(This is good news for people who trust Boeing more than medical workers. You can bring your own screwdriver.)
</satire> </fakeNews>
The serious narrative is shocking:
A Boeing mechanic failed to tighten the bolts on a door-size “cabin plug” that blew out on an Alaska Air 737Max flight. The aircraft had cabin pressure warnings onboard for some time, so instead of investigating/fixing, the airline simply ‘restricted’ the plane from ‘long flights over water’ so it could land quickly. No joke.
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What are you talking about? I’ve been ordering Vodka and Orange juice when I fly for years!
I brought my own whisky in TSA-approved quantities once. It’s against FAA rules for passengers to serve themselves, but entirely legal for flight staff to serve passengers their own supply. Apparently it doesn’t matter where it comes from as long as the airline is in control.
So I asked flight staff to serve me my own stuff. The guy refused, saying (incorrectly) “it’s against FAA rules…” I explained the rules to him, and he still refused. Perhaps the airline has their own rule against people drinking something they sell, but he didn’t say that. I didn’t fight it… I just put it away. But he then apparently felt guilty, so he later served me an Irish coffee on the house.
So there’s a strategy there for getting a gratis screwdriver without
bringing(drinking) your own.
Sharp implements above a certain size must not be taken on board the aircraft. Small pocket knives with a blade length of up to 6 cm, however, are permitted. The same applies to nail scissors.
https://www.hamburg-airport.de/en/depart-arrive/baggage/carry-on-baggage-8490
I tested it, the other passengers in the security line looked kind of shocked when they gave the knife back to me after measuring it.
“Yes, yes, that should do the trick. Carry on, sir.”
so instead of investigating/fixing, the airline simply ‘restricted’ the plane from ‘long flights over water’ so it could land quickly
To be fair this did technically work
To my knowledge the problem with the pressurization system was unrelated, and not critical enough to have been a danger to the aircraft.
oh I assumed it lost pressure because the door that fell off was loose to begin with and leaky
No, it should have gone immediately once it got far enough along the track that the seals failed.
I heard the reason no one got sucked through the opening was because everyone happened to be wearing their seat belts. Technically, people are permitted to remove their seat belts to use the toilet, IIUC. So the timing of the door blowing off was critical to this policy “technically working”.
My problem is this: you have an anomaly of losing pressure in a safety critical operation. It could be any number of things that would cause that, from minor to serious. Considering lives are at stake, don’t we want someone to get to the bottom of it before risking people’s safety?
Also the seats next to the door plug weren’t occupied
I don’t think we’ve actually gotten confirmation on what caused the failure yet. While loose bolts were found during a fleet wide inspection of that area of the aircraft, the tightness of the bolts that keep the door plug in place is irrelevant to the failure, as the locking pins in the end is what actually keeps the nuts from falling off, and thusly allowing the bolts to slide out of the holes where the keep the door from being able to move on its track.
To my knowledge we also haven’t gotten confirmation as to whether the mis-assembly happened at Spirit, where the door was first installed, during the subcontractor’s installation of the satellite data antenna, where the door plug may be removed for acess, or during finally integration by Boeing itself.
To be fair it doesn’t actually matter, as Boeing is responsible for inspecting the things they build at the end of the day and they’ve been having a lot of trouble since getting bought out by McDonall Douglas with cost cutting and penalizing their QA inspctors when they find something that needs to be redone, but it is likely more complicated than just a failure to tightnen bolts to spec.
The previous 737 max failure with the defective angle of attack sensor is astonishing. Not that engineers make mistakes, but the cover-up and everything they did to avoid the expense of training pilots about the known flaw – at the cost of lives. There is an hour long PBS documentary that shows how deep the rabbit hole goes. If you watch that, you’ll realize there is little hope for Boeing being safe. It’s a long line of systemic failure underpinned by business decisions.
Its better with Fanta anyway.