Al Jazeera English
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 7 months, 2019–2024
52:28 · 90K views · Dec 15, 2010
An Al Jazeera English People & Power investigation from 2010 into safety problems with the Boeing 737NG, featuring whistleblowers on cracking parts, hand-made structural components and an alleged cover-up.
HN resurfaces it during Boeing safety stories as early, firsthand evidence that production and management problems long predate the 737 Max.
9 comments from Hacker News
Here are gruesome, firsthand details about production and management problems with the 737NG in a documentary from Al Jazeera. this video The following summary is my own: The whole story is shown in the first seconds: three aircraft encountering more force than a usual landing (such as a runway overrun). All three fuselages breaking into three parts in exactly the same two places! All three aircraft exactly eight years old. Aluminum members called chords run the length of the fuselage and around the circumference to make up the fuselage structure. The chords are joined to each other and to reinforcing surrounds for large openings like doors. Poorly fitting chords and bear plates around openings were redrilled when mounting holes were misplaced, reshaped and pounded with hammers in order to mate them. This weakened of the structure to below design margins. In addition excessive metal fatigue due to hand processing led to accelerated corrosion, likely causing structural failure in three eight-year-old NG aircraft that broke up on landing. The aircraft were engineered to survive an emergency landing intact and were designed for 30-year airframe life. More to the story as the government colluded with Boeing to cover these deficiencies and frustrate the actions (eventually lawsuits) by a team of whistleblowers. Basically, the subcontractor agreed to use computer controlled manufacturing processes, then did 90% of the work by hand. The resulting substandard parts were beaten into shap
Link? Also, the rot didn't start with the 737 MAX. The 737 NG has critical problems that went unaddressed that has contributed to multiple fatalities and equipment damage. Here's a documentary about it: People & Power - On a wing and a prayer (2010) Al Jazeera this video [LINK]
You're talking out of your ass. Watch this documentary about whistleblower complaints as far back as the 737 NG line as they observed workers beating structural parts into place with hammers. Clearly, things haven't improved since then. this video
Here is the video documentary by Al Jazeera for said scandal: this video I just watched it. This is bad. Boeing, with the help of the American government, is covering up serious issues with how the 737NG is being built with faulty parts.
Or: Boeing is in a spiral to death, involving bigger-than-themselves trends: - Airbus started later, so they started with newer technology, on top of it the fly-by-wire / all electronics commands. Boeing is weighted by its legacy. Dozens of thousands of pilots have been trained on mechanical systems, it’s hard to migrate them. Airbus benefited from watching Boeing’s experience and starting at the age of electronics. - Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas in the 2000’s which has extremely bad engineering records (Half of episodes of Air Crash Investigation are about the DC-9/DC-10/MD-11, involving FAA leniency on the flying doors, FAA leniency on extending the length without doing the proper engineering, and I don’t know if one sees a ressemblance with current events). So the MD acquisition may have entirely modified Boeing’s middle management approach to « handling FAA ». By negotiating FAA’s leniency, or by having people exchange jobs and offices... - Since the MD purchase 20 years ago, Boeing has chosen to collude with FAA to become the certifier instead of the FAA, in order to win competition against Airbus. Unfortunately it has eroded customer trust when we noticed the FAA isn’t doing its job at all, for example about the metal frames where workers had to drill extra holes next to misplaced ones, or bend the frames, compromising structural integrity entirely [1], the batteries or the MCAS. - Now with 200 aircrafts 737 Max grounded since 6 months, and perhaps in need of being t