Boeing Names Independent Quality Review Leader

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I work on my own truck. When I do a repair and have an extra or missing bolt or nut, I retrace my steps to find the damned thing and replace it. And that's just to avoid being stuck on the side of the road, not falling from 30,000 ft.
Agreed. And these are not small bolts from our personal vehicles holding this door onto the aircraft.



One of the reasons I never ride on any of the amusement rides at roaming carnivals is that I know for a fact that at the end of the build there are bolts left over that no one is sure where they came from. Just hope this isn't your seat mate on your next flight on anything from Boeing, lol.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAQhPgad4SM
 
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One of the trueisms of the equipment I worked on was, if we saved all the screws, washers, nuts, and fasteners left over, we could soon have enough to build another machine.
One of our old timers had an account with several retired military folks and when Howard took a break with the machine all apart, someone would walk by and toss in a few extra pieces.
Howard would finish with only the joke hardware left and would tell the customer "I can't figure where these go."
 

1. I am not allowed to discuss anything related to the event or issues (for hopefully obvious reasons… )

2. I don't work in production or in commercial aircraft so I don't know whats in the pipe.
 
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They should have invested in a completely new small aisle Jet airliner instead of trying to update the now almost 60 year-old base design of the 737 with all its known shortcomings/limits. They would have had to rely longer on the 737NG but it would have saved hundreds of lives that were lost due to improperly designed and tested software.
 
Up until Oct 2018, if I was a Boeing shareholder I would have been pleased that the firm had stretched out the amortization of 737 program to sixty years, much like how the B-52 development cost was paid for over seventy years ago! Imagine if an automobile newly launched in 1964, such as the iconic Ford Mustang was still produced today and remaining a bestseller at that, with the same essential body and production setup, with occasional upgrades to powertrain and electronics - basically this: Revology Cars. Ford shareholders would be ecstatic at the ROI.
 
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Just listened to this pilot. DerAdlerIstGelandet why would the anti-ice system cause possible engine destruction? And isn't that more of the engine manufacturer's fault than Boeing? Presumably these engines are not exclusive to the 737 Max line?


 
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Commercial aerospace strategy is a (small) part of my job. There's a short answer, a long answer and a REALLY long answer to that question. There's also a book length answer, but something like that might be coming out later this year

Short answer is - Boeing doesn't know exactly what it's going to build in the future. At least, not yet. But it's working on lots of things. But they probably won't be here until about 2035.

Long answer is - Boeing plans to keep building 777, 737 and 787 derivatives for at least the next one to two decades, and probably longer. Based on program accounting quantities and assuming full rate production can be indifinitely maintained, the 737 MAX will be in production for at least another 21 years, the 787 another 14 years and the 777/777X about 7 or 8 years.

Officially, new Boeing clean sheet designs are waiting on a new generation of engine technology offering 10-20% reductions in fuel burn to materialise. This is not expected for 5-8 years. Boeing has completed market studies for the NMA (think a modernised 757) and the NSA (787 technology shrunk down to 737 size), but is not willing to go to market without better engines on the wings.

A summary of the REALLY long anwer is -

1) A bunch of financial considerations.

Making a new aircraft is hugely expensive - the 787 cost somewhere between $28.5 and $32 billion to develop and get into production, and then Boeing has incurred another ~$30 billion to date in production, tooling and other program costs. Boeing needs huge financial resources to fund a new aircraft program.

Boeing is loss making. The company has lost just short of $22 billion on an operating basis since 2019. The 737 MAX debacle means the company will probably be loss making again in 2024.

Plus, Boeing has a bunch of other financial commitments at the moment. It's committed to paying down $15 billion of the debt it took on to survive COVID-19 by the end of 2025. Boeing also needs to pay a bunch of compensation to airlines/leasing companies for 737 MAX & 787 groundings and delays, along with paying for the airframe rectification work. In 4Q 2023 alone, this totalled $2.7 billion.

Basically Boeing isn't going to market with a new aircraft until it is in a better financial situation (and gets its equity and return on investment out of the toilet). Bear in mind, Boeing is a company with $16 billion in liquidity available right now.

2) Production and engineering.

Boeing can't figure out how to build a new aircraft cheaply enough for its own liking, particularly not aircraft with high proportions of carbon composite. The NMA design was supposedly close to going to market, twice. But Boeing pulled the plug both times because they couldn't find a way to manufacture the aircraft at the unit cost they wanted. Airbus is having a similar problem with the A220, a design that it acquired/took over from Bombardier. It still hasn't managed to get the aircraft to unit break-even, despite doubling the rate of production (to ~6 per month).

Boeing is also under pressure to onshore its engineering resources for any new aircraft. But it simply can't find enough trained engineers in the US at the moment to deal with it's current engineering demands, let alone developing a new aircraft. Boeing also doesn't really hire foreign workers in the US (H-1B visas) - less than 100 foreign workers are employed at Boeing Commerical Airplanes, out of a workforce of more than 35,000.

3) Uncertainty about future propulsion for commerical aircraft.

Generally speaking, an airline is only interested in a new aircraft if it offers at least a double digit reduction in fuel burn compared to the aircraft it's replacing. So, without any new engine designs available in the short term, OEMs are stuck offering refinements of their existing airframes.

The airline industry has also committed to cutting its emissions by 50% by 2050. 96% of industry emissions come out of the tailpipe of a turbofan or turboprop. So, the industry needs biofuels/SAF (which offer 60-80% lifecycle emissions reductions, but are only available in tiny amounts at the moment). The sector is also really interested in low/zero emission fuel sources and new engine technology.

There's a drive at the moment for hybrid-electric systems in the 2MW range for 50-100 seat turboprop replacements, with ATR and Embraer likely to put new aircraft into service with this technology around 2030.

Bigger aircraft are more difficult. Unless battery technology becomes an order of magnitude more efficient in terms of both weight and energy density, liquid fuels are really the only game in town for flights longer than 1000km. It's hard to find a fast charging point when you're crossing the Pacific.

So, the big engine makers (GE, Safran, Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce) aren't offering new engines at the moment and they're all looking at alternative fuels for the future - hydrogen is popular, but there's also research into methane and ammonia. Which means that there's massive uncertainty at the moment about what sort of engines are going to end up powering the next few generations of aircraft.
 
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They should have invested in a completely new small aisle Jet airliner instead of trying to update the now almost 60 year-old base design of the 737 with all its known shortcomings/limits.

They should have, but the industry was still risk averse from the GFC and Airbus was eating Boeing's lunch with the A320neo. Boeing needed a competitive response, and it chose the option it could bring to market the quickest with the least cost.

They would have had to rely longer on the 737NG but it would have saved hundreds of lives that were lost due to improperly designed and tested software.

The 737 MAX's software was like that because Boeing didn't want to have to require pilots to do a full certification when transitioning from the 737 NG to the 737 MAX and it didn't want to invest several billion dollars in re-engineering the 737s wing.

One of the big selling points for Airbus with the A320neo was that it was cheap and easy for pilots to transition from the older A320ceo. No sim work needed.

In order to keep pilot difference training to a minimum, Boeing wrote the 737 MAX Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System software to essentially imitate the flight behaviour of the 737 NG.

What was a commercial decision to try to use software to solve an engineering problem (upwards and forwards shift in the aircraft's CoG thanks to the new engines) ended up with 2 aircraft impacting the ground at high speed.
 

Admiral, I told you I do not work commercial and I cannot comment on these things for hopefully obviously reasons.
 
Very informative, thanks for posting.

So, basically nothing since the MD merger.
 
Merger with McDonnell Douglas changed the culture. For some reason McD-D upper management was put in charge. Focus on share holder value over all else. Cut corners and oversight. Profits soared, quality suffered. This product/industry does not suffer fools. Air force tankers not fit for combat operations, tools found in airframe, 737 Max MCAS System, doors with loose bolts (one separated in flight), FAA let them self-certify, this ain't your dad's Boeing anymore. Profit over all else.
 
Companies tend to get lazy when they grow too fat, focussing more on money earnings from the existing products than investing in technical innovation.
See Intel vs AMD
 
Agreed, yet somehow there has not been a single airline crash in the USA since 2009. Given how the 737 Max was simply tweaked after two foreign crashes, I suppose we'll tragically need a new US one before major changes occur.
 
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The Federal Aviation Administration said Monday its audit of manufacturing at airplane-maker Boeing and its key supplier turned up "multiple instances" of them failing to make sure manufacturing met quality standards.

The FAA said that it found "non-compliance issues" with Boeing's manufacturing-process control and parts handling and storage. It did not provide details.

[...]

Last week, the FAA gave Boeing 90 days to come up with a plan for addressing safety concerns raised by the FAA and an independent panel of experts from industry, government and academia.


 
I wonder how qualified the FAA is to conduct this review and to report such findings.
 
It does make you wonder how many potential sales they've lost now because of this, and if those lost sales were worth more than the savings from ignoring quality issues?
And that's without potential lawsuits or fines.

I must admit that I'm biased, having both worked in aviation and now being in a quality role in a different sector.
 

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