Al Jazeera English
6 HN recommenders · recommended in 12 months, 2017–2024
48:23 · 5.7M views · Sep 10, 2014
An Al Jazeera investigation into Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, featuring current and former engineers who voice safety concerns. It covers quality control problems at the South Carolina plant and the roots of the battery problems that grounded the plane.
Boeing threads cite it as early evidence of deep cultural and quality problems at Boeing, years before the 737 MAX crashes.
16 comments from Hacker News
No matter how you may feel about (all) nation-state sponsored media outlets, AlJazeera deserves respect for this excellent footage they got from inside the factory. It's a few years old, but should have raised more alarm by now: this video
The MCAS is what brought Boeing issues into the zeitgeist, but I was aware of issues at Boeing ~ 18 years ago from friends who had worked there and Al Jazeera did a great investigation ~ 9 years ago ( this video ). Boeing used to be the gold standard and as someone who researches such gold standards it was disheartening to see them give that up. But that happened very slowly and started a long time ago. Clearly diluting focus away from safety is an issue for whatever the reason especially when the safety of airplanes is declining. This should also be taken in context that many aspects of manufacturing have improved greatly over the past 20 years so even if everything else stayed the same the general safety should have been greatly improved. So the drag on safety by the culture is bad enough to overcome these 'free' gains and end up with even less safe planes should highlight just how bad that effect is.
It's worth watching Al Jazeera's series on the production of the 787 Dreamliner, and related cultural issues at Boeing after their merger with McDonnell Douglas [1]. Personally, I think it's worth taking with a grain of salt as it appears quite one-sided, but the interviews with Boeing ex-employees and head engineers are enlightening, and could go some way to explaining the lack of redundant systems (i.e. cost and time). [1] this video
Al Jazeera has a long report on YouTube [0] covering the allegations around Charleston, I know that they can be biased against the US but this report is quite eye opening. Even more given the interview with a VP (or director, can't remember exactly the position) being cut short by the PR person involved, the reports from workers inside the factory stating they wouldn't fly a plane built there, etc. [0] this video
Check out this documentary on Boeing's sketchy manufacturing & QA process back in the days of the 787 release. It seems that the company has been toxic for a while now. this video