United & Alaska Air's MAX9 inspections: loose bolts and 'parts' found!

[thewayne]

The airlines, while inspecting their grounded 737-MAX9 fleets, have reported finding loose bolts (United) and 'parts' (Alaska). Fortunately these are easily fixed by the maintenance crews. But it does lead you to ask WTF?! is going on at Boeing and the other company that is outfitting these planes!

No report on what other airlines are finding. But clearly Boeing's inspections are failing bigly.

Boeing stock lost 8% of its value Monday and more on Tuesday, unspecified in the article.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/08/united-finds-loose-bolts-boeing-737-max-planes

Comments

[disneydream06]

I saw a headline tonight that said Boeing is saying "It's our mistake".
That should tank their stocks. :o
Hugs, Jon

[moonhare]

Before my job in the printing company, I worked in aerospace component manufacturing for almost 15 years, most of that as a Quality Assurance engineer, and things like this dumbfound me. It has the appearance of loose inspection standards, poor employee training, confusing instructions, and a host of other preventable errors. Even an uncalibrated torque wrench. But until the investigation is complete, one really cannot say.

What I can say, or quote, from a PWA senior QA inspector: “There aren’t any curbs at 30,000 feet.”

[thewayne]

My personal opinion: Boeing has made two huge mistakes in the last decade.  One was agreeing to a fixed-price contract on the two jets to replace Air Force One, the other was the new rocket for NASA.  They're losing billions on those.  With bean counter MBAs in charge of the company, and moving HQ to DC from Seattle, the board is hopelessly out of touch with the production floor.  They're cutting corners in ways that are jeopardizing safety.

[kaishin108]

I read an opinion in the New York Times today, sure it was just an opinion but he was saying it seems like a serious manufacturing problem. Jeez... I have no faith in Boeing.

[rain_gryphon]

I strongly suspect that DEI initiatives at Boeing and its suppliers have at least something, and perhaps a great deal, to do with this. When you hire people for diversity instead of talent, such things are unavoidable.

[thewayne]

Barrons thinks otherwise, pointing out a lack of engineers in key management roles and that Airbus has higher DEI requirements, being an EU corporation, and doesn't seem to be having these problems.  https://www.barrons.com/articles/boeing-elon-musk-dei-diversity-c102c788

[silveradept]

This is sounding more and more like a manufacturer problem, rather than a problem of improper maintenance, so that's not going to be good for Boeing at all. I have heard elsenet that the MAX design is inherently cursed, because it's trying to do things that were never meant to be done, like bigger engines on the same fuselage.

[thewayne]

The MAX9 is far too new for it to be a maintenance issue: this particular plane is only two months from delivery to the airline from the manufacturer!  Now, the 737 MAXs that crashed: those were the MAX8 series.  I don't know what the difference is between the two, but definitely different production run.

[silveradept]

Fair enough. Mostly the argument seemed to be that Boeing couldn't make structural changes to the MAX planes to accommodate the bigger engines, so they did a lot of compensation work in software instead, and if that's the case, then hardware issues like this one are not going to be easily correctable at all, and that will mean a lot of money wasted on planes that can't fly well or reliably.

[thewayne]

Yeah, that was the software issue that downed those two MAX8 flights: it wasn't easy to override the "fix"!  On an Airbus, if you find the software doing something like that which endangers the plane, pull back on the stick and it overrides the software.  On a Boeing: you had to pull a circuit breaker!  Good luck doing that in a panic!  As it happened, once there was a pilot traveling as a passenger who recognized what was happening, informed the flight crew, and knew what circuit breaker to pull and saved the flight.  I read today that currently there's only 200 MAX9s flying in the USA, it didn't mention world-wide.

[silveradept]

Well, that's two bad designs for Boeing in this series, then. Makes you wonder if they'll pull the whole line because of that. It might be cheaper than continuing to try and fly and fix bad designs.

[kellan_the_tabby]

... parts

that's a worryingly nonspecific term

[thewayne]

Yes, it most certainly is.