Boeing's Max9s cleared to resume flight by the FAA

[thewayne]

Good news for Alaska Airlines and United Airlines. Alaska says they're going to resume some of their canceled flights Friday: it takes a little time to notify pilots and crew that they're needed back on the job.

HOWEVER....

"United Airlines chief executive, Scott Kirby, also told CNBC that he is "disappointed".
"The Max 9 grounding is probably the straw that broke the camel's back for us," he said, adding that "we're going to build a plan that doesn't have the [Boeing] Max 10 in it"."

Not that it will happen, but it's been suggested that Boeing should purge ALL McDonnell-Douglas executives that are still in the company and get actual engineers back into important positions. But it won't happen.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68090175

Comments

[moonhare]

The situation makes me happy I'm no longer involved with aerospace companies. When I left (laid off, terminated, right-sized) we had already made the transition to JIT processing (just-in-time) and were relying more and more on vendors' QA systems to assure up-to-specification hardware. Paperwork was examined, some parts would be inspected to some AQL or another, and everything would be hunky-dory. It worked, for the most part. I never had a rejection for anything I was responsible for verifying.

[thewayne]

Hooo, just wait until you read the whistle-blower post I just put up!

[disneydream06]

WOW, that seems sudden. :o :o :o

And I agree, heads will not roll. ARGH......
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

I don't think it's sudden, there weren't that many planes for the respective airlines to inspect and repair as needed, and it was a very high priority.  It's such a new plane that not many were in service, a total of 45 or so, IIRC.

[disneydream06]

Ahh... I thought it was a lot more then that. :o
I didn't realize it was so new.

[thewayne]

No, it's a very new plane.  It's now like three months since the Max9 was type certified, like 3 weeks of that with it being grounded for that door plug popping out!  Yeah, VERY new and only the two American airlines using it at the moment and both of them not planning on any more purchases for some time.

[disneydream06]

WOWZA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Old planes are bad enough, I'm not sure I would want to fly on such a new one either. :o :o :o

[thewayne]

The interesting thing is that the inspection process means that old planes are fairly well debugged.  For example, that plane that had a nose wheel fall off this week?  That plane has undergone probably two tear-down inspections where the plane is practically stripped down to the bones and inspected to the Nth degree!  Those inspections take a long time, cost literally like $4 million to do.  But the least little thing gets tagged and repaired.  It had at least two of those in its life time.  Those inspections happen like every decade or so, I don't know if they're based on physical age or air miles.

[disneydream06]

WOWZA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now that's what I call an inspection. :o
Hugs, Jon

[silveradept]

Sacrificing the C-suite would probably be the best move for Boeing to do and to get people who are interested in making airworthy aircraft to come back to the company, or to want to work for it. They'd free up so much payroll to hire good engineers, mechanics, and inspectors with.

[thewayne]

Apparently they don't realize that producing a good, reliable product encourages investment.

[silveradept]

You would think they'd figure out that good, reliable products are the most profitable thing any company can produce, but everyone seems to be running away from that idea and that conclusion and chasing some weird trick that almost always explodes in their faces.