The Boeing 737 Max - A tale of on-going woe

[JohnS]

The recent Alaskan Airlines accident involving the Boeing 737 Max 9 continues a saga of safety failures for the Boeing 737 Max series since 2019. You may remember the problems with the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (or MCAS - a flight stabilising feature), which caused two fatal crashes, Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, where 346 people died. It was subsequently grounded worldwide from March 2019 to November 2020. A forum topic on that Boeing system problem can be located at the link below...

Boeing CEO, Dave Calhoun addressed employees for the contractor responsible for builiding the fuselages on the Boeing 737 Max 9, Spirit AeroSystems this week, stating...“We’re going to get better.” Without trying to bring levity to the seriousness of this matter, to quote the Beatles, surely "it can't get much worse!" Or can it? The story below...

Boeing CEO: We’re going to learn from the Alaska Airlines incident

By Pete Muntean, CNN

Updated 2:53 PM EST, Thu January 18, 2024

An Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 with a door plug aircraft awaits inspection at the airline's hangar at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2024, in SeaTac, Wash.

(CNN) — Boeing says its CEO told workers of Spirit AeroSystems — its subcontractor that builds the 737 Max 9 fuselage — that “we’re going to learn from” this month’s blowout on Alaska Airlines flight 1282.

Boeing says CEO Dave Calhoun addressed 200 Spirit AeroSystems employees as part of a town hall meeting held in Wichita, Kansas, on Wednesday. Alongside Calhoun was Spirit AeroSystems President and CEO Pat Shanahan, Boeing says.

“We’re going to get better,” a Boeing news release says Calhoun told employees. “Not because the two of us are talking, but because the engineers at Boeing, the mechanics at Boeing, the inspectors at Boeing, the engineers at Spirit, the mechanics at Spirit, the inspectors at Spirit. They’re going to speak the same language on this in every way, shape or form.”

Earlier Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration specifically named Spirit AeroSystems for the first time as part of its investigation into Boeing’s quality control, triggered by this month’s Alaska Airlines incident. Investigators are determining why a door plug, which is supposed to cover up a space left by a removed emergency exit door in the side of the plane, blew off Alaska Airlines flight 1282 on January 5 and left a gaping hole in the side of the plane.

The Boeing 737 Max 9 remains grounded in the United States until the FAA releases a final directive on how airlines should conduct ungrounding inspections on 171 airplanes. The FAA said Wednesday it has received new data from preliminary inspections of 40 of those airplanes, and once it approves an inspection and maintenance process, it will require every airline with 737-9 Max planes to complete that inspection before the planes can return to the skies.

Alaska Airlines said Thursday it is cancelling all Boeing 737 Max 9 flights through Sunday as it continues to wait for the FAA to issue the final directive for ungrounding the planes.

In a Thursday update posted to its website, Alaska Airlines says the grounding of its 65 Max 9s “continues to have a tremendous impact on our operation,” causing the cancelation of 110 to 150 flights per day. Alaska Airlines says its techs have finished early inspections of some of its Max 9 jets and shared that information with Boeing who in turn is sharing it with the FAA

Spirit AeroSystems is a major Boeing contractor that builds the fuselages of several Boeing jets, including the 737 Max. But the Alaska Airlines incident is not the first time that there have been problems with the quality of its work causing problems for Boeing planes.

In April Boeing announced that a “non-standard manufacturing process” discovered during the installation of two fittings in the rear fuselage made by Spirit AeroSystems for the 737 Max caused delays in deliveries and production and required additional inspection by its airline customers. The FAA allowed the planes that had been delivered to keep flying in that instance.

The supplier used to be part of Boeing but Boeing spun-off its Wichita division and Oklahoma operations into Spirit AeroSystems. While the company now has customers other than Boeing, it is by far its largest customer, accounting for 62% of its revenue during the first nine months of this year.

CNN’s Chris Isidore contributed to this story

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/18/business/boeing-ceo-spirit-aerosystems-alaska-airlines/index.html

[Corylax18]

On 1/20/2024 at 1:38 PM, JohnS said:

The recent Alaskan Airlines accident involving the Boeing 737 Max 9 continues a saga of safety failures for the Boeing 737 Max series since 2019.

You're failing to see the forest through the trees. Boeing has been a dumpster fire since they decided accountants should run the company. What we've been seeing over the last 5 years or so is the result of a very deliberate choice to pump short term stock prices at the cost of any and every thing else. I copied a few more stories below detailing Boeings failures across ALL of their business lines. It started when they decided to move their headquarters to Chicago more than 20 years ago. They can't get the 777X off the ground, even though its just a rewing/engine of a long flying plane. The KC46 (military air refueling platform) will never be profitable, its already 5.4 Billion dollars over budget. Their space division has stumbled and bumbled to billions of dollars in losses and having their lunch eaten by SpaceX. They can't seem to get basic code writing correct, let alone successfully complete more complicated tasks. The Dreamliner is the only program they have going right now that can even remotely be considered a success and its been plagued by plenty of its own QC issues as well. The company as a whole is a failed experiment in letting bean counters tell engineers how they should be designing and constructing airplanes/space ships. Absent a clean sweep of the C Suite and Board, I don't see Boeing pulling themselves out of the nosedive they've been in for the last 15 years. 

 https://hbr.org/2001/10/inside-boeings-big-move

https://onemileatatime.com/news/boeing-777x-delay/

https://breakingdefense.com/2022/01/boeing-racks-up-402m-cost-overrun-on-kc-46-tanker/#:~:text=Total cost overruns for the,must be paid by Boeing.&text=WASHINGTON%3A Boeing has tallied up,program%2C the company announced today.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/06/boeing-stands-down-from-starliner-launch-to-address-recently-found-problems/

https://airinsight.com/new-shimming-issue-delays-boeing-787-deliveries/

[TacoSauce]

I know nothing about airplanes, however I recall a conversation from years ago that is apropos of today's events.

Around 2009/2010 timeframe I sat in a conversation where I heard about a Sr. Boeing technical engineer who was desperately trying to figure out how to retire early because Boeing had become a "dumpster fire." Apparently around that time period, They changed the product design paradigm. In the new paradigm, projects would be run by a panel of non-technical managers representing each function. All decisions were made by this group "by committee," or by consensus vote of the managers. To compound matters, Boeing shifted most of the design and technical work to contractors in Asia. Boeing's remaining technical staff was removed from decision making and instead was tasked with becoming managers of these external teams. The end result, was that each function didn't know what the other functions were doing, and so each group designed systems that weren't compatible with any other system. Internal Boeing technical staff then had to scramble to figure out how to graft all the systems together into one Franken-Plane and still meet timelines. 

Interesting to think back on that conversation now and realize that that was the time period where Boeing was starting to design the 737Max.

[Duxnutz]

I blame Southwest Airlines. 

[Rushman]

34 minutes ago, Duxnutz said:

I blame Southwest Airlines. 

I would be interested to know why. 

[Chibearsv]

We did assorted case studies in my advanced operations management class where we analyzed each case in writing and one of us would be required to make a presentation to make their case. After 5 or six cases where we saw how we could've saved more money here by buying materials in bulk or save a little there by turning up the speed on the assembly line, etc. One of the last cases was about assembling aircraft. Cost savings was so ingrained in us, that we analyzed the manufacturing process the same as we would have analyzed building a radio or a blender or a sledge hammer. We all turned in our analyses to the prof, eager to get our grade, and show how much we had learned that year. The professor walked into class the next morning and threw all of our assignments onto the floor and announced that we all failed. "You don't cut corners building airplanes or you will kill people!". I'll never forget it and it was the most impactful class I ever took in college.

[Rushman]

Wow. Pretty awesome way your prof led you all down that road. Thanks for the story. 

[HDGSN]

Just picked this up. It’s next up on my reading list.

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/646497/flying-blind-by-peter-robison/

[JohnS]

19 hours ago, Chibearsv said:

We all turned in our analyses to the prof, eager to get our grade, and show how much we had learned that year. The professor walked into class the next morning and threw all of our assignments onto the floor and announced that we all failed. "You don't cut corners building airplanes or you will kill people!". I'll never forget it and it was the most impactful class I ever took in college.

You nailed it. Concern for safety is the obvious tenet for why this whole industry exists. Without it, there's no purpose for travelling via aeroplanes whatsoever.

[Fugu]

22 hours ago, Chibearsv said:

"You don't cut corners building airplanes or you will kill people!"

Funny thing is, the very same thing we see happening in the privatisation of public health systems. Cutting corners and maxing shareholder value. And all the while everybody is looking shocked at these rare airplane incidents - that’s what’s killing people. No one cares.

(Sorry, just a little bit of derailing.)

[Duxnutz]

23 hours ago, Rushman said:

I would be interested to know why. 

A large fault for the lack of a clean sheet design narrow body from Boeing is because Southwest love the 737; have ordered hundreds and were reluctant for them to stray from the design. Money talks. Developing the 737 from the original 1960s design all the way through the Next Gen and now MAX they have not to been able to stray from the classic overhead panel on the 737; which would require a new type rating and expensive pilot training. When starting the engines on a brand new 737 one still manually turns the air conditioning packs off, couples the generators to the bus etc which is automatically controlled on Airbus (and has been for 20yrs or so). It’s a piecemeal design.

So basically they’ve pushed the original 100 seat design a long way and possibly too far. They needed bigger engines for the 737 max so made the landing gear higher which led to interesting aerodynamic issues at the edges of the flight envelope. Stretching the airframe has led to the need for the requirement of an extra emergency exit in the higher seat config which not everyone uses, hence a fuselage plug to block the exit so they don’t have to carry an extra flight attendant. 
 

Good grief. Saying all that, Airbus has had some issues with the new A350 too so no airframe manufacturer is immune. 
 

 

[joeypots]

I understand that regulation can be onerous but some things industries need over sight. A lot of oversight. The self certification by Boeing of its aircraft allowed by the FAA has proven to be dangerous. That said, it’s a wonder that it hasn’t proven to be more lethal. Below is a Q&A cut from the WSJ last week. I sent it to my wife because she was worried on the flights we just took to Florida and back. 

Quote

Two harrowing incidents involving planes at the start of the new year—on top of concerns that air-traffic controllers are under more stress and newly hired pilots are facing unfamiliar situations—have raised concerns about the safety of commercial flights. We spoke to WSJ Science of Success columnist Ben Cohen, who delved into aviation history to see if the U.S. system has improved.

A: “Forget about the hole in the side of the plane, the iPhones falling from the sky and the door plug of a Boeing 737 falling into some guy’s backyard. Airplanes have never been safer. The biggest U.S. airlines have now gone nearly 15 years without a fatal crash—and it’s not just because of tech, engineering and luck. It was also a choice. This revolution in the sky that has saved countless lives was the result of an innovative but counterintuitive program to improve air safety, one that dates back to the 1990s and depends on pilots voluntarily reporting issues and doing something that nobody likes to do: admit their own mistakes. The old system was designed to explain accidents after they happened, but the new system was designed to prevent those accidents from ever happening. And it worked better than anyone could have imagined. But it still feels like a miracle that flying across the skies of America has become safer than walking across the street. And it’s worth remembering the next time you’re sitting in a giant metal tube at 30,000 feet.”

 

[SCgarman]

Boeing needs to go back to the drawing board. That 737 Max has been nothing but a myriad of issues since it's inception. Even with a "fix", the negative P.R. surrounding all these problems doesn't bode well. Glad I stay on the ground! 😉

[chris12381]

Aviation is my industry. My friends, colleagues and I have been watching this disaster happen in slow motion since the late 1990s. Generally, we agree it began when Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas, appointed then CEO of McDonnell Douglas Harry Stonecipher as COO, and moved their headquarters out of Seattle to Chicago. Stonecipher was a former GE executive who learned Jack Welch’s management style…and applied it to Boeing. Keep in mind that Jack Welch was well-respected by many on Wall Street and graduate-level business schools in the 1990s and early 00s. His books were considered "must reads". These days, most people seem to look back at his management of GE as an unmitigated disaster. The kind of short-term profits he was peddling could only come at the expense of long-term consequences.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing-lost-its-bearings/602188/

In my opinion, the influence of GE executives who worked under the tutelage of Jack Welch on Boeing can’t be overstated. It would be comical if not tragic.  Harry Stonecipher, CEO 2003-2005 James McNerney, CEO 2005-2015 (oversaw the development of the MAX) and current CEO Dave Calhoun, CEO 2019-Present.  And who the hell knows how many others in the C-Suite/Board of Directors were of this ilk.    

If you want to read something interesting, this was written by someone 21 YEARS AGO. I found it around that same time and I still find myself reading it whenever Boeing is in the news. Whomever wrote this saw ALL the writing on the wall.  

The Downfall of a Great American Airplane Company - An Insider's Perspective