The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which is leading an investigation into the incident, said pilots had reported pressurisation warning lights on three previous flights made by the specific Alaska Airlines Max 9 involved in the incident.
As bad as it is if a manufacturing issue caused a piece to fall off an airplane, there's a huge amount of negligence in an airline continuing to fly an airplane that has triggered pressure warnings multiple times without investigating and resolving the issue.
Agreed. This is a multi-layered fuckup. The manufacturer probably didn’t tighten things down all the way, their QA didn’t catch the critical defect, the plane inspectors didn’t catch it during inspection, the airline didn’t ground it after a pressurization warning, the pilot flew a plane with a known issue. There are several cultures of complacency at play. Hopefully the FAA can scare everyone into flying right.
The reason I added the "if" is because I didn't see any information about age and don't know the specifics of the engineering/specs. Bolts needing the be checked annually and tightened every 5 on average could be perfectly reasonable with how much stress is on airplanes. There's a reason frequent inspection is enforced more heavily on airplanes, and it's not just because failures mean potentially falling out of the sky.
But yeah, it's entirely possible they fucked up, but it's for sure United Alaska did.
The jet had been prevented from making long-haul flights over water so that the plane “could return very quickly to an airport” in the event the warnings happened again, NTSB chief Jennifer Homendy said.
Which makes it sound like they couldn’t find the source of that warning but weren’t willing to completely write it off.
I’ll wait to pass judgement because, not being an expert, I have no idea what the standard procedure is for that warning appearing in 3 out of however many (hundreds of?) flights this plane engaged in over that period of time. With hindsight of course we can say “duh don’t fly the plane with the door about to blow off if it says it has pressurization issues” but maybe this is not actually a particularly serious warning in different circumstances.
If I’m not mistaken, the Alaska Airlines accident aircraft completed 99 flights, as it went into service only a couple months ago.
Not an expert myself but I binge air crash investigation shows like nobody’s business, and this seems to speak to QC and maintenance workload/culture issues.
Apparently it started immediately after Alaska installed their wifi equipment, which some sources have indicated requires opening that door plug. They apparently assumed it was due to the wifi install. Should have grounded it until the figured it out.
Ex-aircraft mechanic here. Nothing will have been done in this situation without paperwork backing the decision. There are often small niggles that could ground an aircraft, but there are manuals that can be consulted to see how many more flights can be taken before it must be grounded for rectification - the MEL (minimum equipment list) and CDL (configuration deviation list). So the airline will not have made the ultimate decision to keep flying, Boeing will.
The fact that this has now been found in two different airlines means that it’s a design flaw again, either the locking mechanism on the bolts is insufficient, or the reinstallation instructions in the maintenance manual is incorrect (the Alaska airlines aircraft door plug was recently removed to carry out maintenance on another part)
As an airline customer, I would much rather have the airline tell me the plane was grounded due to parts being ready to fall off than the 3 hours I had to wait one time because of a busted tray table.
Not clear if this is the cause of the Alaska accident. Those bolts hold on the hinges at the bottom, and the photos appear to show those hinges still attached on the incident aircraft.
Probably more than you think. This strikes me as an understaffing issue in the factory. Loose bolts happen when the person who is supposed to verify the work has been done correctly, is busy doing work elsewhere on the plane. Understaffing causes people to pitch-in to make deadlines, or to ease the burden on their co-workers. Seems trivial at first, but with airplanes, this behavior gets people killed.
I am glad to read all these reports, investigations and of course the emotional laden criticisms of actors associated with this. Because each time I check aviation incidents in Russia, they determine in the first 24 hours it must have been the pilots fault.
After looking at that diagram I have to ask - why in the everliving fuck would a pressure bearing panel like that be hung by bolts and not inserted into the cabin and held in place by the ribs of the fuselage? I mean seriously?
I don’t get why they don’t just make it a bit bigger on the inside so that when pressurized, the pressure itself seals it. Seems like a fail safe solution instead of this shadiness.
It’s a well documented that when Boeing merged with McDonald Douglas, they turned from an engineering led company to an executive led one & have been shit since
It is, kind of. The plug is secured by 6 stops (or tabs) along each side. The positive pressure differential pushes the plug outwards into those stops.
To remove the plug you uninstall 4 bolts which allow the plug to go up and over the stops, after which it can hinge outwards on a hinge found at the bottom of the plug.
Just seems like a better design would be if no bolts existed (like from them loosening over time and falling off), it would still be sealed perfectly fine. The obvious failure point is the bolts and seems they could do better.
That’s how the normal doors work because they aren’t permanently secured in place. The reason is weight as it pretty much always is in aviation design.
It’s a door plug, which means it’s meant to be replaced with an actual door if required, so a lot of the hardware for an actual door are in place. Doors are designed to slide in, then raise up so the stop pins engage the stop fittings from the inside, so the door is in effect bigger than the hole it’s in. this video provides a detailed explanation of how it works.
The big issue here is that the airplane is only 2 months old, it was delivered from Boeing in late October. Which means it’s either a design flaw or a process flaw in the original manufacturing. This smacks of corporate cost cutting again. Boeing are totally on the hook for this and it’s only lucky there were no lives lost. You watch, they’ll blame it on the airline initially but the fault will come back round to them again.
So are they just going to tighten them up real well and call it a day? Also are these the same planes they were urging the FAA to let them flight without further inspection?
A big advantage of repurposing existing lampposts is that cities don’t have to dig in order to lay new cables, says Artis Markots, the chief executive of the Latvian start-up SimpleCharge, which is focusing on Central and Eastern Europe.
Trojan Energy is a Scottish company whose chargers sit flush with the pavement, resembling miniature manhole covers from the outside.
The UK company Nyobolt recently created Bolt-ee, a compact, ultra-rapid charger that can provide up to 300kW of DC power to charge a car within minutes.
Fully mobile charging could be useful for people with disabilities, says Liana Cipcigan, a professor of transport electrification and smart grids at Cardiff University’s School of Engineering.
In terms of fire risks, Mr Shivareddy says that Nyobolt has carefully designed Bolt-ee to be ultra-efficient, and thus to generate very little waste heat.
As Prof Cipcigan says, there is much space for innovation in the EV charging market, and younger and smaller companies “could make an interesting impact on this very complex landscape”.
The original article contains 1,108 words, the summary contains 167 words. Saved 85%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
On a hot day sitting in a parking lot, my Model 3 loses about 10% of its charge just cooling the battery. I am lucky to have the ability to charge at home so I don’t have to worry about it, but if I was living in an apartment, I’d have constant anxiety about it discharging and not being ready when I need it. It’s doable, but having to plan out an extra 20-30 minutes plus travel time to hit a charger, that’s a fairly significant change to routine.
That said, yes, more EV charging at gas stations please. It’s critical for road trips.
While I agree with the drawbacks of wireless charging, it could prevent cables obstructing pedestrians and prevent vandalism. Maybe it’s a good idea for street parking
Ah yes, just fuck up streets and waste a fuckton of energy due to wireless charging
I am assuming you’re assuming inefficiencies in wireless charging over wired charging. One provider looking at this technology finds wired and wireless VERY close to one another in efficiency, with wireless possibly being even MORE efficient.
"Wireless charging for EVs is considered as efficient and fast as charging with a plug. For example, most EV plugs have 80-95 percent efficiency ratings. According to WiTricity, a leading provider, their wireless EV chargers achieve 90-93 percent efficiency. " source
I would be interested in that if done by anyone else than elon. I wouldn’t put it past them to have made that proposal to kill public transit or something else. Like they already did with the dumb tunnel that was canceled now.
Yeah, and most wired charging for a modern EV and charger is on the upper end of that scale.
The wireless charging being that efficient is reliant on the ground never being dirty or wet, the charging coils on the car being very low, and the car being perfectly aligned.
If shopping carts are any indication Europeans will simply plug cables back into the chargers while Americans will be dropping them on the sidewalk and hiring people to organize them.
@boem home owners would certainly charge their EVs at home, so the issue really is for those in apartment blocks. By us most apartment blocks have reserved/paid bays, so I'd imagine it must be possible to fit pop-up type chargers? I'd expect apartment blocks would have to make a plan of sorts to meet car owners halfway. After all, if you buy/rent any apartment today, it normally has electricity wired (and water piped, and often Internet connected) to the unit. Why not the same for a parking bay?
I live in a suburb of Portland and in an apartment. Our management is nice enough to provide a covered space (a luxury!) for a single car. I got to thinking about EV’s and if all of a sudden everyone here was driving them, there would be no place to charge them, but then why not place a charger in front of each parking space? Problem solved. Then, the managers would probably assess an additional fee on top of the already high rents for monthly charging privileges.
Living in this area does have it’s advantages, you can drive just a short distance to the local library and hit up the chargers, there, or go to the stores and always find an open charger or two
I get and will readily admit that most cities don’t have this so I appreciate the concern over EV charging stations. I don’t know much about them as I drive a dinosaur powered Honda so it’s not yet in my radar. :)
In lots of cities most people live in apartments with only street parking. Hopefully public transit will grow to fill the needs of people living in dense cities, though.
@steal_your_face yes by us, most have parking allocation at a cost per parking bay. But yes, if no parking bays then the City should be providing better public transport. The first prize is to actually have less private cars on the road, through efficient and safe public transport.
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Click here to see the summaryThe year 2023 has been confirmed as the warmest on record, driven by human-caused climate change and boosted by the natural El Niño weather event. Last year was about 1.48C warmer than the long-term average before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels, the EU’s climate service says. This recent temperature boost is mainly linked to the rapid switch to El Niño conditions, which has occurred on top of long-term human-caused warming. El Niño is a natural event where warmer surface waters in the East Pacific Ocean release additional heat into the atmosphere. The year 2024 could be warmer than 2023 - as some of the record ocean surface heat escapes into the atmosphere - although the “weird” behaviour of the current El Niño means it’s hard to be sure, Dr Hausfather says. While the language of the deal was weaker than many wanted - with no obligation for countries to act - it’s hoped that it will help to build on some recent encouraging progress in areas like renewable power and electric vehicles. — Saved 83% of original text.
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