Boeing waited until after Lion Air crash to tell Southwest safety alert was off

[RankingMember]

For anyone interested in an insider's perspective on recent quality issues at Boeing, check out this short New York Times podcast wherein they interview whistleblowers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/23/podcasts/the-daily/boeing...

The excerpt that stands out to me the most related the story of one of the whistleblowers finding pieces of debris within a 787 aircraft (between the passenger compartment and the skin), telling his supervisor, and then being told not to worry about it. In another case, a whistleblower in charge of defective inventory found that some of the items marked defective were going missing and ending up installed on aircraft to meet production goals rather than wait for a proper replacement, the red paint marking them defective having been clumsily rubbed off.

[itsaidpens]

These stories are from an acquired factory - it seems like they acquired a lot of problems when they bought Embraer.

[simion314]

As I commented in previous articles here on HN, the chance that there are other subsystems that were rushed and self-approved by Boeing is not zero, people thinking that fixing the MCAS is enough are forgetting to consider that other components had to be updated for the new design.

[mhandley]

And it's recently emerged that the AoA sensor misread itself may have been Boeing's fault, and due to foreign object damage to wiring:

https://interestingengineering.com/boeing-whistleblowers-rep...

Boeing also has foreign object damage problems on the 787 and on the KC46 tankers. Looks like this story still has a long way to run.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing-dreamline...

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/u-s-a...

[RankingMember]

Wow, I'm surprised that's not more well-known (that the USAF halted all deliveries of the KC-46 after finding loose material and debris in delivered planes). Amazingly bad.

I wonder what the odds are that the Dreamliner gets grounded (again) soon to have them all gone over with a fine-tooth comb.

[porpoisemonkey]

I've recently contacted all of the major airlines that fly the 737 Max as well as my congressional representatives and the FAA to let them know I have serious reservations about a software fix to the aircraft.

If this issue is concerning to you I'd recommend you do the same. To make it easier, I've put the links to all the contact sites below.

United Airlines https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/customer/customercare

Southwest Airlines https://www.southwest.com/contact-us/contact-us.html

American Airlines https://www.aa.com/contact/forms?topic=CR#/

Find your Congressional representatives https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representati...

FAA https://hotline.faa.gov/

[magtux]

I always had great respect for aerospace and thought they'd put safety above all else but seeing all this, Boeing seems like a fucking travesty.

[ilikehurdles]

Boeing opened its South Carolina plant to avoid a unionized workforce, and that plant has been responsible for producing these horrific excuses they call airplanes. They had the benefit of a doubt before, but now it's clear that Boeing's leadership, like that of other public companies, values cheap labor over safety.

[tastygreenapple]

It didn't always used to be this way - at one point Boeing delivered planes that were substantially safer than their competitors.

Moving the HQ to Chicago was a terrible idea. Companies like boeing should be managed by engineers not salespeople.

[Florin_Andrei]

> thought they'd put safety above all else

The bottom line is always above all else. Or is it executive compensation? I always forget which is first.

[gdubs]

If I recall from earlier reporting, this is the safety light that Southwest paid extra to have installed, right?

[jbarberu]

I don't fly very often, but being in the midst of booking flights I'm very thankful for websites having filters by airplane type. I'll be paying the additional 10-20% to not set foot on a Boeing this time.

[larrik]

Wow, I'd be surprised if some young congressperson doesn't make their career by publicly eviscerating Boeing soon.

[mieseratte]

I hope you don't think it's going to be a US congresscritter.

"Why do you hate American jobs!"

[_eht]

I feel like you are fantastically undervaluing the power of the Boeing lobby groups...

[dsfyu404ed]

I'm thinking of a particular congresswoman that almost certainly isn't going to do it because she'd lose the vote of pretty much every blue collar worker that aspires to have a stable job somewhere like Boeing. It's not an obvious political win.

Edit: Ah, the good ol' "reality makes me unhappy so I'll shoot the messenger" down-votes. I don't know why I even comment in any of the Boeing threads anymore.

[karlkatzke]

"If it's boeing I ain't going"

[triangleman]

What an unfortunate blunder by Boeing.

Until this episode I was deliberately looking for 787's and such when booking international flights, despite what I had heard about the batteries, because I thought Boeing had to be just that much better than Airbus and their unintuitive UI's that I heard crashed AF447.

And now all that good will is gone.

[balls187]

Or...now that Boeing has clearly lost trust, how much harder will they work to earn that trust back?

[LeoPanthera]

I wonder how many serious problems Airbus have that we simply don't know about because they haven't been caught.

[gthtjtkt]

This is pretty disturbing and makes me far more confident in my decision to never set foot on a Boeing airplane again.

I thought the American airlines had all opted for the AoA disagree light, but now it sounds like Southwest didn't have it because Boeing lied to them and said it was standard.

[agumonkey]

very timely, AvE just made a teardown of an AOAS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhZ0D-JRtz0