Airlines say they found loose parts in door panels during inspections of Boeing 737 Max 9 jets::Federal investigators are learning more about how a door panel flew off an Alaska Airlines jetliner last week.
I always wondered what would happen if an army of accountants took over an engineering-heavy company and just gutted the engineering culture for profit…
This is absolutely crazy. Boeing was the undisputed number one maker of passenger Jet for decades, and McDonnell Douglas was 2nd. USA had a lead on passenger jets in the world where the competition was mostly irrelevant. Then Boeing buys McDonnell Douglas, so there is less competition in USA, but that only paves the way for Airbus.
It’s crazy how USA managed to lose their sovereignty in an area where dominance was almost total. But the lack of preventing monopolies in USA, was probably the cause, making the problem 100% internal for USA as I see it. Allowing ever more monopoly like companies since Reagan, is undermining the strength of American innovation and excellence.
This is probably also the reason the bean-counters took over, why bother with the technology, when there is almost no competition? We might as well make as much money as we can.Thisis what happened at litetally every good tech company.
Well that and “engineering culture” is now mostly “startup culture” where tech companies are spun up purely with an exit strategy in mind with the goal of growing in value for the founders as quickly as possible
Why do airlines still buy Boeing? New airplanes they make are clearly dangerous, and they don’t seem to be able to fix it for the next one, as we are already at the next ones…
Boeing advertises the 737 Max by saying that it works just like the old 737 so you don’t need to retrain your pilots and save money. The issue a few years ago with that is that these planes are not 737 so when some new issue happens the pilots don’t know how to deal.
There’s a long list of reasons:
- training pilots to change planes
- training maintenance teams
- changing procurement practices
- adapt supply chain
- etc
- and then on the bottom, 2 of the most important ones: cost control (maximize profits) and comfort
The cost of retraining their pilots would bite into their profits.
It’s near impossible to switch to airbus if an airline is preset entrenched in Boeing. You have to retrain everyone from ground crews to pilots to FAs to maintenance. On top of that you need new suppliers for spare parts, maintenance hubs and contracts.
Also supply is a major issue. Both Airbus and Boeing are back ordered for years, so there isn’t a way to easily switch fleets.
