Alaska Airlines flight forced to make an emergency landing... 82

[LittleInch]

A refit of a plane not even 3 months old sounds a bit unlikely to me....

But agree, we don't know for sure who was the last company to refit the plug, however Boeing seen to be the most likely.

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

 

[3DDave]

Given that loose hardware has been found on other planes, Boeing certainly has a problem.
Given that Alaska had repeated detections and kept the plane in service indicates Alaska has a different problem.

There have been plenty of warning flags waving that Spirit has been shipping defective parts and assemblies and Boeing has been dealing with them. Sorting out the finger pointing may take a while.

 

[LionelHutz]

The plane would have to be checked by maintenance personnel and passed the tests prescribed by Boeing before going back into service. I doubt they were "Hey, it went away, fuck it lets keep the plane flying."

 

[TugboatEng]

A refit of a plane not even 3 months old sounds a bit unlikely to me....

In this post-pandemic world we are still swimming in backlogs. It's not uncommon to remove parts from assemblies on the production line to support off-line units. Or, reconfigure a product in production to shift to a higher priority customer.

 

[jrs87]

What's inside a Boeing 737 Emergency Exit Door? Link

 

[TugboatEng]

I don't think this news is recent enough to have any impact on this failure but it is a sign of things to come for the future of Boeing.

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

 

[Sym P. le]

A disappointing post.

 

[Murph 9000]

Musk is in no position to throw stones from his glass house, given his misleading promotion of advanced driver assist as "autopilot" and "full self driving". His dishonest and reckless marketing continues to encourage irresponsible use of his products on the public highways.

 

[dik]

I'm pretty sure, not as much... maybe 5% to 10% of it. The problem was obscured and could not be determined without excessive 'dismantling'. The earlier flights indicated that it may not have been so serious.

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[TugboatEng]

I guess it takes one to know one. I remember a Tesla eviscerating itself and driver on a divider in autopilot on highway 280 which was right in Musk's backyard. Other drivers were able to recreate the scenario which was very interesting. Clearly a fault of the automation. No word from Tesla.

The comments on the story are interesting. Boeing farmed out production of the fuselage to Spirit so their corporate rules maybe don't apply. In that case my post above may not be relevant.

 

[Brian Malone]

DEI has no bearing on the failure of the 737 plug door. If that belief is strongly supported by this community of engineering professionals then the xenophobia is endemic and that situation is sad. I see this nonsense in comments on many other news threads and it is disappointing to see it even broached here. I have to shake my head and accept everyone has their opinion even if it makes no sense and their statements perpetuate falsehoods. Unfortunately, Elon Musk is Elon Musk.

 

[TugboatEng]

I specifically stated that this policy would not have had time to have been an influencing factor on this failure but will likely have an influence on quality in the future.

 

[SWComposites]

Boeing didn’t “farm out” the fuselage fab to Spirit. 737 fuselages have always been made in the Wichita plant, which was a Boeing plant until about 2004 when Boeing spun off the Wichita commercial facility to create Spirit.

 

[dik]

Brian... DEI success occurs when you no longer recognise groups and the society is all as one.

One of my classmates from 60 years back (grade school) was Chinese... I knew him, and his family well. He would eat at our place and I at his... there was never a thought about him being Chinese. He was simply a friend. It was only a few years back that this was brought to my attention that he was Chinese.

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[TugboatEng]

I'm not well versed on the corporate side or things. When I said farmed out I meant transfered to holdings groups. The key is that the owning corporation can apply different rules to different divisions to bypass unions, regulations, governance policies.

Dik, your story is contrary to DEI success.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

The history of Spirt seems to be missed by most.

There are several other now suppliers providing core systems which the same was done to.

There was talk of Airbus doing the same with Hawarden after Brexit, but they decided not to.

The ETOPs stuff is strange and its an additional qualification for pilots. With out it we are limited to 1 hour single engine from diversion airport. There is additional equipment on board and servicing required. Burt quite what I have have no idea, the pilot stuff eg fuel planning I have no clue about because I have never been ETOPs qualified. But from the basic stuff from ground school I don't remember the depressurisation being included its not for none ETOPs fuel planning.

Depressurisation is covered a lot but related to terrain clearance and being able to descend to 10k.

I think the ETOPs is a statistical concept to reduce the risk below a certain fatality rate using historical data.

Depressurisation would effect a tri or quad engine aircraft in the same way as a twin which is maybe why its not included.

 

[Brian Malone]

Brian... DEI success occurs when you no longer recognise groups and the society is all as one

I agree with treating everyone respectfully and recognizing their skills regardless of color or creed. The nonsense of claiming DEI policies or programs making products or processes lower quality or dangerous comes up again and again in comments. That ugliness was thrown about with the FIU overpass tragedy (Denney Pate), the Titan submersible tragedy (Stockton Rush), Boeing 737 MCAS (Dennis Muilenburg and Kevin McAllister) and now it is being bandied about for the Boeing 737 plug door failure (Dave Calhoun).

Denney Pate, highly lauded and recognized bridge engineer, Stockton Rush, aeronautics engineer, both let their ego-focused goals blur their sensibilities. Muilenburg and McAllister are highly degreed aeronautics engineers with years of experience and worked their way up through the industry, real insiders yet they either mandated changes at Boeing to meet financial goals and promises and got caught flat-footed with the MCAS failure or they were overconfident of their previous successes and chose to allow shortcuts to be taken. The failure of MCAS was not driven by any DEI hiring policy - it was the guidance from the head offices was flawed.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-020-00252-y

Dave Calhoun said he would change the management message after taking over the Boeing CEO position and maybe he has, maybe he hasn't but he and his team will be scrutinized through this plug door failure.

This claimed DEI poison gets put out there before a root cause has been determined and strikingly, in almost every case cited - the failure or tragedy was lead, controlled and/or designed by a well-degreed, generally well-respected, highly capable middle-age white male. I am not pointing out 'white male' to vilify them, I am pointing it out because those that claim DEI is the root of engineering failure miss the elephant in the living room. The failure mode generally has been a combination of additive failures in the design or system and some level of ego-driven blindness by the principal engineer. Quality and safety haven't been compromised because DEI policies possibly changing the cultural mix of the staff or workers or creating less capable people/staff. The failure or lapse of quality have occurred because either symptoms were ignored or disregarded, or financial pressures or motivations lead to decisions that proved bad.


Good points have been noted on the plug door, its retention fasteners, and the airplane pressurization sensors and warning system. At this point, I don't think it has been definitively determined if the four (4) lock bolts were not installed (though almost certainly they were not in place), or which party left them uninstalled (Boeing, Spirit, Alaska Airlines). The airplane pressurization system warning more than likely was related to the improper closure of the improperly retained plug door but with the plug door covered with an insulated interior panel would it be obvious the plug was the leak point? For a system the size of a commercial airliner how does a maintenance team track down a pressure fault? Maybe the altitude restriction step taken by Alaska until the pressurization fault could be determined is not unusual or reckless to those in the industry? Certainly, in 20/20 hindsight it seems less than perfect.

Then Elon Musk weighs in with his opinion and as the world's richest man, he obviously must know something, and all the Musk sycophants get repeating the same bad belief. He is a very successful business man and has done some things very well and others poorly. I am not a rabid supporter of mandatory DEI but for me Elon Musk's DEI statements show he is missing the engineering truth and has a weakness of character.

 

[1503-44]

No altitude restriction has been mentioned; only distance based on time of flight.

I would think that leaks would not be so hard to find. There are points where the probability of finding them is 100x others. We check the bolted flanges first. Easy to say in hindsight, but doors and door plugs would be #1 on my list. Get a bucket of superbubble mix and have at it, or download Spectroid app to your phone and get a waterfall plot of the sonic environment. It's quite sensitive . I can see the frequency of a bee beating its wings.

But yes. There apparently are altitude restrictions on where one can fly. Commercial aircraft with any number of engines do not venture into the Himalayas and some areas in South America (others?) that make it impossible to descend to and hold 10,000 ft and still reach an acceptable landing runway. No distance or flying time provisions are prescribed that I've seen, but I would assume there would be some judgement calls about what a reasonable time might be, if one had to descend into a valley and take a long circuitous route around a high ridge. There are probably a few of those in Colombia. The Andes split into three ranges making two deep valleys between them. Even if passes existed, the weather tends to be uncooperative and runways few. You might have to exit to the north coast landing at Cartagena or Baranquilla.

--Einstein gave the same test to students every year. When asked why he would do something like that, "Because the answers had changed."

 

[Brian Malone]

1503-44

yes, you are correct Alaska Airlines did not put in an altitude restriction, it put in place a restriction of no long routes to Hawaii placing the plane over ocean water, thus allowing the plane to return to an airport if the pressure warnings returned.

 

[1503-44]

Right. That's what I have been ranting about. It's entirely the wrong limitation for decompression trouble. Decompression at 35,000 ft directly over JFK would have saved nobody. Alaska Air was very, very LUCKY. Only their passengers were luckier still. They should all go out and buy LottoMillion tickets.

--Einstein gave the same test to students every year. When asked why he would do something like that, "Because the answers had changed."