Boeing 737 MAX family NEWS ONLY

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Oh, crap. "And another one bit the dust..." To be honest, it is difficult to distinguish between a) airline servicing failures and b) Boeing manufacturing failures. Of course the media has no clue and happily mix both.

Do you think that failure could be an airline mechanics mistake, and thus Boeing has nothing to do with it ?
 
So another Boeing 737 Max issue this time an engine Couling detaches during flight, I do wonder why the 737 Max is having all these problems. I would not like to travel on a Boeing passenger airliner right now especially the 737 Max.
 
FighterJock said:
So another Boeing 737 Max issue this time an engine Couling detaches during flight, I do wonder why the 737 Max is having all these problems. I would not like to travel on a Boeing passenger airliner right now especially the 737 Max.
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It's an -800 not a Max8.
 
Thanks TomS, with all the issues at Boeing curently it is easy to get the airliners mixed up. Though I wonder what happened to the Couling to become detached the way that it did during flight? Is it a Boeing problem or the engine manufactures this time round?
 
This is not the first time this has happened to an airliner and it has happened on other manufacturers aircraft as well. This from back in 2013 re an Airbus 319.

A319 Double Cowling Loss and Fire - AAIB Report - Aerossurance

In particular, we look at the maintenance human factors that resulted in the cowlings being left unlatched, including an aircraft 'swap-error' and fatigue.
aerossurance.com aerossurance.com

In that case the investigation revealed the following contributory factor

"The design of the fan cowl door latching system, in which the latches are positioned at the bottom of the engine nacelle in close proximity to the ground, increased the probability that unfastened latches would not be seen during the pre‑departure inspections. The lack of the majority of the high-visibility paint finish on the latch handles reduced the conspicuity of the unfastened latches. The decision by the technicians to engage the latch handle hooks prevented the latch handles from hanging down beneath the fan cowl doors as intended, further reducing the conspicuity of the unfastened latches."
That was not the first time that had happened. There had been a similar incident at New York in 2008 on the same type..

Also ATR at Mumbai in Feb 2022.

Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-900ER in Aug 2022
www.9news.com.au

Alaska Airlines engine cover rips off during emergency landing

It started with an "unusual vibration" on the left side of a US commercial jet and ended with its engine co...
www.9news.com.au www.9news.com.au
 
publiusr said:
Dish soap?
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Took an awful long time for Boeing/Spirit to respond to this...

(And I cannot read most of that article without creating a NYT account. I refuse to give them any profits from me on the grounds that they're liars about the Bestsellers list. And if they're lying about the Bestsellers list being a list of the most-purchased books the previous week or two, what else are they lying about?)

But overall it looks like Boeing/Spirit is making the same point I did either here or on FB:
  1. Dish soap is often used to ease the installation of door seals, the problem was specifically that Dawn was not called out in the procedure.
  2. A credit card or hotel keycard is a perfect soft 1mm feeler gauge that won't contaminate aluminum parts with steel or brass, the problem is that it wasn't called out in the procedure.
So it now appears that Boeing has approved the procedures that specify Dawn dishsoap and the use of a keycard as the feeler gauge.
 
WatcherZero said:





As a QA I can say that using Dawn soap in a process isn't in and of its self wrong so long as the method and result has been validated as resulting in a product of acceptable quality and that once validated as the approved method you then always use the same product that has been validated or validate additional products as acceptable substitutes and that the usage of the products in the process is recorded and documented as it is used.
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I refer you to my 12th March post above.

Cant read the specific NYT article but a similar article says the use of Dawn soap is now properly written into their procedure. They had previously validated the use of Dawn soap after the validations of Talc and Vaseline failed as they were found to degrade the seals over time. However they have now replaced the use of credit cards with a proper 1mm feeler gauge.
 
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robunos said:
www.independent.co.uk

‘This will end with a hole in the ground’: Inside the Boeing catastrophe

‘They were always caught flat-footed by some terrible problem that many people in the workplace knew would happen... And that happened over and over and over and over and over again.’ Io Dodds reports on a corporate nightmare
www.independent.co.uk www.independent.co.uk

cheers,
Robin.
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Sweet Jesus. The horror, the horror.

That approach might work well for other industries, whose products are less complex and tend to kill fewer people when they fail.
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Reminds me of Hammond and Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park

John Hammond: All major theme parks have delays. When they opened Disneyland in 1956, nothing worked!

Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, but, John, if The Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don't eat the tourists.

Just realized that present Boeing shape is not unlike Jurassic Park in the first movie. Hammond = Boeing CEOs, Ian Malcolm is the whistleblowers while 737MAX are the raptors.
 
Technically, Boeing is North American, Rockwell, manufacturers of the X-15, Apollo, Saturn 2nd stage and the shuttle orbiter...
Boeing made also the X-20 Dyna Soar and X-37...
 
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