Another Alaska Airlines incident

DAMN!

 

The damage that led to the emergency landing appeared to be in the location of a "plug," said John J. Nance, an ABC News aviation analyst. Those are spots in the fuselage shaped similar to a door that aren't designed to open, even when the aircraft is on the ground. They could be converted to doors if the airline needs an extra boarding door.

 

There is a design flaw with the 737 planes that was built in when it was first designed in the 1960's, and Boeing has never fixed it. The "skin" on the outside of the aircraft is much thinner than it is on other aircraft of a similar size and speed. There was a 737 flight for Aloha Airlines, I believe, that lost a section of the roof, and one stewardess got sucked out through it and died about 35 years ago.

Aloha Airlines Flight 243 - Wikipedia

The reason that the skin was thin to begin with was the engines for this size jet were under-powered in the 1960's, and designers had to take drastic measures to reduce the weight of the plane to get it off the ground. The entire frame of the aircraft was designed specifically for the thin skin. If a thicker skin was used, they would have to completely re-design the airframe to handle it (along with re-tooling the manufacturing process), which would cost a tremendous amount of money. Stronger and stronger engines came out during the 1970's and 80's, and the only thing the Boeing could do "cheaply" to protect the integrity of the plane was add an additional layer of outer skin at the fuselage lap joint. No one at Boeing expected the plane to last as long as it has and through so many iterations (getting longer with more passengers, mostly). They probably should have re-designed the plane with the 737 MAX series.

It wouldn't surprise me if this incident with Alaska Airlines was not in some way related to the other incident with Aloha Airlines.

Now Boeing is asking for an exemption to safety standards (for another issue) to allow the 737 Max 7 to be delivered to airlines. Using de-icing systems in dry conditions could result in an engine overheating and parts breaking off of it, possibly leading to a crash. Boeing wants pilots to be responsible for monitoring the weather and knowing how dry is too dry.

Boeing still hasn't fixed this problem on Max jets, so it's asking for an exemption to safety rules

The FAA needs to tell Boeing at some point to spend the money and fix the problems.

 

I thought the aloha airlines plane was old with many takeoffs/landings. The Alaska airlines plane was relatively new. I’m not buying the theory of thin skin from the 60s design being the issue with 737s

 

Yeah this plane was just delivered in November. And I think the pilots on previous flights had noted some pressure loss.
This is going to be something more basic, like the four relatively small bolts that hold that piece on. Or a manufacturing defect that didn’t get caught at delivery.

 

Plane part lost in dramatic mid-air blowout found Plane part lost in dramatic mid-air blowout found

 

An iPhone survived the 16,000 drop.

iPhone sucked out of Alaska Airlines plane found intact and working

 

was it one of those new titanium iPhones like in the commercials?

 

That's called cashing out on your reputation. It results in the biggest bonuses now, and disasters later (for someone else to worry about). It happens with a lot of companies, which were managed (sometimes sub-optimally) by engineers or the people that invented the thing being sold, who were obsessive about being the best, and figured that profits would follow indefinitely. Eventually circumstances lead the company to fall on hard times, and aggressive, hard-nosed accountants (or MBA's) may take over and start cutting training, safety, and other "non-essential" things.

 

Alaska Airlines KNEW about this problem (the pressurization lights going active) on this airplane, and the only thing they did was restrict it from flying over water, so it could make an emergency landing quickly over land. They had to have known that if the light indicated a real problem and something failed, and someone was nearby and not wearing a seatbelt (going to bathroom, or getting something from the overhead bin), they would get sucked out and die. This is borderline negligence. They should have grounded the plane until they found out what the problem was. They say they take safety seriously, but their actions say otherwise. There should be some way to internally pressurize the aircraft in the hangar, and detect leaks (vacuum leaks will be slightly different than pressure leaks, but if the problem was significant, either should catch it).

It's one thing to handle a cargo aircraft like this (ignoring safety warning lights), but entirely different to do this with a passenger aircraft.

Alaska Airlines plane had warnings days before mid-air blowout

 

Bad news for Boeing: United just found loose bolts on multiple (10) 737 Max 9 aircraft.

United finds loose bolts on several 737 MAX planes, raising pressure on Boeing

 

Probably not. I have a 15 Pro Max and the titanium build has a flaw that causes it to break easier if dropped the right way as the the back is made of glass. The stainless steel models were significantly more durable as are the standard aluminum models. If anything, probably had a really good case on it and fell just the right way.

 

Makes you want to book a ticket pronto.