United Airlines has found loose bolts and other parts on 737 Max 9 plug doors as it inspects its fleet of Boeing jets following the Friday rapid depressurization aboard an Alaska Airlines jet of the same make, according to three people familiar with the findings.
The discrepant bolts and other parts on the plug doors have been found on at least five aircraft, one of the people told The Air Current.
A Boeing representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration declined to comment on the United findings, and pointed to the agency’s earlier statements.
United confirmed the findings in a statement, saying, “Since we began preliminary inspections on Saturday, we have found instances that appear to relate to installation issues in the door plug – for example, bolts that needed additional tightening. These findings will be remedied by our Tech Ops team to safely return the aircraft to service.”
Planes nosediving because they incorrectly think they’re stalling, bolts randomly falling out of critical hardware… sounds like I’m not flying Boeing anytime soon.
I’ve heard Europe has more stringent quality standards. Wonder if Airbus is held to a higher standard.
I’ve always had the impression that airbus is much less in the news, which is probably a good sign.
Plus generally bean counter MBAs don’t have quite the authority over engineers as they do in America.
From my experience as a mechanical engineer, the quickest way to ruin a product, brand, and eventually company is to get those MBAs and finance-types in charge over the engineers.
In theory Transport Canada has one of, if not the strictest standard in the world but they automatically approve anything approved by the FAA and the FAA’s approval process is getting messy…
if they found issues besides what they were looking for while inspecting a specific area, imagine what a full inspection could bring. yikes.
Didn’t they find a LADDER inside the vertical stabilizer of a newly delivered boing aircraft a while back?
EDIT: Yep it was a ladder inside 787:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/28/business/boeing-787-dreamliner-investigation.html
holy what
And of course it’s at the non-union South Carolina plant, not the union Washington plant.
Fod (foreign object debris) is one of the largest threats to aircraft. Need to keep very good track of everything.
Big yikes
Oh shit it’s the casting mount, not the hinge retaining bolt. That’s 99% certain to be Boeing’s fault, not the airline. They’re going to try to say it was the airline because they opened the door to install the WiFi, but they wouldn’t have touched that bolt.
Between this shit and the whole counterfeit airplane maintenance parts, my trust is wavering
What about the outsourced flight control software built by first year software engineers (at best)? Was that Boeing?
What about Starliner, the human rated spacecraft that is (currently) 6 years late? Was that Boeing?
Boeing stock is gonna drop like a motherfucker again tomorrow lol.
Do we know when the plug doors are installed? Is it in the main factory, or at a later finishing stage? If it’s later, hopefully the issue is contained to those facilities. Otherwise, they’re looking at serious general quality questions.
They’re installed by Spirit who manufacture the airframes, which are then shipped to Seattle for assembly with the wings. No-one will have removed those bolts since manufacture. There no need to touch those bolts for the mechanics to open the door, so the airline opening it to install the WiFi seems like a red herring.
What do you mean Spirit manufacturers the airframe? Spirit is an airline, Boing is the manufacturer, right? I thought all Spirit does is maintenance.
Spirit AeroSystems not Spirit Airlines
Awesome! Thanks for the clarification, I was clearly mixed up. And thanks to the downvoter who clearly dislikes idiots like me. :)
As companies make profit their number one priority, we will be seeing much more of this kind of thing … that is until inspections are cut back in the name of profit.
Some dumbass executive:
“We need to show our investors more profit, why is the quality control expense so large? We haven’t had quality control issues in years, slash it!”
People might boycott 737 MAX unless Boeing addresses the problems seriously. I would take extra precaution if I board a 737 MAX. Airbus models seem better in quality than Boeing’s.
