MAX must stand for “MAX Profits” because they sure cut lots of corners on that aircraft.
More like unexpected new features, like the all new spontaneous exit row!
Just think how much easier it will be to get extra leg room now.
I wonder how many cents they saved by not ensuring the bolts were properly tightened.
Probably more than you think. This strikes me as an understaffing issue in the factory. Loose bolts happen when the person who is supposed to verify the work has been done correctly, is busy doing work elsewhere on the plane. Understaffing causes people to pitch-in to make deadlines, or to ease the burden on their co-workers. Seems trivial at first, but with airplanes, this behavior gets people killed.
After looking at that diagram I have to ask - why in the everliving fuck would a pressure bearing panel like that be hung by bolts and not inserted into the cabin and held in place by the ribs of the fuselage? I mean seriously?
I don’t get why they don’t just make it a bit bigger on the inside so that when pressurized, the pressure itself seals it. Seems like a fail safe solution instead of this shadiness.
But mah profits!
737 Max is still a developing example of what happens when you leave corporate to self-regulate themselves.
It’s a well documented that when Boeing merged with McDonald Douglas, they turned from an engineering led company to an executive led one & have been shit since
I think it’s to save space. See: DC-10 Cargo Door fiasco
It does. It is still a plug-type door. It pushes against 12 stop pads. This design has been used for many years, including on the 737-900 that predated the Max9. You can see the exit plug in this photo form 2007, before the Max was even a thing. Also, cargo doors have worked the same way for many more years than that.
They do it so that the door does not have to swing the whole way inside to fit out.
It is, kind of. The plug is secured by 6 stops (or tabs) along each side. The positive pressure differential pushes the plug outwards into those stops.
To remove the plug you uninstall 4 bolts which allow the plug to go up and over the stops, after which it can hinge outwards on a hinge found at the bottom of the plug.
Just seems like a better design would be if no bolts existed (like from them loosening over time and falling off), it would still be sealed perfectly fine. The obvious failure point is the bolts and seems they could do better.
It’s a door plug, which means it’s meant to be replaced with an actual door if required, so a lot of the hardware for an actual door are in place. Doors are designed to slide in, then raise up so the stop pins engage the stop fittings from the inside, so the door is in effect bigger than the hole it’s in. this video provides a detailed explanation of how it works.
The big issue here is that the airplane is only 2 months old, it was delivered from Boeing in late October. Which means it’s either a design flaw or a process flaw in the original manufacturing. This smacks of corporate cost cutting again. Boeing are totally on the hook for this and it’s only lucky there were no lives lost. You watch, they’ll blame it on the airline initially but the fault will come back round to them again.
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That’s how the normal doors work because they aren’t permanently secured in place. The reason is weight as it pretty much always is in aviation design.
United Airlines make it sound like a mundane event finding those loose bolts.
“Oopsie-daisy!”
— Unities Airlines
Lovely, I’m flying united to Ireland in two months. Fingers crossed I get an older version.
Better you’re on the airline where they found the problems than the airline that didn’t.
Ah, playin’ it safe, are ya? Why not spice things up a bit? Flyin’ United, might as well throw in a bit of turbulence for the craic!
So are they just going to tighten them up real well and call it a day? Also are these the same planes they were urging the FAA to let them flight without further inspection?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Bolts in need of “additional tightening” have been found during inspections of Boeing 737 Max 9s, United Airlines has said.
Inspections began after a section of the fuselage fell from an Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9 on Friday.
United Airlines said “installation issues” relating to door plugs would be “remedied” before the aircraft type would return to service.
In its statement, United said: “Since we began preliminary inspections on Saturday, we have found instances that appear to relate to installation issues in the door plug - for example, bolts that needed additional tightening.”
The door plug is a piece of fuselage with a window that can be used as an emergency exit in certain configurations.
It was this part of the Alaska Airlines plane which dramatically fell off mid-flight over the US state of Oregon, eventually landing in a teacher’s back garden.
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Picture of one of the aircraft’s bolts: https://x.com/byerussell/status/1744460136855294106?s=46
Not clear if this is the cause of the Alaska accident. Those bolts hold on the hinges at the bottom, and the photos appear to show those hinges still attached on the incident aircraft.
I hope the front doesn’t fall off.
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I am glad to read all these reports, investigations and of course the emotional laden criticisms of actors associated with this. Because each time I check aviation incidents in Russia, they determine in the first 24 hours it must have been the pilots fault.
