Posted on 01/09/2024 10:09:29 PM PST by Dr. Franklin
Last week, passengers on board an Alaska Airlines flight were rattled by a terrifying incident involving a "door plug" being ripped out of the Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet that was taking them from Portland, Oregon, to Ontario, California.
The following "violent explosive decompression event," as National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy later described it, forced pilots to return back to the ground — though luckily, nobody got seriously injured.
As regulators pore over the data — the offending door plug has since been recovered alongside a fully intact iPhone from one of the passengers — new questions have arisen over the events that led to the incident.
As The American Prospect reports, the plug door, which was designed to seal a hole in the fuselage that's used in some other configurations as a door opening, was possibly the result of "cost-cutting production techniques to facilitate cramming more passengers into the cabin."
The plug door was a fix to still meet Federal Aviation Administration requirements in the case of high-capacity passenger seat layouts without having to make major changes to the fuselage design. "There are a lot of different ways to configure an aircraft to pack in air travelers like cattle, but it changed the calculus for manufacturers to meet standards," airline industry expert Bill McGee told the Prospect.
Worse yet, court documents obtained by The Lever suggest that former employees at Boeing spinoff Spirit AeroSystems, the company Boeing subcontracted to manufacture these plug doors, told Boeing officials about an "excessive amount of defects."
Instead of heeding these warnings, internal correspondence reviewed ... suggest that officials told these former employees to falsify records.
One employee told a coworker that "he believed it was just a matter of time until a major defect escaped to a customer," per the report.
(Excerpt) Read more at futurism.com ...
It should surprise no one that cramming too many people in a plane causes safety problems that get ignored in the name of profits. It's like the Titanic sinking without enough life boats which finally caused a change in maritime laws.
Like in ships, the more hull penetrations the more weak points you create.
With a plug door as you surmise, it creates yet another emergency exit.
But then it’s another hull penetration that needs to be paid attention to during maintenance cycles.
More complexity, longer maintenance cycle to compensate, the more incentive to cut corners on inspecting certain things.
Like plug doors that don’t normally open.
Because why would anything be loose or damaged when it doesn’t get opened?
Not saying this is what happened, but it’s a possibility or possible contributing factor.
Depends on the maintenance logs and inspection reports.
This aircraft was brand new. I haven’t heard how many flights it had, but it’s been reported it was new.
The design was to have an emergency exit door there, which means one fewer row of seats. By replacing the door with a window panel, you get another row of seats.
But they installed the panel wrong.
Boeing quality is going down.
(But they installed the panel wrong.
Boeing quality is going down.)
That’s what happens when DIEversity is implemented in the workplace.
Exploratory sub.
I read the title and just laughed. If it’s linked, it’s a long chain to follow.
All I can say is, look for a new Apple iPhone ad very soon.
Blame the victims...
He’s generally an insufferable Leftist, but that’s pretty good!
“Gaping Hole in Boeing 737 Linked to Stuffing More Passengers Into Flights”
Almost became a way to ‘unstuff’ passengers.
Click=bait.
Isn’t this related to the fact that the electricity grid is collapsing in South Africa as the personnel there cannot maintain it?
unless you can afford first class or get your business to pay for it, flying for the other passengers is almost horrible.....seats stuffed close together, poor service, waiting in lines, inflated prices....a lousy pack of pretzels that cost about a dime.....its a unpleasant experience..
the ntsb woman describes this as an accident, not an incident, which to me means it could have been prevented.
Boeing did not manufacture the item in question. Spirit Aerosystems did.
That we are losing the ability to create and maintain complex systems such as infrastructure in our societies?
“Almost became a way to ‘unstuff’ passengers.”
Did the door suddenly blow off or did it first ‘spring a leak’, allowing the cabin to depressurize without passengers being sucked out?
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