United Airlines finds loose bolts on door plugs on several 737 Max 9 planes following Alaska Airlines mid-air door blowout incident
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/united-airlines-737-max-9-plane-loose-bolts-door-plugs-alaska-airlines/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
16 replies
If it was just a few, they would have confirmed how many
I doubt they would confirm before they had tested every bolt on a few planes
Or at least one, testing every bolt, or at least this bolt on a bunch of them
But they would need a sensitive tool to measure torq needed to unlock it that’s kinda cool
Loose bolts indicate vibration, and that is a death knell for Boeing ... because their engineers should have known how many bolts would be needed and the torque required to lock them in.
Boeing will pay through the nose for this screw up.
Nah, they'll keep getting exceptions for the 737 max until they have the worst plane crash in history. Then something might be done and bigger changes might be made.
Realistically, how much worse could they get? The disasters so far have only been limited by the number of people they can kill due to the plane’s capacity.
Probably would have been different if they failed after taking off from New York or Chicago instead of Indonesia or Ethiopia, because, of course.
I think a plane crashing into a populated city or neighborhood would up those numbers quite a lot though. And yeah, good point. I think another reason the 737 max issues haven't been taken more seriously yet is because the two big accidents involved people from developing nations. Imagine if those planes were full of Americans.
Not necessarily, that assumes that the bolts got torqued down correctly
Generally in Aviation, bolts are torqued down to a spec and then they are wired to prevent them from coming loose. I’m not an engineer but this happening on soo many planes looks like a manufacturing QC problem.
Boeing sure seems to be on a winning streak.
I bought Boeing on the dip during the last 737 disaster. I’m so thankful I unloaded all my Boeing stock when it ran up in late December.
They are a turd of a company. Even though the Max 8 was finally being delivered I figured with their track record for engineering, manufacturing and QC they would still have knock on effects.
The stock is tempting now but I don’t think I want to gamble on them again.
This will somehow result in increased bag fees.
Bolt Tightening Fee
I'd like to fly premium please!.... Oh so the blue plane on the right? Do I get an upgrade to the no duct tape fleet?
If all of them were subject to Alaska Airlines’ WiFi equipment installation post-sale, which required unbolting the door plugs, then all of them have to be rechecked and rebooted. This you won’t hear from them :)
Oh shit....they are going to go after Fred Novabitch the guy at final assembly who goes around with the torque wrench and finish off the screws. You should have done your job Fred!
They need the fixies:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGenq8wsYt8