Because Boeing were on such a good streak already…
the front fell off, you say?
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Working for Boeings PR department must be absolute madness right now… imagine having to somehow excuse all those fuck ups and every week there is a new one
Except this one isn’t even a Boeing issue - this is a plane Delta has operated since 1992. This is entirely Delta’s maintenance’s fault. Boeing will still get blamed for it, of course.
I know, but no one cares who’s responsible at the moment. What people care about is that they read a new article about Boeings planes endangering passengers every 3 days. So while Delta is most likely at fault, Boeing is gonna take the hit to the company image. That’s why I was specifically speaking about the Boeing PR team. Those guys and the crisis managers won’t be able to catch a break for a loooong time.
45,000 commercial flights a day in the U.S. 35 deaths in the last 10 years. Thats about 164 million flights.
~115 people dying by car daily, and those numbers have been rising every year…
If planes get their kill ratio up high enough people will stop caring and start saying it is expected/needed.
Clearly more plane crashes are the answer.
I don’t think we have enough information to say whether it’s a Boeing thing or not. The reason I say that is, that my understanding is some maintenance and repair operations will be performed by Boeing, or Boeing appointed subcontractors. What we may never find out is whether there was any work done on, or requiring access via the nose wheel area, and whether it was performed by Boeing/Boeing subcontracted technicians.
But, as I said in my other comment. This will be an ongoing problem where every Boeing plane issue will be reported now and unless announced by the operator or Boeing themselves, we’ll never know whether it was a Boeing maintenance problem or just neglect by the operator.
The thing is, every Boeing plane that has any problem is going to make it to the news right now. So it’s very hard to see what is relevant and what is just “one of those things”. So, this will make them look worse than they really are.
Having said that, they have problems. My opinion is that cost-cutting has created all their recent actual problems (MCAS, missing bolts, loose bolts etc) and I’d argue that unless the actual location(s) responsible for these problems is identified, the safest thing to do would be to recall ALL aircraft recently (last 3 years AT LEAST) serviced, repaired or had their configuration changed at a Boeing owned or subcontracted location should be reviewed for substandard work.
My reasoning here is that if we have loose/missing bolts on the 737 Max 8/9 and -900ER. It won’t stop there, it is going to almost certainly be an institutionalised problem of quality control slippage that could affect any aircraft maintenance, repair, or adjustment operation.
But, I’m not an aviation expert, so my opinion is worth very little.
I agree with your comment, even though I have no idea on the technical aspects. What I can weigh in on is crisis management, especially communication.
Boeing needs to take control of the situation and actively start communicating and showing that they are working on fixing this thing. In Situational Crisis Communication Theory you would call it a rebuild approach. They tried denial, they tried downplaying, it’s not working. A rebuild strategy is usually the last resort, as things like admitting your mistakes and fixing them are rarely appreciated by investors. Furthermore it’s usually a huuuuge cost to do a recall on that scale. But Boeing need to show the public that they are actively working on improving the situation, to earn back their trust. So at least a partial recall should be considered.
You’re exactly right in your first paragraph about the news. The media and the public are very sensitive to Boeing quality issues rn. These articles won’t stop unless one of three things happen. Either Boeing gets their shit together and gets some effective crisis management and communication done, the company goes bust, or something else turns up in the news that replaces this. The third option will be the most likely, but it will also haunt them forever. It’s like that exploding galaxy note 7 situation. There were articles about that for every new generation of Galaxy Note, despite Samsung doing pretty well in investigating the issues. And while the following Note phones sold alright, the whole thing was a significant loss of trust and money for Samsung and enabled competitors like Huawai to catch up.
The company is still worth over 100 billions. They do something right.
Otherwise I agree with you. It’s almost hilarious to see fail after fail (as long as you are not in the plane).
What they do right is having a duopoly with Airbus, and great military contracts. So investors know that even if things are shit rn, they will probably get better again.
Furthermore, while I agree that Boeing probably will not go bankrupt over this, the valuation sometimes is not a great indicator of what’s going on internally. Enron was worth over 60 billion. Half a year later they were at zero. Now I’m not saying Boeing is nearly that bad, but they are in some trouble for sure.
How is this Boeings issue? This is a maintenance problem with the airline. Tires get replaced by maintenance staff. That plane isn’t brand new.
Careful. Boeing already tried the “but it’s not our job” excuse on a few major incidences with an executive now locked behind bars after pushing bribes to cover it up . They’d be best backing off on taking an attitude about where to assign blame. They got a lot of red spots that will never come out.
If I recall correctly, the aircraft manufacturer writes the maintenance guidelines.
This could be a Boeing issue, if it’s due to something that happened at the time the aircraft was built, or due to a foreseeable gap in the maintenance guidelines.
It could be a Delta issue, if they weren’t following the maintenance guidelines, or a maintenance contractor working for them wasn’t following them and they didn’t catch it.
It could also have been (very small but nonzero chance) the result of physical trauma to the plane that wasn’t foreseen, back in the 1990s when it was built, as something that might cause an issue of this magnitude. I haven’t yet seen any information on whether this particular aircraft has a history of hard landings or running over debris on the runway. Freak accidents do happen.
All of those have precedents in aviation history.
I remember watching this PBS Frontline segment on plane maintenance 10 years or so ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw0b020OFj4
I imagine we still have those problems and the recent news of counterfeit parts entering the market is scary.
Good thing these recent incidents ended up with no serious injuries or death. Perhaps this timing is good in some really weird way as the Supreme Court starts considering powers of regulatory agencies and concerns around government funding to highlight the importance and need for this government role.
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I think the first two repliers have never heard of Ockham’s razor. I mean a micro meteorite could have struck some part of the wheel and knocked it off too, but probably not. Though that would be boeing’s fault to, because they didn’t make it micro meteorite tolerant.
It can be Occam or Ockham. It’s named after William of Ockham, but it was the fashion at that time for scholars to “Latinise” their names, hence the alternative spelling.
No worries, it has been towed outside of the environment.
No, no, no, no, it’s being towed BEYOND the environment. It’s not in the environment.
The front usually isn’t supposed to fall off
