Boeing whistleblower: Staff 'jumped like Tarzan' on jet parts to fit them

submitted by PanzersGhost from (bbc.com)

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[–]binaryblob 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

That by itself doesn't really mean anything, if the parts are supposed to be able to handle such stresses. I can certainly imagine there is regulation, which would prescribe for every part of an airplane how installation should happen, but since some planes have millions of parts that seems unlikely.

A full argument would be as simple as "Part A should be installed via procedure X and it was instead installed multiple times via the procedure Y with X not equal to Y". That way you don't need a long court case.

One guy claimed that the body was not aligned correctly and indeed that would likely be a big issue, but the only way to know that is to calculate whether that's the case and no plane has actually crashed from that, AFAIK. Who says that the engineers didn't account for a bunch of idiots working on planes in the factories (that's what I would do and which happens in construction as well)? I'd expect in the case of body alignment that there would be some kind of sensor that would record that alignment is OK and put in some system for automated review. Indeed, if such systems are not available Boeing might just be a shitty company, except that such technology has been in use for decades in other industries, so they would have to be absolutely retarded for that to be the case.

[–]Jiminy 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

They're trying to make flying more dangerous, so less people want to use it to travel, eventually it'll only be allowed for the rich . They don't want dirty proles bothering them at the beach.

[–]ActuallyNot 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

It may well drive up ticket prices on airbus aircraft. But by the same token it will reduce demand and therefore cost for flying on a boeing.

[–]binaryblob 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I don't get how companies can have a queue lasting years for ordering a plane. I also don't get why people still work in manufacturing, unless they are building/programming the robots/machines. From my understanding there's still actual human labor involved in building planes, which just shows how the industry is ripe for disruption. If you have $30B to invest one could probably crush every other player in the market. I don't give a fuck about planes, but someone should do that.

[–]ActuallyNot 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

That by itself doesn't really mean anything, if the parts are supposed to be able to handle such stresses

Damage adds up linearly. If you have to jump on it to get it to fit, you're maintenance schedule for that part will be behind its actual damage, and you risk the part failing prior to being replaced.

I can certainly imagine there is regulation, which would prescribe for every part of an airplane how installation should happen, but since some planes have millions of parts that seems unlikely.

The damage to every part down to every rivit of a plane is modelled to produce the maintenance schedule.

[–]binaryblob 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Perhaps they do some kind of advanced scan before they deliver the part to the customer.

[–]ActuallyNot 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

And yet the planes have been crashing. Perhaps then need a more advanced scan ... or here's a thought ... precise enough engineering so that the part will fit.

[–]Musky 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Is that unusual though? Sometimes you gotta make shit fit.

[–]binaryblob 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I think people believe planes are made by a bunch of academics smoking pipes in an ivory tower, because the most precious thing in the world flies on them: people (a rather Western point of view when compared to Russia where a human life just exists for the meat grinder for the glory of the empire (or whatever it is that they made up this year)). As such, they think there is some kind of perfection going on (no doubt they believe their sky scrapers are also able to withstand the impact of an airplane (guess that didn't work out either)), which is obviously not the case. Perfection in this world exists, but anything complex made by average people (meaning everything made out of anything that is not fully digital (and any consumer digital product doesn't fall under this)) is going to be very much not perfect.

In short, I think it is not unusual.

Boeing claims to have adopted https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AS9100, which in 2015 already specifically mentions human factors as something they need to take into account, so somewhere there needs to be a document, which describes what happens when some idiot uses a tool that they should not be using for installation. That means that they have had at least 9 years to fix such issues and they probably have had continuous improvements over that time (they do have QA people and surely they must be doing something, right?). If Boeing was a full on circus, there would probably have been more serious problems.

If you look at the regulations, there should be processes for everything, but perhaps the "process" is that they can jump on some wing and that some machine scans it for problems afterwards. That too is still a "process". It would be a problem, if the process is to use XYZ Corp Screwdriver 5000 to install Magic Part and they didn't have that screwdriver and instead decided to just use the Tarzan method.

[–]Oyveygoyim 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Stupid niggers