LIVE: Boeing whistleblower testifies before Congress about defects in planes
A second Senate hearing Wednesday will feature a Boeing engineer who claims that sections of the skin on 787 Dreamliner jets are not properly fastened and could eventually break apart. The whistleblower’s lawyer says Boeing has ignored the engineer’s concerns and prevented him from talking to experts about fixing the defects.
Finally. I always thought the FAA was strangely quiet throughout all of this.
The Boeing officials also dismissed another of Salehpour’s allegations: that he saw factory workers jumping on sections of fuselage on 777s to make them align.
I don’t doubt it for a minute. Having worked in the industrial sector… I’ve seen stranger things.
I suspect that is less common these days with CAD/CAM solid modeling. I still remember standing over a worker who was scraping away at the huge main landing gear forging on the prototype MD-80 to make it fit due to the weird compound angles between the forging and the lateral brace. My job was to make sure he didn’t scrape off too much and thus weaken( destroy) it, and making sure it fitted well enough to be structurally sound.
And that’s why they have to hammer the components together.
“We have the technology.”
Having seen the component qualification and selection process first hand, I will never pay for a ride on one of those.
The FAA has long suffered from capture by the people it’s supposed to regulate.
And to your second point, there is story that when General Dynamics took over M1 Tank production one of the engineers was horrified to see a worker using a 18lbs sledge as a fine adjustment tool…
It ain’t the meat its the motion.
Same here. We don’t need no stinking repeat clients. It’s not like we have any competition.
Coulda had a pickle factory…
Jojo. For god’s sake stop with the pickle stuff.
On the contrary, Jojo. More pickles!
For a stoned guy, he’s pretty focused. There is a lot of smoke in is bubble.
The obvious caveat is that everyone knows of someone who, either because they’re a disgruntled — or far from gruntled* — employee, or because they’re someone who has found that a way to get the attention they think they deserve, invokes ‘elf and Safety at the first opportunity.
* — TM P G Wodehouse
I have yet to come across a gruntled employee.
Nor even a single dis.
There’s a song in here somewhere. “One grunt leads to another, and dis grunt led to you!” I’ll work on it.
As a boeing stock holder. The 787 issue was talked about a year or more ago. This is old news.
Because they’ve all been grounded.
No. Once the issue was found they fixed a few at a time. Boeing has issues thats for sure, but not this one.
I believe that the early Tesla vehicles had serious fit and finish issues, which Elon got corrected (mostly). Shortly after Elon’s corrective actions … a flurry of lawsuits by “unjustly fired” … black … ex-Tesla employees were filed.
Problem solved. Settling the lawsuits is well-worth the improved quality of Teslas
Why in the world are you writing in past tense? Have you seen the fits on the Uglitruck?
… and when the ENTIRE design idiom is SHARP lines and angular surfaces … you better get those joints PERFECT … or your cyber-thang will look for shit.
Well … it looks for shit no matter …
Boeing does seem to be suffering a drop in QA. I read an interesting article on the effect pof the “merger” between Boeing and Lockheed recently, can’t remember where. It basically stated that it was, in effect, a cultural takeover by Lockheed and Boeing’s engineering approach was kicked to the curb in favour of Lockheed’s more “financial” approach.
The same thing happened to GE when engineering took second place to financeering.
I have a friend who works in aircraft manufacturing. The sense in the industry is that Boeing’s quality control issues arose once engineers were no longer in charge. In the US Navy, since before WWII one could not become the captain of an aircraft carrier unless one was a naval aviator, the thinking being that only aviators can truly understand the issues surrounding the handling of aircraft under conditions at sea which is the entire raison d’être of a carrier. Likewise only engineers can truly understand what constitutes good or bad manufacturing processes. They’re not perfect; but they’re better than the finance and marketing types who are trained to deal with problems with the stroke of a pen.
and the finance types do not suffer consequences of their decisions.
With the exception of the oil and gas industry, 75% of engineers know nothing about manufacturing. Which puts them light years ahead of management.
These Boeing planes are a perfect match for the new crop of myocarditis affected pilots. Talk about forward thinking aircraft design.
Hard for a black box to record a cardiac episode.
Astronauts routinely have their vitals monitored, would not be hard with modern technology.