737 max loses window
Discussion
Starfighter said:
If it is the case that Boeing remove and refit the door plug then surely it would be in Spirit’s interest to use temporary fittings to locate it at their site and have Boeing fit the final fasteners as part of the final airframe build. Fitting red plastic bolts would make it obvious that the fitters were temporary and is similar to fitting streemers during maintenance etc.
Does it really matter if final assembly always has the door plug removed for interior fittings to be loaded. One of the speculated issues is completed aircraft leaving final assembly with missing bolts. It doesn’t matter what colour you paint them if QA is so poor that missing isn’t picked up. You would have hoped the standardised inspection plan included a sign off before fitting interior panels in door rows.
IMHO this and most of current Boeing issues are down to inadequate QA and associated process controls.
Starfighter said:
It is very hard to check torque applied to a bolt when fitting it especially after a cotter lock pin is fitted. Nooner would be talking about Spirt if they had used red plastic bolts to transport fit the plug as it would be obvious it was a Boeing assembly line issue.
We do not know if they were fitted at all and in any case the torque is irrelevant, the fastener is not bearing any load and a pinned fastener can't be torqued consistently.Boeing has wisely withdrawn an exemption request they wanted through 2026. This directly affects the Max 7 which wasn't certificated before the grandfather rights deadline but it also affects the 8 & 9 which are currently affected by an AD:
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense...
The exemption request was controversial even before the latest incident. Another example of how much a pigs ear the 737 is these days.
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense...
The exemption request was controversial even before the latest incident. Another example of how much a pigs ear the 737 is these days.
Starfighter said:
xeny said:
hidetheelephants said:
a pinned fastener can't be torqued consistently.
I've spent many a happy hour grinding washers to the correct thickness in order to achieve that very goal.
hidetheelephants said:
Starfighter said:
xeny said:
hidetheelephants said:
a pinned fastener can't be torqued consistently.
I've spent many a happy hour grinding washers to the correct thickness in order to achieve that very goal.
Starfighter said:
xeny said:
hidetheelephants said:
a pinned fastener can't be torqued consistently.
I've spent many a happy hour grinding washers to the correct thickness in order to achieve that very goal.It’s official. Someone forgot to put the bolts back in that hold the plug door in place and quality control didn’t pick up on it.
https://news.sky.com/story/key-bolts-missing-were-...
https://news.sky.com/story/key-bolts-missing-were-...
An amazingly clear and concise report. Those photos of the unmarked post-incident bolt holes, and of the before/after photos of the repair that was carried out, are all pretty damning. It will be interesting to see what documentation they unearth about the rivet repairs and who signed it off, and when they did so.
I'd be asking what happened to the bolts left off, someone should have picked up on that. Standard practice when I was on the tools would be to bag fasteners in a draw-string plastic bag and tie them to the removed assembly or the parent structure (if the same component wasn't coming back) as close to where fitted as possible.
I'm very surprised that this wasn't the case, and that some sort of tag wasn't applied to the bolt holes. Especially given that each logged rectification has an orange tag. Heck, whenever I repaired domestic grade equipment and had to leave it open, I always put the fasteners in a ziploc bag and write on it what it is and my name/date. When I changed the battery and connector in my Iphone, I colour coded the screws with a dot of sharpie, and I don't regard that as particularly over the top.
On Pprune, someone has pointed out that in one of the photographs, you can see a zip-tie around a stop fitting / plug (figure 16). This may be all that was stopping the door moving upwards. Around 1-o-clock on the lower-right blue circle:
NTSB page https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/DCA24MA0...
Report PDF: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Documents/DCA2...
On Pprune, someone has pointed out that in one of the photographs, you can see a zip-tie around a stop fitting / plug (figure 16). This may be all that was stopping the door moving upwards. Around 1-o-clock on the lower-right blue circle:
NTSB page https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Pages/DCA24MA0...
Report PDF: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Documents/DCA2...
Forester1965 said:
Looking at all thats gone on with the Max , it's amazing more Boeing planes don't fall out of the sky.
I get the feeling Boeing are going to ride right out of their luck fairly soon. That the two crashes happened to load of dem foreigners and y'know the darn plane werent perfec' maybe but some good ol' boys from the south piloting it would have dealt with some bumpiness, right?Then the plug blows out - forgotten bolts FFS, I couldn't add to what has been said of such a breakdown in basic procedure and good practice that'd get you fired from a Mexican washing machine factory - but in a jetfull of good Americans, it had the courtesy to sing it's inevitable audios while everyone had their seat belt on. But for that we'd be talking multiple fatalities.
And Boeing have displayed little more than contempt for everyone, trying to blame everyone from the pilots their planes killed to subcontractors they are culpable for anyway regardless, and I read are as we speak squabbling with the faa over adding the redundant sensors but for which noone would know what MCAS even means.
I mean the comet was killed by bad press many would say undeservedly, how big of a funkup do Boeing have to make before people look at their complacency? And I'm not taking the moral high ground, I've flown on a 737-
Teddy Lop said:
I mean the comet was killed by bad press many would say undeservedly, how big of a funkup do Boeing have to make before people look at their complacency? And I'm not taking the moral high ground, I've flown on a 737-max8200
The lack of an alternative is probably what has kept the airlines with it. Airbus order books are full for the A320 series for years and they can’t pump out more A220s either (the larger of which should compete with the Max 7). That along with costs of retraining crews etc. has held them back. That said airlines will be forced to move if the flying public vote with their wallets. I’m surprised there hasn’t been much of that already.
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