Alaska Airlines explosive decompression 1/5/23

Never seen a checklist with the CVR breaker on it. It's procedure to do it in case of incidents/accidents like this, but not an item on the checklists I have used on Boeing/Airbus.
 
Bell206 said:
FYI: it was a much larger market than SWA. It was an international market across dozens of countries. SWA simply had the right business model to take advantage of that exploding overseas market. And just to add, Boeing did lose AA to the NEO which sparked the move to the MAX.

In this case you’re wrong. Different market and legend. Airbus had already screwed the pooch with their “long term planning” on the A380. And you saw how that ended. Boeing eclipsed them with their “long term planning” offer the 787.

However, in the short term, when Airbus responded to the exploding single aisle market in Asia and similar areas with the NEO it light a fire under Boeing to catch up. No clean sheet, ie, innovative design, could compete on the same time schedule.

So the move was to the MAX. The only problem was the 737 had short landing gear vs the 320’s higher gear length which was designed for a different era of pax loading/unloading. Unfortunately, that short gear led to the MCAS requirement and the rest is history.

You can blame Boeing all you want, but they are hardly the only hole in the block of Swiss cheese to line up and cause the issues of the MAX. And to include the door plug falling out if those 4 bolts were actually missing.
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I was only using SWA as an example, but yes they have many more customers that all wanted the common type rating for a new aircraft.

But MCAS/Max aside, the door plug falling off is all on Boeing. They are responsible for quality control, both of their manufacturing and any subcontractors they are using. Missing or loose hardware is just not acceptable when you build transportation aircraft. This time it might have been "just a door", but this event is just a symptom of a much bigger problem. Their biggest fortune in this event is that no one was sitting there and fell out. Had this plane been at full capacity, this story may have been much different.
 
TBH, in this one I would give the crew a pass. It sounds like the cockpit door had blown open during the decompression, and that the cockpit in general was a bit of a mess of papers... not to mention the crew probably wanted to get off the airplane/debrief/hit the bar... Whatever... not to point fingers but I would be focusing on maintenance in Portland... they were calm and levelheaded... pull that breaker as soon as you get onboard.
luvflyin said:
Hmm. I wonder if that’s a checklist item. After landing after an emergency, turn off CVR.
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TipTanks said:
TBH, in this one I would give the crew a pass. It sounds like the cockpit door had blown open during the decompression, and that the cockpit in general was a bit of a mess of papers... not to mention the crew probably wanted to get off the airplane/debrief/hit the bar... Whatever... not to point fingers but I would be focusing on maintenance in Portland... they were calm and levelheaded... pull that breaker as soon as you get onboard.
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Oh for sure. In the heat of the moment the crew does not know the extent of the situation. They had a rapid depressurization event. The flight attendants are reporting a hole in the side of the airplane. I wonder if the attendants even knew about the presence of that door or thought the wall of the cabin failed.
 
midwestpa24 said:
Oh for sure. In the heat of the moment the crew does not know the extent of the situation. They had a rapid depressurization event. The flight attendants are reporting a hole in the side of the airplane. I wonder if the attendants even knew about the presence of that door or thought the wall of the cabin failed.
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Yeah, just saying I have heard (not here) people angry with the crew for not pulling that CVR breaker... I just think they get a bit of a pass for forgetting that one in this case. I was shocked to see the FA walking around during what appears to be flight when the plug was out. Juan at the Blancolirio channel on Youtube has been providing great daily updates.
 
midwestpa24 said:
the door plug falling off is all on Boeing. They are responsible for quality control, both of their manufacturing and any subcontractors they are using.
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Yes and No. At the upper level as the PC holder Boeing is responsible for the overall quality control. However, at the lower levels especially at the vendor level, that direct QC responsibility is held by those FAA-approved vendors themselves. And it has yet to be determined if the direct QC failure was at Spirit or at Boeing. Time will tell.
 
Bell206 said:
You can blame Boeing all you want, but they are hardly the only hole in the block of Swiss cheese to line up and cause the issues of the MAX.
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Yes, there are many holes, but Boeing owns the cheese. As long as the aircraft is called "Boeing" it's their responsibility, beginning to end, and it's up to them to manage their suppliers and to ensure users are properly trained.

So yeah, I'll blame Boeing for problems on a Boeing aircraft.
 
wanttaja said:
View attachment 124263
Ron Wanttaja
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Yes, but....

Part of the culture problem at Boeing is the role of engineers, and at least some of the blame for that falls on the company chief engineer and the engineers themselves. Boeing engineers ceased behaving as professionals and viewed themselves as labor, forming unions and going on strike. They did not exercise proper professional autonomy, and they abandoned the ethics of their professional societies and of their oaths by not calling adequate attention to the problems. When they were overridden by program managers, they had a professional obligation to go directly to regulators, to the FAA, and to the media and public if necessary, and they reneged.
 
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Half Fast said:
Yes, but....

Part of the culture problem at Boeing is the role of engineers, and at least some of the blame for that falls on the company chief engineer and the engineers themselves. Boeing engineers ceased behaving as professional and viewed themselves as labor, forming unions and going on strike. They did not exercise proper professional autonomy, and they abandoned the ethics of their professional societies and of their oaths by not calling adequate attention to the problems. When they were overridden by program managers, they had a professional obligation to go directly to regulators, to the FAA, and to the media and public if necessary, and they reneged.
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To an engineer, integrity is more important than ability.
 
I double checked before my first run-up. No bolts, cotter pins, or castle nuts left on the workbench or on the floor... Jus' sayin'.
 
Spinka said:
Never seen a checklist with the CVR breaker on it. It's procedure to do it in case of incidents/accidents like this, but not an item on the checklists I have used on Boeing/Airbus.
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At one of the recent NTSB briefings, Homendy made it pretty clear they are very unhappy with the CVR erasure. She took the time to urge the FAA to require update of CVRs in current commercial aircraft to have 25 hours of continuous memory. She said there's currently an FAA NPR for new a/c to have the 25 hours, but no requirement for retrofits.
 
Half Fast said:
Yes, but....

Part of the culture problem at Boeing is the role of engineers, and at least some of the blame for that falls on the company chief engineer and the engineers themselves. Boeing engineers ceased behaving as professionals and viewed themselves as labor, forming unions and going on strike. They did not exercise proper professional autonomy, and they abandoned the ethics of their professional societies and of their oaths by not calling adequate attention to the problems. When they were overridden by program managers, they had a professional obligation to go directly to regulators, to the FAA, and to the media and public if necessary, and they reneged.
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You can trace Boeing's problems back to the merger with McD. Prior to that, the relationship between the company and its engineers was pretty good...most of my managers had come up through the ranks. The union, then, was pretty minor. Membership wasn't required, and only about half the engineers were members.

The only action SPEEA (the engineer and technician union) ever until 2000 was a one-day strike in the mid '90s (announced in advance as a one-day strike). My Stinson partner (a fellow engineer, natch) buzzed the line with an air-horn blaring. My lead engineer had a real gleam in his eye, walking around chanting "Strike, strike, strike!"

We left for one day, and came back.

McD executives took over aircraft manufacturing after the merger. The executives seemed to take delight in alienating the engineering staff. One called us "prima donnas" in a news interview. McD executives, in turn, hired their flunkies to take over the mid-level management jobs. Managers seemed to now have business degrees, not engineering ones.

It eventually led to the strike in 2000, and eventually my own departure from the company (to return a few years later). By the time the strike happened, the vast majority of the engineering staff had been driven into the union. People we mad over how they'd been vilified by the Boeing executives.

So...we walked.

Keep in mind, we're aren't talking blue-collar employees here, traditional strong union supporters. We're talking a bunch of conservative engineers who had basically kowtowed to management prior to that. Kowtowing wasn't that bad, when the subject was a fellow engineer who had moved up in the world. The guy chanting "strike, strike, strike" in the early 90s? Became as executive by the 2000 strike (I worked on the space side, less subject to disruption).

So, the strike happened. I wrote an email to friends describing the background from my point of view and what the experience was like. Dave Martin at KITPLANES suggested I send it to Avweb. They published it, and it's still there, albeit without the original photos.

The Boeing Strike: A Report from the Trenches

GUEST COMMENTARY. The ongoing strike by the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) against Boeing took a lot of people by surprise, not least of which apparently was Boeing. Since February 9, the strike's first day, the white-collar union has seen more and more of its...
www.avweb.com www.avweb.com
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After it was over, I left for about two years, came back when the startup I'd gone to started to fold. The strike had solidified SPEEA's position in the company. Part of the settlement was that every engineer would have to pay a fee to cover SPEEA's representation of them...whether they joined the union or not (SPEEA negotiated for ALL engineers, whether they were members or not). Turned out that that fee was ~90% of what union dues were. So for the first time, SPEEA actually could AFFORD to oppose the company...and thus became a more-traditional sort of union. I wasn't too fond of that, but management had driven that particular bus.

Ron Wanttaja
 
Half Fast said:
Yes but integrity also requires admitting the limits of your ability and alway striving to improve your abilities.
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Exactly. That’s the hierarchy of desired traits in the engineering world but I’m preaching to the saved.
 
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Piperonca said:
To an engineer, integrity is more important than ability.
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I think that's true for people in general. I can teach people IT skills. I'm not good enough to teach an adult to have integrity that doesn't already have it.
 
Wh
Spinka said:
Never seen a checklist with the CVR breaker on it. It's procedure to do it in case of incidents/accidents like this, but not an item on the checklists I have used on Boeing/Airbus.
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What????
 
wanttaja said:
You can trace Boeing's problems back to the merger with McD.
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Concur. One arbitrator compared legacy Boeing engineers to the legacy McD managers as Boy Scouts going up against hunter-killer assassins.

But I'll expand on that a bit. Stonecipher and others who moved from McD into Boeing executive slots were acolytes of Jack Welch. Welch's scorched-earth approach to raising profits and stock prices has been the downfall of several companies, and that philosopy has wrecked Boeing. Welch's methods work (for a little while) when you're building toasters; they're entirely inappropriate for building airliners.


wanttaja said:
McD executives, in turn, hired their flunkies to take over the mid-level management jobs. Managers seemed to now have business degrees, not engineering ones.
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Exactly. And that's the heart of the problem.

Boeing's org structure is fatally flawed for addressing this problem, because they have engineers answering to program managers. At LockMart, at least my part of it, that's not the case. Program engineering teams report to a program chief engineer, who works with the program manager but not for the program manager. The program chief engineers, depending on the size and nature of the program, report to the chief engineer department manager (me, before I retired) or to a line-of-business chief engineer. The CE dept manager and the LOB CEs report to an engineering VP, and he reports up the corporate chain ultimately reaching the CTO. The CTO reports to the CEO.

In that way, engineering management and program management only converge at the CEO, and God help anyone who can't resolve a conflict before it reaches that level. The program managers have no authority to override an engineering decision, so the PM and the CE must collaborate. There's often a lot of conflict here, and sometimes it gets elevated a level, but done properly conflict is healthy and provides a fire that burns off the dross and refines the gold.

In fact, just last night a fellow retiree and I were discussing all this. We both recalled many instances where we had stopped a delivery or blocked a flight test until engineering concerns could be addressed, and never once were we overridden. There would be questions and follow-on discussions, of course, but no PM ever even tried to say "Screw the engineers; ship it."



wanttaja said:
The executives seemed to take delight in alienating the engineering staff. One called us "prima donnas" in a news interview.
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I saw execs make similar statements a couple of times. I never saw one progress any further in his career afterward.
 
I read your first sentence and thought to myself "that sounds like GE", no kidding. When I was in college we'd go to dinner with some of the engineers working at GE CRD in Schenectady. Stories of craziness about "neutron jack" were always a great topic. Some of the sharpest people I've ever met, being led around by 20 something managers that knew nothing about design.

PM's are great, but they're supposed to be facilitators, not anyone in a decision making role. Where I work, we've given them the exact authority that they need, and that's to be able to organize meetings with anyone and get questions answered in terms of who is responsible for what. Then, the tech people make the recommendations, and leadership, who all have an actual IT background, weigh in on the decisions.
 
Half Fast said:
Concur. One arbitrator compared legacy Boeing engineers to the legacy McD managers as Boy Scouts going up against hunter-killer assassins.

But I'll expand on that a bit. Stonecipher and others who moved from McD into Boeing executive slots were acolytes of Jack Welch. Welch's scorched-earth approach to raising profits and stock prices has been the downfall of several companies, and that philosopy has wrecked Boeing. Welch's methods work (for a little while) when you're building toasters; they're entirely inappropriate for building airliners.




Exactly. And that's the heart of the problem.

Boeing's org structure is fatally flawed for addressing this problem, because they have engineers answering to program managers. At LockMart, at least my part of it, that's not the case. Program engineering teams report to a program chief engineer, who works with the program manager but not for the program manager. The program chief engineers, depending on the size and nature of the program, report to the chief engineer department manager (me, before I retired) or to a line-of-business chief engineer. The CE dept manager and the LOB CEs report to an engineering VP, and he reports up the corporate chain ultimately reaching the CTO. The CTO reports to the CEO.

In that way, engineering management and program management only converge at the CEO, and God help anyone who can't resolve a conflict before it reaches that level. The program managers have no authority to override an engineering decision, so the PM and the CE must collaborate. There's often a lot of conflict here, and sometimes it gets elevated a level, but done properly conflict is healthy and provides a fire that burns off the dross and refines the gold.

In fact, just last night a fellow retiree and I were discussing all this. We both recalled many instances where we had stopped a delivery or blocked a flight test until engineering concerns could be addressed, and never once were we overridden. There would be questions and follow-on discussions, of course, but no PM ever even tried to say "Screw the engineers; ship it."





I saw execs make similar statements a couple of times. I never saw one progress any further in his career afterward.
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The Starship, on the other hand, sounded more like engineers run amuck…although they were largely inexperienced engineers, as Raytheon wasn’t going to let some old fuddy duddy King Air engineer ruin the vision. ;)
 
Half Fast said:
At LockMart, at least my part of it, that's not the case. Program engineering teams report to a program chief engineer, who works with the program manager but not for the program manager.
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In my dealings with T1s, and I’ve worked with them all, my projects with LM have been among the most satisfying projects of my career.

The PM, CE, and, we, the vendor, worked as a team of equals identify issues, resolve problems, and deliver product that met expectations and specifications. It was satisfying work. My sales enginner coined a term describing good customer engineering teams, “They live on the planet earth.” We used that all through our career to describe good customer teams.

When working with the company subject to this post, the projects were managed in a very dictatorial top down fashion that resulted in a very contentious stressful work environment. Non bueno.
 
wanttaja said:
So, the strike happened. I wrote an email to friends describing the background from my point of view and what the experience was like. Dave Martin at KITPLANES suggested I send it to Avweb. They published it, and it's still there, albeit without the original photos.
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Ron, I read your AvWeb article. No offense intended, but in the context of recent Boeing issues your article actually illustrates a large component of the problem, at least in my opinion.

Boeing engineers were willing to raise all kinds of hell, walk off the job, picket the company, talk to the media, jeopardize their future employment, etc., for the sake of a contract which they considered unfair. Probably it was indeed unfair, but that's not the point. The point is that Boeing's engineers never raised a stink, much less went to the mat, over safety issues. They stood their ground over medical benefits and bonuses, but they rolled over when it came to problems which killed people.

That's how we might expect labor to behave, but it's not what we expect of learned professionals.

Every engineering code of ethics I've seen has language requiring us to hold paramount the safety and welfare of the public. The very first article in the IEEE code of ethics reads:

I. To uphold the highest standards of integrity, responsible behavior, and ethical conduct in professional activities.​
1. to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public, to strive to comply with ethical design and sustainable development practices, to protect the privacy of others, and to disclose promptly factors that might endanger the public or the environment;​
​
By not doing this, IMHO Boeing's engineers behaved unethically, regardless of all the corporate mismangement BS. Whether employed by a corporation or in private practice, we engineers have obligations to the public and to our profession that, in situations like this, supercede company loyalty.

You've seen Boeing from the inside, so I hope you'll give some consideration to this aspect of the issue and perhaps share an opinion or two.
 
Half Fast said:
You've seen Boeing from the inside, so I hope you'll give some consideration to this aspect of the issue and perhaps share an opinion or two.
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One thing I should make clear is that I never worked in an area at Boeing where human safety was at risk...worked unmanned/space programs for my entire career. So can't speak to the safety/whistleblower issues you raise.

Do have to point out that one engineer is known to have raised concerns with the earlier issues with the Max. He got transferred away...if not for union protections (e.g., the company having to show cause), he probably would have been fired.

I'm not from a "union family"; my father managed a heavy-equipment repair company that underwent unionization and he pointed out the problems with it. I joined SPEEA in the early '80s. Not in belief of its mission, but when I discovered that the union provided protection and did the negotiations for *all* engineers (not just union members). I don't take freebies.

Did the strike have a lasting financial benefits for the engineers? Beats the heck out of me. Most of the stuff the union was fighting against eventually happened anyway...reduction in medical coverage, disappearing pensions, etc. Took another ~20 years, but it did happen. I retired about eight years ago with the full, traditional pension that the union had preserved...but the company had already gone to a two-tier system, where new hires don't get one and instead are offered more "modern" options involving 401Ks. Maybe it's better, I dunno. But in my case, it was automatic, like a military pension...I put in the time, I now get the monthly check without having to depend on my own financial decisions. A number of my co-workers from the pre-strike era left the company after the strike but never returned. Most of them are still working, as they didn't have a big fat Boeing pension check waiting for them.

Union membership paid off for me about 25-30 years ago. An individual publicly claimed I was under investigation by the FBI, and printed in a national magazine that I was the "dupe of terrorists." Since I had high security clearances, this caused some problems. I underwent an interview with the security folks.

Now, it was the kind of thing I should have brought a lawyer to...but finding lawyers with TOP SECRET/CODEWORD security clearances is difficult. But under union rules, I could request a shop steward to be present. She was an engineer in my office, and had the same clearances. She didn't get involved in the questioning, just took copious notes. It was rather a relief to have ONE neutral observer at the meeting; to keep the company from running me over. The union would have been there anyway, whether I was a member or not, but I liked knowing that I had been supporting it for the past ten years.

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
...Now, it was the kind of thing I should have brought a lawyer to...but finding lawyers with TOP SECRET/CODEWORD security clearances is difficult. But under union rules, I could request a shop steward to be present. She was an engineer in my office, and had the same clearances. She didn't get involved in the questioning, just took copious notes. It was rather a relief to have ONE neutral observer at the meeting; to keep the company from running me over. The union would have been there anyway, whether I was a member or not, but I liked knowing that I had been supporting it for the past ten years.
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I used to work both union and non-union jobs as a part-time musician, and I had noticed that the contracts for the non-union jobs tended to have some pretty one-sided provisions in favor of the employer. The worst was one that required me to indemnify the employer. The union would never have agreed to that, but I had never before seen a clause like that even in the non-union ones. The job didn't pay enough to justify hiring a lawyer to assess the liability that I would be assuming, so I declined the job.
 
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wanttaja said:
One thing I should make clear is that I never worked in an area at Boeing where human safety was at risk...worked unmanned/space programs for my entire career. So can't speak to the safety/whistleblower issues you raise.

Do have to point out that one engineer is known to have raised concerns with the earlier issues with the Max. He got transferred away...if not for union protections (e.g., the company having to show cause), he probably would have been fired.

I'm not from a "union family"; my father managed a heavy-equipment repair company that underwent unionization and he pointed out the problems with it. I joined SPEEA in the early '80s. Not in belief of its mission, but when I discovered that the union provided protection and did the negotiations for *all* engineers (not just union members). I don't take freebies.

Did the strike have a lasting financial benefits for the engineers? Beats the heck out of me. Most of the stuff the union was fighting against eventually happened anyway...reduction in medical coverage, disappearing pensions, etc. Took another ~20 years, but it did happen. I retired about eight years ago with the full, traditional pension that the union had preserved...but the company had already gone to a two-tier system, where new hires don't get one and instead are offered more "modern" options involving 401Ks. Maybe it's better, I dunno. But in my case, it was automatic, like a military pension...I put in the time, I now get the monthly check without having to depend on my own financial decisions. A number of my co-workers from the pre-strike era left the company after the strike but never returned. Most of them are still working, as they didn't have a big fat Boeing pension check waiting for them.

Union membership paid off for me about 25-30 years ago. An individual publicly claimed I was under investigation by the FBI, and printed in a national magazine that I was the "dupe of terrorists." Since I had high security clearances, this caused some problems. I underwent an interview with the security folks.

Now, it was the kind of thing I should have brought a lawyer to...but finding lawyers with TOP SECRET/CODEWORD security clearances is difficult. But under union rules, I could request a shop steward to be present. She was an engineer in my office, and had the same clearances. She didn't get involved in the questioning, just took copious notes. It was rather a relief to have ONE neutral observer at the meeting; to keep the company from running me over. The union would have been there anyway, whether I was a member or not, but I liked knowing that I had been supporting it for the past ten years.

Ron Wanttaja
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My concern isn’t so much the union, per se, as it is the willingness of Boeing engineers to lay it all on the line when it comes to protecting a pension but NOT when it comes to protecting human lives.
 
Half Fast said:
My concern isn’t so much the union, per se, as it is the willingness of Boeing engineers to lay it all on the line when it comes to protecting a pension but NOT when it comes to protecting human lives.
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This is what unions do. Plumber's unions aren't concerned with toilets, teacher's unions aren't concerned with students, pilot's unions aren't concerned with passengers or airplanes, engineer's unions aren't concerned with bridges. Regardless of what you've heard, unions are concerned with their member's continued employment and payment of dues.
 
Kritchlow said:
I’ve never known it to be procedure, even if not on checklist.
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At my company the CVR is on none of the checklists.
The securing of CVR by pulling the CB part we have on a separate incident/accident guide. No idea how Alaska does it.
 
Lindberg said:
This is what unions do. Plumber's unions aren't concerned with toilets, teacher's unions aren't concerned with students, pilot's unions aren't concerned with passengers or airplanes, engineer's unions aren't concerned with bridges. Regardless of what you've heard, unions are concerned with their member's continued employment and payment of dues.
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Again - I’m not discussing the union. I’m discussing the willingness of the engineers to take substantial and risky steps to preserve job benefits compared to their UNwillingness to go to any extremes over matters of safety.
 
Half Fast said:
My concern isn’t so much the union, per se, as it is the willingness of Boeing engineers to lay it all on the line when it comes to protecting a pension but NOT when it comes to protecting human lives.
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To start, Ron's description sounds spot-on to much of what I've heard about the Puget Sound side of Boeing as viewed from another part of the same company.

I was in a different part of the company and the engineering workforce was not unionized (IIRC we/they voted down unionization not long after I was hired). Regardless, as I understand it for most of my career my engineering-title counterparts in the PNW were not unionized either. I was involved in human-safety-critical roles for much of my time there, and I was at a similar clearance level (with different clearances) as described here. With that out of the way, I can't think of a case in my area of influence where an engineer felt it necessary to "lay it on the line" to "protect human lives (sic)." I was certainly there when safety issues were raised, and of course there was pushback, from both management and other cognizant engineers, but the issues were addressed and resolved. There were times that resolution was painful, but I'm not aware of anyone being disciplined overtly or covertly for raising the issue. I certainly saw 'career limiting' moves and action taken, but all that come to mind were regarding programmatic issues.

ETA/C: What I'm saying is that no one (AFAIK) felt the need to "lay it on the line" because it was possible to raise safety issues without doing so.

I also had to report the same circumstances but definitely less severe incidents as Ron to my security people. I did so without reservation and without additional representation, with absolutely zero repercussions.

Why the dichotomy? Well, I think some of it is real, some of it is self-manufactured, and some of it is blown out of proportion by outsiders (and some insiders) with an axe to grind. As for why I think these are the causes, maybe I'll share them in a different forum, as they don't fit the narrative here.

Nauga,
from the fringes
 
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Spinka said:
At my company the CVR is on none of the checklists.
The securing of CVR by pulling the CB part we have on a separate incident/accident guide. No idea how Alaska does it.
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In a past life maintenance control would been in charge of protecting the CVR.
 
MauleSkinner said:
The Starship, on the other hand, sounded more like engineers run amuck….
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Seems like there's been another example of an airplane company run by the engineers in the news recently.

Nauga,
in a Van's down by the river
 
The sky is not falling (yet).

www.wsj.com

Flying in America Has Actually Never Been Safer

U.S. airlines have gone nearly 15 years without a fatal crash—and it’s not just luck. The revolution in the skies began with an innovative program that has become a model for the rest of the world.
www.wsj.com www.wsj.com

Note the comments about how this program we all know (and some have used) isn’t in place on the manufacturing/ overhaul arena. It should be.
 
Half Fast said:
My concern isn’t so much the union, per se, as it is the willingness of Boeing engineers to lay it all on the line when it comes to protecting a pension but NOT when it comes to protecting human lives.
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I'd have to see a sample case, where engineers had an opportunity to stop an unsafe process but didn't. There's a lot of ways management can mollify engineers... "Oh, don't worry, they'll add the additional training for the MAX that covers that" or "That'll be part of the pre-acceptance review, out of your area" or "Engineer XXXX says there's nothing to worry about, so we're going with him." This sort of thing can tend to take the wind out of one's sails as far as protesting.

Bring the objection to the program Chief Engineer? Certainly. But at Boeing, the Chief Engineer on most programs is a executive-level manager.

It's very easy for engineers to drop the dime to the FAA when necessary...or to the news media.

One engineer digging his or her boots into the ground is one thing, but, often, there is only ONE engineer with the best insight into the problem. Hard for others...or the union...to take a stand when they don't have firm understanding of the issues involved. Nominally, the union is supposed to believe the protesting member irregardless of anything else. Don't think engineers are comfortable with that.

Over history, you find many military campaigns where everyone from the Colonel on down to the merest Private thought an operation was a bad idea. But the General said, "Go!" and no one was willing to fall on their swords to stop it. For one reason or the other Boeing has a VERY militaristic management structure.

I read an article in Navy Institute Proceedings, long ago (it was in the library at Boeing). When you look at the cases where individual officers managed to push the Navy into improvements and updates, they invariably had independent means. Their liveihood didn't depend on remaining in the Navy, and they could rabble-rouse to their hearts content. Look at Billy Mitchell...he didn't end up on the bread lines after his court-martial.

But the average Lieutenant JG doesn't have that option, nor does the average engineer. I agree, he or she SHOULD raise a ruckus of they see something wrong, and (of course) their union (if any...Boeing Seattle is pretty rare) should back them up. But, again, it's too easy for management to provide justification and explanations.

I'm real curious to see the results of the investigation into the door plug problem. I'm sure it was cost-reduction-related. My guess is that it's along the lines of, "We don't need to run our own inspection, look, here's Spirit QA's signoff on it."

Note: This is a BOEING issue, not a Spirit one. Boeing has responsibility for its subcontractors. The people on the line at Boeing, though, has to accept their management's assurance that the subcontractor did its job.

So: How (and if!) was Boeing checking the work? I have a very good opinion of the skills and pride of the machinists at Boeing the people who actually assemble the airplanes. I suspect, paperwork or no, that they do stuff like flick bolts on newly-received hardware just to see if they're loose.

But...what state did Boeing receive the fuselages? Did they have the interior trim panels already installed? Would they have to be removed to access the door plug hardware? These were supposedly semi-permanent installations; not too hard to believe the suspect hardware areas weren't directly accessible once they were shipped to Boeing.

Again, waiting to hear the results of the analysis.

Oh, and to cheer everyone up: Spirit does work for Airbus, too.....


Ron Wanttaja
 
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