Air Crash Thread: Boeing MAX and Other Problems

I'm not sure if that plug is installed by Boeing or by the airlines' maintenance crews (a Southwest buddy says he thinks their planes are also plugged) but either way there will be a written procedure for the process, a pretty detailed step-by-step and documentation process written off my multiple people. The mx department is combing through that plane's log as we speak I'm sure.
 


I think it was on Reddit where I commented at some point that it's easy to see other airplanes at night. Somebody was asking about visibility, etc. I was under the impression that the Dash 8 had either missed the hold short line or was in the process of taxiing onto the runway as the A350 was in its landing roll, giving the A350 basically no options to avoid it.

However apparently the Dash 8 had been lined up on the runway centerline for some time. Still not sure if it was there before the A350 had touched down or not. But if the Dash 8 had been sitting there on the centerline for some time, it is plausible that the pilots literally never saw it. From that perspective, the runway lights would be much brighter than the Dash 8's lights, and the white light on the tail would've simply blended in with centerline lights. The cockpit of the 350 is likely higher than even the tail of the Dash 8 so the pilots would've had a long-distance top-down view of the runway and anything on it, making it that much harder to tell the difference between all the lights.
 
BBC: United Airlines has found loose bolts in MAX inspections after the grounding.

Just the news Boeing needs.
 
Tagesschau (Deutsch): FAA issues indefinite grounding of MAX 9



The article, translated:

The US aviation agency has extended the grounding of the MAX 9 variant of the Boeing 737 for an indefinite period of time. The FAA clarified that the ban of 171 aircraft is to protect the security of American air travellers.

40 aircraft must be re-examined and the FAA will determine if the safety of the aircraft is adequate enough to allow them to fly again. "We're working so that this does not happen again", they said, adding "The MAX 9 will not return to the skies until we are convinced of its safety."
 
Last edited:
british leyland door.gif
 
This was bound to happen:



Stock buy backs, short term thinking, juicing stock prices, executive compensation, shareholder returns. Its all there. Stock buybacks need to be illegal, immediately, and executive compensation needs to be reformed such that there needs to be a long duration vesting period (like 15-years type long) so that CEOs/CFOs/COOs can't come in and do some ******** stock engineering for a quick payday at the expense of, in this case, the lives of 338 people.
 

You know, sometimes the world makes me feel like I should be wearing a tin foil hat.
How about now:

 
How about now:
That is certainly unfortunate and curious. Though throwing some numbers together suggests around 700 deaths per year (around 400 deaths per 100,000 people in US 2020) out of a population that is the combined size of Boeing and Spirit employee pool, which is around 180,000. How meaningful that calculated death rate is, is up for debate, but it makes me thing that the chain of events we're seeing are still within chance. I do think they warrant some investigation.
 
That is certainly unfortunate and curious. Though throwing some numbers together suggests around 700 deaths per year (around 400 deaths per 100,000 people in US 2020) out of a population that is the combined size of Boeing and Spirit employee pool, which is around 180,000. How meaningful that calculated death rate is, is up for debate, but it makes me thing that the chain of events we're seeing are still within chance. I do think they warrant some investigation.
Are those deaths per year stats for all people, or just working aged people? If you exclude people over the age of 70, the mortality rate would go way down. Assuming you do get a couple of deaths a year in the Boeing workforce, the odds of them being the exact two people who were whistleblowers starts to raise eyebrows.
 
Are those deaths per year stats for all people, or just working aged people? If you exclude people over the age of 70, the mortality rate would go way down. Assuming you do get a couple of deaths a year in the Boeing workforce, the odds of them being the exact two people who were whistleblowers starts to raise eyebrows.
The number is roughly the average of people in the US age 30-50 according to my search. I agree that there is much room for error, and the data being from 2020 makes me think of COVID influence. Comparing to announcements within my own company where we have had some unexpected deaths, 700 does seem high. I don't think it can be taken as an accurate metric, but at least it's not 4 orders of magnitude off from 2, and the 700 number is a total, not just for whistleblowers which would be a subset. I also agree that as the expected number of deaths becomes lower, the more suspicious it is that both are whistleblowers.
 
Last edited:
How about now:

Getting a suit tailored out of space blanket material so that I have a full outfit to go with the hat.

Whether this is just unlucky or not, I bet someone at Boeing has done the math on how many whistleblowers have to die before it becomes statistically unlikely to have been a coinkydink.
 
Back