After Flight to Oregon, Boeing 737-800 Lands with a Missing External Panel (cnn.com) 64
A Boeing 737-800 "was discovered to be missing an external panel" on the bottom of its fuselage, reports CNN, "after it landed in Medford, Oregon, Friday afternoon after taking off from San Francisco."
They stress that it's not a 737 Max, but the previous generation of Boeing aircraft. The plane carrying 145 passengers and crew landed safely and was parked at the gate at Rogue Valley International Medford Airport when a person on the ground first noticed the panel was missing, United Airlines said in a statement. The crew of Flight 433 did not declare an emergency and there was no indication of the damage during the flight, the airline said...
United said the missing panel did not affect the flying characteristics of the airplane...
Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport Director Amber Judd indicated to the Rogue Valley Times the aircraft is not in condition to fly and "will be here for a while." Judd added it is unclear where the missing panel is.
"They don't know where they lost it," Judd told the RV Times.
"The Federal Aviation Administration said it will investigate the incident."
Yahoo Finance notes that shares of Boeing "have declined over 30% in 2024."
They stress that it's not a 737 Max, but the previous generation of Boeing aircraft. The plane carrying 145 passengers and crew landed safely and was parked at the gate at Rogue Valley International Medford Airport when a person on the ground first noticed the panel was missing, United Airlines said in a statement. The crew of Flight 433 did not declare an emergency and there was no indication of the damage during the flight, the airline said...
United said the missing panel did not affect the flying characteristics of the airplane...
Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport Director Amber Judd indicated to the Rogue Valley Times the aircraft is not in condition to fly and "will be here for a while." Judd added it is unclear where the missing panel is.
"They don't know where they lost it," Judd told the RV Times.
"The Federal Aviation Administration said it will investigate the incident."
Yahoo Finance notes that shares of Boeing "have declined over 30% in 2024."
What headline (convieniently) doesn't say (Score:2, Insightful)
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Well yeah, but still, those things aren't supposed to just fall off due to old age. Those 'still-flying things' might fall off and hurt someone.
Six Sigma and all that [youtube.com].
Re: What headline (convieniently) doesn't say (Score:5, Insightful)
As much shit Boeing is in for lax quality control lately, at that age it's long past the point of quality control at the factory. At that age you're looking more at the quality of preventative maintenance on the part of the airline.
Re: What headline (convieniently) doesn't say (Score:2)
Unless Boeing was responsible for the last major overhaul.
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Unless Boeing was responsible for the last major overhaul.
Given the number of incidents that have been occurring with United, I suspect the issue lies there... And as far as airlines go, I kind of like United.. Certainly worse airlines out there (looking at you Luftwaffe).
The best thing United can do is look at where the issue is, what's causing it and rectify it. Hopefully they won't do a Boeing and try to MBA their way out of an engineering problem.
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It is cute that you think facts mean anything to this subject.
Re: What headline (convieniently) doesn't say (Score:5, Interesting)
They only said a 'panel". Most likely, the full name of the part is "inspection panel" which is a panel that maintenance personnel unscrew to inspect and work on certain internal components. It's a bit of a stretch to state that a panel which has been unscrewed and screwed back on dozens to hundreds of times (depending on where it is) bt maintenance personnel on a 22 year old plane fell off because of a design or manufacturing problem.
I don't know what kind of "panel" fell off, but an inspection panel is by far the most likely possibility. Pretty much everything else that would be described as a panel would involve fairly heavy damage to the plane either in the removal process or aftermath.
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Another United flight? That's 4 dangerous events on United aircraft so far this month. There are coincidences, and even statistical clusters, but that's looking pretty bad for United maintenance. I'll keep that in mind when we book our next flight.
https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
Re: What headline (convieniently) doesn't say (Score:3)
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It shouldnt matter. Just sayin. Either the plane is fit to fly or it's not.
Absolutely, but at 23 years what is relevant here is that it is a United plane, not a Boeing plane. Right now it's cool to shit on Boeing because ... well frankly they deserve to be shat on, but let's not forget there are other companies equally deserving of being shat on, and United is quite up there.
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Exactly. This is like reporting "A 23-year old Ford truck had the gas-filling door break off after putting gas in the vehicle."
The owner reported "I don't know what happened. It worked perfectly for the last 223,000 miles I have driven the truck."
A Ford representative looked at the reporter like he was an idiot when asked if this was endemic with all Ford trucks.
What's next? Someone reporting the seat-back trays on some Boeing models don't stay latched after 20 years of service? How about the overhead r
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But this is the fourth major event on a United plane in the last 12 days, at least three of them due to maintenance issues. I posted a link higher in the thread to the other three.
Re:What headline (convieniently) doesn't say (Score:4, Funny)
You post this shit every time something happens with a Boeing and it does not make it any more true (or relevant). Here, there's another incident from 12 days ago which involved one of their machines.
So was that "plastic bubble wrap" from a transgender sex aid?
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I suspect an astroturfer. It's not proof, but they've been found before. And they first showed up in a commercial context.
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Oregon Plane (Score:2)
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According to the Malheur County Times-Register, the aircraft in question was transiting the Oregon Psilocybin Test Range when the panel was lost.
Re: Oregon Plane (Score:2)
Maybe it's aliens.
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Searching for "Malheur County Times-Register" turned up a newspaper in Iowa and some links to "Courier Press". Somehow I'm dubious about the accuracy of your post.
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They are referring to another Oregon thing [oregonlive.com]
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More like 'United Plane', this is the third maintenance-related event on a United plane this month.
wa34t9 p7yp9we;pou (Score:2)
> Yahoo Finance notes that shares of Boeing "have declined over 30% in 2024."
time for another round of stock buybacks
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Buy the dip!
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Re: wa34t9 p7yp9we;pou (Score:2)
That doesn't mean the shareholders won't be wiped out. They did in the case of the GM bailout, for example.
Incidents (Score:5, Interesting)
People post air traffic control recordings on Youtube. Listening to them is an education. These things happen a lot. Tires explode. Engines catch on fire. Electrical systems fail. Planes, and the entire air travel system, are designed to handle these failures.
If this was a 2 year old plane, it would likely be a manufacturing problem. This is a 20 year old plane. It's either a maintenance or inspection issue, or it's just a 20 year old piece of hardware that's been used tens of thousands of hours, and it's simply failing.
Re:Incidents (Score:4, Informative)
Better yet, read The Aviation Herald [avherald.com] regularly. You can filter for the kind of incidents and the reporting is excellent.
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Yeah, that was my reaction as well. "So what?"
Just take a look at channels like VASAvation and this stuff happens all the time. I've watched these for hours, it's very interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/@VASAv... [youtube.com]
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This is a 20 year old plane. It's either a maintenance or inspection issue, or it's just a 20 year old piece of hardware that's been used tens of thousands of hours, and it's simply failing.
Yes yes, things fall from the sky so often that it makes the news. You cite several odd issues as if they are the same as an exterior panel falling off. The issue is that it's failing while flying, and you seem to be suggesting this wasn't important enough to maintain or inspect. If I can't count on ground crews to inspect the visible stuff, what _can_ I count on? How many funerals need planning before we decide that 20 year old airplanes should be inspected and maintained correctly?
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The issue is that it's failing while flying, and you seem to be suggesting this wasn't important enough to maintain or inspect.
I'm implying that, if this was an Airbus, it wouldn't have made the news at all. But this stuff happens to Airbus planes as well. And, absolutely, the airlines need to do a much better job of maintaining and inspecting their airplanes. They have been slacking, and the FAA has been slacking in their oversight.
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The issue is that it's failing while flying, and you seem to be suggesting this wasn't important enough to maintain or inspect.
I'm implying that, if this was an Airbus, it wouldn't have made the news at all. But this stuff happens to Airbus planes as well. And, absolutely, the airlines need to do a much better job of maintaining and inspecting their airplanes. They have been slacking, and the FAA has been slacking in their oversight.
I gather from your post that Airbus is slacking too, given things fall off their planes as well?
Meme Stonks (Score:2)
The other thing to keep in mind is that Boeing is a public company. The stock price has actually been pretty stable since the whole 737 MAX stuff went down, all things considered. I think it's just hard to price right now - on the one hand it seems to have some pretty serious management issues, but on the other hand it only has one competitor and it's a certainty that the US govt will do anything required to bail it out.
It would not surprise me if there are loads of short sellers trying to drive the price d
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People post air traffic control recordings on Youtube. Listening to them is an education. These things happen a lot. Tires explode. Engines catch on fire. Electrical systems fail. Planes, and the entire air travel system, are designed to handle these failures.
If this was a 2 year old plane, it would likely be a manufacturing problem. This is a 20 year old plane. It's either a maintenance or inspection issue, or it's just a 20 year old piece of hardware that's been used tens of thousands of hours, and it's simply failing.
As much as I despite Boeing this is a very good point.
The question isn't how many Boeings drop panels, have tires explode, etc.
The question is how many Boeings have those issues as opposed to aircraft from other manufacturers, such as Airbus?
Of course, I feel like an Airbus losing a panel/tire/door/wing would also be newsworthy right now given all the attention spent on Airplane issues, so I suspect there's still a more general Boeing specific quality issue.
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These things happen a lot.
Yeah people don't seem to understand this. I have a friend who recently changed careers and became an air traffic controller. I joked with him over a beer "so have you had a panicked emergency landing yet", and his reply was yes, about 3 this year. That was last month... so about an incident requiring prioritising a plane with a problem every 2-3 weeks. Usually it's minor things.
Slightly related, I was also on a flight recently where I a guy was looking out the window, and then called the stewardess over, a
Boeing smoeing (Score:5, Interesting)
About 40% of all US airliners are Boeing, about double that of Airbus. If an incident occurs, all else being equal, it is 2x as likely to be a Boeing plane as an Airbus plane. The remaining 40% is split among a lot of others, mainly smaller planes that usually don't get media attention.
One of the recent incidents was an Airbus plane.
Most of the incidents are maintenance issues, and that's on the airline. The seat thing is a design error and maintenance issue. The door plug is a quality control issue definitely on Boeing. The wheel falling off is probably a maintenance issue. The hydraulic leak is most likely a maintenance issue. The runway excursion is a pilot-ATC issue (pilots were told to hurry up and clear the runway, so apparently tried to make the turn at too high a speed). These seem to be happening mainly to United planes. Sounds like no one is blameless, but United seems to have some maintenance issues.
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Most of the incidents are maintenance issues, and that's on the airline.
It does not matter who is responsible. In the coming years Boeing will systematically get blamed in the press and public opinion. That's what skimping on quality earned them and it's probably well deserved.
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About 40% of all US airliners are Boeing, about double that of Airbus. If an incident occurs, all else being equal, it is 2x as likely to be a Boeing plane as an Airbus plane. The remaining 40% is split among a lot of others, mainly smaller planes that usually don't get media attention.
Just to clarify what that other "40%" is, the most produced passenger plane in the world is a Cessna 172 with over 44,000 examples built. Even ignoring GA and private it gets a lot bigger than Boeing and Airbus, you've also got Embraer (E-Jets), De Havilland Canada (DHC), Bombardier (CRJ), ATR (42 and 72), Cessna, even a few old Fokkers and Saabs flying about.
Most of those will be regional or smaller airliners with your Embraer E-195 being the largest, which is smaller than a B737/A320 family. However th
that's complete BS (Score:2)
Using non-flush rivets affects flight characteristics significantly. (top speed, fuel economy, well known since ww2) Saying an entire panel missing "doesn't affect flying characteristics" is just a bald-faced lie.
If they simply said "the change in flight characterists caused by the loss of the panel is still well within safe flying parameters" I might be more convinced they weren't justt trying to hand-waive all of my
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"hand-waive"?
Who needs hands anyway?
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United had the engine fire, the wheel fall off, and the body panel fall off, all this month.
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If Boeing is on the downward trajectory to extinction due to their consistently dropping standards and safety record, is there any other alternative for who could provide commercial planes for the masses in the future? Personally, I've never heard about any other manufacturers (but I'll Google out of curiosity after submitting this comment).
Airbus. You must be trolling because I can't imagine you've never heard of Boeing's main competitor Airbus.
Re: What's the alternative? (Score:2)
I think I'm just a complete ignorant when it comes to the aviation industry because I've always thought that Airbus was a plane model name. ðY
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The plane was 23 years old, the other "Boeing" events were also all on older airplanes.
I am reminded (Score:2)
Ages ago, there was an NCIS episode where they had a form TFOA1. That would have been a US Navy form. Is there one for civilians?
Primary Buffer Panel (Score:3)
Did the primary buffer panel just fall off my gorram ship for no apparent reason?!
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so.. it was not a necessary panel? (Score:2)
>> the missing panel did not affect the flying characteristics of the airplane ;-)
Hence was not a necessary hardware to begin? All good, then!
Boeing share price (Score:3)
"Yahoo Finance notes that shares of Boeing "have declined over 30% in 2024." Well actually 28%
Oh well, that's a lot better than TSLA (34%). Maybe Cathy Wood should have bought Boeing. How many billion has Ark lost under her watch?
Boeing has a target on its back (Score:1)
Something something BOEING something something.
A panel fell off on a two-decade old jet and the manufacturer and not the airline is getting the headline?
I call shenanigans.
They're just testing (Score:2)
Alternatively, Boeing finds new way to save money (Score:2)
Are we rehashing that twilight zone episode (Score:2)
As long as that person was not comitted or institutionalized, we are all safe
When Everything Is A Nail (Score:1)