I have no confidence in an industry that allows this to happen
I grew up sucking at the teat of the Boeing company — like most people living in the Seattle area. So I pay attention when Boeing makes the news in a bad and terrible way, since there was a time when that would have been catastrophic for my family, would probably mean we’d have to move to a smaller, more run-down house, and I wouldn’t be getting any dentistry done for a while. That was the reality of living in a company town. It’s weird to think we’d be happy when Boeing sold a couple of more planes, which would be front page news in the paper.
I felt a faint frisson when I heard about the door panel blowing out on a 737 in flight, and it was peculiar because my first thought wasn’t about the terrified passengers, which would have been more appropriate, but…uh-oh, is my family back in Seattle going to feel the consequences? Boeing has made a lot of bad decisions in the decades since I moved away, and the worst has been the shift from putting the engineers first and at the top of the decision tree and instead promoting all the suits, the MBAs who don’t give a fuck about these machines except as a way to squeeze more money out of the customers. It’s profit uber alles.
A faulty course change pretty well describes Boeing, which went through a restructuring during the 1990s from an “association of engineers” to a firm run by Wall Street shareholders. This catastrophic path has led to another systemic crisis for one of the world’s two major commercial aviation companies, underscoring the deterioration of Boeing’s product quality by financialization, cost-cutting, and outsourcing.
Yep, that’s about it. I’ve known a few engineers in my time, and they’re a bunch of persnickety, demanding people who would have cut a suit dead if they dared to suggest cutting corners on a basic safety issue to save a few bucks. They can be pretty obnoxious that way, daring to rebut such plans with math and analyses and outrage at the temerity of some damn business guy daring to tell them how to make a hunk of metal fly better.
Let’s also blame the airlines. They’re not about safety or even reliable transportation — I’ve had so many bad experiences with airlines that I’m not going to fly unless the situation is pretty dire. Last summer I had scheduled a flight to a science conference, and instead of getting to Syracuse, I spent two days sitting in an airport until they finally just canceled the whole trip beneath me…and offered me a $300 travel voucher to repeat the same bad experience with the same goddamn airline.
After subjecting their passengers to a horrific terror-ride on their improperly maintained airplane, Alaska Airlines offer their traumatized customers a refund and $1500. $1500! Would you take a $1500 offer to fly on a plane that was going to blow out midflight?
I guess in the future I’ll (1) simply not fly anywhere, or (2) if I’m faced with essential travel, book on Airbus, or (3) take a train, if possible, which it often isn’t in America. I’m suddenly sympathizing with Richard Lewinton, who was infamous for refusing to fly. I think it wasn’t because he was a scaredy-cat, but because the state of air travel in this country is deplorable.
I’m blaming capitalism.
Was reading a column in the WaPo yesterday about how equity firms are buying out doctor practices and how the care of the patient becomes secondary. while increased and aggressive billing become primary concern. These are parallel situations, it is about the all mighty dollar.
Me too, PZ, I am not flying anymore, when I have all my life, unless I must get to somewhere too far away. I was going to go out to my father’s house lately, where I’d always flown, and now was going to do the 12-hour drive instead. But, that’s how long the flight takes, with all the connections and waiting around during delays and trying to get your luggage back, which has been sent to Dubai. The last time I traveled there, out of four flights, three were delayed. Now there’s trying to get there alive as well!
And stuffin @1, you are so correct. My pediatrician sister’s practice is run by MBAs who have no concern for, and not even any knowledge of, how medical care works. The doctors have to fight, fight, fight, to keep any sort of quality in their medical work.
John Madden famously didn’t fly either.
I hate flying. Always have. And in the past few years I’ve gone from “I might fly if the situation requires it” to if I have to go somewhere by air questioning if I really need to go to that place. Unless my employer said I have to fly somewhere or get fired, I might do it. Or, at my age, just retire and go do something else. No way, no how am I going to subject myself to the equivalent of a flying cattle car or the ridiculousness that is airports and airport security.
Xpost from Mano Singham two days ago.
Another mistake Boeing made was moving their corporate headquarters from Seattle to Chicago after their merger with McDonnell Douglas.
Seattle is where they were founded and where they still have extensive research, development, and manufacturing facilities. At one time, they were one of the main employers in the Seattle area.
This showed that the company was leaving its engineering history behind and being run by corporate suits who knew “business” but didn’t know a lot about research, development, and manufacturing jet planes.
They are now moving their corporate headquarters to Arlington, Virginia, which happens to be where the US military has its Pentagon headquarters.
It looks like they are far more interested in their defense business than making civilian aircraft.
It’s ironic that as a species due to sheer BS we went from flying being the dream of humanity to the nightmare of it.
I don’t fly much any more either.
My rule is if it is within a days drive up to 600 miles to just drive.
That way at the end of the trip, I still have a car.
Part of it was getting tired of the security theater in the airports. The security body scanners don’t really work, so they inevitably end up patting you down or using a hand scanner anyway.
Part of it was the airline scheduling. To fly to some places I wanted to go would take almost all day. There would be one or two plane changes with layovers so a two hour flight takes 5 hours if you are lucky. Add in the drive to the airport and being an hour early, the trip takes you all day anyway so why not drive?
PS Having grown up in northern Washington, I know exactly what PZ means about Boeing and Seattle. When Boeing was in a slump, the billboards going out of town always said, “Will the last person to leave Seattle turn out the lights?”
Does this post mean you won’t be attending this?
https://www.discovery.org/e/dallas2024/
HA!
@8, boba1
LOL.
Guess we will all have to drive instead!
PZ you should watch the Netflix documentary “Downfall – the case against Boeing.” It covers the crashes of the Boeing 737 Max 8 and describes the exact problems you highlighted above. A really well made documentary in my opinion.
https://www.netflix.com/title/81272421
Yeah, right — the only possible reason I’d skip that Dallas event is because I don’t like to fly.
I remember some columnist asking, back in the 1980s, “Does anyone really believe the recent explosion in numbers of MBAs has improved the performance of American businesses overall?” I don’t remember ever hearing anyone saying “yes” in response.
Traveling by train would have been my first gut reaction to this as well, that is before I watched John Oliver’s segment on rail lines.
Yeah, I know this is focused on freight, but still, it doesn’t help my level of confidence in rail transport either way, regardless of whether it is passenger or freight.
Then I think about the quality control issues and cost-cutting in the pharmaceutical industry and what my doctor has me taking these days now that I’m pushing 60. At least it seems like there is more oversight from the FDA than from the NTSB, for what it’s worth.
Capitalism ruins everything.
I remember the lithium battery fires. My friend who was working it the warehouse at the time speculated that the problem was getting cut rate batteries from China. Not 100% sure, but that is what I was told. Bean counters threaten lives.
I’ve been an engineer going on four decades now. I’ve been employed by three different organizations that were all started by engineers, and well run by engineers, until they became large enough to attract the attention of MBA’s. Once the bean counters took over all three companies quickly declined and eventually disappeared.
I’m convinced the reason is that engineers think in terms of creating value while MBA’s think in terms of extracting value.
kenbakermn: I can’t say for sure, but I believe engineers think more in terms of solving problems and addressing needs or demands. Which of course has the effect of “creating value,” but that phrase is too vague for an engineer’s purposes. /tech_writer_quibble
I hear the Safety Chief at Boeing has an Open Door policy.
@16 Raging Bee
Speaking as an engineer (>40 years), you are correct in your assessment. That is precisely how most engineers think, and they’ve also had safety concerns drummed into their heads from the day they walked into their first class.
The idea that a company simply makes “widgets” and that all widget manufacturers can be treated the same is one of the main problems with MBA thinking. Sectors are unique. Would anyone want a manufacturer of electronic medical diagnostic gear to be run the same way as a company that makes stereo equipment? But they both make “widgets”, and electronic ones at that, right?
When I’m dealing with anything in the Toronto/Montreal/Ottawa area, I always take the train… not only is the train downtown to downtown, meaning no extra trips at both ends to get closer to town, but there’s no ridiculous security theatre either. Going from downtown Toronto to downtown Montreal isn’t appreciably faster by plane once you take all the other time delays into account.
Sadly, that stretch is about the only part of Canada for which you can really say that easily; outside of the Quebec-Windsor corridor, train travel here isn’t great, and a trip between Toronto and Vancouver (my parents live out west as well) takes four and a half days by train rather than five hours by plane. And going through the U.S. is worse once you’re anywhere away from the East Coast: I once looked into train from Toronto to Pittsburgh for a convention and it turned out that the fastest method had a 23 hour layover in New York City.
And yeah, Boeing has been aiming a machine gun at its own foot for a while now. One of the biggest issues with the Dreamliner was the way the production was spread out across so many countries, which not only makes corporate espionage against them so much easier, it also means a whole lot more moving parts in the schedule that can break and throw all the production into chaos. (Which, of course, happened.)
I knew someone who had worked for the Canadian Space Agency who had a whole detailed and researched rant about the rise of the MBA as a side effect of the military procurement process of WWII metastasizing across the rest of business operations. Basically once you had to have someone who specialized just in the procurement process and the paperwork required to get everything done, that person became a critical part of the process and could often end up believing they actually understood the business rather than just understanding how to fill out the mess of paperwork. And once other people at the top who mostly understood the finances of business started believing the procurement people knew what they were doing as well… you ended up with a self-reinforcing cycle of people who prioritized the bottom line without understanding that you need to have things on the top line going into it first.
Hemidactylus @ 3. I didn’t know that. It doesn’t come over that strongly in Best Exotic Marigold Hotel; perhaps I should deconstruct the movie (as per the 737 Max…)
Ok, as an airline pilot I am going to be biased but hear me out. This wasn’t an airline safety failure, this was a production failure. The airline orders a plane with a certain amount of seats, that amount determines the number of emergency exits required, it’s cheaper for Boeing to make the airframe accommodate maximum exits but also only to install the required amount. That was done improperly.
This plane landed safely without loss of life as a result of the actions and training of the cabin crew (also, yes, luck no one was sitting next to that spot) and that is directly attributable to training and support they receive from the airline.
also of note, the recent Japan accident where no lives from the airliner were lost at all because of the actions and training of the crew (and also how the Japanese tend to remain calmer and follow instructions)
So this hyperbole of how the airlines don’t care about you or your safety is just that. Yes, the people counting the beans are going to cram as many seats in as they can and figure out how to extract everything they can from you but the people flying the line, the people in maintenance, the people in the training departments, we care. I am a line check airman, I train our new pilots flying the line. One thing I constantly emphazise to them is that this is bascially a customer service job. The safety and well being of our pax is our number one issue, we do our best to get you to your destination in as much and comfort and timeliness as possible.
Flying is not that bad! I go places too, when I do I go through security just like everyone else. Is it annoying? Sure. But a few things you can do makes it so much easier. Pack light, wear travel friendly clothing. FFS we know it sucks but we still take our shoes off so wear something to make it easy. Get to the airport a bit early and have a less stressful trip. Be friendly with the workers and other passengers. We are all stuck up there together. Also, don’t get drunk at the airport
For the rich, too much money is never enough.
After decades of arguing that capitalism is the only and best way to organise society, it should be obvious that capitalism is the on;y and best way to make the rich richer. And in the service industries this is achieved by cutting the costs of maintenance and safety and customer support procedures, destroying competitors, and raising prices.
@17, Artor
groan
:)
I blame NASA.
Why? Well, with the Challenger disaster, NASA demonstrated that they had been infiltrated by the MBA mindset.
In addition, NASA has been slow-walking the “B-Ark”, which is where we should put all the MBAs.
And no, we don’t need any telephone sanitizers, since everyone has their own personal phone now.
Capitalism is unconcerned with your blaming and shaming. Capitalism is too busy swimming in a pool filled with cash, Scrooge McDuck style.
All that, after the airlines got $50B+ in subsidies during COVID.
I think it was Cory Doctorow who coined the term “crapitalism,” and it should be used more often.
Also recommending the movies Park Avenue (free on Youtube) and The Corporation. I consider myself pretty well informed, but learned lots from both.
With the exception of waydude #21 everyone here is complaining about air travel. No,one mentioned it is by far the safest way to travel/ thousands of times safer than by automobile. Decades ago there were hundreds of deaths per year and recently there are periods of several years where the number of deaths is zero. In the last four months I have made four plane trips to a southern city 400 miles away. It takes 4-5 hours with one layover. Every flight has been on time, no luggage lost or misdirected, (American, and Delta), the trip was relaxed, easy, lots of reading done. I much prefer it to driving . This may be atypical and perhaps only those with bad experiences are writing here, but sometimes it seems that people here love to complain about anything they can. Excessively. Research showed that in driving roundtrip -800 miles- the chances of a car accident is about 1 in 250. Don’t remember the chances of dying. Chances of dying in a plane crash-I in 11million. Things are not nearly as bad as most everyone here is sayin. Also, because of my chronic back pain, I get pushed in a wheelchair between gates at the layovers. Anyone can do that. Makes thing much easier. My girlfriend prefers to drive to see me. I always fly. So much easier and safer.
astringer @20
A different John Madden:
https://www.sportingnews.com/us/nfl/news/john-madden-bus-travel-madden-cruiser-flying/sb53m2l1s51f1418bnamedqfu
Chances of dying in a car crash in a an 800 mile trip=1 in 250,000. Pretty low but many times higher than the near 0 rate of airline travel.
Although I’ve always loved flying, I gave up on air travel a few years ago. It’s a very CO2-producting way to travel, and really isn’t justifiable if we’re trying to get to zero CO2. Not flying can be inconvenient, but an out-of-control planetary warming loop is a lot more inconvenient.
I fly when the company organising my holiday won’t give me a discount for getting there on my own. It also lets me visit my daughter in London! I get there by train.
https://img-9gag-fun.9cache.com/photo/a8qR5y6_460swp.webp
chesapeake, maybe, but the issue here is Boeing.
cf. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10130490
I don’t fly either. Not because I’m scared of flying at all, I actually enjoyed the brief moments of reduced gravity from severe turbulence, but I won’t put up with the TSA. Put me on a watch list — I don’t care. Security theater is bad and the fascists involved should feel bad.
As it turns out, the best way to avoid TSA and DHS more generally is to stay away from airports and keep farther away than about 160 kilometers from the U.S. border.
The McDonnell Douglas merger destroyed Boeing. Basically, the people that ran MDD into the ground got the keys to Boeing. A great engineering company became a termite mound full of MBAs worried about stockholder value and nothing else.
Yes capitalism and the conservative political crones they own. In the 1970s the state of New South Wales had a vast rail network servicing key country towns and providing important jobs in those towns. They also had an aging suburban rail fleet. The conservatives approach was to bring in the man who destroyed British Rail, (when you really want to destroy something get your former colonial master to help). He closed many of the country lines cutting off country towns from ril services forcing travelers and freight onto inadequate and dangerous rural roads and sounding the death knell for many railway towns. He sold off and privatised track and fleet maintenance leading to cost blowouts and constant maintenance and safety problems. To cover their bastardy and pretend they are actually achieving something these corporate goons usually call in overpaid consultants to do a fancy rebadging at vast expense. This consisted of repainting the old suburban rail fleet from red to blue and white. Its amazing how many problems you can temporarily cover up with a lick of paint.
In other news, Transport for London is considering adding fake steering wheels to their DLR (Docklands Light Railway) trains.
An idea they no doubt copied from the earlier 737 Max implementation.
@16 Raging Bee
I get what you’re saying, but I’m an engineer and have had discussions with many other engineers, and I can assure you other engineers know what I mean when I talk about creating value. Of course that’s a simplification of what engineers do, but I put it that way to make a simple contrast with extracting value.
@35 Yes Gary, these were criminal acts and should be treated as such. Instead of that, people who sell-off or destroy public infrastructure are hailed as capitalist heroes.
jimf @ 18 hit the nail on the head. A consumer electronic device, such as a stereo vs medical equipment. Stereo fails, no music, nobody dead. Medical equipment fails, patients can and will die.
But, to the MBA type, management is management is management, regardless of what is being managed, boat insurance, train maintenance, biomedical equipment manufacturing, hospitals, aircraft or even spacecraft. So, we get cars missing bolts that hold the steering on, trains that have brake lines come loose, radiation therapy machines that incinerate patients with radiation, airplane plug type doors missing hardware to hold them closed and well, SpaceX launch pads getting launched.
I do take exception to one thing PZ wrote, about maintenance, as this wasn’t a maintenance issue. Inspection of that door is a heavy maintenance action, which is conducted many, many hours of operation beyond when this happened. Routine maintenance wouldn’t find the fault, only a rather complete teardown of the interior of the aircraft would find it – complete with seat removal, wall removal, insulation removal and disconnection of wiring.
Nope, this is from shoddy assembly, precisely what was missed and where, subject to discovery by the NTSB investigation. The door is held in place via guides that were shown by the video to be intact, the rails the door pins slid into, also intact. The door pins are held within the tracks by bolts, which have a castle nut securing them, then locked with a cotter key through the castle crown. Apparently, United found at least some needing tightening, suggesting the cotter key was not installed or the bolts were not torqued down properly.
That brings it squarely down to Boeing, who removes the doors to load the interior of the aircraft aboard during final assembly, their assembly line proper, as well as quality assurance and control. And that places it squarely on Boeing management’s lap, because they are responsible as leaders of the company to ensure safe and correct assembly of their aircraft.
“Inspection of that door” → “Inspection of that door plug”.
It plugs the hole where a door would be if an additional door had been desired, but is not a door.
Errata:
The plug door is not removed by Boeing. So, the subcontractor that assembled that section and plug door may be the ones responsible in part, or in full. Just as, would Ford be responsible if the airbag unit was improperly assembled at the air bag company’s plant, just because they assembled the car with the air bag installed?
Also, misspoke on six, it’s four bolts holding the four pins that hold the plug type door in place.
Excellent video on the plug type door.
Oops, wrong video…
Here’s the correct video.
https://youtu.be/maLBGFYl9_o
LJ Hart-Smith, a long-time engineer who worked for McDonnel-Douglas and Boeing predicted the problems caused by outsourcing on the “dreamliner” long before they happened.
Search for “Out-sourced profits” or “Hart-Smith on outsourcing”.
Oh, another winner on the 737 MAX series. Missing nuts on a minor component, the rudder control assembly.
Because, having the nose of the plane go any which way is always good for control.
Sounds like an infinite number of monkeys derived management style, an infinite number of managers create an infinite number of problems.
For folks doing comparison stats between airlines and cars, use the relevant data.
Km per person is not a key piece of data.
A person getting into a car or plane wants to know if this trip is safe, regardless of how many folks are on board.
So the stats should be how many vehicle trips are made during a period of time and how many of those trips result in fatalities and maybe also serious injuries.
Don’t consider length of trip in km or time or number of people in the vehicle.
Huh. Who knew MAD Magazine had it right all those years ago. BOEING is the sound an airplane makes when it hits the ground…
Boing, isn’t that the sound of an airplane landing in winds at Heathrow?
Plenty of videos oversensationalized of that. Looks annoying as hell for the pilots, maybe the winds should make up their minds!
New meaning to the term “exit row seating.”
That said it will be interesting to see if they now pay people to take those seats instead of charging extra.
bcw bcw @ 48, since they’re not marked, people would have to count windows from the outside to know which ones are the plug type doors (which is their official name).
And John, that’s their official name, as they are indeed still doors, just only for maintenance (as near as I can tell, basically meaning, only to be maintained, as they have no other usage whatsoever when a proper door with vent isn’t installed due to aircraft configuration). Seriously though, one can have a true door retrofitted, at a massive expense and well, seals and whatnot still do need to be inspected and when necessary, replaced. They’re only inspected during major maintenance intervals, when the aircraft is largely disassembled for wiring harness, tubing and ducting inspections.
Overall, the design really doesn’t give me a warm and fuzzy, not enough redundancy in the existing design, such as detentes or other retention, rather than relying upon just four bolts/nuts/cotterpins and blind hope. As was shown here.
Um. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_1282#Aircraft
“The MAX 9 has optional rear mid-cabin emergency exit doors, on each side of the aircraft behind the wings. Aircraft with dense seating configurations, such as the MAX 9s operated by Lion Air (220 seats) and Corendon Dutch Airlines (213 seats), require these additional emergency exit doors and slides to meet evacuation regulations. On aircraft with less dense configurations, such as those operated by Alaska Airlines (178 seats) and United Airlines (179 seats), the doors are not required and plugs are installed in their place. The plugs are covered with cabin panels no different in appearance from a regular window panel.”
(I’m not that surprised people opine without even a modicum of research)
BTW, I’m old enough to remember when the windows on planes matched the seats on planes.
(Just saying; but then, in those days there were stewardesses, not flight attendants, so there’s that)
relevant to MBA culture:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/how-mckinsey-destroyed-middle-class/605878/
capitalism is the problem – the solution is strong government regulation and appropriate taxation. Unfortunately neither of those things is likely to occur until the 99% get the pitchforks and torches out for the 1%
canadiansteve:
Um, we do have strong government regulation and appropriate taxation, as far as capitalists are concerned.
Wow. You clearly don’t get how wealth is distributed.
(I think you’re thinking of the 0.01% when you write 1%)\
Anyway, given your nym, here: https://www.thekickassentrepreneur.com/net-worth-percentile-calculator-canada/
The usual crowd are blaming DEI hires….
https://twitter.com/ConceptualJames/status/1745110176372339167?t=xPeE3Gc8KAcMzWIebC29bQ&s=19
“Let’s have a close look at Boeing and DEI!
Boeing’s corporate filings with the SEC reveal that in beginning 2022, the annual bonus plan to reward CEO and executives for increasing profit for shareholders and prioritizing safety was changed to reward them if they hit DEI targets…”
After reading about how poorly other passengers are behaving, about how entitled other travelers are acting, and now this, I can honestly say that I NEVER want to fly again.
John Morales @ 50
So these plugs serve no purpose at all?
My father spent about 10 years starting in the mid-1950s working as contract technical support with the US Air Force. He refused to fly, then or afterwards, on the grounds that he knew of too many things that go wrong with airplanes.
It’s highly likely their military aircraft will be just as shitty. The US military has some pretty infamous vehicles and aircraft that are death traps — Amphibious Assault Vehicles that sink and drown the occupants & the V-22’s history of crashes.
birgerjohansson, @56, what?
They plug the holes in the fuselage that allow for doors to be installed if desired.
You can tell that because when they fall off, the hole is exposed.
In the news: https://www.npr.org/2024/01/12/1224444590/boeing-faa-737-max-9-alaska-airlines-door-plug
@John Morales
Wow. You clearly don’t get how wealth is distributed.
(I think you’re thinking of the 0.01% when you write 1%)\
did you miss a /s tag? Or are you just that pedantic?
The 99% is a common expression and the nearest whole number to 100% without saying 100%. I wasn’t making an effort to define the exact income level which is “too much.” Your Jumping to declaring my ignorance is just an asshole move, so fuck right off.
laughing at myself for the quote fail
canadiansteve:
Neither. What, you wanted me to ignore you because you can’t handle being corrected?
So, you concede the point I made, while trying to be pedantic about it. Heh.
Indeed not. Merely speaking in slogans. I know.
So indignant! Did you even look at my link?
Anything in the top decile is way above the typical wage, because wealth distribution is not linear.
USA Today, December 6, 2023, citing (and linking to) Federal Reserve statistics through mid-2023:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2023/12/06/top-1-american-earners-more-wealth-middle-class/71769832007/#
It is also true that the top 0.1% currently have more than five times the total wealth of the bottom 50%; that gap is about twice as large as it was in 1989. The top 1% have about 12 times the total wealth of the bottom 50%; that gap is also about twice as large as in 1989.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/
Any way you slice it, inequality has increased enormously over the last 35 years. Over that time, top tax rates have fluctuated a bit in the 33–37% range but they remain much, much lower than in the 1940s, 50s, 60s and 70s when they ranged between 70% and 94%.
https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/whole-ball-of-tax-historical-income-tax-rates
We have been on the wrong track for a long time.
[PT]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorenz_curve
I was a stress analysis engineer at Boeing a long time ago. Engineers ain’t saints. Many are pretty far right. Plenty got a MBA so they could climb the corporate ranks. There was one of my immediate engineering supervisors that the only time I would truly trust him to to do the right thing safety-wise was if he could get his name in front of the muckety-mucks. Biggest brown nose I ever met.