The amount of Boeing failures is so problematic, it points to the kind of cultural failure within the company where in almost every other circumstance it should just be shut down and sold for parts.
The problem is that that is such an unacceptable situation that it can't ever be allowed to happen.
Boeing is a huge employer in the US, not even counting all the direct subsidiaries who would shut down if it was shut down.
Boeing is developing critical space hardware for NASA. As great as SpaceX is, the US should not rely on a single company for this. I don't think even SpaceX wants this.
If Boeing did fail, that leaves Airbus as the only commercial jet manufacturer? I don't think anyone, including Airbus and definitely not any airline which has used the airbus-boeing dance during price negotiations wants this to happen.
Not to even mention the supply chain issues with keeping our massive fleets of Boeing airplanes flying if Boeing goes defunct.
We also have to consider the defense implications of loosing what is now our only serious domestic manufacturer of many military aircraft and other ordinance.
Boeing literally can not be allowed to fail, the implications would be too great. I also literally see no other path for Boeing but failure.
I also think out of the ashes of that failure something much more focused and better would emerge and that, without that failure, it probably never will but still the failure cannot be allowed to happen.
This is a problem discovered during testing. It could mean testing is being done properly; probably it’s a bit late in the dev cycle, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing; now it’s making news because of what happened with Boeing in the past.
But not finding failures during testing maybe means you’re not testing hard enough.
I've done a couple rounds through aerospace or aerospace-adjacent over the years.
This seems to be a certification test (https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boein...), aka the "make-or-break, 0-failures allowed test before we get final approval to sell this aircraft, and we are 99.999% sure this test is going to go flawlessly".
Failing is a pretty big deal. This should have been found far sooner in the process.
> But not finding failures during testing maybe means you’re not testing hard enough.
Also not an airplane expert...
Agreed that finding issues is (often) good (it means you are human and you also found your errors).
But of course such testing, certification, is costly and uneconomical, and if you aren't allowed to fail, then you can't do the correct testing either...
I suspect the issue is two-fold: Firstly, Boeing can't afford to fail, and hence can't test. Secondly, it is driven primarily by profit, not safety, which is part of why it can't afford to fail. Profit drives/motivates new features, efficiencies, and ultimately complex systems, which require exponentially more time to thoroughly test than simple, inefficient, easily verifiable systems.
Falling apart because they are no longer profitable may not be a good thing either - sure, something could "rise from the ashes", but that thing will be in all likelihood, immature, poorly tested, and mostly incompatible with existing systems.
The best bet would be to simplify, as much as possible, all systems, suppliers, etc, and to double, quadruple, perhaps even expand by an order of magnitude the testing effort(s). Perhaps even some sort of new New Deal could come about...
What they are saying here is that the component was designed to X, but, not manufactured to those specifications.
Depending on who made that actual component, this is either a failure of Boeing directly or a failure of Boeing to ensure that their suppliers have adequate processes in place to capture these kinds of problems.
This is actually a much more serious failure than a design failure because the problem can't easily be systemically addressed, there is no single component they need to address now. Boeing can not simply say "we checked the other engine mounts in production and they are fine". Even saying that they addressed the issue with the production of that component is insufficient. The real root cause here is why any component which did not meet design specifications was accepted and allowed to be installed on the aircraft. Boeing will need to do a huge review to understand this and may need to inspect and replace huge numbers of other, seemingly unrelated, components.
> But not finding failures during testing maybe means you’re not testing hard enough.
This is not quite the same. This is finding a failed part that should not have failed, as it should have been designed to -at least- pass the flight test requirements it was designed to fulfil.
And what this article failed to mention was that similar structural issues were found on 2 other test aircrafts.
Our government is not competent enough to do that.
Much of the issues Boeing has are as a result of government involvement.
Just look at the entire starliner debacle, in any truly free market Boeing would have been fired as a vendor years ago. They were (and are) way behind schedule, their unmanned demo flight was a failure, they still went forward with a manned flight which has been an abject failure -- the crew is on month three of what was supposed to be a 3 hour^W^W9 day tour. They might not be coming home till February. I hope they have someone watering their plants.
You seem to be agreeing that our government is not competent enough to handle Boeing from an oversight perspective, let alone actively running the company.
I agree with both of your points, the government should never have allowed the McDonnell Douglas merger (I assume that's what you mean) and I can't possibly agree more that the FAA's "self certification" regime was a hilariously bad concept which was made worse by their implementation.
The inverse happened: the nation was corporatized with regulatory capture and lobbyists purchasing influence outright, so that is prevented from happening.
Well that and the people in charge during that decline need to feel personal consequences.
This is also a problem of incentives:If you can roll your dice and the only possible outcomes are:
A) you save your corporation some money while lowering reliability and fucking up safety, but you get a bonus and IF something happens you are either long gone or never held accountable
B) you do nothing, you gain nothing
Then it is clear why more people choose A. If you want management to feel what they are doing is "taking a risk", then make it really, actually risky for them. Especially if it has the potential to kill people. I am talking about significant jail time on top of losing all benefits made during the act. I am an electrical engineer. If something I am not giving my work due diligence and it ends up killing people, I go to jail. If management makes me use flammable materials to safe money and they burn down an orphanage it is a tragic accident that nobody can change, even when you have whistleblowers warning about it internally and publicly.
I constantly heard the phrase that management has to earn a lot because of the huge responsibilities they carry. If the most dire consequence to breaking those responsibilities is that you leave your job with a golden parachute, then that does not sound like it comes at a huge risk. Sure you need to be able to act like a amoral psychopath, but that is a price they are willing to pay.
This is utter nonsense. I happen to be a white guy working in aerospace. I love that we're finally starting to address some of the bias that has led to preferential hiring of people like me. The non-white, non-male, non-christian, and non-hetero colleagues I have are absolutely brilliant and earned their positions though hard work.
There's nothing wrong with diversity but your career is stillborn if your management buys into the entire DEI cult. It's a dog whistle / trojan horse and not what you think it is.
My carrer is doing just fine, thank you. You're seeing monsters under the bed. There is no "DEI cult." There's simply a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
I have to say the Embraer E195-E2 is a lot more comfortable than a 737 or A320 as a passenger, and that's for a plane that's significantly smaller.
It really shows that it was designed in this century. The focus on type certificates/training is really holding the industry back (as well as causing the terrible MCAS crashes).
I agree, on the one had this is normal, there are issues discovered and corrected during testing of all new aircraft types.
But I also wonder if we aren't pushing the limits of what's reasonable for a 2-engine passenger airliner. I get that the more people you can put on a flight the more money the airlines make from that flight, but there's a practical limit somewhere.
we're still making huge leaps forward in the quality of the base materials, until we stop making progress there, I don't think we're able to say that we're at the practical limit.
> Also I don’t think Airbus would have a problem with Boeing going out of business.
I'm not quite certain. Airbus is possibly quite happy to have a stumbling giant occupying that space and tripping over its own feet. It's a lot more comfortable than having to compete against a heavily subsided Chinese company, like what is happening in the EV market. (Not that they are a threat at the moment)
Are any of the Chinese airframes certified for use in EU or USA? If not, is that 100% political, or is the engineeing/QC not up to standards (which is a bit of a LOL given the context of the question)?
This is partly due to engineering/QC not being up to standards, insofar that the airworthiness certificate delivered by the Chinese Aviation Administration is not recognized/trusted in the West.
But it is not a political decision. Chinese manufacturers wanting to be able to sell and fly their airplanes in the West can simply apply for an EASA (or FAA) certification, like other manufacturers do. If they pass, they are good to go.
The problem is engineering at Boeing is now mostly outsourced (GE influence on that). Eroding decades of knowledge and skills for cheaper labor elsewhere
AT&T was broken up based on location, hence the term Regional Bell Operating Companies.
I’m not sure how the relative straightforwardness of that approach maps to a company that basically has two main supply chains (737 in Renton and everything else in Everett with North Charleston as a satellite.)
Boeing has experienced hundreds of major technical incidents but scant few were covered before the MAX crashes. Dozens and dozens more happened after the crashes.
>If Boeing did fail, that leaves Airbus as the only commercial jet manufacturer? I don't think anyone, including Airbus and definitely not any airline which has used the airbus-boeing dance during price negotiations wants this to happen.
>Boeing literally can not be allowed to fail
They're too broken for America to repair. They should be shut down, and the pieces sold off to Airbus for pennies on the dollar. Then Airbus can take over the designs and start building better-designed aircraft at the ex-Boeing facilities. There should simply be a stipulation that none of the management is allowed to be American, because obviously they can't do it any more.
I'm not sure if Tesla is a great example here, considering they also suffer quality control issues, at least in their US manufacturing. The amount of panel gap issues and fitment problems I've witnessed with Teslas have been more than I care to admit.
Being truly vertically integrated is no guarantee for quality in my experience.
Agreed, Tesla now has a reputation for low quality. Even taking to randoms who do t know much about EVs or Teslas just say this now. It’s become common wisdom Toyota make good cars, Tesla make crap.
> Does anybody think there is a link between vertical integration and quality? That maybe all this outsourcing messed things up?
Yes. For an American example, have a look at Apple. For international examples, have a look at the Japanese keiretsus like Toyota or Mitsubishi, or the Korean cheabols.
Yes though it's not really because of a drive to outsource but more because it was a European multi-state project, that want to see returns on their investment.
But it suggests that construction simply being split across multiple entities does not explain the quality difference. Maybe they're not under cost pressure though.
From what I heard, they are obviously critical but not a single point of failure. In fact they're made of several points that are expected to fail in a pre-determined order to cover the "engine falling off the plane" scenario.
It's obviously not good if one fails and the engine falls off the plane, but, a 777X should still be able to fly with a single engine.
Of course, that capability is more geared to "we saw a high temperature on the engine so let's proactively shut it down and land as soon as we can" and not "the engine fell off the plane and landed on someone".
It is a safe-life part, so yes, it is a single point of failure part for that engine. And, if something fails unexpectedly, it could significantly damage the wing too, as has happened in the past with deadly consequences.
The problem being encountered on two other test planes, makes it a lot more problematic, as the probability of the second engine shearing off then becomes a lot, lot higher.
There was a 747 crash in (poland or the netherlands) where the bolts broke off the engine and the failed engine managed to hit the other engine on the wing. The plane fell straight out of the sky and cut an apartment building in two killing at least 40 on the ground. Engines falling off a plane are very very bad and cause a lot of secondary damage.
obviously not good if one falls off the plane????!! you are talking about major structural damage to the airplane, the center of mass will be completely off and the airplane will fall as hard as a rock.
If one falls off the way it was planned it will be a very bad but not necessarily terrible situation. Someone else already linked to the excellent admiral cloudberg article that describes how it should have happened (which there it didn't), as designed the engine would flip over the wing and not hit anything. Though of course the damage to the wing and pylon might rip hydraulics or wiring out or something. It's never a good thing.
Also, the engines are pretty close to the centre of mass so it's not a huge deal. Asymmetric thrust will be a problem but the drag situation will be better than with 1 engine disabled! After all there is no inactive engine face catching a whole load of air. And an engine failure situation is already a known situation.
Well, El Al 1862 crashed anyways, isn't it? You can't compare losing 1/4 engines to 1/2 of the massive GE9X engines and center of mass will be off by a lot. There are several crashes related to weight imbalance (usually cargo bay) and there is a reason why there are several precautions regarding how to load a plane. We also have the 737-Max, that needs a counterbalance mechanism to make it work.
Yes but it crashed because the pylons failed in the wrong way. It was a design flaw.
Also, if it had failed as designed it would have only lost one. The other one was only lost because the first engine hit it on the way out. As well as the leading edge of the wing and the slats. The plane was doomed but not because of imbalance. It just could not fly under 270 knots.
Structural damage aside, modern planes have ridiculous safety margins on center of mass, drag and lift. A cleanly separating engine wouldn't be that much of a problem, mostly sorted by pumping fuel and rudder trim.
A DC-10 can't fly when one engine comes off unplanned (and it has two engines left in that case...):
as the aircraft was beginning its takeoff rotation, engine number one (the left engine) separated from the left wing, flipping over the top of the wing and landing on the runway. As the engine separated from the aircraft, it severed hydraulic lines that lock the wing's leading-edge slats in place and damaged a 3-foot (1 m) section of the left wing's leading edge. Aerodynamic forces acting on the wing resulted in an uncommanded retraction of the outboard slats. As the aircraft began to climb, the damaged left wing produced far less lift than the right wing, which had its slats still deployed and its engine providing full takeoff thrust. The disrupted and unbalanced aerodynamics of the aircraft caused it to roll abruptly to the left until it was partially inverted, reaching a bank angle of 112°, before crashing in an open field by a trailer park near the end of the runway. The engine separation was attributed to damage to the pylon structure holding the engine to the wing, caused by improper maintenance procedures at American Airlines.
Aircraft with largest composite wing and engines ever conceived has problems with engine mounts after 1000s of test hours and longer certification requirements by FAA.
The problem is that that is such an unacceptable situation that it can't ever be allowed to happen.
Boeing is a huge employer in the US, not even counting all the direct subsidiaries who would shut down if it was shut down.
Boeing is developing critical space hardware for NASA. As great as SpaceX is, the US should not rely on a single company for this. I don't think even SpaceX wants this.
If Boeing did fail, that leaves Airbus as the only commercial jet manufacturer? I don't think anyone, including Airbus and definitely not any airline which has used the airbus-boeing dance during price negotiations wants this to happen.
Not to even mention the supply chain issues with keeping our massive fleets of Boeing airplanes flying if Boeing goes defunct.
We also have to consider the defense implications of loosing what is now our only serious domestic manufacturer of many military aircraft and other ordinance.
Boeing literally can not be allowed to fail, the implications would be too great. I also literally see no other path for Boeing but failure.
I also think out of the ashes of that failure something much more focused and better would emerge and that, without that failure, it probably never will but still the failure cannot be allowed to happen.