; CRM; and sterile cockpit rules. There's plenty of crews have talked themselves into trouble trying to troubleshoot non-critical issues; all too often fatally.

Alaska responded to the auto pressurization fails by restricting the aircraft from flight over water - which I presume means it had dropped below the ETOPS minimum dispatch list, or was considered at risk of it, but not the non-ETOPS MDL (Homendy confirms the MDL allows flight with one channel failed) - and scheduling it for further investigations. The fact one of those failures occurred with the aircraft on the ground would seem to argue it wasn't a pressure-related failure. In any case it's normal for aircraft to fly with issues awaiting repair or investigation, that's why we have minimum dispatch lists.
(...)
* We need to remember airliner pressure cabins aren't sealed pressure vessels, they're deliberately leaky pressure vessels, with the actual internal pressure determine by balancing inflow and outflow valves. Air flow through the cabin is happening all of the time. Just because you can hear a whistle doesn't mean it was inside to outside leakage of air, it could have been flow noise internal to the ducting. We need to see what NTSB make of this to know if it was relevant, not what a lawyer who's professionally mandated to be biased in favour of his clients says in relation to a non-specified flight and non-specified witnesses.
Could also be outside-to-inside airflow, if there's enough ram pressure on the leading edge of the plug, but yes.

The outflow valves on a commercial plane are big enough to put a person through. And I don't mean a skinny asian kid, I mean a fatass american like me.


The root cause is Boeing reassembled a door plug leaving out the four bolts meant to hold it in place, and their sign-off procedures weren't good enough to make someone wonder, "Why do we have four big bolts left over?"
This. I'm an A&P, you DO NOT have spare fasteners on a job. 4 fasteners come out, 4 fasteners go back in.

What is scaring me is that Boeing cannot produce any work documentation for the removal and reinstallation of the plug.


Depressurization of a passenger aircraft at 16,000ft with 177 people aboard is not "a minor mechanical incident". If you want an early equivalent, it's Dan Air Flight 240, brought up here , we're just lucky this time the door missed the tail.
Very much so.

I'm thinking some 180 guardian angels were working overtime to keep that plug from hitting the tail.
 

NTSB tells Senate hearing that for two months into the investigation Boeing repeatedly refused to provide the NTSB with a list of the 25 employees that worked on door panels at the factory or the identity of their Manager, blocking the NTSB's attempts to interview them, Boeing said the Manager was not available to be interviewed as they were on medical leave. Boeing have also not provided the documentation for the removal and reinstallation of the door plug or even confirmed that said records were kept and said in their defence that the documentation might not exist. Security camera footage of the assembly line which would have showed who was working on the aircraft was deleted after 30 days.
I'm quite sure that most of the items that Boeing can not or will not provide they are LEGALLY REQUIRED to provide.

Seems like there need to be a purge and a lot of people need to go to jail, do not pass go, do not get off with a fine. Spirit might be a shitshow, but Boeing is no better, or actively worse.
 
What is scaring me is that Boeing cannot produce any work documentation for the removal and reinstallation of the plug.

What's worrying me even more is the way they're phrasing it as "if the door plug removal was undocumented there would be no documentation to share". What's this 'if'? Either it was documented or it wasn't. If they don't know, then conditions on the shop floor are even more chaotic than we suspected; if they do know, then they're prevaricating about saying, which is equally worrying, and goes with what Homendy told the Senate yesterday.
 
What's worrying me even more is the way they're phrasing it as "if the door plug removal was undocumented there would be no documentation to share". What's this 'if'? Either it was documented or it wasn't. If they don't know, then conditions on the shop floor are even more chaotic than we suspected; if they do know, then they're prevaricating about saying, which is equally worrying, and goes with what Homendy told the Senate yesterday.
That is not the defense someone apparently thinks it is.

And whoever said it needs to be followed up with "[name], are you telling me that Boeing does not document their work, as is required under the FARs?" (insert much profanity for emphasis)
 
…. This. I'm an A&P, you DO NOT have spare fasteners on a job. 4 fasteners come out, 4 fasteners go back in. …
RCAF tradition says that critical fasteners (e.g. bolts) are only used once, then discarded and replaced with new bolts. I suspect that Boeing’s production lines only install new bolts.
 
Potentially deadly malfunctions need two or three over-lapping layers of inspection. Hence the requirement for two signatures any time a flight control is dis-connected. That is standard operating procedure for pilots and aircraft mechanics.

OTOH if you are dealing with Canadian courts or Transport Canada, then if enough people are involved, then guilt gets spread so thin that no single person goes to jail.
Lawyers will cheerfully skew evidence - beyond recognition - as long as it supports their side of the argument.
After a 9-year-long personal injury lawsuit, you may guess how much I amire and respect the Superior Court of British Columbia and how much I want to become a lawyer when I grow up.
Hah!
 
RCAF tradition says that critical fasteners (e.g. bolts) are only used once, then discarded and replaced with new bolts. I suspect that Boeing’s production lines only install new bolts.
In which case they should have been wondering why they had eight bolts left over!
 

TLDR: A United Max 8 landing at Newark on 6th February experienced frozen rudder pedals on landing for both pilot and co-pilot, the pilot switched to nose-wheel steering and continued the landing without further issue, pedals then freed up about 30s post touchdown. NTSB has apparently been able to reproduce the issue via cold-soaking certain parts, which United says are only present in 9 aircraft in its fleet.

Boeing can't seem to catch a break at the moment. The identifiable parts issue is odd, something specific to one supplier?
 
What's worrying me even more is the way they're phrasing it as "if the door plug removal was undocumented there would be no documentation to share". What's this 'if'? Either it was documented or it wasn't. If they don't know, then conditions on the shop floor are even more chaotic than we suspected; if they do know, then they're prevaricating about saying, which is equally worrying, and goes with what Homendy told the Senate yesterday.
I have the uneasy feeling that Boeing is skating *this far* from speculation of a coverup conspiracy (justified or not). And once the speculation & charges of a conspiracy are chummed into the US public media waters, Katy bar the door. This will get out of control. (Yes. That quote from Red October.)

It took three DC-10 crashes to kill McDonnell Douglas. (OK, to perniciously weaken the company over the next 15 years...to the point where their buyout allowed their management to infect Boeing with Weclhism.)

Boeing can't seem to catch a break at the moment.

No. It is not just the moment. This is the usual brownian level of bad news that Boeing catches, and normally, it never rises to the level of public attention. But now it does, because Boeing is under the microscope and will stay there until the media gets tired and finds somebody else to make headlines on.

Northrop had a similar "all news is bad news" experience in the 1980s and it took 15 years to recover. (Remember Ed Bradley (of "60 Minutes") doing a standup at the the 120th Street entrance to the Electronics Division reporting on the the Peacekeeper IMU scandal? I do.)
 
To wit: after writing the above, I went over to pick up the headlines to find the following story where UAL 737-900 suffered surging in flight today. I quote in part:

Compressor stalls can be caused by a number of factors, including a foreign-object damage like bird strike, or a worn, dirty or contaminated compressor component. While it's not a serious risk to the plane, pilots should get the plane on the ground after such an incident as soon as possible.

Passenger Elliot Trexler described hearing a loud noise while in the air.

“This was a loud explosion. There was no question in any of our minds that something bad had happened. That combined with the plane nosediving and seeing the flames,” Trexler said in an interview aired Thursday on NBC's "TODAY" show.

Boeing does not provide the engines for its planes.

Still, the Monday incident is yet another flight snafu involving a Boeing aircraft, adding to the already heightened scrutiny of the massive aviation manufacturer after a Boeing-made Alaska Airlines plane door panel blew out midair over Portland, Oregon, on Jan. 5.

NEVER do you see the headline "Two CFM-56 jet engines crashed today, killing all 198 aboard their jet "
 
RCAF tradition says that critical fasteners (e.g. bolts) are only used once, then discarded and replaced with new bolts. I suspect that Boeing’s production lines only install new bolts.
Sure.

The old bolts go in a bag so that you can say "4 old bolts came out, 4 new bolts went in" on the paperwork. And then usually the old bolts go home with a mechanic to use on non-aviation things.

But where is the (all the expletives deleted) paperwork?!?!?
 

TLDR: A United Max 8 landing at Newark on 6th February experienced frozen rudder pedals on landing for both pilot and co-pilot, the pilot switched to nose-wheel steering and continued the landing without further issue, pedals then freed up about 30s post touchdown. NTSB has apparently been able to reproduce the issue via cold-soaking certain parts, which United says are only present in 9 aircraft in its fleet.

Boeing can't seem to catch a break at the moment. The identifiable parts issue is odd, something specific to one supplier?

Same issue has happened twice before in 2019 on 737NG which uses identical rudder parts and in all three instances was resolved by replacing the same three rudder control parts. From testing after the incident this year they believe its down to a servo motor manufactured by Collins that controls autopilot rudder movements, the arm of the servo can lock solid when exposed to cold temperatures suggesting a thermal contraction issue, this in turn stopped the whole rudder mechanism from being able to move so didnt respond to manual pedal commands. Considering how widespread the part must be in NG's and MAX its possibly a bad batch but if it is a design defect a lot of aircraft will need the part replacing. While the MAX in question was delivered new for United fairly recently it appears to have been one of nine United MAX aircraft originally destined for a different Boeing customer and so had a different rudder control system specification to the rest of United's fleet.
 
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Same issue has happened twice before in 2019 on 737NG which uses identical rudder parts and in all three instances was resolved by replacing the same three rudder control parts. From testing after the incident this year they believe its down to a servo motor manufactured by Collins that controls autopilot rudder movements, the arm of the servo can lock solid when exposed to cold temperatures suggesting a thermal contraction issue, this in turn stopped the whole rudder mechanism from being able to move so didnt respond to manual pedal commands. Considering how widespread the part must be in NG's and MAX its possibly a bad batch but if it is a design defect a lot of aircraft will need the part replacing. While the MAX in question was delivered new for United fairly recently it appears to have been one of nine United MAX aircraft originally destined for a different Boeing customer and so had a different rudder control system specification to the rest of United's fleet.
Given limited numbers reported so far, I'm thinking bad batch of servos. Or maybe just servos that are right at the lower limits for clearance between parts...
 
@DWG : to reply quickly to your remark castigating my comments on the lack of appropriate action from the pilots being notified of a potential leakage in the door seal, I would like to remind you that safety is the matter of all and hence a multi-pronged strategy: from design engineers to drafter, from production supervisor to riveters, from cabin crew, mechanics to pilots.
If one loop of the chain fails, it's likely that a minor event could end-result in a bad experience for many.

I fully agree (and did jump on the case early-on) that the missing bolts is disturbing. But this might have been caught before the catastrophic event during the plane operation. That's a fact.

@Scott Kenny: Not all lawyer actions are despicables. I can point you toward hundreds of litigations that have moved us forward.
 
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@DWG : to reply quickly to your remark castating my comments on the lack of appropriate action from the pilots being notified of a potential leakage in the door seal, I would like to remind you that safety is the matter of all and hence a multi-pronged strategy: from design engineers to drafter, from production supervisor to riveters, from cabin crew, mechanics to pilots.
If one loop of the chain fails, it's likely that a minor event could end-result in a bad experience for many.
The pilots did the right thing, they checked the operation of the pressurization system. No problems detected, note it in the logs for maintenance and continue the flight.

Cabin pressurization runs off bleed air from the engines, and is controlled by how much air is allowed to "leak" out. The pressurization outflow door is a good 24" square and can be used as an access to the back end of the rear equipment bay as long as the hydraulics are completely deactivated and electrical connectors to the control valves have been unplugged. There's enough power in the hydraulics to cut someone in half.


@Scott Kenny: Not all lawyer actions are despicables. I can point you toward hundreds of litigations that have moved us forward.
Yes, but it seems like whoever is acting for Boeing is ... not up to the standard expected of a lawyer dealing with the Federal Aviation Regulations. Not understanding that a failure to produce documentation is 1) an admission of guilt of not documenting maintenance and 2) it only makes Boeing look worse in the eyes of the public and the regulators..
 
Lol. You don't need to lecture everyone or me on the way airplane systems work.

Just ask yourself this question, when you notice such noise in your car, what do you do? Checking your dashboard or inspecting the joint and seals yourself or with the help of a mechanic?
 
Lol. You don't need to lecture everyone or me on the way airplane systems work.

Just ask yourself this question, when you notice such noise in your car, what do you do? Checking your dashboard or inspecting the joint and seals yourself or with the help of a mechanic?
When I'm on the freeway, I check the dashboard and keep going to at least the next exit before I pull off to check other things.
 
Lol. You don't need to lecture everyone or me on the way airplane systems work.

Just ask yourself this question, when you notice such noise in your car, what do you do? Checking your dashboard or inspecting the joint and seals yourself or with the help of a mechanic?
When I'm on the freeway, I check the dashboard and keep going to at least the next exit before I pull off to check other things.
Yeah, the pilots did the only thing they could at that moment. There's no getting out and kicking the tires at 30K feet.
 
your remark castigating my comments on the lack of appropriate action from the pilots being notified of a potential leakage in the door seal,
That's because their in-flight reaction was entirely appropriate.

For Flight 1282 the only comment from NTSB on the crew's handling was that Boeing's manual was insufficiently explicit on the cabin door opening during a depressurization, which is on Boeing, not the crew.

For the unidentified flight where the crew were allegedly informed of a whistling noise, they checked the aircraft wasn't depressurizing, it wasn't, so the correct action was to ignore it. The only question I can see is was it written up as a possible issue for maintenance once on the ground? And it's still hearsay, we don't know what flight, which passenger or which seat.

Cockpit management has come a long way, the correct reaction to an issue is to assess whether it's an immediate threat to the aircraft and ignore it if it isn't. They did, and did.

safety is the matter of all

Agreed. And the safety priorities for the flight crew are aviate, navigate, communicate, with troubleshoot possible maintenance issues something to be done on the ground by the maintenance staff, not in the air by them. That's fundamental safe cockpit resource management.
 
We don't know because there was probably no action done past the dashboard stare.
Just like we can't see trace of those bolts because no tracking action were initiated.

Identical problems...

But dissimilar, or even opposite, press/online media attention.
 
We don't know because there was probably no action done past the dashboard stare.
Just like we can't see trace of those bolts because no tracking action were initiated.

Identical problems...

But dissimilar, or even opposite, press/online media attention.
The follow-up action is not the responsibility of the pilots. Reporting a problem IS. Apparently they did that. What happens after that is not up to them.
 

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