Alaska Airlines flight forced to make an emergency landing (Part II)... 26

[Lou Scannon]

"water landing"... an oxymoron if there ever was one. BITD it was called by its true name, "ditching"

"Schiefgehen wird, was schiefgehen kann" - das Murphygesetz

 

[waross]

Have they checked the doors on the StarLiner?

--------------------
Ohm's law
Not just a good idea;
It's the LAW!

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

There has been a debate for years that some form of smoke hood would be more useful these days than life jacket.

Some areas don't require you to carry life jackets. The lower seat pads are declared buoyancy aids.

Historically life jackets were useful, with the change in the incident type most likely to occur. It maybe needs revisited.

 

[LittleInch]

Agree about the smoke hoods, but then they can be can be difficult to put on in a panic. I carry one with me when I travel, both for the plane and hotel rooms. Manages to get through security ok with the odd strange look.

The lifejacket thing is now so embedded in air travel it's difficult to see how to get rid of it, but with modern planes with underwing engines it is remarkably difficult to land on water without the plane breaking up. How Sullenberg did it I have no real idea.

But for sure, more people die from smoke inhalation over the years than have ever drowned, and inflate it inside a sinking aircraft and you get pinned to the roof...

They might be better off installing airbags in the back of the seats.

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[Oops409]

Plotting the evidence from an Article on culture changes at Boeing affecting safety

https://nypost.com/2024/01/11/business/elon-musk-rips-boeing-they-prioritized-dei-over-safety/

 

[3DDave]

DEI isn't a cause and Musk isn't a reliable source of information.

If I had to suggest a cause I would say they had a huge number of long-time employees who looked at the stock price and decided to bail, taking hundreds of thousands of man-years of experience with them.

Part of the push in many companies to DEI is because they need their interviewers to stop ignoring qualified people based on sex and race to make up for this general sort of problem.

Time and again I see reports by people of submitting nearly identical applications and resumes with the only difference being the name. Tyrone Smith? No response after 3 weeks. "Robert Smith" - called to schedule an interview the next day.

I think the stock price was the way out for too much experience.

 

[Oops409]

From Stansberry

"If you're working with a group of people and suddenly promotions and raises and bonuses start getting doled out because of factors other than performance, it has a really shockingly bad impact on the culture." - This quote encapsulates Stansberry's view on how DEI policies can negatively affect company culture and performance when not implemented in conjunction with merit."

"The truly talented people are going to leave and go work for SpaceX." - Stansberry uses this statement to illustrate the consequences of losing top talent due to frustration with corporate politics overshadowing merit-based achievements."

"It's almost as if somebody was deliberately trying to destroy this company, because you can't make decisions this bad if you weren't trying to." - Stansberry's blunt assessment of Boeing's leadership and financial decisions suggests a deep-rooted problem within the company."

https://www.tftc.io/boeing-dei/

 

[3DDave]

Stansberry is also not reliable. They have no direct information to work with.

The Securities and Exchange Commission sued him in 2003 on this basis and for his newsletters containing "nothing more than baseless speculation and outright lies"

There are no reliable financial advisors. By default, if they were good at their job they would be billionaires in their first decade or two of work. They would not want or need the distraction of constantly telling others what to do. If they are not good at their job, the next best thing is to fleece suckers by selling useless advice.

 

[TugboatEng]

When did Boeing adopt their DEI policy?

When did their quality and management issues start?

 

[davidbeach]

Their quality and management issues started with the McDonnell-Douglas "deal". Long before anybody was talking about DEI.

When one this sentence into the German to translate wanted, would one the fact exploit, that the word order and the punctuation already with the German conventions agree.

-- Douglas Hofstadter, Jan 1982

 

[TugboatEng]

Neither Boeing nor McDonell-Douglas had brand new planes shedding parts in flight until recently.

 

[waross]

Destroying a company the size of Boeing isn't easy and it takes time.
We are witnessing the end result of the management turnover that came with the McD deal.

--------------------
Ohm's law
Not just a good idea;
It's the LAW!

 

[waross]

The 737:
Envisioned in 1964, the initial 737-100 made its first flight in April 1967 and entered service in February 1968 with Lufthansa.
The buyout of/by McD:
McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing in August 1997
737 Max first crash:
Only 13 minutes after taking off from Jakarta, bound for another island in Indonesia, Lion Air flight JT 610 crashes into the Java Sea on Oct. 29, 2018, killing all 189 aboard.
So the 737 flew successfully for 30 years before the merger and the new management philosophy.
It took management another 19 years to deteriorate to the point of the Lion Air crash.
Boeing's apparent attitude?
No bigy.
Then, this;
Just months after the Lion Air crash and amid continued scrutiny of the 737 Max, another Max 8 crashes into a field six minutes after taking from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, en route to Nairobi, Kenya, on March 10, 2019.
Boeing paid a lot of fines but avoided some charges by promising to do better.
Then a door fell off.
Now Boeing has stranded a crew in space.
The very top tier of engineers can work anywhere.
I suspect that they no longer work for Boeing.

--------------------
Ohm's law
Not just a good idea;
It's the LAW!

 

[TugboatEng]

That's my point. These catastrophes are only within the decade. The MD acquisition happened in a previous decade.

Does Boeing have a DEI policy?

 

[FacEngrPE]

From the official Boeing website Global Equity, Diversity & Inclusion

Opinion - the problem with DEI is that when it becomes the priority, the business of a company is no longer the priority.

Being professionally courteous to our fellow workers is always a good idea, that will not get in the way of doing the things that makes a company do the things it's customers want to purchase.

Similarly a diverse workforce can be beneficial, but colorblind hiring on the basis of competency (or at a minimum potential for training to competency) will provide far better results.

 

[waross]

That's my point. These catastrophes are only within the decade.

You missed my point.
The McD merger started a trend.
The very best engineers tended to leave Boeing or, in later years, may have chosen not to start at Boeing.
While possibly not accurate, the effect may be described as the "MBA"effect.
A primary focus on stock price and quarterly reports over other concerns.

Tug, it appears that you have been fortunate to have never worked for bad management.
I once worked for a small company that was bought into be new blood.
The new CEO was an engineer by training, but had deep MBA tendencies.
He was very intelligent but his intelligence was crippled by his ego.
Our chief engineer confided in my that he was horrified by some of the CEO's "Engineering by Decree".
We were preparing a major equipment package for sea shipment to South America.
I was tasked with preparing, assembling calibrating and testing a control package.
I was given a very short deadline.
Too short.
I was only given a couple of days.
We worked a couple of long days and finished up at about 4:00 AM on the day of the deadline.
No testing.
No double checking.
No final adjustments or tweaking.
There were enough days left to have done the job properly, but our leader set an artificially short deadline to make sure that the package was ready for the sailing.
Douglas Addams' philosophy has no place in the world of MBAs.

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”

I don't know if my controls package functioned properly or not.
By the time the equipment was installed, I had found another job.
Within a year, the entire engineering staff had left, voluntarily, to be replaced with person's of the CEO's chosing, able to adapt to the MBA game.
The last to go?
After about a year, the original founder of the comany walked into the CEO's office;
"I've had it with you,you SOB.
Have your lawyer contact my lawyer and negotiate a buyout.
I'm done here."

Boeing had a lot of inertia and the MBA influence was not nearly as aggressive, but the trend was set when McD managers started to direct Boeing.



--------------------
Ohm's law
Not just a good idea;
It's the LAW!

 

[TugboatEng]

I am in operations. Recently we had a bad year with two expensive accidents. I had to work harder than ever to get the vessels back online and despite my cost savings it blew out the budget. Come bonus season, the bean counters saw the expensive year as low performance on our end. Our General Manager ended up having to pay our bonuses out of his discretionary account.

 

[waross]

It sounds as if you are very fortunate to a very good General Manager to work under.
It is nice to see that in this world of MBAs and AI there are still some decent managers left.

--------------------
Ohm's law
Not just a good idea;
It's the LAW!

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

https://www.businessinsider.com/boe...tion-door-plug-blowout-alaska-airlines-2024-8

Bit of additional detail.

 

[Sym P. le]

NTSB web page for Investigation ID DCA24MA063 (Alaska Airlines Flight 1282) - here

NTSB Docket DCA24MA063 - here

Link to NTSB Preliminary Report (Aug 27, 2024) pdf - here

NTSB Event page - here

Webcasts of Flight 1282 Investigative Hearings, August 6 - here, and August 7 - here

Edit: Links rectified.

Enhanced closeup of damaged rivet that led to the door plug being removed (from Preliminary Report, Figure 14)