Boeing 737 missing door report

I did find the other thread but it was closed 🤷‍♂️

Anyway, here’s a video covering the report, seems the door had been missing some bolts the entire time. There’s even photos (by boeing!) of them doing stuff near the door, and in the photos you can see the bolts are missing 😬. Seems to be a total shitshow over there

Squeaky bum time for people that don’t like flying and then see which plane they are on for their hols.

It’s all a bit crap isn’t it?

Looks like an open and shut case. I’m glad it doesn’t hinge on Boeing’s evidence alone. That company sure does have its knockers.

More Quality Control Issues With 737 MAX

I want to thank an employee at the supplier who flagged to his manager

It’s worrying that it relied on a single employee flagging it up and that Boeing had no incoming QC checks.

Rich_s
Full Member
Looks like an open and shut case. I’m glad it doesn’t hinge on Boeing’s evidence alone. That company sure does have its knockers.

Well played sir!

Nah it’s all sorted, I saw on the internet that it was caused by Diversity.

Wow, Britain’s Got Talent has more to answer for than I thought.

Concord had one accident and they scrapped the entire thing. I guess plebs are cheaper and more expendable.

Nah it’s all sorted, I saw on the internet that it was caused by Diversity.

And I heard on the internet it was all caused by capitalism.

Lots of designs rely on additional fixings on the assumption that all will not be fitted, will be fitted incorrectly or to insufficient spec. Designing for human error and laziness. Assume this was next level

Imagine bikes if every bolt had 2 or 3 if only one was actually needed

Concord had one accident and they scrapped the entire thing. I guess plebs are cheaper and more expendable.

The issue with Concord is it can only carry 100 passengers and costed a fortune to run, so it was simply economicaly unviable.

737max are a bit of a different marque as they are reletivley cheap to buy & run, hence why there are so many of them for ‘short haul’ flights.

The Netflix documentary ‘Downfall – the case against Boeing’ is pretty eye-opening and exposes a totally rotten corporate culture at Boeing. It’s well worth a watch

Nah it’s all sorted, I saw on the internet that it was caused by Diversity.

It is quite the stretch to claim this.

What has been pointed out factually (regardless of the motivation for doing so), is that incentives were changed so that two additional factors were considered (climate and DEI) for a total of 5 for operational performance. Reason being they were critical for their long range business plan, which I guess involves still being able to make and sell planes.

Do you want to fly in an airplane where they prioritized DEI hiring over your safety? That is actually happening. https://t.co/FcTyzZD0uW

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 10, 2024

Who knows what the consequences of this was across a massive company. Given these were newly added areas, perhaps there was more easy wins here to get your bonus than in the existing areas (product safety, employee safety, and quality). More priorities always dilute focus, and if you have too many then nothing at all is a priority. People rightly do adapt when priorities change from above. And ill-designed incentives do cause unwanted behaviours, especially when it comes to bonuses.

Priorities for example could affect what topics discretionary (i.e. not compliance/legal related) training budget is spent on. It also does factor into recruitment and promotion; quite a few companies don’t pick the best people starting from the top for these, rather they’ll pick plenty from the pool that are good enough on merit, and then pick on non-merit factors from these to fill the number of roles available. Or where R&D spend is targeted.

So I’d expect these priority and incentive changes to have had an effect, but how specifically and to what extent we don’t know, various things are just plausible. I’ll lay it at capitalism and incentives always bugger things up.

AFAIK, the rot set in when Boeing joined with McDonnell Douglas, and everything became about performance, shareholders, etc – basically “I’ll lay it at capitalism and incentives always bugger things up.”

AFAIK, the rot set in when Boeing joined with McDonnell Douglas, and everything became about performance, shareholders, etc – basically “I’ll lay it at capitalism and incentives always bugger things up.”

That’s pretty much the impression I have, correctly, or incorrectly, I’d feel safer flying on an airbus plane rather than Boeing…

But you don’t tend to get a choice of aircraft when booking flights!

bikesandboots
Full Member

It is quite the stretch to claim this.

It’s a simple statement of fact tbh

easy wins here to get your bonus

Say what now?

It’s a simple statement of fact tbh

Indeed…You don’t see the equivelent airbus just randomly dropping out of the sky, or doors falling off, etc.

I understand there are different varients of the Boeing 737, but they should all be grounded without exception, IMO.

You don’t see the equivelent airbus just randomly dropping out of the sky, or doors falling off, etc.

You have a very short memory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Seville_Airbus_A400M_crash

I understand there are different varients of the Boeing 737, but they should all be grounded without exception, IMO.

The issue with the door plugs was not a design issue. As long as they are correctly fitted, they are perfectly safe. It’s the same as the wheels on a car – if you don’t fit them properly, they will fall off, but they are perfectly safe if fitted correctly.

The nosediving into the ground was a much more serious problem, but it only affects 373 Max models, AFAIK. That problem is now understood and should be able to be fixed.

The bigger issue is really that Boeing’s culture seems to have eroded and they keep making dumb mistakes like this. Fixing corporate culture is much harder than fixing engineering problems. Part of the problem is that Boeing was allowed to self-certify the 737 Max, so that points to an even bigger issue with regulators not doing their jobs.

The bigger issue is really that Boeing’s culture seems to have eroded and they keep making dumb mistakes like this

Yeah, I tend to agree with you. I’m not in a position to accuse Boeing of making dangerous planes on the cheap, (heaven forbid!) or the people who buy/lease them for not maintaining them correctly, according to the specific confuguration of model they operate.

But the blame lies somewhere between the two… the plane is either faulty, or the plane is incorrectly maintained, I’m really struggling to see how there could be any other reason, in terms of logic, as to why there there’s a really big issue with 737s at the moment.

If you’ll forgive me for making a crass analogy… every time you see a person killed by a dog in the news, it’s a safe bet it’s a pit bull/ xl bully dog, every god damn time.

Same with plane crashes..it’s always a 737 of some type.

It is quite the stretch to claim this.

It’s a simple statement of fact tbh

I was referring to what they said, not what you said about what they said.

Indeed…You don’t see the equivelent airbus just randomly dropping out of the sky, or doors falling off, etc.

Are you agreeing it was caused by diversity? I think some of us might not be on the same channel about understanding what each other have written.

easy wins here to get your bonus

Say what now?

Given quality and safety had been the only incentivised priorities for presumably years, all the easy wins had probably already been taken and they were probably pretty good at it. So the new additional priorities probably had more room for improvement and things people could do to meet the bonus criteria.

Given quality and safety had been the only incentivised priorities for presumably years,

So, profit has nothing to do with it?

Are you seriously suggesting that ‘quality and safety had been the only incentivised priorities ‘ ?

Your words.

Are you agreeing it was caused by diversity?

The whole DEI thing is just a right-wing talking point, there’s no basis in reality for it. A few weeks back, some MAGA nutter went off about not wanting Black or female pilots. Elon Musk is the last person who should be talking about prioritizing safety – the Tesla autopilot thing is just one example of his utter distain for regulators.

No offence @thols2 but I fear we digress.

Mechanical or technical failure is not a product of politics or opinion, it’s mechanical failiure, be that an inherrent design fault, or the result of lack of proper maintenence.

If your car gets a flat tyre, It’s an expensive inconvenience… when planes start dropping out of the sky, it’s a much bigger problem…

…moreso if you happen to be on said plane at the time.

The door is just another example of how Boeing thinks. Maximum revenue is the push so they outsource as much as possible to become a plane assembler not a manufacturer. They keep a 30 year old flawed design that sits too low for modern engines. They create lots of variants of the flawed design that then handles differently. Create MCAS to remove need for pilots to type rate on new aircraft.

BTW reason for the door plug is again to save money on door fittings and they only have the door so if the airline fit more seats they needs more emergency exits. Probably just the tip of the iceberg on minimising costs wherever possible. There is a reason the 737 is so popular and it’s because it cheap. Just ask Ryanair.

Probably just the tip of the iceberg on minimising costs wherever possible. There is a reason the 737 is so popular and it’s because it cheap. Just ask Ryanair.

It’s not Ryanair?…

The common denominator here is Boeing.. it’s not a coincidence that 737s in particular are getting a bit of a reputation.

I don’t belive in coincedences.

If that’s design faults, or lack of proper maintenence by operator is an open question,  and a question which needs to be answered.

BTW reason for the door plug is again to save money on door fittings

That’s a perfectly sound reason for fitting them. As long as they are correctly fitted, they are perfectly safe. In this case, workers did not fit the bolts that keep the plug in position. As pointed out above, Boeing seem to have suffered badly from the McDonnell Douglas merger. In this case, the fuselage sections are built by a company called Spirit AeroSystems. AIUI, the door plugs are fitted by Spirit then removed at the Boeing assembly plant, then refitted again before the aircraft is delivered. In this case, the door plug was fitted into the fuselage, but the locating bolts were not fitted. That is quite a mind-boggling oversight and I suspect (without direct evidence) that workers may have been pressured to try and speed things up to try and make up for Boeing’s woes. Whatever the case, this is because workers did not follow the correct assembly procedures, not because the door plug is an unsafe design.

All the big f-ups I saw when working in the sector were predominantly down to a failure to hand-off jobs between two different organisations, whether it be the customer, safety authority/regulator, manufacturer or the sub-contractor. Lack of clarity between the safety regular and the manufacturer and quietly forgetting about the too difficult/too hard stuff particularly when working to a programme milestone. The diversity thing is a bit of a smokescreen, because it is because of the over-familiarity between organisations and individuals that results in things being missed – I’ve seen it for myself where whistle-blowers or those that challenge the status-quo get rounded-on and it’s only when something really bad happens and there’s a root and branch investigation do these things get identified.

Whatever the case, this is because workers did not follow the correct assembly procedures, not because the door plug is an unsafe design.

The fact that the design relies on someone remembering to fit 4 bolts makes it unsafe in my view. The fact the door ended up in a field would support that. We are talking about safety critical application here which should have redundancy built in. A full fat door has that as it doesn’t rely on a couple of bolts to stop people potentially being killed.

this is because workers did not follow the correct assembly procedures

…and because their work wasn’t checked. And because a whole bucket load of systems and controls weren’t in place or were ignored.

This isn’t about the worker.

The fact that the design relies on someone remembering to fit 4 bolts makes it unsafe in my view.

All vehicles rely on being correctly assembled. It’s not possible to make a machine that will operate properly if it’s not correctly assembled. Try removing all the bolts from the stem of a bicycle and see how far you can ride. That doesn’t make the design unsafe, it just means that you need to assemble it correctly.

This isn’t about the worker.

Exactly, it’s about the corporate culture at Boeing. It seems quite possible that assembly line workers were under pressure from management and started taking shortcuts. If that’s the case, the blame is with the managers.

It’s an aircraft travelling at 40,000 feet carrying 150+ people at over 450 knots so let’s compare it to a bike.

Ryanair doesn’t use the door plug because they cram so many passengers in, necessitating the additional emergency exit.  You can all relax

the diversity nonsense from musk is hilarious

he pushed forward a rocket launch, against his engineers advice, to the 20th April amd it blew up

all because hes that desperate for likes from his incel fanboys

https://futurism.com/the-byte/starship-explosion-420

And because a whole bucket load of systems and controls weren’t in place or were ignored.

never mind systems and controls, there’s a bucket of (unused) fixings somewhere that nobody flagged as an issue

Given quality and safety had been the only incentivised priorities for presumably years,

So, profit has nothing to do with it?

Are you seriously suggesting that ‘quality and safety had been the only incentivised priorities ‘ ?

Your words.

No. What I said was in context of operational performance priorities, I should have also mentioned the separate financial performance priority. Still, the point stands.

The fact that the design relies on someone remembering to fit 4 bolts makes it unsafe in my view

No. The processes and procedures were inadequate. Airbus use door plugs too. Customers get to choose their configuration to some extent so when the higher number of seats are fitted, or where airframes are extended additional doors are required to allow evacuation in the prescribed times. Doors are frggin complicated and as a result expensive. The bolts on this design were there to stop the plug lifting off it’s fixings. Workers at Boeing are expected to sign off their own work despite their union’s objections.

It’s the logical conclusion of the overall approach to H&S on the US IMV.

Not the same plane type but boeing not having their best PR times lately

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/19/boeing-plane-emergency-landing-miami-florida

bikesandboots
Full Member

I was referring to what they said, not what you said about what they said.

Thanks for that, it didn’t read that way to me but I am happy to be corrected!

tonyf1
Free Member

The fact that the design relies on someone remembering to fit 4 bolts makes it unsafe in my view.

Me rebuilding my car depends on me remembering to fit bolts in the right place. Building a plane doesn’t depend on anyone remembering anything, you have checklists/flowcharts, you have doublechecks, you have stock control (ie, someone says “hey why are there door bolts left over?”) A lot has to go wrong before anything like this happens, whether it be a lot going wrong on the line, or a lot going wrong in the process design, or a lot going wrong in the decision making further up, or (probably) some combination thereof

It’s an aircraft travelling at 40,000 feet carrying 150+ people at over 450 knots so let’s compare it to a bike.

Is it on a treadmill? 🤔

you have stock control (ie, someone says “hey why are there door bolts left over?”

It’s worse than that. These fixings will be lot traceable. So someone has said that specific fixings from a specific lot id (or more than one, doesn’t matter) are in place on that aircraft.
If Spirit are doing that work then Boeing are removing and replacing the same fixings then the process is shite. If Spirit are fitting tooling only fixings, which are then removed and replaced with lot traceable ones, then the Boeing processes/controls must still also be shite to allow it to happen without being noticed (even if not immediately)