this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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United States | News & Politics

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The FAA has opened an investigation into Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner after the company disclosed that employees in South Carolina falsified inspection records on work done where the wings are joined to the fuselage body.

Boeing informed the Federal Aviation Administration in April that, despite records indicating completion of required inspections, workers had not performed some of those inspections to confirm adequate bonding and electrical grounding at the 787 wing-to-body join.

“The FAA is investigating whether Boeing completed the inspections and whether company employees may have falsified aircraft records,” the federal safety agency said via email.

Boeing said its engineers have established that this newly discovered lapse does not create “an immediate safety of flight issue.”

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[–] [email protected] 91 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I like how it's "Boeing employees" and not just "Boeing" that falsified inspection records.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It’s going to trickle down further, next it’s going to be employees at outsource facilities falsified records. I know someone who worked in the QA department for a company involved with the design and manufacture of certain parts of the fuel system and they are all currently shitting themselves.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's going to trickle down further

Passengers boarded a plane without first checking for falsified inspections

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago

Critical flaws found in plane which was apparently assembled by a group of persons inside a Boeing facility.

[–] littlebluespark 32 points 7 months ago (2 children)

And this is the company about to launch actual humans into space, officially? No, I mean astronauts this time, not unwitting airplane passengers. This is the timeline we're in? Just checking.

[–] halcyoncmdr 18 points 7 months ago (1 children)

On a capsule that failed to deploy all three parachutes during its first abort test. And then also failed during its first real launch. Made it to orbit at least but it wasn't able to dock with the ISS as planned due to failures, just deorbited instead. Third launch was originally scrubbed due to valve issues, and wasn't tried again until 9 months later. Clearly wasn't just a simple valve issue.

And that's just the actual launch issues.

[–] over_clox 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Oof. Welp, lemme make some popcorn...

[–] halcyoncmdr 10 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Welp, scrubbed. Oxygen relief valve issue with the Centaur upper stage. Not actually a capsule issue this time... But that's still a little bit concerning since the Centaur isn't exactly a new rocket, it's quite a mature vehicle. Issues like that should normally be caught before they have astronauts loaded onboard.

[–] over_clox 7 points 7 months ago

Did they forget to bolt the valve in? 😂

Meh, par for the Boeing course huh? At least the astronauts are safe.

[–] over_clox 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

In another hour and a half, yeah, apparently.

I just hope they don't suffer "rapid disassembly"...

[–] Feyr 1 points 7 months ago

Yeah at this point it's rapid disassembly, because it's scheduled

[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)
[–] HappycamperNZ 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] AtariDump 6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

They bought Boeing with their own money.

[–] HappycamperNZ 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] AtariDump 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] HappycamperNZ 5 points 7 months ago

Ah, they brought boeing with boeings own money. That makes more sense.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 7 months ago (2 children)

That video provides literally no value. "Spend money on share holders and cut corners." Examples?

A big part of what's going on is a reverb of covid. The whole aerospace industry got hammered during covid, which forced a lot of experienced people to retire. We are now seeing what happens when a company with has a ton of tribal knowledge loses a lot of experienced all at once

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

Buybacks were illegal throughout most of the 20th century because they were considered a form of stock market manipulation. But in 1982, the Securities and Exchange Commission passed rule 10b-18, which created a legal process for buybacks and opened the floodgates for companies to start repurchasing their stock en masse.

The SEC's decision to make this shift came against the backdrop of President Ronald Reagan's era of deregulation and coincided with the rise of 'free market' economists preaching a new type of social responsibility for business: increasing profits.

So, uh, yeah, it's more of that sweet #1 bullshit from Reagan. It's true the loss of experienced people hurt the company, there have been numerous reports on that aspect. That doesn't have anything to do with cheating on quality inspections.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

There was a LOT more to it than that, reportedly.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago

Jesus fucking christ they are doing this on a plane that we don’t have any industry-wide long-term real-world durability data on because that’s the first fully composite airliner ever manufactured. Nobody really knows what long-term high-hour failure modes will look like.

We can simulate and guess, but when they cut corners like that, it introduces all kinds of horrifying possibilities involving cascading structural failures. Like, maybe the bonding surfaces between the fuselage and wing box starts to delaminate and, oh, I don’t know, the wing separates from the fuselage or something like that.

Perhaps I’m being sensationalist - I don’t know all the ins and outs of their manufacturing process. But I’m going to remain pretty fucking concerned until Boeing can conclusively prove it’s either not a problem, or that it can be correctly repaired back to original specs.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)
[–] Shameless 2 points 7 months ago

Planning on a holiday later this year, safe to say I'll be going out of my way to not be on a boeing.