Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

So on top of its aircraft troubles, and its spaceship trouble, oh - did you hear they have an on-going strike, now they have had a satellite explode in space! (the strike is in its sixth week and workers (jet assembly line) voted to reject Boing's most recent offer) Boing just announced a $6 billion quarterly loss last week

So. The satellite. The Intelsat 33e was launched in 2016 and experienced "an anomaly" Saturday, and is now in 20 trackable pieces, and who knows how many smaller ones according to Space Command, Roscomos says they're tracking 80, and the major debris does not represent a threat to other satellites. These huge satellites are normally in much higher geostationary orbits so the debris is a very different field than if they were in lower orbits.

Its job was to provide communications across Europe, Asia, and Africa. Boing is working with other satellite vendors to reestablish services for its customers.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/boeing-satellite-intelsat-33e-explodes-space-anamoly/

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/10/24/0142204/boeing-made-satellite-explodes-in-space

Strike news:
https://apnews.com/article/boeing-earnings-strike-vote-new-ceo-af6c6dab8747d5b8189df97a55e6b8d9

The noise is described as like a sonar ping. Clearly it has reverted to P-3C Orion mode and is hunting for Nazi submarines from a better vantage point. What it's going to attack with if it finds any, I'm not sure.

The cause is most likely benign, however, with Boing these days, you can't be too careful. Spacecraft have a history of odd, benign noises. From the article: "Astronauts notice such oddities in space from time to time. For example, during China's first human spaceflight int 2003, astronaut Yang Liwei said he heard what sounded like an iron bucket being knocked by a wooden hammer while in orbit. Later, scientists realized the noise was due to small deformations in the spacecraft due to a difference in pressure between its inner and outer walls."

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/09/starliners-speaker-began-emitting-strange-sonar-noises-on-saturday/

I could spew an absolute ton of invective right now.

That shitshow of a capsule called the Starliner should not have launched. They knew there were problems with those thrusters, and they had problems docking.

And the problems have gotten worse.

The two astronauts were supposed to be up there for two weeks, then return home. They've been up there for TWO MONTHS. And now there's some very hard problems, and they could potentially result in fatalities.

Here's the basic problem. A spaceship contains batteries. The batteries have a fixed lifespan. The batteries in the Starliner are rated through the end of August. That's not much time.

NASA is not 100% confident that the thruster problem is resolved. But Boeing is. Everybody raise your hands and jump up and down if you trust Boeing's answer.

Now, the previous successful mission of the Starliner worked great. Unmanned, it was launched, flew up to the ISS, docked itself, then later uncoupled, de-orbited, and landed in the ocean and was recovered. So the obvious answer is, why can't they do that, and the two astronauts be returned on a later flight?

BECAUSE BOEING REMOVED THE FUCKING SOFTWARE THAT PERFORMED THAT FUNCTION.

They updated software that worked. The big question is whether or not NASA and the two astronauts were notified of this change. Now someone, or some two, will have to be in that capsule, with potentially twitchy thrusters, to decouple it from the ISS and attempt to fly it back home.

The thrusters are needed twice. To move the capsule away from the ISS - SAFELY - and to reorient the capsule for its de-orbit burn. If the de-orbit burn is not performed correctly, it can mean quite literal death for the capsule occupants. And the thrusters are not 100% reliable.

I am absolutely flaming furious at Boeing!

Yes, space is hard. That's why engineers are careful and try to make sure everything is done right BEFORE any vehicle is classed as flight capable. This damn Starliner should never have been launched, it was scrubbed once because the thrusters were leaking, they should have scrubbed it again until they thoroughly understood what the problem was and it was absolutely fixed.

People's lives depend on it, you don't fuck around.

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/08/nasa-likely-to-significantly-delay-the-launch-of-crew-9-due-to-starliner-issues/

No, a Dutch roll isn't a weird sex position. Well, it probably is, but we won't get into that. In an aircraft, it's an uncontrolled side-to-side yawing motion of the tail, and it can be lethal: a 747 experienced that and crashed, killing most all on board. In this case, the plane, less than two years old, experienced it after taking off from Phoenix. The pilots were able to regain control and landed safely. A subsequent investigation found a damaged backup power control unit, which is responsible for power to the tail.

If a Dutch roll is not controlled by the flight crew, it can cause the tail to shear off or otherwise fail catastrophically.

The plane was grounded for several days and then flown to Everett, Washington where one of the airline's major maintenance vendors is located. Reportedly no one was seriously injured in the incident, though many were violently ill.

https://www.npr.org/2024/06/13/nx-s1-5004725/boeing-737-max-southwest-dutch-roll

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/06/14/0331240/faa-is-investigating-new-incident-involving-a-boeing-737-max-8-jet-in-midair

*sigh*

The test on the Dreamliner was to "confirm adequate bonding and grounding where the wings join the fuselage on certain 787 Dreamliner airplanes". A Boeing employee witnessed some shenanigans, apparently saw the inspections not being performed or being done in a half-assed fashion and being logged as complete, and reported it to his supervisor. His supervisor reported it to executive leadership, and executive leadership reported it to the FAA who are investigating.

Boeing says that this will not affect the safety of planes in service, which I find a little dubious - seems to me that every plane in service will need an inspection. They also say that it will affect "customers and employees "because the test now needs to be conducted out of sequence on airplanes in the build process" i.e. they have to go back and redo those inspections, probably with additional supervision to make sure they're done properly and logged, which is going to disrupt production and slow down delivery for a little while.

Once again, corporate culture of 'gotta get them planes out the door to meet deliverables and quarterly profit expectations!' and not enforcing safety standards rears its ugly head.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/boeing-says-workers-skipped-required-tests-on-787-but-recorded-work-as-completed/

Wow. Words absolutely fail me.

John Barnett had worked for Boeing for thirty years before retiring in 2017 for medical reasons. He was a senior quality control engineer on the 787 program. He became a whistleblower when he saw sub-standard parts being installed and later discovered a 25% failure rate in the passenger breathing mask system for the 787.

He was in Charleston as part of a long-running legal battle against Boeing. When he failed to appear as part of this on Saturday, they searched for him at his hotel and he was found dead in his truck in the parking lot.

Of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

I really, REALLY hope the FBI steps in on this one. It might have been a clean suicide, it might not have been. But there's too much going on with Boeing without there being a VERY serious investigation into this!

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68534703

Ed Clark had been in charge of the Max program for almost three years. He came up through the ranks and had been with Boeing for 18 years, having previously been chief engineer and chief 737 mechanic. He knows the plane.

This is purely sacrificial, a move by the board to appease investors. There was also a shuffling of directors and the creation of a new director position. See: Titanic and deck chair rearrangement. If they don't stop putting shareholder return above safety, it's not going to do a damn thing to improve the situation. Clark was not the reason those bolts weren't there, it was the board's drive for money by more rapidly pushing the planes out the door and increasing deliverables. Also a crappy ticketing system.

And this is what the board is trying to appease: "Beyond the problems that have resulted in the grounding of the 737 Max 8 and Max 9 after the incidents, the problems at Boeing have also postponed certification of two new versions of the jet, the Max 7 and a stretched version, the Max 10.

The CEOs of three key Boeing customers – United Airlines, Southwest and Delta Air Lines – have recently all said they no longer are counting on getting those new versions of the planes they had ordered anytime soon. United CEO Scott Kirby referred to the Alaska Air incident as the “straw that broke the camel’s back” in terms of his airline’s planning assumptions for the Max 10." Southwest's entire fleet is almost 100% 737. They did this to standardize maintenance operations. If Southwest is willing to break that up, that's seriously bad news for Boeing.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/21/business/boeing-removes-head-of-737-max-program-in-wake-of-safety-incidents/index.html

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/24/02/24/0553215/boeing-removes-head-of-its-737-max-program-after-januarys-door-bolts-incident

Oh, boy! LUCY, YOU HAVE SOME 'SPLAININ' TO DO!

There are SOOO MANY problems here!

First off, the problem appears to be entirely Boeing's fault. Spirit manufactured the fuselage - including installing the door plug - then the fuselage was transported from Kansas to Seattle via train for final assembly. Okay, not unreasonable.

Except these fuselages are riddled with defects, or 'non-conformities'. Spirit has a team of technicians permanently based in Seattle to work on these at Boeing's assembly line. These are 'warranty repairs' by Spirit. No idea how big this team is, I expect pretty sizeable.

This particular fuselage, like all the others, had lots of problems. They immediately spotted a number of bad rivets on the door plug on the RIGHT side of the fuselage, but didn't spot problems on the door plug on the LEFT side, which was the one that blew out. They then discovered problems with the plug on the left side.

Now two other things need to be explained.

First, Boeing has two computer systems to deal with repair ticketing. One is used to broadly discuss issues, the other is used to specifically ticket the issue, and more particularly, mark when it's done. And hey, guess what! The two systems do not talk to each other! And it takes time to update tickets in the second system, and since we know companies do not like paying overtime, this sometimes doesn't happen.

This failure to update tickets is definitely a factor in the door plug blow-out.

The second thing to explain is a matter of basic physics, specifically, atmospheric pressure. At ground level, the air is much denser. The higher you climb, pressure is lower. Think about an airplane. It's pressurized. That means that as it climbs, the pressure on it decreases, and it's going to expand.

Now we're back to the door plug. And, for that matter, the doors on an aircraft. I'm definitely going to try to remember to look at this the next time I fly! The door plug is not welded in place, it's removeable, just like an emergency exit door is. It's just that it's not removeable from the inside - normally - without that trim panel being taken out first. To overly simplify it, bolts are screwed into the side of the plug. The head of the bolt sticks out. On the side of the aircraft, in the nook where the plug is, are these little guide tracks. As the plane gains altitude, the door plug actually slides up a little bit - but this isn't a problem as the guide tracks hold the plug in place. And pressurization isn't a problem because there's an excellent rubber seal around the door plug to maintain the cabin pressure.

Of course, this assumes that the bolts are in place. No bolts, nothing for the guide tracks to catch. And when the plane gets to a high enough altitude, the door plug goes sailing.

Boeing removed the door to service it - NOT SPIRIT. And they screwed the pooch when they reinstalled it. The bolts were not put back in place. It was not documented, and apparently when the door was recovered from that teacher's back yard, there were no bolts in the door.

The whistle-blower provided full documentation to the Seattle Times, and presumably the National Transportation Safety Board, as to what happened from Boeing's internal systems.


This article is a long read, but pretty understandable.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing-not-spirit-mis-installed-piece-that-blew-off-alaska-max-9-jet/

https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/01/25/0314242/boeing-not-spirit-mis-installed-piece-that-blew-off-alaska-max-9-jet

Raise your hands if you're utterly shocked at this report.

[looks around, doesn't see a lot of hands raised]

The CEO of Alaska made a couple of interesting statements, but the most interesting was that they are reconsidering an order placed with Boeing for 277 MAX10 aircraft, which do not exist yet. Alaska recently purchased Hawaiian Air, which operates Airbus jets, I would imagine that Alaska is considering diversifying their fleet with an additional influx of Airbus. While this would increase their maintenance costs, it would probably help them in the long run.

Alaska is having to cancel approximately 150 flights a day while its MAX9 fleet is grounded, the FAA has not yet announced what it will take to get those jets back in the air.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/alaska-airlines-found-more-loose-bolts-boeing-737-max-9-ceo-says-rcna135316

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/01/alaska-airlines-says-it-found-many-loose-bolts-on-its-boeing-737-max-9s/


In other news today, a nose wheel on a Boeing 757 fell off. Now, I'm not picking on Boeing on this one because the 757 is a much older jet. The plane was sitting on the ground waiting to taxi, and for reasons unknown, one of the two nose wheels decided it wanted to roll down a hill. There were no injuries to passengers or crew, and no further damage to the aircraft. Everyone deplaned, were put on another flight, and all was well. Large aircraft have two nose wheels, losing one was certainly unusual, but didn't represent a huge danger to the craft.

But there's an interesting note in this article. The travel service Kayak has added a filter that, when you're scheduling air travel, you can EXCLUDE Boeing 737 MAX aircraft! Now that is both useful and a huge PR blow to Boeing.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/24/delta-air-lines-plane-nose-wheel-falls-off


Boeing's problem is they fully embraced Wall Street culture when they merged with McDonnell-Douglas. They started chasing 'shareholder value' rather than its engineering/safety culture that it had before. Now it has the classic 'do more with less' which leads to corners being cut, and we can now clearly see what it's led to.

Airbus, on the other hand, even though it is making planes in the USA, is adhering to European safety standards and isn't seeing problems like this. While their planes aren't 100% perfect, they do something that I think is absolutely brilliant: the cockpit of each Airbus model is almost identical to every other! This minimizes pilot retraining and helps them get certified across types much more quickly. Boeing? Each one is its own beast, requiring its own multi-million dollar simulator and training program, and a lengthy training and certification program for pilots.

I've been waiting for some more information before writing about this, as it's quite the story!

If you have a fear of flying, maybe you don't want to read this. I am going to cut to the good news: no serious injuries and no one died. I'll put the rest under a cut for your consideration.

( Read more... )