Airlines in a Crisis

So far the new Boeing CEO is not standing out as a problem solver. His first couple of months has more been a deepening of the Boeing rut. Maybe his immediate and well announced (partial) relocation to Seattle was not such a smart move after all. It certainly have given the machinists the guts to demand back stuff they gave up 10 years ago because Boeing then threatened to move more production away from the area. He needs to be careful with letting his division leutenants run the show by playing hardball with the unions at a time when Boeing needs to ramp up production, not let it grind to a halt altogether. They may have more experience from within Boeing and been seen by the previous CEO as leading lights but it is time for a new regime. The previous one created and proeeded with more trouble than it was worth for both customers and the company itself. Boeing might be too critical to the for all practical purposes duopoly in passenger plane making in the western world, but that deepl...

The preliminary accident investigation report has come up with a picture taken after closing the plug door that afterwards departed from a Alaska 737 MAx 9 in the air. It shows it being held down by a a cable tie. THere is speculation that this would be enough to stop the door from sliding up and being able to eject for a number of flights sine there woud be litle presure on it as oon as the plane takes off and outside air pressure locks it onto its stopping pads. It could also be that the cable tie held the bag of roller stopper bolts that was to be installed by a later shift but that the last part never happened. There is a case for ripping out the floor of that particular Alaska 737 Max9 and see if anything that the investigation has so far not found have slipped down along the wall and is now laying in a hidden area that can't be checked otherwise.  Another worrying picture is of a stopper bolt installed but with 2 washers. This is proably so the castelated nut can lign up with...

 Another retired armed forces top brass have been added to Boeing mgmt. This time a retired admiral. Yes I'm sure his nuclear bacground have made him very pedantic but do Boeing really need nuclear pedantry for its civilian airdraft production. Sounds expensive, not very productive and not something that would have a lasting effect. And not is there any actual nuclear apect to their civilian aircraft production program either. Another thing is that to reach the grade of admiral he has had to always toe the "company" line. That is not something you as a user of its products want in Boeings executive suite at this point in time. You would want somebody to shake things up a bit. Somebody with some diverging opinions and not just another yes man. Sounds like a press release friendly apointee thought out by finance people and lawyers and not what a engineering based top management would have been looking for. What Boeing need is somebody with a multilevel experience. and not o...

When its a set screw A set screw is fully threaded while a bolt is only partially threaded. (And yes a set screw has a head. If no head its called a grub screw.) This means a bolt fits better and thighter in its holes than a set screw does. A set screw only have the sideways or bending strength of a bolt 1 size down.  A bolt can only be thigthened to a certain point because it runs out of threads. Who knows if Spirit used set screws securing the plugs on a couple of planes because they ran out of the correctly sized bolts and expected Boeing to redo them anyway. Impossible to see/inspect unless you draw/remove the item in question. Or the head is stamped with a part number and you can see the head. Should Boeing have overengineered it so that a bolt also was covered by a sleeve that double secured the bolt wasn't overtightened and drew the frames closer, weakening them in the progress. A sleeve would also protect the bolt from the roller pins it was supposed to keep in place consta...

 What on the overwing exits stop them physically from being opened by a passenger with poor survival instincts during flight and did Boeing design engineers remove this safety mechanism from instructions for when installing a plug instead of a door. What other safety features did they omit on the grounds of cost saving in the design for using a door plug instead of a real emergency exit.  Normal cabin doors can't be opened during flight by design since they swing forward into the wind. There are few comments around on how this door (when installed) pivots. Is it up like the overwing exits or is it down since with such a small door there are probably no self inflating slide like the normal cabin doors. Or is it left or right. On the 737-200 the emergency exit overwing door came out loose and into the cabin. On the 737-NG-800 they swing up and out of the way. I doubt it just is pushed out and fall down because that could damage it during testing / maintenance. Would the overwing...

Further investigation points to that Spirit the maker of the 737 airframes do ship it with this blank in place but only temporarily fastened. Boeing then take the blank out to load the interior and then reinstall it.  The blank is like a door with a larger window and no manual opening mechnism and is being held in place by a frame rail with lugs but instead of movable pins and a handle like a normal door it is held in place with bolts and castelated nuts that should have split pins in them. As long as they are in place the doorblank can not be moved upwards (some say downwards and some later pictures of a locking bolt seems to support this) to a position where it can be opened / taken out. Again, regular inspection of these bolts have been made inpossible by having a complete panel on the inside. Questions remains over if split pins where installed. Bolted on parts can have the nuts unwinding themselves due to vibration. And the exact torque required to prevent this can be difficul...

On Max 9 an extra emergency exit door is replaced with a blank if you don't want it instead of not cutting the hole for it in the first place. And it was mechanically fastened instead of welded in place. And since the inner panel is just a normal panel making it impossible to do frequent checks on the blank, of course it eventually fell out taking the inner panel with it. And in this case after only 147 flights. That is less than 1 year in use.  On the other hand larger (in the hundreds) and original Max orders like the one from Ryanair get its own no mentioning of Max version number (737-8200) and  just uses a easily inspected normal door as it was originally designed for. This hole covered by a blank must be a financial quick fix to avoid producing 2 different versions of the airframe (with or without a door hole) and not something engineers recommended. And with it came a number of uncertainties, lets call them risks, that for the economists was a case of numbercrunchi...

In Norway we have several examples on this. Norwegian was/is hq'd at Fornebyu that haven't been an airport for over 20 years. Flyr was hq'd in the overexpensive Oslo city center. And Norse hq'd in Arendal, a town without an airport and even further from Oslo airport than Oslo itself. The train connections from hq to airport might be frequent and only take halve to an hour but its not the same as a 10 minute walk to oversee where your real operations happens. The place where your customers experience your service and most of your critical costs are spent. But also the costs most easily squeezable. Closenes let you reduce the costs before they occur rather than just financially overseeing the bills in accounts after they have happened. That makes a difference when it comes to reducing costs through strict control.  And low costs are the most important for being able to underprise your competitors. Something all the beforementioned airlines tried and tries because they see...

Braathen and his suited team didn't get his 1/5 billion nkr from the Nowegian government but there is about 100 million USD available together with the Norwegian name for a company that is willing to commit taking some new planes from Boeing.  As a manufacturer they care more about how many new airlines the can sell than how many of the older planes get parked. Norwegian never got to an agreement for how much the problems with their new ExMax and Dreamliner planes was goeing to cost the manufacturer because Beoing prefer to pay that sort of money in discounts rather than cash.  A new-Norwegian without most of the commitments and liabilities of the Schram-Norwegian could make a deal and have a fleet partially financed. That would also give them a good base for getting a good deal with the banks so any ticket sales will end up in the airline instead of being kept by the card issuers and banks for security against future refund claims.   

Don't exactly know what degrees Boeing top management have but it don't seem to be psychology, or pr for that sake. They think the most important thing is to get the 737 ExMax past the FAA scrutiny. And for that they are playing the stubborness card. As little change as they can get away with for as cheap as is possible. And that means software only. Reprogramming is cheap but it doesn't really give the press anything to take a picture off. And a picture is worth a thousand words. It is not the FAA that is going to pay to be passengers on the plane. That is the general public and they go by what the press says. And since the press have been touting for many months now that the plane is unsafe and aerodynamically flawed, the potentially flying public is expecting something to be done about it. And noen of them have any real belief in safe software thanks to Microsoft's work during the past 2 decades. They know it is always flawed and full of bugs and need to be rectif...

The language in their lawsuit against Boeing in connection with their termination of the contracts for ExMax and Dreampliner deliveries is not sparing the expetives. A company in such a precarius position should be more careful when it comes to handling its in reality only supplier that it for a good while into the future still will be dependant on for the maintenance and value of its entire existing fleet. Could it be that top management of Norwegian do not really know what it entails to change from Boeing to Airbus, or the risk of going Chinese or Russian. After all they are lacking indepth airline experience between them, coming more from a finance and retail background. The pilot retraining and dual engineering maintenance and double parts storge costs alone would stop the company from being a Low Cost. And a Low Fares airline without corresponding Low Costs will be a loss making business no matter how many routes you cut or how much you shrink, or how many extra candybars you s...

This is what happens when an international airline get a top chief that have no experience from managing an airline. No experience from any other parts than a bit of consulting. Just thinks its about selling a ticket plus whatever extra you can add onto the purchase. You don't make a Low Fares airline by lowering prices. You make the basis for it by keeping your costs low. And a key part of that is the single type of plane. But you need to spend time in engineering and ops to understand why that is so important. Just 1 set of spares and 1 type of engineer for all the planes, just 1 type of pilot so you don't have to double up on simulators and standbys, and the ability to swap any plane in on any route depending on what is available on the day. Did the company bosses visit other airlines that has done before the type of company they wanted to be. O'Leary of Ryanair did do a study visit to Southwest before forming his vision.  If you want to play with the big boys and sou...

Most startups place their HQ at or near their main airport to keep a close eye on operations. It can also give combined advantages. Sample the DUB based flight crews used to meet up at the Ryanair hq and transport in a van directly to the planes, needing no extra office space within the terminal. Ryanair management used to walk or drive up to the airport complex frequently and many of their top management where known to be very hands on. Sample during the baggage handler strike of 98 they where all handling suitcases. In fact every male employee in the White House (nick name for then Ryanair HQ) was. And most of hq staff had airport airside passes hither and tither. Even after the move to larger premises the DUB airport main terminal is less than a 5 minute drive away. Airlines like Norwegian on the other hand seem to have missed that the Oslo airport have moved from Fornebu to Gardermoen at the opposit end of the city. Not only that but they are paying rent at what is rumoured to g...

Where airlines like Ryanair could really muddle the waters are if they used the extra capacity of the ExMax over the NG to offer social distancing through middle seat free. The way to sell the ExMax to a flying public that don't care how much it saves the company money or if it is marginally more environementally friendly, is by offering something on it that matters for them and that other planes don't have. An ExMax-10 have about 54 extra seats more than an NG. If sold to the capacity of an NG that would give 27 rows of middle seats free for CoVid19 nervous fliers. Distancing sold as an extra only on ExMAx would really give potential passengers something to think about. All depending on Boeing getting approval for the thing before the pandemic is over by everbody having it or a vaccine is found and distributed.