Airline Industry

[northland10]

Boeing ousts head of 737 Max program in management shake-up
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/bo ... rcna139831

Boeing EVP Stanley A. Deal announced Wednesday that Ed Clark, the head of the company’s Boeing’s 737 Max program, was leaving the company.

Boeing announced Wednesday that the head of the company's 737 Max program is leaving the company in a management shake-up in the wake of a January mishap that has damaged the aircraft manufacturer's reputation and cost it billions of dollars in value.

Boeing Executive Vice President and CEO of Boeing Commercial Airplanes Stanley A. Deal announced several leadership changes in an email to employees Wednesday, including that Ed Clark, the head of the company's Boeing’s 737 Max program, has been replaced.

“Ed departs with my, and our, deepest gratitude for his many significant contributions over nearly 18 years of dedicated service to Boeing,” Deal said.

Most of the leadership in Boeing right now are relatively recent promotions or additions so are not responsible for the core issue. The two dudes who would need to be fired retired some time ago:

Harry Stonecipher (Boeing CEO 2003–2005, Boeing COO 1997–2001, McDonnell-Douglas CEO 1994–1997)
James McNerney (Boeing CEO 2005–2015)

Stonecipher brought the cut costs, do not innovate, listen not to engineers mentality from McDonnell-Douglas, and McNerney was an outsider from GE and 3M who made his priority cutting costs during the time the 787 and 737 MAX were developed.

[AndyinPA]

[chancery]

An interesting comment to the anecdote that I posted above:

Re Sharon’s comment above, the “big” names of music do exactly the same as the rest of us mere mortal musicians: we all fly frequently because that is part and parcel of the job, and we are usually time-constrained, and certainly destination-constrained. Given any choice, by and large we know which airlines are more likely to get us, our luggage and our instruments to our destination. But in the end, we have to fly, because if we don’t, we can’t earn our living (the idea above of going “on strike” would surely harm no-one but ourselves).

We make sure that larger instruments travelling in the cabin (notably cellos) always have seats in the cabin that are booked by a specialist travel agent who is proven to know how to do this (we’ve worked with the same company for 30 years, and many other orchestras also work with them). You [rightly] pay a small service fee to the travel agent for booking that seat, but £15 or so extra is a small price to pay for knowing that you and the cello will travel together. We have learned how best to handle check-in staff (who are usually underpaid and hard-pressed, working awful hours and rarely getting much goodwill from passengers – it’s amazing what service you can get for making a check-in operator laugh). When booking in 50 people we will usually spot any grumpy check-in operator and send only the most charming of our players to that desk. And so on, and so on (I’ve been touring for 38 years now!).

[MN-Skeptic]

My husband traveled a lot for business but he knew the value of being humble and cordial with all the airline employees. He told me once of being in line behind someone who was just rude and ended up not getting helped at all. My sweetie was his usual outgoing self when he spoke to that airline employee and she kind of winked and said, well we do have discretion. My husband was accommodated.

My sister-in-law is very much a people person so I'm sure she's doing fine at working with the airline personnel. I'm sure my niece is learning from her. My niece is also a real Scandinavian ancestry cutie with a bubbly personality. Just being pleasant can make a world of difference when you're dealing with stressed employees!

Since this is the beginning of my niece's career, it'll be interesting to hear her stories of traveling with her cello. I know she'd rather stay in Minnesota for grad school, but that's just not an option when you're a cello performance major. And I know she'll want to come home often - her older sister is due to give birth to identical twin girls in April. But it's also not cheap when you have to buy two airline tickets!

[Rolodex]

I got tired trying to squeeze a 4000 pipe pipe organ, and the console into the overhead so now I just travel with my organ shoes.

That beats 5 octaves of handbells.

[MN-Skeptic]

That beats 5 octaves of handbells.

I hadn't thought about bell choirs touring. Do they? I can't imagine them packing the bells for an air flight, but I guess that wouldn't be any different than flying all the instruments of an orchestra.

[Rolodex]

That beats 5 octaves of handbells.

I hadn't thought about bell choirs touring. Do they? I can't imagine them packing the bells for an air flight, but I guess that wouldn't be any different than flying all the instruments of an orchestra.

Bells have their own cases, which are pretty secure. There's just a lot of them. I've personally never flown with them. You learn how to load them in a vehicle, though. I'm also a pianist and play at harp. All the big cumbersome things. Shoulda picked flute.

[raison de arizona]

https://x.com/allenanalysis/status/1767 ... 23963?s=20

BREAKING: According to the NTSB chair as reported by ABC, Boeing, trading under the ticker $BA, has deleted surveillance video from the maintenance facility where a door plug was replaced before it failed on an Alaska Airlines flight earlier this year.

Probably not nefarious?

[tek]

Boeing is in a world of hurt here.
This follows their "the documentation you requested does not exist."
Not the defense they think it is..

[MN-Skeptic]

I remember the company I worked for in the 90s trying to figure out a record retention policy. It was so much more involved with computers, email, and the internet. You don't want to have something incriminating from 10 years ago if you could have a logical reason for purging those files. On the other hand, that email from 10 years ago could exonerate you in a lawsuit.

[RTH10260]

Boeing Whistleblower Who Raised Quality Concerns Is Found Dead
John Barnett had accused the plane manufacturer of retaliating against him after he flagged problems he saw at Boeing’s 787 factory in South Carolina.

By Sydney Ember
Published March 12, 2024 Updated March 13, 2024, 12:02 p.m. ET

A prominent Boeing whistle-blower, a former quality manager who raised concerns about manufacturing practices at the company’s 787 Dreamliner factory in South Carolina, was found dead on Saturday with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to local officials.

The whistle-blower, John Barnett, was in Charleston for a deposition for a lawsuit in which he accused Boeing of retaliating against him for making complaints about quality and safety.

Quality problems involving both design and manufacturing have plagued Boeing for years — most prominently after the crashes of two Boeing 737 Max jets in 2018 and 2019, and again since a fuselage panel blew out on a Max flight shortly after takeoff two months ago.

Mr. Barnett filed the complaint against Boeing with the U.S. Labor Department in 2017 under the AIR21 Whistleblower Protection Program, which protects employees of plane manufacturers who report information pertaining to air carrier safety violations. He left the company that year.

Boeing’s lawyer deposed Mr. Barnett on Thursday and he was questioned by his own lawyers for half the day Friday. They were scheduled to complete the deposition on Saturday morning, said Robert Turkewitz, Mr. Barnett’s lawyer in the case.

When Mr. Barnett, 62, did not show up on Saturday morning and did not answer phone calls, Mr. Turkewitz said he grew concerned and called Mr. Barnett’s hotel. Mr. Barnett was then found dead in his pickup truck in the hotel parking lot.




https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/12/busi ... -dead.html
share link https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/12/busi ... =url-share

[RTH10260]

The Concorde flies floats again ...

Concorde jet gets floated down the Hudson River after months of refurbishment

Guardian News
14 Mar 2024

After undergoing extensive refurbishment, a Concorde aircraft has been floated on a barge down the Hudson River in New York to return to the museum where it resides. This Franco-British jet, which last flew across the Atlantic in 2003, had been housed at the Intrepid Museum until it was removed for refurbishment in August 2023; it has now been returned to the museum. Leslie Scott, a former Concorde pilot said: 'I've never seen it look so good. I mean, it is a beautiful, beautiful job that the Intrepid have managed to do. As I said, when I used to fly it, it didn't look like that'

Concorde completes latest journey – along Hudson River in New York

[RTH10260]

F.A.A. Audit of Boeing’s 737 Max Production Found Dozens of Issues
The company failed 33 of 89 audits during an examination conducted by the Federal Aviation Administration after a panel blew off an Alaska Airlines jet in January.



By Mark Walker Reporting from Washington
March 11, 2024

A six-week audit by the Federal Aviation Administration of Boeing’s production of the 737 Max jet found dozens of problems throughout the manufacturing process at the plane maker and one of its key suppliers, according to a slide presentation reviewed by The New York Times.

The air-safety regulator initiated the examination after a door panel blew off a 737 Max 9 during an Alaska Airlines flight in early January. Last week, the agency announced that the audit had found “multiple instances” in which Boeing and the supplier, Spirit AeroSystems, failed to comply with quality-control requirements, though it did not provide specifics about the findings.

The presentation reviewed by The Times, though highly technical, offers a more detailed picture of what the audit turned up. Since the Alaska Airlines episode, Boeing has come under intense scrutiny over its quality-control practices, and the findings add to the body of evidence about manufacturing lapses at the company.

For the portion of the examination focused on Boeing, the F.A.A. conducted 89 product audits, a type of review that looks at aspects of the production process. The plane maker passed 56 of the audits and failed 33 of them, with a total of 97 instances of alleged noncompliance, according to the presentation.



https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/us/p ... 7-max.html
share link https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/us/p ... =url-share

[RTH10260]

same

FAA audit of Boeing’s 737 production found mechanics using hotel card and dish soap as makeshift tools: report

By Social Links forAllie Griffin
Published March 12, 2024, 1:55 a.m. ET

The Federal Aviation Administration found dozens of issues throughout Boeing’s 737 MAX jet production process, including mechanics at one of its key suppliers using a hotel key card and dish soap as makeshift tools to test compliance, according to a report.




https://nypost.com/2024/03/12/us-news/f ... ls-report/

[Slim Cognito]

[bill_g]

Boeing moved to an At Will state to save on labor costs. (cough)

[raison de arizona]

The thick plottens.

'If anything happens, it's not suicide':

Boeing whistleblower told family friend before death.

[raison de arizona]

Word on the bird site is that a Boeing 737 leaving SF (United Airlines flight 433) has been forced to make an emergency landing in Oregon after a panel fell off mid-air.

► Show Spoiler

[raison de arizona]

I can fix this sentence: "Trump's deregulation of the industry was a terrible idea in hindsight."
https://x.com/allenanalysis/status/1768 ... 43520?s=20

BREAKING NEWS: United Airlines' Boeing 737 Forced to Land in Oregon Following Mid-Air Loss of Panel.

Trump's deregulation of the industry was a terrible idea in hindsight.

Following the incidents involving two 737 Max airplanes, the administration under Donald Trump negotiated an agreement with Boeing, enabling the corporation to circumvent criminal charges.

Should allegations of safety lapses be substantiated, the Department of Justice under Joe Biden has the option to revoke this agreement.

[Frater I*I]

I know everyone would like to place this on Boeing, but the aircraft in question rolled of the line in 1998....

This aircraft would have been through the airline's HMV [Heavy Maintenance Visit] program several times by now, and the panel is missing due to a failure of the composite material as indicated by many of the fasteners still in the airframe. Most likely either it was a failure of a composite repair in a previous HMV cycle or the ground crew missed damage to the panel since it's last C-Check [another term for an HMV].

This one is on the airline.

And it makes me happy it's United...screw them...

[raison de arizona]

A Boeing whistleblower says he got off a plane just before takeoff when he realized it was a 737 Max

A Boeing whistleblower said he refused to fly on a plane he'd boarded after realizing it was a 737 Max.

Ed Pierson told CNN he'd deliberately made sure the plane wasn't a 737 Max before booking.

He spent 10 years at Boeing and testified to Congress in 2019 about its factory in Renton, Washington.

Pierson's flight was in 2023 — before the January Alaska Airlines door-plug blowout.

"I walked onto the plane — I thought, it's kind of new," Pierson said. "Then I sat down, and on the emergency card it said it was a Max."

He quickly got off the plane just as a flight attendant was closing the front door, he said.

https://www.aol.com/news/boeing-whistle ... 58475.html

[raison de arizona]

Screenshot 2024-03-16 at 6.46.58 PM.png (341.14 KiB) Viewed 158 times

https://abc7news.com/united-flight-miss ... /14529741/
https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/ne ... ght-issue/

[John Thomas8]

I know everyone would like to place this on Boeing, but the aircraft in question rolled of the line in 1998....

When you combine a cost-cutting manufacturer with cost-cutting maintenance entities around the various airlines, that leads me to driving.

[northland10]

I know everyone would like to place this on Boeing, but the aircraft in question rolled of the line in 1998....

When I first saw the article they mentioned 737-8. I didn't bother checking the the actual date of the build but unlike the press wanting clicks, I knew this was not part of Boeing's issue and was likely something to do with maintenance.

[northland10]

I know everyone would like to place this on Boeing, but the aircraft in question rolled of the line in 1998....

When you combine a cost-cutting manufacturer with cost-cutting maintenance entities around the various airlines, that leads me to driving.

Cost-cutting on bridge construction or maintenance is not a thing? Cost-cutting in vehicle builds and maintenance? Cost-cutting is hiring and managing semi drivers?