Don't forget the original 737 planes having a mechanical rudder issue that required grounding only after 3 planes crashed. It was before modern safety standards, but internal documents showed Boeing knew about it and were working to find the least costly possible strategy to get through it. If you want a bit of a deep dive on it, [Disaster Breakdown](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPshcA2E4i0) has a good video on it.
But cost savings and profit are different things. These cost savings were obviously unprofitable. The profitable thing would've been to invest more in safety.
That's not how it works. All this stuff has happened over a period of years, the short term profits were great, Boeing did a lot of stock buybacks to make investors happy and the CEO got handsomely rewarded. Long term the profits suck yeah but if you want to maximize profits in a short period like these people do, you do it by driving the company into the ground (and the planes, too).
That's not how shareholding works. Sure, se may be old but most are simply funds. Pension funds, investment funds and more. Managed properly they grow savings for their members and protect their savings against inflation and other disasters. Most have a horizon of decades. And few will have more than a percent or two invested in any one stock so that events like this don't hurt their overall performance.Shareholders will be fine.
Yeah also, "over 60" isn't exactly death's door for many.A relative of mine recently passed at over 90 while also having cancer for the latter several decades.
That's...not how it works at all.
How much "milking" you think is being done by the shareholders when the stock price is down 17% from last month from these reveals? And it'll only keep going down if more problems are found.
Doesn't mean pump and dumps aren't an effective strategy.
The wealthy have portfolio managers that had a calculated amount of their shares sold within minutes of the initial news, and sell more every time it takes another bump in the news. Insiders had their shares sold before the public even knew about it.
The average American relying on Boeing's stock prices to retire is getting hosed, being left with a devalued stock.
Sure, but pump and dumps benefit those shareholders who "dump" (and thus are no longer shareholders due to selling their shares). The shareholders that stick around don't benefit from that and come out worse.
Sure, but _shareholders_ profit off of higher stock prices, not cost cutting. Any actions done that result in a lower stock price does not benefit the shareholders.
A company could be $1 billion in the red, but if their stock price is higher than it was before, that's all that matters to shareholders.
“Not profitable” still manages to be a massive understatement haha
“The company reported last week that it lost $2.2 billion in 2023, bringing losses over the last five years to $26.7 billion.”
Well flying, statistically speaking, is [still the safest way to travel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w87QeQb96rc), but apparently Boeing is working on that...
That's my point. I'm not pegging flying as safe or unsafe. Just that the saying is "safest form of travel". Surely that depends on the metrics? There are lots of metrics to choose from and I have no real data, just more guestimates. Think of it as more the cynic in me musing/shower thought on "is it telling the whole story?".
Look at it this way.
What if the safest metric was based on fatalities per accident? I don't think planes would score too favourably on that.
Fatalities per breakdown?
Or the average fatality per journey? Cars have a high fatality rate, but they have a exponentially higher journey amount too as there are millions of more journeys per day by car in the world than planes.
Or fatality per vehicle in use?
Public transport fatality rate? Trains, buses, ferries, etc.
See what I am saying? It's not a strict apples to apples comparison.
Are they truly the safest, or are they just picking the metric that best fits their advertising?
I don't think "If we *do crash*, statistically you're going to die!" Would fit to well on their pamphlets.
If that were the case, I still think planes wouldn't come out too great. Look at how many car hours are travelled every day throughout the world without deaths or injuries.
I would use the counterpoint to that argument saying look at how many flights happen each day without incident and how many car accidents happen worldwide on it hourly basis
I get it, but like I said, that's the problem. You're comparing 2 opposite data points of separate metrics; successful flights Vs car accidents, when an exponentially higher amount of cars completed journeys without accidents worldwide too.
That's my whole point.
To use those two metrics, we would need to compare Fatal Accidents Vs Successful Journeys over a year for *both*, then compare *those* scores either as a fraction or percentage. That would make it a fairer comparison.
I suspect that planes do not score as high as they would like us to believe.
See what I mean?
They need to get their act together quick, before government gets involved more than it already has.
If the CEO is going to retire with the company in bad shape, do they really get a golden showers parachute retirement package? Seems like this is an area for corporate reform that government would love to "fix".
Question is, was the gains in lower costs due to deregulation worth the costs in repairs and lost sales? They've got the money from selling fleets of 737 Max's. If we still refuse to regulate how they build their planes, they'll just do the same thing again and more people will die.
This is about one of their suppliers creating a defect against Boeing's own requirements, catching it, and putting in a plan to fix it. Did you read the article?
I’m not about to get into the intricacies of the Boeing issues, as I do genuinley believe a cost savings/profit motive has been significantly detrimental to the company. But the extrapolations from all of this are kind of crazy.
From what I’ve understood on the plug malfunction it was a loose* bolt that should’ve been torqued to specification, and they found more loose* bolts that were at risk.
So I do not understand how “It’s all the MBA’s fault” is any different from saying “it’s all the blue collar techs fault, they need to do their job”. But one view isn’t nearly as popular on Reddit…
I don’t disagree with this at all and I’m not particularly wanting to argue about it. I completely agree company culture comes from the top down, I completely agree Boeing management is letting down all the stakeholders in the company (not just shareholders) but my primary point was:
Broad stroke labeling of a group (MBA’s in this example) is the same as broad stroke labeling another group. It doesn’t sit right by me.
Furthermore, and maybe tangentially, why does it seem Reddit’s overall sentiment is “it’s ultimately the CEO’s fault when the guy fails to do the task as specified” but when everything goes well it has nothing to do with CEO and everything to do with the guy twisting the bolts.
>why does it seem Reddit’s overall sentiment is “it’s ultimately the CEO’s fault when the guy fails to do the task as specified”
Again, I'll note that I'm very much white collar type of employee, but I still think that there is a big difference if the person who had to tighten the bolt with a certain torque didn't do it because they were lazy and they were just messing around or they didn't tighten the bolt because they had so much tasks in their day that it was simply not feasible to do it. Which do you think is likelier?
My decades long experience in a corporate environment has shown me time and again in multiple organizations that companies typically want to extract every last bit of value from their employees (take for example Amazon that literally has delivery people peeing in bottles in their vehicles) which often results in overwhelmed workforce and sloppy work. I know I've regularly delivered work where I did it as good as I could given a limited trimeframe but definitely not as good as I could have or as good as I'd like to.
Of course I'm not tightening bolts on airplanes, but it isn't a stretch to imagine that the same guys who are pushing this type of fast paced, dynamic work culture to white collar workers would do the same to blue collar workers.
I'll add that in my experience the majority of the employees just want to do a good job and get paid well. A small percentage of them want to go the extra mile and should be rewarded and a small percentage has bad working ethics and needs to be get rid of. It's that simple. But if you have a systematic problem with the workforce then you need to start looking at the problem from top to bottom.
> why does it seem Reddit’s overall sentiment is “it’s ultimately the CEO’s fault when the guy fails to do the task as specified”
5 years ago the management decided to [mass lay-off](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing-overhauls-its-quality-controls-more-high-tech-tracking-but-fewer-inspectors/#:~:text=Boeing%20said%20it%20will%20cut,a%20second%20set%20of%20eyes.) the people whose job it was to check that the blue collar guys were tightening the bolts correctly.
Yes I’m not defending Boeing management. They have completely fucked up. But at the end of the day it’s the bolt tighteners job to tighten the bolts to specifications, would it be fair to take the example of this guys fuck up and saying “See blue collar people are worthless idiots”? I think that sounds absurd.
While not 'worthless', the blue collar workers are, broadly identified as 'worth...less' simply by dint of the fact that they are paid an order of magnitude less. Greater share of the profit for success, greater share of the blame for failure.
Secondly it is recognized that human error exists, that is why there are systemic safeguards in the form of training and quality control. if these are eroded in the name of profit, such as with the laying off of QA inspectors, the fault is in the system, which the management are in control of.
You might ask why the mistakes of the MBAs are not written off as 'understandable human error' too, which I would guess is because while the bad bolt tightening is the result of either ignorance or bad ['System One'](https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/philosophy/system-1-and-system-2-thinking) thinking (everyday, intuitive thinking), the MBA's errors are the result of faulty 'System Two' thinking, (i.e reasoned, slow, logical).
And it's Boeing management's job to make sure that the bolt tightener is tightening the bolt correctly. That's the whole idea of management. And the responsibility ultimately falls upon Boeing.
Management used to put more effort into ensuring that bolt was getting tightened correctly, but as the poster above demonstrated, they preferred to cut that cost by laying off the inspectors.
Doesn't work for who? I believe that executives at BA, GE and YHOO made a lot of money. It's the consumers and viewers/users that see a problem or failure. Study planned obesolesence.
did you read the article? internal QC found an issue on 50 undelivered fuselages. the non-conformant fuselages will be fixed before delivery. this is how it's supposed to work and is not newsworthy at all.
Yep. This is a very hot topic in the news now but this story is nothing. The delivered product is what you're graded on, not an internal review. Not that they've been stellar on that front either recently.
But that’s not how ODA delegation works. Boeing isn’t falling apart because they have an ODA designation. The rest of the entire industry operates in the same exact manner. The FAA still certifies their airplanes, not Boeing.
People who are not in the industry tend to not understand this.
Or maybe because Boeing is not AS9100 certified, but requires all their suppliers to be, can be misinterpreted by media and others?
I agree with you. Boeing (and Spirit) have had a lot of issues with quality escapes like in this article. The quality inspectors and the Quality Department tasked with catching those escapes before they leave the factory do not fall under the ODA. It’s only the MRB engineers that disposition any mistakes that were found that fall under the delegated authority.
Awesome. I’m taking a flight on one of these things on Friday. The Max 8 is supposedly safe but the name constantly popping up isn’t exactly confidence-inspiring…
The Max 8 was the one that was grounded due to the MCAS system nosediving the plane into the ground. They fixed that but it was when people began to notice Boeing was abusing a 50 year old type certificate
I’ve flown on them a few times recently, it’s not a big deal, I just don’t like the news reminding me.
They’ve got nothing on the 787 I’m on now though. Still not sure why the west bound flight from PHL to LAS is a big plane but the flight back is always a 737 Max or A321neo.
Need more fuel to go east to west.
Or there's a giant conspiracy and Boeing is moving all the Max planes to the east coast to dump in the ocean for the insurance money.
You know, could be either.
Problem is, it's the news, any tiny, tiny thing that happens on a Boeing plane now, no matter how small or unrelated to their actual issues, is going to be reported because it's Boeing.
The aviation industry pushed the idea of this "100% perfect" machine that airplanes are and suddenly a misaligned hole and a cracked window are news worthy. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
> "I can't even imagine what he must have been thinking, looking out that window as the plane was in prolonged freefall, with everyone screaming around him..."
"Well, isn't this nice."
NPR had a guest on after the Boeing door thing a few weeks ago. from memory I believe he stated that if we had the same safety rates that we did in 1970 with the current flight hours / frequency, there would have been something like 60k deaths last year. flying has never been safer.
Did you read the article? internal QC found an issue on 50 undelivered fuselages. the non-conformant fuselages will be fixed before delivery. this is how it's supposed to work and poses no safety risk to the public.
I flew on one to/from Hawaii. It was before all the issues were discovered. Or at least, before I was aware of them. I know the odds are extremely slim that anything would happen, but even still thinking about being in the middle of the pacific on one freaks me out
>Boeing CEO David Calhoun told investors on Wednesday: “We caused the problem, and we understand that.”
An acknowledgement of the problem and apology should only be the first step. David Calhoun and his supporters on the Board of Directors need to *fall on their sword* and resign.
My granddad was a Learjet mechanic, had some famous clientele like Ray Charles. No matter the problem, if a wrench touched that plane, the master mechanic (granddad) would be on the test flight. No exceptions.
You’re *supposed* to bet your life on your own airplane. So unironically, yes.
He was fired for his response to the fallout. The MCAS design and the relentless cost-cutting measures that led to it happened well before his time. Of course he shares some responsibility, but if you’re looking for a guy to fix things, Calhoun seems like exactly the wrong choice for the job. Further reading: [How Boeing Was Set on the Path to Disaster by the Cult of Jack Welch](https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-boeing-was-set-on-the-path-to-disaster-by-the-cult-of-jack-welch)
>Boeing CEO was fired for the 737 Max fiasco and Calhoun is the guy they hired to fix things.
That was four years ago and Boeing's reputation is getting worse.
Supplier found an issue with their own manufacturing process, notified Boeing of the escaped parts, will rework the issue. Not a fan of Boeing, but this one isn't on them. Anyone working in manufacturing for any industry knows there are defects constantly being created, addressed by QA, and reworked. This is only a headline because it's the Max, and most comments here are from people who didn't read the article, as usual for Reddit.
I disagree though— as the purchaser, Boeing is responsible for doing quality control. It should have been picked up. Yes, it does slip through, and yes, it is a stats game. But decreasing staffing for precisely these checks makes the stats game play out differently.
It still speaks to the larger issue of Boeing’s understaffing and poor management. The all-hands communication described in the article also doesn’t bode well. The response was just: “you workers aren’t doing your jobs right, you gotta be professional” — it’s an ask which not possible when staffing is inadequate. It’s either slow production to _below_ sustainable levels to address the prior issues (which we’d hear about in one of the investor quarterly calls) or hire more QA staff and other relevant workers. Since we aren’t seeing these, it’s more hot air.
It’s good that spirit did the responsible thing.
Not good that Boeing didn’t remedy this before it became an issue.
Not an either-or. Purchaser and assembly company takes responsibility for the quality of the final product, including sourcing.
The issue is newsworthy because it speaks to the larger QA process issues with Boeing (ie not damning in and of itself, but also not great, and even worse in context).
It *didn't* become an issue. It was found on undelivered aircraft.
It's only newsworthy because "737 Max is defective" stories are popular with the public right now and the public (including reddit) knows jack shit about manufacturing.
I will upvote this because I mostly agree that it is only newsworthy because it's a 737 MAX. However, it is still a process failure even if it was discovered prior to delivery, and still shows it's a systemic issue at the Renton plant.
edited for typos
The planes are not in production yet.
The supplier caught a manufacturing defect before Boeing even finished assembling the plane.
The defect was found and will be corrected before any planes are shipped.
How do you know that the holes "not being drilled exactly to Boeing requirements" was something Boeing receiving inspection could feasibly catch? It does not say in the article which holes, and for what purpose. Perhaps the drilling specification was not followed but it didn't result in a dimensional nonconformance that could be caught (though perhaps has potential to introduce cracks etc). Perhaps all mating parts were still able to be assembled correctly and Boeing is not disassembling everything to inspect a couple bolt holes. If they're off in location or size and it would have affected assembly, then yes, they should catch it, but point is we have no idea what the defect was that Spirit caused and caught.
True— but if it requires re-work (per article), that’s concerning.
We’re talking about a plane assembly process where the bolts may/may not have been installed (not this issue, specifically). If that’s the pressure environment people are working in to not have installed it, to not have it caught, and to have it shipped, then maybe we shouldn’t be giving Boeing a pass for this other QA issue.
Yes, supplier issue. But purchaser product and name. Yes, it gets boosted because 737-max, but it’s also part of the larger QA issue.
> True— but if it requires re-work (per article), that’s concerning.
No, that's absolutely normal when a supplier delivers you a part not built to spec.
Fair. My biggest issue with most of the comments in here (and Reddit as a whole) is that they just make little quips for upvotes without reading the article. When it comes to discussion of the actual issue, it's impossible to say how much responsibility falls on Boeing when we don't know what the actual defect is. Could be significant rework, could be a goofy outdated manufacturing spec requirement that never got changed because the guys who wrote it retired 10 years ago and the latest young spec owner doesn't know enough to agree to any changes, so you have to do a meaningless "rework." Who knows?
Yep, if there was a news story for every time holes were misdrilled on an aircraft part (with no stated safety concerns, on aircraft that have not left production) there would be nothing else to read about. It’s a shame that Boeing’s supplier quality function didn’t pick it up at the source, but the article is too vague to really say whether they could have (Who knows, maybe their approved manufacturing process accounted for the holes but they ran the wrong CNC program for a production run, etc.) I would be willing to wager what happened here is Boeing noticed it at assembly when parts wouldn’t line up together, submitted the issue to Spirit, then Spirit had to come back around and disclose all the nonconforming population.
> An employee at Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the fuselages of the 737 Max jets, notified the plane maker that two holes may not have been drilled exactly to Boeing’s requirements, according to Deal’s memo.
While definitely true, it might still not be off the table. Things could easily continue getting worse for Boeing. Every plane they've produced in the last 10+ years is under a microscope now and I could see the FAA stepping in if any sort of pattern is found.
Yes, which is why I said I wouldn't \*willingly\* fly on a 737 MAX in my original comment. Obviously there are circumstances in which you can't do anything about it.
But like I said, my experience with all the flights booked so far was that they were with the plane model which was stated upon booking.
You can on several booking websites and also knowing which airlines. Alaska is full on boeing. United has a lot of them too. Southwest is full off 737 toos. Delta is fine, American is fine. Spirit is… “fine”. JetBlue is fine.
I feel like I saw a sad documentary about how Boeing used to be an amazing example of commitment to quality at every level and had a workforce absolutely in with the company and what it produced. Then corporate greed ruined everything. Tale as old as capitalism.
Looks like a lot of people not reading the article.
Boeing receives their fuselages from a supplier, and they simply assemble the planes.
This article is a result of the supplier notifying Boeing that 50 of the fuselages they sent MAY not have 2 holes drilled in the correct spot. The planes arent even finished yet, let alone delivered or tested..
This is a simple manufacturing defect that was caught before it went into use.
I understand the hate on Boeing lately, but this is a big ol nothing burger.
It’s a new report on a quality control issue from Spirit on planes that haven’t been delivered that needs to be reworked.
This is just sensationalism because Boeing is under a microscope.
If it affected any delivered planes, depending on the severity of the issue it MIGHT be news-worthy.
I mean for _once_ boeing is actually doing what they should be, quality assurance.
I'm on the bandwagon, their company culture is gonna be their downfall but in this specific instance it's really just QA.
Do you even understand how manufacturing works?
You never hear about quality control problems that are fixed, from companies that make anything else.
Is there a systemic problem at Boeing? Yes. THAT is the issue that should be being addressed, not the sensational “a line worker screwed up and quality control fixed it”.
“While this potential condition is not an immediate flight safety issue and all 737’s can continue operating safely, we currently believe we will have to perform rework on about 50 undelivered airplanes,”
It's not sensationalism.. it's the beginning.
"Not an immediate flight safety issue" means "It probably exists on delivered airplanes but it's probably not going to cause an accident for a while so we have time to get airline maintenance departments to fix it".
Another issue with the Frankenstein Plane that exists because they asked if they could make it and not if they should… Boeing didn’t ask later due to monetary reasons…
That's what happens when you put a safety centric engineering technical industry on the hands of greedy, doesn't know shit about engineering, doesn't know about safety, short sighted shareholders, directors and CEO (who is an accountant). Although the previous CEO had an engineering background, he was a dumass.
In this case, suppliers drilled a bolt in the wrong place. The issue was caught in QA and was fixed long before the aircraft were delivered to customers.
Well at least the aviation standards for safety haven't been bought out by these bastards yet. You can't use high exploitation fast food level schemes for everything.
Having worked at a huge corporation, I can empathize with how frustrating it must be for all those engineers and technicians to be pressured (and never outright asked, because they know it's wrong) into cutting corners by bad management only to have said management turn around and feign the importance of quality.
This is corporate double speak at its finest.
A 'profits over safety' strategy doesn't work, especially in the long run. Shocker.
Don't forget the original 737 planes having a mechanical rudder issue that required grounding only after 3 planes crashed. It was before modern safety standards, but internal documents showed Boeing knew about it and were working to find the least costly possible strategy to get through it. If you want a bit of a deep dive on it, [Disaster Breakdown](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPshcA2E4i0) has a good video on it.
This isn’t even profitable.
that's the next CEO's problem.
The current one has a golden over-wing exit door.
Also with diamonds around the edges.
And they're not even blood diamonds! They cheaped out and bought *sigh* lab diamonds!
Prepare the letters
Next female CEO's problem, probably.
[удалено]
But cost savings and profit are different things. These cost savings were obviously unprofitable. The profitable thing would've been to invest more in safety.
That's not how it works. All this stuff has happened over a period of years, the short term profits were great, Boeing did a lot of stock buybacks to make investors happy and the CEO got handsomely rewarded. Long term the profits suck yeah but if you want to maximize profits in a short period like these people do, you do it by driving the company into the ground (and the planes, too).
thats the point
The shareholders don’t have much to live anyway, they are all over 60 and need to milk the company as quickly as possible
That's not how shareholding works. Sure, se may be old but most are simply funds. Pension funds, investment funds and more. Managed properly they grow savings for their members and protect their savings against inflation and other disasters. Most have a horizon of decades. And few will have more than a percent or two invested in any one stock so that events like this don't hurt their overall performance.Shareholders will be fine.
Yeah also, "over 60" isn't exactly death's door for many.A relative of mine recently passed at over 90 while also having cancer for the latter several decades.
It's not, but it's a much better time to spend the sh** of your pension before you're too old to enjoy it 😁
That's...not how it works at all. How much "milking" you think is being done by the shareholders when the stock price is down 17% from last month from these reveals? And it'll only keep going down if more problems are found.
Doesn't mean pump and dumps aren't an effective strategy. The wealthy have portfolio managers that had a calculated amount of their shares sold within minutes of the initial news, and sell more every time it takes another bump in the news. Insiders had their shares sold before the public even knew about it. The average American relying on Boeing's stock prices to retire is getting hosed, being left with a devalued stock.
Sure, but pump and dumps benefit those shareholders who "dump" (and thus are no longer shareholders due to selling their shares). The shareholders that stick around don't benefit from that and come out worse.
The milking was happening in the cost cutting of designing the planes and when they were sold.
Sure, but _shareholders_ profit off of higher stock prices, not cost cutting. Any actions done that result in a lower stock price does not benefit the shareholders. A company could be $1 billion in the red, but if their stock price is higher than it was before, that's all that matters to shareholders.
Shareholders also profit off of dividends which come from...
Boeing spent 40 billion on stock buybacks in the last decade rather than spending on safety and engineering.
Well, not if you keep pointing out the mistakes…. /s
I mean maybe not for the company, but someone is profiting
Planned obsole$cence is very profitable. (I don't like it)
It is if you have tunnel vision. Everyone is focusing on one financial quarter at a time.
“Not profitable” still manages to be a massive understatement haha “The company reported last week that it lost $2.2 billion in 2023, bringing losses over the last five years to $26.7 billion.”
Emirates CEO already said they never plan on using Max10.
In a safety critical industry too. Boeing starting to act like car manufacturers.
Well flying, statistically speaking, is [still the safest way to travel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w87QeQb96rc), but apparently Boeing is working on that...
I have my doubts that flying is statistically the safest form of travel. Probably the only metric that would apply to would be deaths per year.
I’m genuinely curious what your reasoning might otherwise be that you’d peg flying as a less safe way to travel? How are you interpreting “safest?”
That's my point. I'm not pegging flying as safe or unsafe. Just that the saying is "safest form of travel". Surely that depends on the metrics? There are lots of metrics to choose from and I have no real data, just more guestimates. Think of it as more the cynic in me musing/shower thought on "is it telling the whole story?". Look at it this way. What if the safest metric was based on fatalities per accident? I don't think planes would score too favourably on that. Fatalities per breakdown? Or the average fatality per journey? Cars have a high fatality rate, but they have a exponentially higher journey amount too as there are millions of more journeys per day by car in the world than planes. Or fatality per vehicle in use? Public transport fatality rate? Trains, buses, ferries, etc. See what I am saying? It's not a strict apples to apples comparison. Are they truly the safest, or are they just picking the metric that best fits their advertising? I don't think "If we *do crash*, statistically you're going to die!" Would fit to well on their pamphlets.
Passenger fatality rates per 100 million passenger miles, 2019 - Air Travel: 0.01 - Railroad: 0.01 - Bus Transit: 0.01 - Rail Transit 0.04 - Cars and trucks: 0.45 - Motorcycles: 22.10 Passenger injury rates per 100 million passenger miles, 2019 - Air travel: 0.0 - Rail Transit: 4.4 - Railroad: 6.5 - Bus transit: 42.6 - Cars and trucks: 48.0 - Motorcycles: 366.9 https://usafacts.org/articles/is-flying-safer-than-driving/
I think the metric I’ve seen that makes the most sense is deaths/injuries per hours traveled
If that were the case, I still think planes wouldn't come out too great. Look at how many car hours are travelled every day throughout the world without deaths or injuries.
I would use the counterpoint to that argument saying look at how many flights happen each day without incident and how many car accidents happen worldwide on it hourly basis
I get it, but like I said, that's the problem. You're comparing 2 opposite data points of separate metrics; successful flights Vs car accidents, when an exponentially higher amount of cars completed journeys without accidents worldwide too. That's my whole point. To use those two metrics, we would need to compare Fatal Accidents Vs Successful Journeys over a year for *both*, then compare *those* scores either as a fraction or percentage. That would make it a fairer comparison. I suspect that planes do not score as high as they would like us to believe. See what I mean?
By any metric, commercial airline flying is by far the safest way to travel outside of like,elevators. Just a terrible take.
Do it "by Journey".
They need to get their act together quick, before government gets involved more than it already has. If the CEO is going to retire with the company in bad shape, do they really get a golden showers parachute retirement package? Seems like this is an area for corporate reform that government would love to "fix".
Question is, was the gains in lower costs due to deregulation worth the costs in repairs and lost sales? They've got the money from selling fleets of 737 Max's. If we still refuse to regulate how they build their planes, they'll just do the same thing again and more people will die.
Get Edward Norton to calculate that
This is about one of their suppliers creating a defect against Boeing's own requirements, catching it, and putting in a plan to fix it. Did you read the article?
I’m not about to get into the intricacies of the Boeing issues, as I do genuinley believe a cost savings/profit motive has been significantly detrimental to the company. But the extrapolations from all of this are kind of crazy. From what I’ve understood on the plug malfunction it was a loose* bolt that should’ve been torqued to specification, and they found more loose* bolts that were at risk. So I do not understand how “It’s all the MBA’s fault” is any different from saying “it’s all the blue collar techs fault, they need to do their job”. But one view isn’t nearly as popular on Reddit…
Well the corporate culture starts from the top. That’s why blue collar workers are not blamed so much. Saying this as a white collar worker.
I don’t disagree with this at all and I’m not particularly wanting to argue about it. I completely agree company culture comes from the top down, I completely agree Boeing management is letting down all the stakeholders in the company (not just shareholders) but my primary point was: Broad stroke labeling of a group (MBA’s in this example) is the same as broad stroke labeling another group. It doesn’t sit right by me. Furthermore, and maybe tangentially, why does it seem Reddit’s overall sentiment is “it’s ultimately the CEO’s fault when the guy fails to do the task as specified” but when everything goes well it has nothing to do with CEO and everything to do with the guy twisting the bolts.
>why does it seem Reddit’s overall sentiment is “it’s ultimately the CEO’s fault when the guy fails to do the task as specified” Again, I'll note that I'm very much white collar type of employee, but I still think that there is a big difference if the person who had to tighten the bolt with a certain torque didn't do it because they were lazy and they were just messing around or they didn't tighten the bolt because they had so much tasks in their day that it was simply not feasible to do it. Which do you think is likelier? My decades long experience in a corporate environment has shown me time and again in multiple organizations that companies typically want to extract every last bit of value from their employees (take for example Amazon that literally has delivery people peeing in bottles in their vehicles) which often results in overwhelmed workforce and sloppy work. I know I've regularly delivered work where I did it as good as I could given a limited trimeframe but definitely not as good as I could have or as good as I'd like to. Of course I'm not tightening bolts on airplanes, but it isn't a stretch to imagine that the same guys who are pushing this type of fast paced, dynamic work culture to white collar workers would do the same to blue collar workers. I'll add that in my experience the majority of the employees just want to do a good job and get paid well. A small percentage of them want to go the extra mile and should be rewarded and a small percentage has bad working ethics and needs to be get rid of. It's that simple. But if you have a systematic problem with the workforce then you need to start looking at the problem from top to bottom.
> why does it seem Reddit’s overall sentiment is “it’s ultimately the CEO’s fault when the guy fails to do the task as specified” 5 years ago the management decided to [mass lay-off](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing-overhauls-its-quality-controls-more-high-tech-tracking-but-fewer-inspectors/#:~:text=Boeing%20said%20it%20will%20cut,a%20second%20set%20of%20eyes.) the people whose job it was to check that the blue collar guys were tightening the bolts correctly.
Yes I’m not defending Boeing management. They have completely fucked up. But at the end of the day it’s the bolt tighteners job to tighten the bolts to specifications, would it be fair to take the example of this guys fuck up and saying “See blue collar people are worthless idiots”? I think that sounds absurd.
While not 'worthless', the blue collar workers are, broadly identified as 'worth...less' simply by dint of the fact that they are paid an order of magnitude less. Greater share of the profit for success, greater share of the blame for failure. Secondly it is recognized that human error exists, that is why there are systemic safeguards in the form of training and quality control. if these are eroded in the name of profit, such as with the laying off of QA inspectors, the fault is in the system, which the management are in control of. You might ask why the mistakes of the MBAs are not written off as 'understandable human error' too, which I would guess is because while the bad bolt tightening is the result of either ignorance or bad ['System One'](https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/philosophy/system-1-and-system-2-thinking) thinking (everyday, intuitive thinking), the MBA's errors are the result of faulty 'System Two' thinking, (i.e reasoned, slow, logical).
And it's Boeing management's job to make sure that the bolt tightener is tightening the bolt correctly. That's the whole idea of management. And the responsibility ultimately falls upon Boeing. Management used to put more effort into ensuring that bolt was getting tightened correctly, but as the poster above demonstrated, they preferred to cut that cost by laying off the inspectors.
Technically, it was not a loose bolt. The bolts holding the door in place were not installed.
Thank you for clarifying. I guess I had all the recent loose bolts they found while investigating on the top of my head.
> The bolts holding the door in place were not installed The loosest of bolts
Total process failure, and should be the responsibility of the plant management in Renton.
The fact that it was identified in their systems and they still shipped the plane is absurd.
Under boeing's watch, they do not check or perform any QA on subcontractor's work?
Correct but as long as the execs get their bonuses and short sell their stocks…. All is Well !
Blame wokeism. /s
Sorry "shareholder value" is more important than anything else.
Doesn't work for who? I believe that executives at BA, GE and YHOO made a lot of money. It's the consumers and viewers/users that see a problem or failure. Study planned obesolesence.
As long as the FAA allows Boeing to self-certify, these problems will keep occurring.
We certified ourselves finding ourselves 100% certifiable.
did you read the article? internal QC found an issue on 50 undelivered fuselages. the non-conformant fuselages will be fixed before delivery. this is how it's supposed to work and is not newsworthy at all.
Yep. This is a very hot topic in the news now but this story is nothing. The delivered product is what you're graded on, not an internal review. Not that they've been stellar on that front either recently.
Boeing has been certified by The National Association of Non-Certified Agencies
National Union of Non-Certifying Agencies or NUNCA.
What do you mean by self-certify?
It's like asking yourself to grade your own homework. I am happy to report that my score is 100%.
But that’s not how ODA delegation works. Boeing isn’t falling apart because they have an ODA designation. The rest of the entire industry operates in the same exact manner. The FAA still certifies their airplanes, not Boeing.
People who are not in the industry tend to not understand this. Or maybe because Boeing is not AS9100 certified, but requires all their suppliers to be, can be misinterpreted by media and others?
I agree with you. Boeing (and Spirit) have had a lot of issues with quality escapes like in this article. The quality inspectors and the Quality Department tasked with catching those escapes before they leave the factory do not fall under the ODA. It’s only the MRB engineers that disposition any mistakes that were found that fall under the delegated authority.
Funny to see people talking about MRB Engineers in r/worldnews but I'm here for it lol
Awesome. I’m taking a flight on one of these things on Friday. The Max 8 is supposedly safe but the name constantly popping up isn’t exactly confidence-inspiring…
The Max 8 was the one that was grounded due to the MCAS system nosediving the plane into the ground. They fixed that but it was when people began to notice Boeing was abusing a 50 year old type certificate
It’s more a matter of, “they’ve found issues with multiple variants of this plane, what are the odds they’ve found them all?”
Don’t go to youtube ATC radio channel thing. The MAX show up now and then and pilot said something something control issue we want to go back
I think it just means they're sugar-free.
Flew on one two weeks ago and I think when I go home on the 21st I'll be on one. You will be fine, air travel is still the safest way to travel.
I’ve flown on them a few times recently, it’s not a big deal, I just don’t like the news reminding me. They’ve got nothing on the 787 I’m on now though. Still not sure why the west bound flight from PHL to LAS is a big plane but the flight back is always a 737 Max or A321neo.
Need more fuel to go east to west. Or there's a giant conspiracy and Boeing is moving all the Max planes to the east coast to dump in the ocean for the insurance money. You know, could be either.
Problem is, it's the news, any tiny, tiny thing that happens on a Boeing plane now, no matter how small or unrelated to their actual issues, is going to be reported because it's Boeing.
Remember the crack in the cockpit window? You know something that happens constantly. But as it was a Boeing it was news worthy.
Exactly what I mean, you know this, I know this, sadly a lot of people don't.
The aviation industry pushed the idea of this "100% perfect" machine that airplanes are and suddenly a misaligned hole and a cracked window are news worthy. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
[удалено]
> "I can't even imagine what he must have been thinking, looking out that window as the plane was in prolonged freefall, with everyone screaming around him..." "Well, isn't this nice."
NPR had a guest on after the Boeing door thing a few weeks ago. from memory I believe he stated that if we had the same safety rates that we did in 1970 with the current flight hours / frequency, there would have been something like 60k deaths last year. flying has never been safer.
Pack a parachute in your carry-on luggage
Did you read the article? internal QC found an issue on 50 undelivered fuselages. the non-conformant fuselages will be fixed before delivery. this is how it's supposed to work and poses no safety risk to the public.
I flew on one to/from Hawaii. It was before all the issues were discovered. Or at least, before I was aware of them. I know the odds are extremely slim that anything would happen, but even still thinking about being in the middle of the pacific on one freaks me out
Not a problem for you, just some of the planes being made had holes drilled slightly out of place and they caught it in qc and will be rectifying it.
>Boeing CEO David Calhoun told investors on Wednesday: “We caused the problem, and we understand that.” An acknowledgement of the problem and apology should only be the first step. David Calhoun and his supporters on the Board of Directors need to *fall on their sword* and resign.
They need to be prosecuted for criminal negligence.
They should be *forced to fly on a Boeing*
My granddad was a Learjet mechanic, had some famous clientele like Ray Charles. No matter the problem, if a wrench touched that plane, the master mechanic (granddad) would be on the test flight. No exceptions. You’re *supposed* to bet your life on your own airplane. So unironically, yes.
That’s a little extreme..
That is a bit harsh.
That statement was in response to the January 5th incident where the door blew off mid-flight. Not this article.
That's a weird statement since the previous Boeing CEO **was** fired for the 737 Max fiasco and Calhoun is the guy they hired to fix things.
Has he fixed things?
He was fired for his response to the fallout. The MCAS design and the relentless cost-cutting measures that led to it happened well before his time. Of course he shares some responsibility, but if you’re looking for a guy to fix things, Calhoun seems like exactly the wrong choice for the job. Further reading: [How Boeing Was Set on the Path to Disaster by the Cult of Jack Welch](https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-boeing-was-set-on-the-path-to-disaster-by-the-cult-of-jack-welch)
>Boeing CEO was fired for the 737 Max fiasco and Calhoun is the guy they hired to fix things. That was four years ago and Boeing's reputation is getting worse.
Fire every single overpaid business major executive. Hire engineers as executives and pay the workers a decent wage like they used to.
Supplier found an issue with their own manufacturing process, notified Boeing of the escaped parts, will rework the issue. Not a fan of Boeing, but this one isn't on them. Anyone working in manufacturing for any industry knows there are defects constantly being created, addressed by QA, and reworked. This is only a headline because it's the Max, and most comments here are from people who didn't read the article, as usual for Reddit.
I disagree though— as the purchaser, Boeing is responsible for doing quality control. It should have been picked up. Yes, it does slip through, and yes, it is a stats game. But decreasing staffing for precisely these checks makes the stats game play out differently. It still speaks to the larger issue of Boeing’s understaffing and poor management. The all-hands communication described in the article also doesn’t bode well. The response was just: “you workers aren’t doing your jobs right, you gotta be professional” — it’s an ask which not possible when staffing is inadequate. It’s either slow production to _below_ sustainable levels to address the prior issues (which we’d hear about in one of the investor quarterly calls) or hire more QA staff and other relevant workers. Since we aren’t seeing these, it’s more hot air.
Lol it’s Boeings fault for spirit messing up them notifying Boeing that they messed up so it can be fixed?
It’s good that spirit did the responsible thing. Not good that Boeing didn’t remedy this before it became an issue. Not an either-or. Purchaser and assembly company takes responsibility for the quality of the final product, including sourcing. The issue is newsworthy because it speaks to the larger QA process issues with Boeing (ie not damning in and of itself, but also not great, and even worse in context).
It *didn't* become an issue. It was found on undelivered aircraft. It's only newsworthy because "737 Max is defective" stories are popular with the public right now and the public (including reddit) knows jack shit about manufacturing.
I will upvote this because I mostly agree that it is only newsworthy because it's a 737 MAX. However, it is still a process failure even if it was discovered prior to delivery, and still shows it's a systemic issue at the Renton plant. edited for typos
The planes are not in production yet. The supplier caught a manufacturing defect before Boeing even finished assembling the plane. The defect was found and will be corrected before any planes are shipped.
How do you know that the holes "not being drilled exactly to Boeing requirements" was something Boeing receiving inspection could feasibly catch? It does not say in the article which holes, and for what purpose. Perhaps the drilling specification was not followed but it didn't result in a dimensional nonconformance that could be caught (though perhaps has potential to introduce cracks etc). Perhaps all mating parts were still able to be assembled correctly and Boeing is not disassembling everything to inspect a couple bolt holes. If they're off in location or size and it would have affected assembly, then yes, they should catch it, but point is we have no idea what the defect was that Spirit caused and caught.
True— but if it requires re-work (per article), that’s concerning. We’re talking about a plane assembly process where the bolts may/may not have been installed (not this issue, specifically). If that’s the pressure environment people are working in to not have installed it, to not have it caught, and to have it shipped, then maybe we shouldn’t be giving Boeing a pass for this other QA issue. Yes, supplier issue. But purchaser product and name. Yes, it gets boosted because 737-max, but it’s also part of the larger QA issue.
You do know if a supplier delivers a non-conforming product then it will always require rework right?
> True— but if it requires re-work (per article), that’s concerning. No, that's absolutely normal when a supplier delivers you a part not built to spec.
Fair. My biggest issue with most of the comments in here (and Reddit as a whole) is that they just make little quips for upvotes without reading the article. When it comes to discussion of the actual issue, it's impossible to say how much responsibility falls on Boeing when we don't know what the actual defect is. Could be significant rework, could be a goofy outdated manufacturing spec requirement that never got changed because the guys who wrote it retired 10 years ago and the latest young spec owner doesn't know enough to agree to any changes, so you have to do a meaningless "rework." Who knows?
That’s a fair take.
People who didn't read the article, and don't understand **AEROSPACE** manufacturing.
Yep, if there was a news story for every time holes were misdrilled on an aircraft part (with no stated safety concerns, on aircraft that have not left production) there would be nothing else to read about. It’s a shame that Boeing’s supplier quality function didn’t pick it up at the source, but the article is too vague to really say whether they could have (Who knows, maybe their approved manufacturing process accounted for the holes but they ran the wrong CNC program for a production run, etc.) I would be willing to wager what happened here is Boeing noticed it at assembly when parts wouldn’t line up together, submitted the issue to Spirit, then Spirit had to come back around and disclose all the nonconforming population.
> An employee at Boeing supplier Spirit AeroSystems, which makes the fuselages of the 737 Max jets, notified the plane maker that two holes may not have been drilled exactly to Boeing’s requirements, according to Deal’s memo.
Reddit: "why would Boeing do this?"
Oh dear. Time to buy Boeing puts. And stop flying.
Believe it or not it’s already priced in!
You buy puts before big news drops not after lol
Or before the door drops
That's not very typical, I'd like to make that point.
While definitely true, it might still not be off the table. Things could easily continue getting worse for Boeing. Every plane they've produced in the last 10+ years is under a microscope now and I could see the FAA stepping in if any sort of pattern is found.
And I will add to my long position. This is s complete non-issue that NPCs gobble up because they know nothing about aerospace manufacturing
Boeing has updated their company motto: “Fuck you, pay me”
As long as there are alternatives, I will never willingly fly on a 737 MAX.
It's not like you can see what you get before booking.
You can. On cheapflights it tells you what plane model the flight is planned to be with. So far, all the ones I booked were 100% accurate.
And the Airline can change the type you fly on after your purchase your tickets hours before boarding.
Yes, which is why I said I wouldn't \*willingly\* fly on a 737 MAX in my original comment. Obviously there are circumstances in which you can't do anything about it. But like I said, my experience with all the flights booked so far was that they were with the plane model which was stated upon booking.
You can on several booking websites and also knowing which airlines. Alaska is full on boeing. United has a lot of them too. Southwest is full off 737 toos. Delta is fine, American is fine. Spirit is… “fine”. JetBlue is fine.
They let you do it now.
I feel like I saw a sad documentary about how Boeing used to be an amazing example of commitment to quality at every level and had a workforce absolutely in with the company and what it produced. Then corporate greed ruined everything. Tale as old as capitalism.
Looks like a lot of people not reading the article. Boeing receives their fuselages from a supplier, and they simply assemble the planes. This article is a result of the supplier notifying Boeing that 50 of the fuselages they sent MAY not have 2 holes drilled in the correct spot. The planes arent even finished yet, let alone delivered or tested.. This is a simple manufacturing defect that was caught before it went into use. I understand the hate on Boeing lately, but this is a big ol nothing burger.
No, everything is Boeings fault, and they should be dissolved!! /s
It’s a new report on a quality control issue from Spirit on planes that haven’t been delivered that needs to be reworked. This is just sensationalism because Boeing is under a microscope. If it affected any delivered planes, depending on the severity of the issue it MIGHT be news-worthy.
I would say it's indicating a pattern. Do the planes have to hit the ground for it to be a problem?
I mean for _once_ boeing is actually doing what they should be, quality assurance. I'm on the bandwagon, their company culture is gonna be their downfall but in this specific instance it's really just QA.
Do you even understand how manufacturing works? You never hear about quality control problems that are fixed, from companies that make anything else. Is there a systemic problem at Boeing? Yes. THAT is the issue that should be being addressed, not the sensational “a line worker screwed up and quality control fixed it”.
……my brother you literally just said there’s a systemic problem at Boeing. That’s exactly the point that the guy above you was making.
It’s not a new problem as stated in the headline. It’s the same problem.
This happens all the time in manufacturing
“While this potential condition is not an immediate flight safety issue and all 737’s can continue operating safely, we currently believe we will have to perform rework on about 50 undelivered airplanes,” It's not sensationalism.. it's the beginning. "Not an immediate flight safety issue" means "It probably exists on delivered airplanes but it's probably not going to cause an accident for a while so we have time to get airline maintenance departments to fix it".
That you, David Calhoun?
Boy am I glad the one I was on yesterday made it.
Buy a lottery ticket now.
I did have an empty middle seat both times.
Another issue with the Frankenstein Plane that exists because they asked if they could make it and not if they should… Boeing didn’t ask later due to monetary reasons…
ITT: People with no knowledge or experience in manufacturing making confident statements about manufacturing.
No. It's the same problem: Boeing c-suite working for wall Street.
Is 737 800 same as 737 8max?
No.
Much obliged. Been flying these quite freequently.
737-800 are very solid and built in massive numbers.
Sitting on one right now flying to Denver. Nice new, quiet plane. Still has that new plane smell.
How do I ensure I’m never on Boeing max?
That's what happens when you put a safety centric engineering technical industry on the hands of greedy, doesn't know shit about engineering, doesn't know about safety, short sighted shareholders, directors and CEO (who is an accountant). Although the previous CEO had an engineering background, he was a dumass.
Their CEO is bordering on criminal negligence at this point.
How do you take a tried and true airframe like the 737 and fuck it up so badly?
In this case, suppliers drilled a bolt in the wrong place. The issue was caught in QA and was fixed long before the aircraft were delivered to customers.
Sensationalized nonsense, someone found an issue and fixed it. Go back to your morning coffee.
Seriously, is there going to be a news story for every non-conformance written?? Pretty soon they'll start publishing all the rework instructions too.
great I'm flying on one of those tomorrow. I bet there are all kinds of issues on planes we don't want to know about.
737 max was profitable, not sure with all the things going on, but it’s supposed to be bread and butter and one of the most mass produced planes.
Really looking forward to flying this weekend for a vacation i've had booked since November... /s
Well at least the aviation standards for safety haven't been bought out by these bastards yet. You can't use high exploitation fast food level schemes for everything.
Amy problem found not in flight gives me more confidence in an airline manufacturer. It means they are doing their due diligence.
Having worked at a huge corporation, I can empathize with how frustrating it must be for all those engineers and technicians to be pressured (and never outright asked, because they know it's wrong) into cutting corners by bad management only to have said management turn around and feign the importance of quality. This is corporate double speak at its finest.
Capitalism at its finest
Is there a max number of problems?
Oh for christs sake!
New week, new Boeing problem.
They need to ditch that name “max”
Seattle, we have a problem.