BOEING: Couple of screws loose
The Boeing 737 MAX jet family has had a troubled history. It started with two of the ‘8’ variants crashing and killing 346 passengers and crew, and the model subsequently grounded for 20 months for the cause to be found and rectified.
Now, the ‘9’ variant – a stretched version of the ‘8’ with allowance for an additional exit for high-density passenger configurations has not crashed but suffered a rather alarming event that involved the ‘blow out’ of a blanked-out exit on an Alaska Airlines flight. Something that should never have happened. Fortunately, it occurred at 16,000 feet and not 32,000, early in a flight so passengers were belted in, and no one got sucked out of the exit a la one of the Airport movies.
Content of this Post:
Grounding of 737 MAX 9 and screws loose
Subsequently, Alaska grounded all of its MAX 9s, and then the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) called for the grounding and inspection of all of the models under its regulation.
Although the right thing to do, it is alarming when both Alaska and United Airlines report that they have found ‘bolts that need additional tightening’ or, in layman’s terms, loose door plug screws.
This moves concern about quality control at Boeing from a missed one-off incident to a systemic problem.
What airlines have found
Both Alaska and United have made statements about finding the loos screws:
“As our maintenance technicians began preparing our 737-9 MAX fleet for inspections, they accessed the area in question. Initial reports from our technicians indicate some loose hardware was visible on some aircraft.”
Alaska Airlines statement
“Since we began preliminary inspections on Saturday, we have found instances that appear to relate to installation issues in the door plug — for example, bolts that needed additional tightening.”
United Airlines statement
These inspections occurred before the FAA formulated aircraft inspection guidelines to ensure their flying safety. This is not a good sign. It suggests a company-wide issue, rather than a single oversight.
Excellence in engineering takes second place
There have long been accusations of lowered engineering standards and an accent on profit at Boeing. This is epitomised in the documentary ‘Downfall. The case against Boeing‘ is a Netflix documentary.
In a Guardian article, Kennedy is quoted as saying:
“There were many decades when Boeing did extraordinary things by focusing on excellence and safety and ingenuity. Those three virtues were seen as the key to profit. It could work, and beautifully. And then they were taken over by a group that decided Wall Street was the end-all, be-all. There needs to be a balance in play, so you have to elect representatives that hold the companies responsible for the public interest, rather than just lining their own pocketbooks.”,
Rory Kennedy, maker of the Netflix documentary ‘Downfall. The Case Against Boeing’, quoted in The Guardian
But wait, there’s more
Added to the company woes, during the rapid decompression in the Alaska Airlines incident, the cockpit door of the Boeing 737 MAX 9 opened. This is actually by design. You want to have equal compression in the aircraft during a decompression incident, otherwise you could have a bunch of other problems. However, Boeing forgot to include that in the manual or in any of the training provided to pilots!
Oh yes, and Boeing didn’t even tell the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) about this feature.
Boeing has promised to do better. Have I heard that before, and didn’t a CEO have to resign?
2PAXfly Takeout
Boeing lost 8% of its value on the share market yesterday. I don’t think that is the end of the story.
There have long been accusations that the culture at Boeing changed from giving primacy to quality, safety and engineering excellence to one of shareholder value and money-making more than a decade ago. This latest incident and its apparent cause – sloppy assembly/installation- would support that claim.
Investigations and inspections are underway. It will likely be a year before we have a final report from the FAA. Let’s hope Boeing moves towards enterprise culture change, more in line with production and engineering excellence in that time.
What did you say?