Posted on 02/07/2024 8:19:52 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Imagine knowing you were sitting next to that door plug in the past flights!
If this blowout happened at say 35,000ft then many would have died except the pilots and anyone able to get to the oxygen quick enough.
Our airliners have missing bolts and the White House Administration has more than one screw loose.
No — the issue is that Boeing managers decided to describe the operation as “Opening” the panel instead of “Removing” the panel. See if the panel is removed, they are required to verify and document that the bolts have been reassigned, which takes time and money. In contrast, if it is simply “opened”, there are no bolts to worry about and all that pesky paperwork and useless inspections can be avoided.
This one is squarely on Boeing managers cutting costs by cutting corners.
If bolts were missing, how did the crews pressurize the cabin? Missing fasteners mean vacant holes for air to leak from the cabin. Did the crews us manual pressurization to override the auto pressurization? Were there maintenance complaints made to the mechanics and instead of grounding the aircraft for major air leaks the mechanics just signed off the aircraft as repaired and returned it to service? That is done for minor issues but if you cannot pressurize the cabin that is very dangerous as was proven when a major fuselage door blows out. If that would have happened at 39000 feet altitude many people would have gone out into the slipstream;
The door plug is primarily held in place by 12 stop pads mounted to the fuselage and 12 stop fittings mounted to the door plug. When the door plug is installed it is slid up, over and down with stop fittings behind the stop pads. The 4 missing bolts just prevent the door from moving in a vertical direction.
Here is the preliminary NTSB report that should answer your questions.
https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Documents/DCA24MA063%20Preliminary%20report.pdf
I work on my own cars. Yeah, I’m old school like that.
I have a couple of plastic silverware drawer organizers that live in the garage for holding fasteners and parts when I get into anything serious. Also have a couple of heavy plastic Coke cases for larger parts.
Having leftover serious bolts of the sort in play here, left over afterwards, is simply inexcusible. Heads should roll.
Why didn’t someone notice that they had four extra bolts left over when the job was done?
DEI is going to kill a whole lot of people before it’s doe.
That hasn't been determined yet. Seems to me the door should have been tagged and the bolts left with the door after being opened.
That it will, and it will be censored and forbidden to talk about it.
“ My daughter was flying home from Australia the night the door blew off. I was up all night worrying whether she was on a Boeing plane.”
I wish I knew about this at the time. I could have eased your mind and helped you sleep by explaining there was no way she was on a 737 from Australia. Too far for that little jet.
Spirit AeroSystems boasts a big diversity and inclusion program... and the president was fired a few months ago because the quality of the company’s work was terrible to the point of being dangerous.
The bolts were installed by the contractor, but had been installed incorrectly. The old bolts were then taken out at Boeing but no one thought to install the new ones.
Goes well with DIE pilots.
This one was a twofer according to the preliminary report. There were 5 bad rivets near the door frame that had to be replaced. This happened at Spirit Areosystems. The door plug was removed to do the work at Boeing. The bolts were never put back in.
Exactly. Now knowing more about the rivet rework associated with removing the plug to accomplish.
There is a standard instruction on the floor for dealing with removal and reinstallation of the plugs/exits etc. for co-lateral reasons.
This is a FUBAR first at at the worker level for not following the standard instruction. Second it is an inspection escape. The floor inspector absolutely rubber stamped completion of the required work.
Culturally, this flows back to the 1990's trend of implementing TQM and six sigma QA where each progressive step of an assembly was verified for compliance by the next worker in line. Culturally, as QA manager in a major aerospace company, I can vouch that there was a lot of resistance to accept the TQM approach from both management and union perspective. We had to do it because it was a contract flow-down requirement but it was "half fast" in implementation.
Thanks for your insight. The first inspector caught the rivet errors and it went down hill after that..
It had been a male plane, but was transitioning to female, and had it’s bolts removed.
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