The amount of Boeing failures is so problematic, it points to the kind of cultural failure within the company where in almost every other circumstance it should just be shut down and sold for parts.
The problem is that that is such an unacceptable situation that it can't ever be allowed to happen.
Boeing is a huge employer in the US, not even counting all the direct subsidiaries who would shut down if it was shut down.
Boeing is developing critical space hardware for NASA. As great as SpaceX is, the US should not rely on a single company for this. I don't think even SpaceX wants this.
If Boeing did fail, that leaves Airbus as the only commercial jet manufacturer? I don't think anyone, including Airbus and definitely not any airline which has used the airbus-boeing dance during price negotiations wants this to happen.
Not to even mention the supply chain issues with keeping our massive fleets of Boeing airplanes flying if Boeing goes defunct.
We also have to consider the defense implications of loosing what is now our only serious domestic manufacturer of many military aircraft and other ordinance.
Boeing literally can not be allowed to fail, the implications would be too great. I also literally see no other path for Boeing but failure.
I also think out of the ashes of that failure something much more focused and better would emerge and that, without that failure, it probably never will but still the failure cannot be allowed to happen.
This is a problem discovered during testing. It could mean testing is being done properly; probably it’s a bit late in the dev cycle, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing; now it’s making news because of what happened with Boeing in the past.
But not finding failures during testing maybe means you’re not testing hard enough.
I've done a couple rounds through aerospace or aerospace-adjacent over the years.
This seems to be a certification test (https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boein...), aka the "make-or-break, 0-failures allowed test before we get final approval to sell this aircraft, and we are 99.999% sure this test is going to go flawlessly".
Failing is a pretty big deal. This should have been found far sooner in the process.
> But not finding failures during testing maybe means you’re not testing hard enough.
Also not an airplane expert...
Agreed that finding issues is (often) good (it means you are human and you also found your errors).
But of course such testing, certification, is costly and uneconomical, and if you aren't allowed to fail, then you can't do the correct testing either...
I suspect the issue is two-fold: Firstly, Boeing can't afford to fail, and hence can't test. Secondly, it is driven primarily by profit, not safety, which is part of why it can't afford to fail. Profit drives/motivates new features, efficiencies, and ultimately complex systems, which require exponentially more time to thoroughly test than simple, inefficient, easily verifiable systems.
Falling apart because they are no longer profitable may not be a good thing either - sure, something could "rise from the ashes", but that thing will be in all likelihood, immature, poorly tested, and mostly incompatible with existing systems.
The best bet would be to simplify, as much as possible, all systems, suppliers, etc, and to double, quadruple, perhaps even expand by an order of magnitude the testing effort(s). Perhaps even some sort of new New Deal could come about...
What they are saying here is that the component was designed to X, but, not manufactured to those specifications.
Depending on who made that actual component, this is either a failure of Boeing directly or a failure of Boeing to ensure that their suppliers have adequate processes in place to capture these kinds of problems.
This is actually a much more serious failure than a design failure because the problem can't easily be systemically addressed, there is no single component they need to address now. Boeing can not simply say "we checked the other engine mounts in production and they are fine". Even saying that they addressed the issue with the production of that component is insufficient. The real root cause here is why any component which did not meet design specifications was accepted and allowed to be installed on the aircraft. Boeing will need to do a huge review to understand this and may need to inspect and replace huge numbers of other, seemingly unrelated, components.
> But not finding failures during testing maybe means you’re not testing hard enough.
This is not quite the same. This is finding a failed part that should not have failed, as it should have been designed to -at least- pass the flight test requirements it was designed to fulfil.
And what this article failed to mention was that similar structural issues were found on 2 other test aircrafts.
Our government is not competent enough to do that.
Much of the issues Boeing has are as a result of government involvement.
Just look at the entire starliner debacle, in any truly free market Boeing would have been fired as a vendor years ago. They were (and are) way behind schedule, their unmanned demo flight was a failure, they still went forward with a manned flight which has been an abject failure -- the crew is on month three of what was supposed to be a 3 hour^W^W9 day tour. They might not be coming home till February. I hope they have someone watering their plants.
You seem to be agreeing that our government is not competent enough to handle Boeing from an oversight perspective, let alone actively running the company.
I agree with both of your points, the government should never have allowed the McDonnell Douglas merger (I assume that's what you mean) and I can't possibly agree more that the FAA's "self certification" regime was a hilariously bad concept which was made worse by their implementation.
The inverse happened: the nation was corporatized with regulatory capture and lobbyists purchasing influence outright, so that is prevented from happening.
Well that and the people in charge during that decline need to feel personal consequences.
This is also a problem of incentives:If you can roll your dice and the only possible outcomes are:
A) you save your corporation some money while lowering reliability and fucking up safety, but you get a bonus and IF something happens you are either long gone or never held accountable
B) you do nothing, you gain nothing
Then it is clear why more people choose A. If you want management to feel what they are doing is "taking a risk", then make it really, actually risky for them. Especially if it has the potential to kill people. I am talking about significant jail time on top of losing all benefits made during the act. I am an electrical engineer. If something I am not giving my work due diligence and it ends up killing people, I go to jail. If management makes me use flammable materials to safe money and they burn down an orphanage it is a tragic accident that nobody can change, even when you have whistleblowers warning about it internally and publicly.
I constantly heard the phrase that management has to earn a lot because of the huge responsibilities they carry. If the most dire consequence to breaking those responsibilities is that you leave your job with a golden parachute, then that does not sound like it comes at a huge risk. Sure you need to be able to act like a amoral psychopath, but that is a price they are willing to pay.
This is utter nonsense. I happen to be a white guy working in aerospace. I love that we're finally starting to address some of the bias that has led to preferential hiring of people like me. The non-white, non-male, non-christian, and non-hetero colleagues I have are absolutely brilliant and earned their positions though hard work.
There's nothing wrong with diversity but your career is stillborn if your management buys into the entire DEI cult. It's a dog whistle / trojan horse and not what you think it is.
My carrer is doing just fine, thank you. You're seeing monsters under the bed. There is no "DEI cult." There's simply a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
I have to say the Embraer E195-E2 is a lot more comfortable than a 737 or A320 as a passenger, and that's for a plane that's significantly smaller.
It really shows that it was designed in this century. The focus on type certificates/training is really holding the industry back (as well as causing the terrible MCAS crashes).
I agree, on the one had this is normal, there are issues discovered and corrected during testing of all new aircraft types.
But I also wonder if we aren't pushing the limits of what's reasonable for a 2-engine passenger airliner. I get that the more people you can put on a flight the more money the airlines make from that flight, but there's a practical limit somewhere.
we're still making huge leaps forward in the quality of the base materials, until we stop making progress there, I don't think we're able to say that we're at the practical limit.
> Also I don’t think Airbus would have a problem with Boeing going out of business.
I'm not quite certain. Airbus is possibly quite happy to have a stumbling giant occupying that space and tripping over its own feet. It's a lot more comfortable than having to compete against a heavily subsided Chinese company, like what is happening in the EV market. (Not that they are a threat at the moment)
Are any of the Chinese airframes certified for use in EU or USA? If not, is that 100% political, or is the engineeing/QC not up to standards (which is a bit of a LOL given the context of the question)?
This is partly due to engineering/QC not being up to standards, insofar that the airworthiness certificate delivered by the Chinese Aviation Administration is not recognized/trusted in the West.
But it is not a political decision. Chinese manufacturers wanting to be able to sell and fly their airplanes in the West can simply apply for an EASA (or FAA) certification, like other manufacturers do. If they pass, they are good to go.
The problem is engineering at Boeing is now mostly outsourced (GE influence on that). Eroding decades of knowledge and skills for cheaper labor elsewhere
AT&T was broken up based on location, hence the term Regional Bell Operating Companies.
I’m not sure how the relative straightforwardness of that approach maps to a company that basically has two main supply chains (737 in Renton and everything else in Everett with North Charleston as a satellite.)
Boeing has experienced hundreds of major technical incidents but scant few were covered before the MAX crashes. Dozens and dozens more happened after the crashes.
>If Boeing did fail, that leaves Airbus as the only commercial jet manufacturer? I don't think anyone, including Airbus and definitely not any airline which has used the airbus-boeing dance during price negotiations wants this to happen.
>Boeing literally can not be allowed to fail
They're too broken for America to repair. They should be shut down, and the pieces sold off to Airbus for pennies on the dollar. Then Airbus can take over the designs and start building better-designed aircraft at the ex-Boeing facilities. There should simply be a stipulation that none of the management is allowed to be American, because obviously they can't do it any more.
The problem is that that is such an unacceptable situation that it can't ever be allowed to happen.
Boeing is a huge employer in the US, not even counting all the direct subsidiaries who would shut down if it was shut down.
Boeing is developing critical space hardware for NASA. As great as SpaceX is, the US should not rely on a single company for this. I don't think even SpaceX wants this.
If Boeing did fail, that leaves Airbus as the only commercial jet manufacturer? I don't think anyone, including Airbus and definitely not any airline which has used the airbus-boeing dance during price negotiations wants this to happen.
Not to even mention the supply chain issues with keeping our massive fleets of Boeing airplanes flying if Boeing goes defunct.
We also have to consider the defense implications of loosing what is now our only serious domestic manufacturer of many military aircraft and other ordinance.
Boeing literally can not be allowed to fail, the implications would be too great. I also literally see no other path for Boeing but failure.
I also think out of the ashes of that failure something much more focused and better would emerge and that, without that failure, it probably never will but still the failure cannot be allowed to happen.