I was on a flight that made and emergency landing once, it was TERRIFYING. The pilot circled once then we went down at a very steep angle.
What was even worse was the three days we were stranded in Gander Newfoundland while they fixed the plane and then flew in a new crew. It was basically an refueling/military base and not a real airport, no food or facilities. After that I never flew without my toothbrush, change of clothes and contact solution in my carry on.
Thats a decent setup for a Hallmark movie - two travelers stranded and isolated find love through the zaney activities used to pass time in a remote locale.
That's a very common (emergency) stopping point because it's the last major airport for Eastbound planes headed to Europe, at least until you get to Greenland.
Heh. Although was it was a very NON-ROMANTIC situation!! We all were in the same clothes for four days and people were getting majorly drunk and throwing up because the flight crew gave away all the alcohol from the plane to apologize for the delay.
I've never felt more gross in my life or had a nicer shower in my life than that first one after we finally landed, got to the location and finally relaxed. Mainly it was not having a toothbrush that was the worst!
It is more common than you can think of. Especially when people have a “base” both in their departure and destination locations.
For example i know a couple living a long distance relationship. They both have enough stuff at each others place so that they can travel very light.
Now of course it sucks if you suddenly get stranded in between, but it is not life threatening just an inconvenience. And from then on it is just a tradeoff. You can gain a small bit of regular convenience for the cost of risking a rare but moderate inconvenience.
People go everywhere all the time without a couple of Snickers bars and/or Walkers style shortbreads or equivalents, some wet wipes, a disposable fork, a 3-port power strip, and a bottle of unsweetened beverage.
Unbelievable by my standards, because those items had saved me time and again from my frequent time mismanagements, but not everyone is on an exact same standard.
Ha, maybe I know you irl. Although it's a pretty common emergency landing and refueling spot for cross Atlantic flights. I think a lot of the 9-11 planes got grounded there, there's a nice book about how the local population of Canadians in Gander supported the giant sudden influx of population from the grounded flights.
If it makes you feel any better, planes can operate much “wider” than they normally do for the comfort of the passengers.
If you ever watch the takeoff profile of a FedEx or UPS plane compared to the airlines, they turn much harder because they’ve no passengers to complain.
The nomenclature is interesting. In my mind, a "depressurization event" would imply that the biggest problem was the depressurization. In other words, that there was not a big gaping structural hole.
If there can be a big hole in the plane and we can call that a "depressurization event", I would like to advocate for changing how we describe this.
I know you're kidding, but we're trained to avoid making that mistake in assignment of cause of death (and in states where I've lived, they give clear instructions on the death paperwork to remind you not to make that kind of mistake)!
Yes. I think the aviation community would use something like "explosive uncontrolled depressurization", to distinguish from e.g. someone forgetting to arm the pressurization system.
You can't depressurize what isn't pressurized. Also, there isn't a "if you forget this everyone suffocates" button. The controls are multiply guarded and "normally closed".
> An investigation into the crash by the Air Accident Investigation and Aviation Safety Board (AAIASB) concluded that the crew had neglected to set the pressurization system to automatic during the take-off checks. This caused the plane not to be pressurized during the flight and resulted in nearly everyone on board suffering from generalized hypoxia, thus resulting in a ghost flight [..] eventually crashed near Grammatiko, Greece, killing all 121 passengers and crew on board. It is the deadliest aviation accident in Greek history.
That's pilot error. You have to move multiple safeguards and covers to move it OUT of auto in the first place. There is a reason (very poor training and safety practices, often government corruption as well) that you hear about accidents like that happening in Greece, Vietnam or Ethiopia, not the US.
> Also, there isn't a "if you forget this everyone suffocates" button.
(Also note that the pilots did not move the pressurization system out of AUTO; you are blaming them for not discovering that a ground engineer had done so, mostly while they fought hypoxia.)
I retract nothing. The cause of that crash was pilot error. They ignored written procedure, and did not react to multiple serious warnings, including the master caution. Which is something you do not ignore. Also note this was still only an issue because the pilots ALSO refused to verify the position of the aft outflow valve. It was the combination of all these things. So no, there absolutely is not a "press this button every flight or everyone suffocates" button.
more like a "don't throw BOTH of these at the same time, while also ignoring every warning device in the cockpit". The master caution will both flash and say "CAUTION! CAUTION! CAUTION!" You can't miss it.
You are simultaneously arguing that it's not possible to accidentally kill everyone by having a switch be in the wrong position, and also that when this actually happens in reality it shouldn't count because "that was pilot error".
Yes, it was! Those pilots should totally have put that switch in the position that doesn't kill everyone! But they didn't, and then they got too hypoxic to fix it and now everyone's dead. It's almost like there's a switch that it's a really bad idea for pilots to forget about..
It is possible for two switches, and multiple external factors including scandalous levels of procedural error by the Captain, First Officer, and maintenance technician to kill them.
it's not generating ambiguity for the people who need to know
for example, air traffic control and other pilots listening on the radio will know that this aircraft needs to be cleared to descend to a lower altitude and other traffic needs to get out of the way, be alert, etc.
Bad wording on my part since I implied but didn't state the alternative. In my mind, the alternative scenario that would create a depressurization event would be a small hole or a hole that is not visible from the passenger compartment. I.e., a hole from which a passenger or attendant could not exit the plane.
I'm no expert, but I've always assumed these pressurized cabins aren't exactly hermetically sealed, so a small invisible hole wouldn't noticeably depressurize the plane.
My assumption has been there's always fresh air actively added continuously at a rate that can compensate for such small leaks, and that it's just an automatically regulated thing. Maybe a gauge/alarm visible to the pilots would indicate an out of spec level of fresh air entering to maintain pressure, without actually being a "depressurization event"...
But a door-sized hole is a whole (har har) different story.
Your assumption is correct - air is pushed into the cabin by the engines, and the pressure is controlled by an outflow valve. An unanticipated hole, assuming it was small enough, would just be compensated for.
> unplanned holes in a pressure vessel have a tendency to rapidly get larger.
I suspect that's only an issue on airliners when the hole happens in a window.
There's no shortage of search results confirming that something like gunfire on an airliner likely won't depressurize the plane unless it hits a window....
Wouldn't a small hole quickly become a large gaping hole anyway, if it's large enough to affect the cabin pressure?
I suppose if the small hole had existed since before takeoff, you could avoid catastrophic damage as the aircraft will not be pressurized at all. I wouldn't call it a depressurization event, though.
> According to FAA record posted online, the Boeing 737-9 MAX rolled off the assembly line just two months ago, receiving its certification in November 2023.
The pictures clearly show that the seat is still there.
It also wasn't a window... that's a plug for an unused emergency exit location. Planes have spots in the fuselage where emergency exits can be placed if the aircraft is configured with enough seats where it needs more exits. This one wasn't, so instead of an emergency exit, there's a plug bolted into the spot instead. Would have to guess that there was a defect in this one though...
It's not a plug door. It's an outward-opening door, apparently. [1] Usually, those things are plugs, and have to be pulled inward to open them, which is not possible when the cabin is pressurized. But there are B-737 configurations where it's an outward-opening door. For those, when there's a door installed, there's a single solenoid to prevent opening it in flight.[2] Is there some kind of dummy door that's installed if that location is not set up as an exit?
I'd thought that outward-opening doors on passenger aircraft had gone away after the DC-10 disasters with them.[3] Apparently not.
Even if that is the case, it shouldnt been an issue. The DC10 problem was due to insufficient safety mechanism that allowed for crew to unknowingly close the door without engaging the safety lock.
The Turkish airlines crash was even worse. And it happened almost two years later after the FAA was fine with a gentlemen's agreement instead of an airworthiness directive.
According to the NYT report, there was no one seated in the seat by the window (which is still there in pictures). That is very lucky. The child seated in the aisle of that row had his shirt ripped off by the depressurization.
Man.. if I hadnt seen it I wouldn't have believed it.That is absurd. How the FAA keeps approving this junk from Boeing is even more concerning than how bad Boeing manufacturing has become.
Sadly, that's the story of most great technology and manufacturing companies of the past.
Maximizing profit is a good thing that a healthy company should do, but if it wants to remain a healthy company in the future then it should not be done "at all costs"... Profit needs to be balanced with: safety, quality, and the humans who research, create, and manufacture the products. Too much emphasis is put on the one person at the very top who often makes decisions that sacrifice safety, quality, and the humans who research, create, and manufacture the products.
not much choice. Boeing is practically the only US manufacturer of widebody passenger jets and enjoys a privileged position as such. there is literally no other American competition for passenger air.
Alternatives include the Chinese Comac 929, Sukhoi SSJ100, or A320 from Airbus. the first two are non-starters as most north american politicians are furiously opposed to the idea of carriers so much as looking at chinese or russian passenger jets. the A320 on the other hand, while arguably a better widebody jet than anything Boeing has ever produced, has the same political hand-wringing and strong arming from lobbyists and airline executives alike. American Airlines replaced a chunk of their fleet with the A320 because the Dreamliner was literally killing about as many people as it managed to transport when it wasnt down for loose bolts or reboots due to battery issues.
Given enough time and without meaningful reform and intervention by Washington, Boeing will literally hand the win over to these 3 other competitors just like AT&T handed over 5G to Huawei. Ironic considering Airbus was originally a Boeing joint venture.
This makes no sense. The Comac 929 is a widebody that is still in the prototype stage, the SSJ100 is a regional jet that competes with the A220 or Embraer (a market where Boeing doesn’t even have a product), and the A320 is not a widebody. No airline replaces Dreamliners with A320s.
It’s rather ironic that by claiming their comment lacks credibility without including any counterpoints it makes your comment itself lack credibility too.
Airbus has never been a Boeing joint venture. It is a politically desired united European aircraft company (doesn't sound good so far?) that somehow took off (heh).
Maybe it worked because the predecessor companies' main problem was "just" scale - they made some decent planes already.
> American Airlines replaced a chunk of their fleet with the A320 because the Dreamliner was literally killing about as many people as it managed to transport when it wasnt down for loose bolts or reboots due to battery issues.
From Wikipedia:
> The Boeing 787 has been involved in seven accidents and incidents as of November 2023, with zero fatalities and no hull losses.
ignoring various questionable details here, the one main point is correct: Boeing and Airbus are strategic industrial assets of USA vs EU and have deep implications for strategic security for both US and EU and their clients. For example, servicing these machines provides access to sensitive infrastructure all over the planet to these two companies’ employees & “certified” 3rd party consultants. If you are sitting say in UAE, buying Boeing vs AirBus is a political decision as well as a practical decision.
It’s not cursed, it’s the inevitable outcome of regulatory capture. That Boeing have suffered little to no consequences from the Max failures is a symptom of an FAA that desperately needs a purge of corrupt processes and officers.
From what I remember from the first 737 max incidents, the 737 max was designed as an iteration of 737 limited to the updates that would allow Boeing to bypass re-certification. The upgrades were significant and some, like engine placement, un-natural and clearly driven by regulation bypass.
I think it is quite logical that the added complexity results in additional failures.
It's going to be quite hard for the public to regain confidence in that aircraft, especially when (as noted elsewhere) Boeing was just now trying to get an exception from the FAA re: certification of the max 7.
But was that door specific to the max? I would assume previous generations of B737 had the exact same door. It seems to me that this is more an indictment of Boeing's manufacturing than a design flaw specific to the max (well, we will see what actually caused it). If that's the case, this would curse all boeing models.
I don't think we know that yet. Yes, I have seen many reports that the Max has the "exact same door" as the 737-900, but how confident are we that there wasn't some cost-cutting or "simplification" measure done on newer models, or a change to a cheaper subcontractor building a crucial part, or whatever? There's enough complexity there that I think there could be significant differences while still theoretically staying within the "same design."
Unreal. Do people not go deaf from the sound of the air coming into the exposed fuselage like that? I would have thought they'd be covering their ears or something.
400MPH with an open window plausibly causes some loud noise due to turbulent flow across the opening. The turbofan engines are also reasonably close to the opening and ground crew wear hearing protection to mitigate the effects of the noise.
My assumption was that the air pressure at that height is low enough to not be loud. Yeah it’s moving fast but there isn’t much of it. Different story on the ground.
That's a good thought. Initially the density is pretty normal and I'm sure there's a loud sound, but once pressure drops the air wouldn't transmit as much sound.
I don't see enough detail to really know how high they fly once the depressurization happens. I'm guessing that, if possible, they descend to an altitude where the supplementary oxygen is not critical for preserving life so the loudness could go back up. I couldn't find if there's a "typically safe" maximum altitude that is used in depressurization or it's situational.
Probably someone with better flightradar knowledge could figure out the altitude with time.
Once pressure is equalized, you have the same situation as an open car window, except at much higher speeds. I don't know about other people, but to me the noise of an open car window is really annoying even at 120 km/h. I can't image what it must be like at airliner speeds.
Plus increased noise from the engines (or at least the engine on that side of the plane), as a sibling comment notes.
It's not so bad. Used to be a jumpmaster in the 82nd Airborne, where part of the job was to stick your head out of the side of the open door of a C141 while in flight to check for issues, towed jumpers, etc. It's loud, but survivable. You can hear yelling over it. Of course we were going much slower...
Fun fact: they dim the interior lights when you're landing at night so your eyes are already adjusted to the darkness if an evacuation is required.
It's not always noticeable since they are sometimes already dim (especially on later flights when people might be trying to sleep, but they will turn the lights on for their safety check and then turn them off again).
Yeah must admit I think I jumped the gun a bit there. Reading about it a bit more it seems like this is a major manufacturing cock-up that this was even possible.
If an inspection done after going into service involved removing/replacing that door, it could have been done incorrectly.
There really is no way to know what happened without more research, and I’m confident the priority will be to understand if this was a one off or widespread issue.
Aren’t maintenance protocols handled by the FAA? Otherwise it would be implied that budget carriers like Spirit or Alaska would be “less” safe (which isn’t the case AFAIK).
Maintenance protocols are a mix of manufacturer recommendations and carrier/maintenance contractor SOPs, which are then approved by the manufacturer and FAA.
In 2000, an Alaska MD-80 went down, killing all 88 onboard. The NTSB found that it was apparently due to failing to adequately lubricate the tail jackscrew, as required by manufacturer documentation, not just once, but in at least two successive scheduled maintenance periods. Also, Alaska had been increasing, with FAA approval, the period between scheduled maintenence. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261
I'd recommend searching Google Flights with the "Legrooms for Google Flights" Chrome extension. Not only does it visibly list each aircraft type in the list of search results, but it also shows you how many inches of legroom each one has. One of the most useful Chrome extensions, IMO.
Except, you know, this thing called the Airbus A320 NEO. You know the thing that is more modern and produced at a higher rate. Somehow that doesn't seem to have doors falling of. So your statement is objectively wrong.
> The Boeing 737-9 MAX rolled off the assembly line just two months ago, receiving its certification in November 2023, according to FAA record posted online.
It’s 2 months old, so poor maintenance, wear and tear, etc are not even minor factors.
This is just a poorly made plane with awful quality control.
And that’s even before we get into some of the design issues, both the shortcuts they’ve taken and ones that are more fundamental.
Stan and the gang will try and pawn this off on Spirit, but Renton is supposed to do high blow[1]. It's one of the last things that gets done, with hydraulics and suchlike. I'm just guessing here, but I bet someone waived a batch of Spirit stuff through the process to get more units out the door. "Eh, this whole block is probably fine". False Equivalence strikes again[2].
[1] Simulated full pressurization, often many of them
[2] And yeah. Spirit's got problems. But those problems wouldn't be problems if Boeing didn't sell off BCA's Wichita fuse fab to investment bankers back in 2005 as "Spirit". It's a pretty good name, since it's what some religions think is left behind after you're dead.
Please, Stan the Man will blame the pilots, the passengers, the Wright brothers themselves before admitting Boeing screwed up again. Accountability left that company years ago.
The part that blew off was a blank filler panel for an optional emergency door. With that context, are they still delivered as part of the fuselage or are they added in the final assembly?
"Provision for the new exits – which boost the exit limit capacity from 189 to 215 passengers – “will be structurally installed as standard in all -900s, and will allow operators to decide if the door should be activated or deactivated”, says 737 chief project engineer Mike Delaney."
Makes it sound like they're always installed, and airlines can opt to activate them or not...
I think the idea is that it used to be Boeing didn't have these kinds of problems, they managed themselves and made safer airplanes. At least they appeared safer.
I think the idea was that capitalism was at fault, so we should go back to whatever variant of the system Boeing operated under when there were less failures. Or else I’m not sure why their conclusion would be that the fix would be to reel in capitalism.
Think the govs lost their vetoes a while ago. Airbus is now a play by American asset managers AFAIK. Since the market’s mature, it’s more attractive and profitable to buy up programs like the A220 and farm EU subsidies vs. betting on a Boeing turnaround.
Guess what, the old Boeing that did the 777 is just as much 'capitalism' as the one that did the MAX. Arguable more so because they were less focused on military and government contracts depending on what we mean when we are saying 'capitalism'.
If by capitalism you mean 'profitable' then Boeing was more so before they started making shitty products.
The reality is companies and all organisation, for many reason change over time.
I hope it's not controversial to point out that agents motivated by profit will, at the limit, optimize for profit at the expense of everything else (including, in this case, safety). Airlines are less regulated today than they were back when Boeing got its start; the other quality of free and markets is that they consolidate into monopolies, at which point the market stops functioning entirely as a useful mechanism for resource allocation.
> agents motivated by profit will, at the limit, optimize for profit at the expense of everything else
As opposed to agents motivated by conformity and an eye towards bureaucratic values?
Humans are self interested. This is common across systems. What differs is how we orient those interests in concert or competition, and when that dial is turned.
So where are the profits? Boeing hasn't made money since 2018 and I suspect their revenue per employee is very low.
They are "too big to fail", part of the ministry of defense, and a large make-work program.
> they consolidate into monopolies
Indeed there are about 3 aerospace companies setup to server the US government. It regulates everything from how paperwork is stored, to what tests candidate employees must pass, and which parts they can order.
In the commercial sector all of their customer's requirements come from the government.
> This is just a poorly made plane with awful quality control.
Maybe if Boeing, you know, lobby to lower these safety restrictions then those pesky quality control checks will reduce and somehow everything will just work out just fine [1].
Seriously though, as a brand new, fresh off the production line 737 this kind of event should be so rare as to be nearly impossible.
> Maybe if Boeing, you know, lobby to lower these safety restrictions then those pesky quality control checks will reduce and somehow everything will just work out just fine
I am open to the possibility that an industry might be over-regulated and also expect that the people who would be most likely to try and correct that imbalance would be the companies in the industry. Therefore, it seems perfectly reasonable to me that a company should be able to lobby the government in it's own interests. The issue of de-regulation creating safety hazards lies completely with the government officials who take their advice (and probably money) without regard to the effects that might happen.
When a mobster bribes a cop, the person that's commiting the (much) greater offense is the cop.
a) you’re okay with companies (effectively) acting like mobsters, in their own pecuniary interest
b) you expect every (individual, human) government official to act morally and correctly in every instance, despite the pressure and temptation placed upon them
c) you see no problem with this setup, and see no need to alter this situation
> you’re okay with companies (effectively) acting like mobsters, in their own pecuniary interest
I didn't say that. I said I'm okay with them lobbying for their interests and that am open to the idea that some industries might be over-regulated and that the companies in that industry are in the best position to know that.
> you expect every (individual, human) government official to act morally and correctly in every instance, despite the pressure and temptation placed upon them
Yes.
> you see no problem with this setup, and see no need to alter this situation
Again, I didn't say that. I used that as an analogy. Analogies aren't perfect. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear but I expect you know exactly what I was getting at and chose to misinterpret me so you can dunk on the strawman.
My overall point being, if you're upset with deregulation, you should direct your ire at the regulators who took the word of lobbyists at face value instead of doing their jobs.
Eh, I was being a touch snarky using your mobster analogy back at you somewhat out of context, but other than that, I wasn't really straw-manning much at all.
I guess the root of where we seem to disagree is the extent to which it's reasonable for companies to lobby, and the extent to which we believe it's reasonable to expect government employees to be the last bastion of reason and good conduct, despite everything that might be brought to bear against them.
Part of the case with Boeing and the 737 Max is actually more extreme than this, and also really interesting, as Boeing's financial interest is set clearly and diametrically against the interests of the public who might fly on their planes. Here's a precis (as I understand it): following the two earlier actual crashes of the Max (each killing hundreds of people) the FAA requested changes to those planes, to make them safer. Boeing lobbied against these changes, successfully, resulting in Congress effectively overruling the FAA, via a provision in the recent spending bill. [0]
Sadly, in reality, such "holding to account" almost certainly won't happen.
1) Congresspeople's voting can often be related to local selfish incentives - they support local industries because that's what their voters care about, irrespective of the bigger picture. There are myriad examples of this - Joe Manchin being in the pocket of the coal industry is an obvious one. In this particular case, Boeing claimed that the safety work requested by the FAA would place the 737 Max program itself (and therefore the jobs that depend on it) at risk. You could see this as democracy at work... but it's really democracy tainted by the influence of money and lobbying.
2) The 'adjustment' to the FAA's safety work was placed inside a much bigger bill, therefore obfuscating responsibility and even awareness.
3) In a highly-partisan, two-party system, it would have to be a highly emotionally-charged topic to push voters into voting tactically against their previous choice. Roe vs. Wade might be big enough for some people, but I doubt that something as small as this would do so.
--
That aside, the idea that the current system is protected by the ability of voters to 'hold their representative to account' every two or so years is surely crazy:
a) such accountability (if it ever happens) has up to a two-year lag - far from acceptable given the current example related to aircraft safety (which should be noted and reversed as a matter of urgency)
b) even if such accountability transpired, is it realistic to expect that a newly-elected replacement Congressperson could reverse the previous wrong? Highly unlikely.
I’d be willing to bet all planes built in the last year or so will be grounded immediately. As for others, possibly if they determine the issue is long standing and we’ve just been lucky.
Because it makes sense to double check your maintenance when you just experienced an issue overwhelmingly likely to be related to maintenance.
These same exact exit plugs have been in service without issue since at least 2007.
> Each aircraft will be returned to service only after completion of full maintenance and safety inspections. We anticipate all inspections will be completed in the next few days.
> you just experienced an issue overwhelmingly likely to be related to maintenance
What maintenance? The plane was barely two months old and the part that failed was meant to be something installed permanently, not an emergency exit door that would probably see regular inspections. It's probably "just" sloppy assembly from Boeing/Spirit, which, yes, merit a grounding and inspection.
> What maintenance? The plane was barely two months old
A plane is not a car. They don’t go in once a year to tighten some bolts and replace your oil filter. You have no idea how much is taken apart and reassembled on a regular basis.
A modern 737 has A / P1 checks every 500 hours. The plane in question has completed a total of 145 flights so it's quite possible it hadn't even reached the 500 hour threshold yet.
While emergency equipment like slides and doors are typically inspected with an "A" check, this wasn't an emergency door that failed. What failed was a permanently installed panel. To inspect it you'd have to pull off interior panels, something that doesn't typically happen on a 737 until a C check (roughly every couple of years or 5,000 hours).
So yeah. What maintenance on a nearly brand new plane would require pulling the interior apart and disturbing the emergency exit plug?
This wasn't a maintenance issue.
Edit: And, no, this plane was never at the Oklahoma City MRO.
Then you’re going to have to ground all the 737-900ERs (in service since 2007) out there as well, since they use the exact same part.
Or maybe, just maybe, this is 1,000x more likely to be a maintenance issue than it is a faulty design.
If there were a genuine, ongoing safety issue worth worrying about pilots would stop flying them. People seem to entirely forget that the crew up in the cockpit are humans with an interest in self-preservation.
Because even if it is just a maintenance issue (which as others point out is weird for a a permanent part on a 10 week old plane that shouldn’t need maintenance on this part ever), Boeing and the FAA have completely shot their credibility over the 737.
Both in terms of original certification and also doubling down on “no issue planes are fine” until it became incontrovertible that the planes were the problem and then all the collusion and shadiness about how the 737 came to be came out.
So with that history, even if it would be an overreaction, rebuilding trust would look like immediately grounding in a situation like this out of an abundance of caution. Btw the 737 has had other maintenance problems crop up since they put it back in service since the fleet was grounded to retrofit the part that was needed to fix the original fatal-causing defect. Honestly this just looks like an unsafe plane top to bottom that could sink Boeing (except they’re not allowed to sink because they’re critical partners to the national defense industry)
My first thought was that the pilots and crew would lose their jobs if they refused to fly.
But perhaps pilots would be less likely to get rated for Max aircraft if (hypothetically) there's a perceived broad issue with their safety? This could cause those who have a choice (stronger pilots) to go airbus.
From what I understand, most pilots generally consider the famous MAX crashes to be “bad pilot crashes” and, of course, all pilots know they’re not bad pilots.
Grounding is a heavy measure. They're more likely to just inspect other planes with similar doors to see if there's anything obviously wrong with them.
Planes are complicated machines and the processes for inspecting them are highly detailed. Once they figure out what happened, the fix might be simply to include some simple check for whatever happened. Just another line item for a routine inspection. And probably the list of things to check for doors is quite long already.
In any case, flailing your arms and panicking is not part of the process. This incident seems completely unrelated to previous incidents and it happened many years after the first max flew. Which suggests it's an isolated incident. It's quite possible that the door has not been redesigned for the max (quite likely even, because why would they?) in which case they might have to look at all 737s going back 50 or so years.
> Alaska flight 1282 left Portland just after 5pm local time on Friday when an emergency door blew out at 16,000 feet.
If this happened at cruising altitude with a higher pressure differential, would the plane survive? (I know generally the door won't open at that altitude since they open inward, but I assume the same forces wouldn't do anything to prevent a window blowout)
Southwest Airlines Flight 1380's window was broken at 32,000 feet, the plane survived but one passenger was sucked part way out the broken window and died of her injuries.
The Aloha Airlines Flight 243 incident took place at 24,000 feet.
> The captain felt the aircraft roll to the left and right, and the controls went loose; the first officer noticed pieces of grey insulation floating in the cockpit. The cockpit door had broken away and the captain could see "blue sky where the first-class ceiling had been.
> The crew declared an emergency and diverted to Kahului Airport for an emergency landing. During the approach to the airport, the left engine failed, and the flight crew was unsure if the nose gear was lowered correctly. Nevertheless, they were able to land normally on Runway 2, thirteen minutes after the incident.
I remember reading an article about how some Boeing employees are surprised the 787 planes don’t have more issues because their warnings about quality issues are ignored.
It can also survive a colision with another aircraft while landing, and people can survive inside it for 20 minutes while it is literally on fire. That’s pretty compelling.
I was pleasantly surprised recently that a much smaller airliner the Embraer 195 had much more cabin comfort than a 737. Considering the smaller size I was expecting the opposite.
> the Boeing Dreamliner for example is shockingly uncomfortable to fly in
Struggling with this comment, I do a lot of long-haul and the dreamliner is a clear differentiator on arrival due to cabin pressure and humidity. Boeing seems to have made a lot of mistakes over the years but I seek out a dreamliner for anything over 8 hours.
Perhaps you are the victim of the airline more than the aircraft itself?
The 787 is nice, but the competing A350 and A380 both have similar pressurisation and I haven't noticed humidity issues on either. I think the 787 was a significant step up on the 777, but compared to modern alternatives I think it probably is slightly less comfortable.
> Park praised three aircraft types in particular: the Airbus A380, the Boeing 787 and the Airbus A350.
> The 787 and A350 nudge the humidity up to approximately 25% — an incremental upgrade, to be sure, but an upgrade nonetheless. That's because their composite-materials fuselages won't rust like metal ones would under increased humidity.
Haven't been on an A350 but definitely enjoyed the other two for long-haul. There's a noticeable difference when you spend enough time in that tube, Sydney to London is 24hr's straight with a short time off the plane halfway in the middle of the night. Long-haul is the default for Australians travelling internationally.
Yeah I live in London and my partner lives in Melbourne. Been doing 3x a year since covid.
Something that's fascinating to me though, and which puts a lot of online aviation discourse (that mostly comes from US domestic flights) into perspective, is that the short hops we sometimes do like Melbourne -> Hobart, is that they are immediately noticeable as far less comfortable. Apart from sleep effects, 1 hour of domestic flying leaves me feeling worse than 14 hours of long haul, and I think it's just seats and leg room. Economy (and cheap!) long haul flights are not actually that bad, at least for me as a 6' tall guy.
Same here: lot of long haul. Know of all the rumors about bad 787 engineering. Still much prefer 787 over alternatives because I find it significantly more comfortable.
I've done a few New Zealand to Houston trips on the Dreamliner and I find the vibration, temperature and humidity to be totally hostile compared to the A350.
They used to say “if it’s not Boeing, I’m not going.” Some sort of jingoistic tripe. I wonder how many true believers are left after all the trash Boeing has been putting out lately.
Is there a browser addon that can list the type of plane next to the flight in popular flight search tools? (e.g. Google Flights, SkyScanner etc). I’d love such an addon.
I think the algorithmic flight pricing has picked up on this.
I was seeing flights on 737 Max 8 were easily 10-20% cheaper compared to other models on a given route and date. The 737 Max 8 ended up being my most flown model in 2023.
That just shows: you never know. Perhaps something had been done to this plane too, indeed. The only thing I would exclude at this point is bad maintenance. It's so unlikely that that part needed maintenance in less than 2 months. But your example shows we really should wait for the report.
Boeing is playing off its role as being so vital to national security that the government will keep it from suffering too much loss.
Fair enough.
However, if that is the case, then the bean counting management is guilty of sabotaging US national security by running Boeing into the ground for short term profits.
The entire C-Suite of Boeing should be sentenced to multi-decade prison terms at IDF SuperMax for their selling out US National security for profit.
> Boeing is playing off its role as being so vital to national security that the government will keep it from suffering too much loss.
I don’t actually think this is true. Boeing has a terrible track record with defense contracts in recent years. They lost the KC-X tanker competition to Airbus before Boeing lobbied to overturn the decision, they lost the JSF competition to the Lockheed Martin F-35, and they (in partnership with Sikorsky) lost the Black Hawk replacement competition to Bell. Super Hornet production is ending next year and Osprey production could probably be turned over to Bell.
No, it’s less that Boeing is vital to national security and more that Boeing is a government jobs program. It’s the jobs—not Boeing’s importance to national security—that has influenced powerful senators like Patty Murray and Lindsay Graham to put their thumbs on the scale.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 115 ms ] threadI was on a flight that made and emergency landing once, it was TERRIFYING. The pilot circled once then we went down at a very steep angle.
What was even worse was the three days we were stranded in Gander Newfoundland while they fixed the plane and then flew in a new crew. It was basically an refueling/military base and not a real airport, no food or facilities. After that I never flew without my toothbrush, change of clothes and contact solution in my carry on.
https://people.com/human-interest/couple-who-met-because-of-...
I've never felt more gross in my life or had a nicer shower in my life than that first one after we finally landed, got to the location and finally relaxed. Mainly it was not having a toothbrush that was the worst!
You used to fly without those things? :O
For example i know a couple living a long distance relationship. They both have enough stuff at each others place so that they can travel very light.
Now of course it sucks if you suddenly get stranded in between, but it is not life threatening just an inconvenience. And from then on it is just a tradeoff. You can gain a small bit of regular convenience for the cost of risking a rare but moderate inconvenience.
Unbelievable by my standards, because those items had saved me time and again from my frequent time mismanagements, but not everyone is on an exact same standard.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/148775
If you ever watch the takeoff profile of a FedEx or UPS plane compared to the airlines, they turn much harder because they’ve no passengers to complain.
https://katu.com/news/local/alaska-airlines-flight-1282-retu...
If there can be a big hole in the plane and we can call that a "depressurization event", I would like to advocate for changing how we describe this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522
> An investigation into the crash by the Air Accident Investigation and Aviation Safety Board (AAIASB) concluded that the crew had neglected to set the pressurization system to automatic during the take-off checks. This caused the plane not to be pressurized during the flight and resulted in nearly everyone on board suffering from generalized hypoxia, thus resulting in a ghost flight [..] eventually crashed near Grammatiko, Greece, killing all 121 passengers and crew on board. It is the deadliest aviation accident in Greek history.
> Also, there isn't a "if you forget this everyone suffocates" button.
(Also note that the pilots did not move the pressurization system out of AUTO; you are blaming them for not discovering that a ground engineer had done so, mostly while they fought hypoxia.)
Yes, it was! Those pilots should totally have put that switch in the position that doesn't kill everyone! But they didn't, and then they got too hypoxic to fix it and now everyone's dead. It's almost like there's a switch that it's a really bad idea for pilots to forget about..
It is possible for two switches, and multiple external factors including scandalous levels of procedural error by the Captain, First Officer, and maintenance technician to kill them.
The MAX itself is an example of this. Both famous crashes definitely were pilot error AND were a bad design allowing that pilot error to occur.
it's not generating ambiguity for the people who need to know
for example, air traffic control and other pilots listening on the radio will know that this aircraft needs to be cleared to descend to a lower altitude and other traffic needs to get out of the way, be alert, etc.
It's an exit door opening, not some random part of the fuselage developing a potentially structure-compromising hole...
My assumption has been there's always fresh air actively added continuously at a rate that can compensate for such small leaks, and that it's just an automatically regulated thing. Maybe a gauge/alarm visible to the pilots would indicate an out of spec level of fresh air entering to maintain pressure, without actually being a "depressurization event"...
But a door-sized hole is a whole (har har) different story.
Edit: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/53831/are-press...
I suspect that's only an issue on airliners when the hole happens in a window.
There's no shortage of search results confirming that something like gunfire on an airliner likely won't depressurize the plane unless it hits a window....
I suppose if the small hole had existed since before takeoff, you could avoid catastrophic damage as the aircraft will not be pressurized at all. I wouldn't call it a depressurization event, though.
"Man, it's unfortunate that there's a problem with the pressurization system in this.. sky."
> According to FAA record posted online, the Boeing 737-9 MAX rolled off the assembly line just two months ago, receiving its certification in November 2023.
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38882358 (“HN: Boeing wants FAA to exempt MAX 7 from safety rules to get it in the air“)
It also wasn't a window... that's a plug for an unused emergency exit location. Planes have spots in the fuselage where emergency exits can be placed if the aircraft is configured with enough seats where it needs more exits. This one wasn't, so instead of an emergency exit, there's a plug bolted into the spot instead. Would have to guess that there was a defect in this one though...
"The Front Fell Off" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
> Second photo shows it wasn’t the full seat. Still couldn’t imagine sitting next to a gaping hole in the aircraft.
I'd thought that outward-opening doors on passenger aircraft had gone away after the DC-10 disasters with them.[3] Apparently not.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFNU0cc29OQ
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zyxy3naQh0
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_96
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Zyxy3naQh0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_981
For anyone that doesnt know, McDonnell Douglas merged with Boeing.
Wear. Your Seatbelts.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2024/01/alaska-airlines-flig...
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/iphone-survives-1600...
https://twitter.com/avgeekjake/status/1743474494411608489?s=...
Maximizing profit is a good thing that a healthy company should do, but if it wants to remain a healthy company in the future then it should not be done "at all costs"... Profit needs to be balanced with: safety, quality, and the humans who research, create, and manufacture the products. Too much emphasis is put on the one person at the very top who often makes decisions that sacrifice safety, quality, and the humans who research, create, and manufacture the products.
Alternatives include the Chinese Comac 929, Sukhoi SSJ100, or A320 from Airbus. the first two are non-starters as most north american politicians are furiously opposed to the idea of carriers so much as looking at chinese or russian passenger jets. the A320 on the other hand, while arguably a better widebody jet than anything Boeing has ever produced, has the same political hand-wringing and strong arming from lobbyists and airline executives alike. American Airlines replaced a chunk of their fleet with the A320 because the Dreamliner was literally killing about as many people as it managed to transport when it wasnt down for loose bolts or reboots due to battery issues.
Given enough time and without meaningful reform and intervention by Washington, Boeing will literally hand the win over to these 3 other competitors just like AT&T handed over 5G to Huawei. Ironic considering Airbus was originally a Boeing joint venture.
“The Boeing 787 has been involved in seven accidents and incidents as of November 2023, with zero fatalities and no hull losses.”
It's like an LLM hallucinating.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/djWftXndJ7iMPsjrp/the-dark-a...
All is just caused by one group, one thing, one enemy. The analytical capabilities of a mouse seeing cats in every shadow.
Maybe it worked because the predecessor companies' main problem was "just" scale - they made some decent planes already.
From Wikipedia:
> The Boeing 787 has been involved in seven accidents and incidents as of November 2023, with zero fatalities and no hull losses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_787_Dreamliner#Accident...
At this point, the 737 Max seems cursed.
I think it is quite logical that the added complexity results in additional failures.
It's going to be quite hard for the public to regain confidence in that aircraft, especially when (as noted elsewhere) Boeing was just now trying to get an exception from the FAA re: certification of the max 7.
I don't see enough detail to really know how high they fly once the depressurization happens. I'm guessing that, if possible, they descend to an altitude where the supplementary oxygen is not critical for preserving life so the loudness could go back up. I couldn't find if there's a "typically safe" maximum altitude that is used in depressurization or it's situational.
Probably someone with better flightradar knowledge could figure out the altitude with time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29ghXy6O2dc
FUSELAGE BLOWN OUT MID-AIR | Alaska Emergency at Portland
Plus increased noise from the engines (or at least the engine on that side of the plane), as a sibling comment notes.
It's not always noticeable since they are sometimes already dim (especially on later flights when people might be trying to sleep, but they will turn the lights on for their safety check and then turn them off again).
(The tweet is just referencing this and a flighradar track, poorly.)
There really is no way to know what happened without more research, and I’m confident the priority will be to understand if this was a one off or widespread issue.
Maintenance protocols are a mix of manufacturer recommendations and carrier/maintenance contractor SOPs, which are then approved by the manufacturer and FAA.
sorry, but this one’s on Boeing.
From today on HN.
It’s 2 months old, so poor maintenance, wear and tear, etc are not even minor factors.
This is just a poorly made plane with awful quality control.
And that’s even before we get into some of the design issues, both the shortcuts they’ve taken and ones that are more fundamental.
[1] Simulated full pressurization, often many of them
[2] And yeah. Spirit's got problems. But those problems wouldn't be problems if Boeing didn't sell off BCA's Wichita fuse fab to investment bankers back in 2005 as "Spirit". It's a pretty good name, since it's what some religions think is left behind after you're dead.
"Provision for the new exits – which boost the exit limit capacity from 189 to 215 passengers – “will be structurally installed as standard in all -900s, and will allow operators to decide if the door should be activated or deactivated”, says 737 chief project engineer Mike Delaney."
Makes it sound like they're always installed, and airlines can opt to activate them or not...
Once they bought them out and became a monopoly that was deemed ‘not a monopoly’ they had room to relax and replaced engineers with finance people.
This is what happens when finance people make aircraft.
They is very much competing in lots of different competition for lots things.
Of course they take all subsidies they get, but that does not distinguish that from many other big companies not founded on government initiative.
If by capitalism you mean 'profitable' then Boeing was more so before they started making shitty products.
The reality is companies and all organisation, for many reason change over time.
Ah yes, the aerospace and airline industries are just really overrun with free market ideals.
As opposed to agents motivated by conformity and an eye towards bureaucratic values?
Humans are self interested. This is common across systems. What differs is how we orient those interests in concert or competition, and when that dial is turned.
So where are the profits? Boeing hasn't made money since 2018 and I suspect their revenue per employee is very low.
They are "too big to fail", part of the ministry of defense, and a large make-work program.
> they consolidate into monopolies
Indeed there are about 3 aerospace companies setup to server the US government. It regulates everything from how paperwork is stored, to what tests candidate employees must pass, and which parts they can order.
In the commercial sector all of their customer's requirements come from the government.
> Airlines are less regulated today
In what ways?
I wouldn't trust either, industry is moving to Airbus because of their failures.
Maybe if Boeing, you know, lobby to lower these safety restrictions then those pesky quality control checks will reduce and somehow everything will just work out just fine [1].
Seriously though, as a brand new, fresh off the production line 737 this kind of event should be so rare as to be nearly impossible.
[1] - https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boein...
I am open to the possibility that an industry might be over-regulated and also expect that the people who would be most likely to try and correct that imbalance would be the companies in the industry. Therefore, it seems perfectly reasonable to me that a company should be able to lobby the government in it's own interests. The issue of de-regulation creating safety hazards lies completely with the government officials who take their advice (and probably money) without regard to the effects that might happen.
When a mobster bribes a cop, the person that's commiting the (much) greater offense is the cop.
a) you’re okay with companies (effectively) acting like mobsters, in their own pecuniary interest
b) you expect every (individual, human) government official to act morally and correctly in every instance, despite the pressure and temptation placed upon them
c) you see no problem with this setup, and see no need to alter this situation
Wow.
I didn't say that. I said I'm okay with them lobbying for their interests and that am open to the idea that some industries might be over-regulated and that the companies in that industry are in the best position to know that.
> you expect every (individual, human) government official to act morally and correctly in every instance, despite the pressure and temptation placed upon them
Yes.
> you see no problem with this setup, and see no need to alter this situation
Again, I didn't say that. I used that as an analogy. Analogies aren't perfect. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear but I expect you know exactly what I was getting at and chose to misinterpret me so you can dunk on the strawman.
My overall point being, if you're upset with deregulation, you should direct your ire at the regulators who took the word of lobbyists at face value instead of doing their jobs.
I guess the root of where we seem to disagree is the extent to which it's reasonable for companies to lobby, and the extent to which we believe it's reasonable to expect government employees to be the last bastion of reason and good conduct, despite everything that might be brought to bear against them.
Part of the case with Boeing and the 737 Max is actually more extreme than this, and also really interesting, as Boeing's financial interest is set clearly and diametrically against the interests of the public who might fly on their planes. Here's a precis (as I understand it): following the two earlier actual crashes of the Max (each killing hundreds of people) the FAA requested changes to those planes, to make them safer. Boeing lobbied against these changes, successfully, resulting in Congress effectively overruling the FAA, via a provision in the recent spending bill. [0]
How does this make sense, in any rational world?
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38896095
How many of the Congress people who voted for this are going to be re-elected?
It's congresses authority at the end of the day and it's our responsibility to hold them accountable.
1) Congresspeople's voting can often be related to local selfish incentives - they support local industries because that's what their voters care about, irrespective of the bigger picture. There are myriad examples of this - Joe Manchin being in the pocket of the coal industry is an obvious one. In this particular case, Boeing claimed that the safety work requested by the FAA would place the 737 Max program itself (and therefore the jobs that depend on it) at risk. You could see this as democracy at work... but it's really democracy tainted by the influence of money and lobbying.
2) The 'adjustment' to the FAA's safety work was placed inside a much bigger bill, therefore obfuscating responsibility and even awareness.
3) In a highly-partisan, two-party system, it would have to be a highly emotionally-charged topic to push voters into voting tactically against their previous choice. Roe vs. Wade might be big enough for some people, but I doubt that something as small as this would do so.
--
That aside, the idea that the current system is protected by the ability of voters to 'hold their representative to account' every two or so years is surely crazy:
a) such accountability (if it ever happens) has up to a two-year lag - far from acceptable given the current example related to aircraft safety (which should be noted and reversed as a matter of urgency)
b) even if such accountability transpired, is it realistic to expect that a newly-elected replacement Congressperson could reverse the previous wrong? Highly unlikely.
http://web.archive.org/web/20240106075153/https://news.alask...
These same exact exit plugs have been in service without issue since at least 2007.
> Each aircraft will be returned to service only after completion of full maintenance and safety inspections. We anticipate all inspections will be completed in the next few days.
What maintenance? The plane was barely two months old and the part that failed was meant to be something installed permanently, not an emergency exit door that would probably see regular inspections. It's probably "just" sloppy assembly from Boeing/Spirit, which, yes, merit a grounding and inspection.
A plane is not a car. They don’t go in once a year to tighten some bolts and replace your oil filter. You have no idea how much is taken apart and reassembled on a regular basis.
While emergency equipment like slides and doors are typically inspected with an "A" check, this wasn't an emergency door that failed. What failed was a permanently installed panel. To inspect it you'd have to pull off interior panels, something that doesn't typically happen on a 737 until a C check (roughly every couple of years or 5,000 hours).
So yeah. What maintenance on a nearly brand new plane would require pulling the interior apart and disturbing the emergency exit plug?
This wasn't a maintenance issue.
Edit: And, no, this plane was never at the Oklahoma City MRO.
https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/n704al#3374196f
Or maybe, just maybe, this is 1,000x more likely to be a maintenance issue than it is a faulty design.
If there were a genuine, ongoing safety issue worth worrying about pilots would stop flying them. People seem to entirely forget that the crew up in the cockpit are humans with an interest in self-preservation.
Planes are not cars. They don’t go in once a year to change the oil filter and tighten a few bolts.
https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/n704al#3374196f
a.) The -900ER has exit doors where the -9 has plugs blocking off the doors.
b.) If the problem was installation related then it would still make sense to ground the planes and inspect the potentially faulty aircraft.
The -900ER can and has come configured with the exact same plugs in those doors.
Both in terms of original certification and also doubling down on “no issue planes are fine” until it became incontrovertible that the planes were the problem and then all the collusion and shadiness about how the 737 came to be came out.
So with that history, even if it would be an overreaction, rebuilding trust would look like immediately grounding in a situation like this out of an abundance of caution. Btw the 737 has had other maintenance problems crop up since they put it back in service since the fleet was grounded to retrofit the part that was needed to fix the original fatal-causing defect. Honestly this just looks like an unsafe plane top to bottom that could sink Boeing (except they’re not allowed to sink because they’re critical partners to the national defense industry)
But perhaps pilots would be less likely to get rated for Max aircraft if (hypothetically) there's a perceived broad issue with their safety? This could cause those who have a choice (stronger pilots) to go airbus.
Not saying it's the case, just pondering here.
You'll forgive me if I find your assertion strains credulity.
If the MAX is as likely to fall out of the sky as the armchair experts at HN believe, pilots wouldn’t fly them.
Planes are complicated machines and the processes for inspecting them are highly detailed. Once they figure out what happened, the fix might be simply to include some simple check for whatever happened. Just another line item for a routine inspection. And probably the list of things to check for doors is quite long already.
In any case, flailing your arms and panicking is not part of the process. This incident seems completely unrelated to previous incidents and it happened many years after the first max flew. Which suggests it's an isolated incident. It's quite possible that the door has not been redesigned for the max (quite likely even, because why would they?) in which case they might have to look at all 737s going back 50 or so years.
If this happened at cruising altitude with a higher pressure differential, would the plane survive? (I know generally the door won't open at that altitude since they open inward, but I assume the same forces wouldn't do anything to prevent a window blowout)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1380
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/falling-through-the-crac...
> The captain felt the aircraft roll to the left and right, and the controls went loose; the first officer noticed pieces of grey insulation floating in the cockpit. The cockpit door had broken away and the captain could see "blue sky where the first-class ceiling had been.
> The crew declared an emergency and diverted to Kahului Airport for an emergency landing. During the approach to the airport, the left engine failed, and the flight crew was unsure if the nose gear was lowered correctly. Nevertheless, they were able to land normally on Runway 2, thirteen minutes after the incident.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/falling-to-pieces-the-ne...
I wonder if airlines have data showing that their Airbus flights are more popular than Boeing flights after adjusting differences.
I remember reading an article about how some Boeing employees are surprised the 787 planes don’t have more issues because their warnings about quality issues are ignored.
Also I know a 737 MAX pilot who had time on A320 and he said fly A320 if you can.
It's not even just the safety, the Boeing Dreamliner for example is shockingly uncomfortable to fly in.
Struggling with this comment, I do a lot of long-haul and the dreamliner is a clear differentiator on arrival due to cabin pressure and humidity. Boeing seems to have made a lot of mistakes over the years but I seek out a dreamliner for anything over 8 hours.
Perhaps you are the victim of the airline more than the aircraft itself?
> The 787 and A350 nudge the humidity up to approximately 25% — an incremental upgrade, to be sure, but an upgrade nonetheless. That's because their composite-materials fuselages won't rust like metal ones would under increased humidity.
https://thepointsguy.com/news/the-healthiest-planes-in-the-a...
Haven't been on an A350 but definitely enjoyed the other two for long-haul. There's a noticeable difference when you spend enough time in that tube, Sydney to London is 24hr's straight with a short time off the plane halfway in the middle of the night. Long-haul is the default for Australians travelling internationally.
Something that's fascinating to me though, and which puts a lot of online aviation discourse (that mostly comes from US domestic flights) into perspective, is that the short hops we sometimes do like Melbourne -> Hobart, is that they are immediately noticeable as far less comfortable. Apart from sleep effects, 1 hour of domestic flying leaves me feeling worse than 14 hours of long haul, and I think it's just seats and leg room. Economy (and cheap!) long haul flights are not actually that bad, at least for me as a 6' tall guy.
Maybe it's a personal preference thing.
I was seeing flights on 737 Max 8 were easily 10-20% cheaper compared to other models on a given route and date. The 737 Max 8 ended up being my most flown model in 2023.
https://www.npr.org/2023/11/10/1212144515/plane-missing-wind...
And inspect similar planes in the mean time.
Fair enough.
However, if that is the case, then the bean counting management is guilty of sabotaging US national security by running Boeing into the ground for short term profits.
The entire C-Suite of Boeing should be sentenced to multi-decade prison terms at IDF SuperMax for their selling out US National security for profit.
100%
I don’t actually think this is true. Boeing has a terrible track record with defense contracts in recent years. They lost the KC-X tanker competition to Airbus before Boeing lobbied to overturn the decision, they lost the JSF competition to the Lockheed Martin F-35, and they (in partnership with Sikorsky) lost the Black Hawk replacement competition to Bell. Super Hornet production is ending next year and Osprey production could probably be turned over to Bell.
No, it’s less that Boeing is vital to national security and more that Boeing is a government jobs program. It’s the jobs—not Boeing’s importance to national security—that has influenced powerful senators like Patty Murray and Lindsay Graham to put their thumbs on the scale.
Switch to Linux today :)