Alaska Airlines plane had warnings days before mid-air blowout

[brooklynite]

Source: BBC

Alaska Airlines placed restrictions on the Boeing plane involved in a dramatic mid-air blowout after pressurisation warnings in the days before Friday's incident, investigators say.

The jet had been prevented from making long-haul flights over water, said Jennifer Homendy of the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

…snip…

Before Saturday's intervention by the FAA, Alaska Airlines briefly returned some of its Max 9s to service, saying it had made "no concerning findings".

Speaking at a news conference, Ms Homendy said pilots reported pressurisation warning lights on three previous flights made by the specific Alaska Airlines Max 9 involved in the incident.

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67909417.amp

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Lawsuits aplenty coming up.

[Ocelot II]

1. Lawsuits for what? There were no significant injuries.

Although there might be a few cases like this one: https://casetext.com/case/quill-v-trans-world-airlines-inc

[maxsolomon]

5. It's America. They'll sue for trauma, lost phones, time lost.

Kid will sue for losing his shirt.

[Wonder Why]

7. Tell that to this woman and others traumatized by the event

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/other/alaska-airlines-passenger-drafted-final-texts-to-her-loved-ones-after-section-of-the-plane-blew-out-midflight/ar-AA1mzkkW]MSN article.

I'm sure you would not get PTSD from something like this.

[Ocelot II]

8. That's possible, depending on the severity. See this case:

https://casetext.com/case/quill-v-trans-world-airlines-inc

[cstanleytech]

2. Only if someone suffered more than a bloody nose.

[Stargazer99]

3. Many of you don't know Boeing's engineer told them 737 was not safe so what did they do?

took the engineer off the project and proceeded...they need to be sued

[Ocelot II]

6. Alaska Airlines might have a claim; they were sold a defective airplane.

[EX500rider]

9. "Boeing's engineer"

They have 17,000 engineers.

[Stargazer99]

10. It was one working on the 737 that they took off the project when he told them it was not safe

and he was right!

[EX500rider]

11. And yet over 1,200 737-Max's have been delivered with 7,000 ordered

They don't seem to be falling out of the sky.

Boeing's 737 Max has been described as "the most scrutinized transport aircraft in history"

[Stargazer99]

12. It killed 400 people initally-I live in the NW so I heard about this before many of you

[EX500rider]

13. Yes it did and the software was fixed

And aviation news travels worldwide, not just to the NW

[Stargazer99]

15. I am sure the software fix didn't comfort the relatives of the dead passengers or do they count?

[EX500rider]

16. Not the first plane to have flaws that cause crashes

See the Airbus in Air France's flight 447 for example.

[Stargazer99]

17. Maybe paying attention to your engineers might have prevented 400 deaths

The problem with business seems to be what little value they place on human life...taking time and expense to investigate why the engineer said it wasn't safe might have saved human lives.

[EX500rider]

18. Unless he was specifically objecting to the MCAS it wasn't saving anybody

[lostnfound]

19. There were specific warnings about MCAS.. Boeing's exemplary culture shifted

In the mid-2000s. Before that, Phil Condit was president an CEO and he was a Boeing-grown aerodynamics engineer who got his pilot license at age 18. The engineering-led culture was stellar. I used to walk through their factory and think “this is a national pride”.

A couple years of Harry Stonecipher from Douglas, who irritated Boeing people, then the GE guys took over. McNerney and Calhoun are smart guys but came from business / finance orientation and their aviation experience is in engines, not aircraft design / manufacturing. Muilenburg had aerospace background but from Boeing military side, much different focus and culture. Boeing people had their doubts about all of these cultural shifts — I heard them regularly. Even from those selling airplanes.

Today’s chairman is an honest, great person — he has integrity and is brilliant. But to rebuild the old safety culture may be difficult. In my opinion, they should be elevating the geeky airplane engineers from within more than they have been.

As far as MCAS..

”Are we vulnerable to single AOA sensor failures with the MCAS implementation or is there some checking that occurs?” - December 2015 memo.

”Frankly right now all my internal warning bells are going off,” said the email. “And for the first time in my life, I’m sorry to say that I’m hesitant about putting my family on a Boeing airplane.”…

A separate Boeing document about MCAS from June 2018, four months before Lion Air Flight 610 crashed in Indonesia, warned that slow reaction times to runaway trim, which can push the nose of the plane down, could be “catastrophic” if pilots take more than 10 seconds to react and said it found a typical reaction time was four seconds.
https://www.aviationtoday.com/2019/11/02/boeing-ceo-outlines-mcas-updates-congressional-hearings/

[Prairie Gates]

4. And nobody sitting in the most dangerous seats...what a miracle

[Hassin Bin Sober]

14. Well gee, at least they didn't let the planes go over water. Makes it easier to find the phones, tshirts and bodies.

They could advertise them as fresh air flights.

[Swede]

20. Only good thing from this story is that no one died.

nt