I did both ways between Baltimore and Kansas City not too long ago - and came back to headlines about loose rudder linkage and then the latest incident involving the blown out door. I fly frequently and am certainly not a nervous flyer, but I'm having second thoughts about these aircraft. What are your thoughts? I'd be especially interested to know what some of our commercial pilot OF members think.

 

Leave the Ranchero behind. Seriously though, I think the latest episode may cause an increase in safety awareness by the airlines. Now is the time to fly on them before they become complacent again.

 

Agree. The safest time to fly is after a big headline accident because now every inspection will focus on that area. It's the unknown that you have to worry about.

Going back the the original question, I still feel safer flying compared to driving.

 

Maybe Alaska will stop charging to sit in the exit row….

 

I think they had 177 passengers on board … and the capacity is between 178 or 198… so between 92 and 99% chance someone would be next to the blow out…. Maybe the charging policy saved someone. Crazy that it happened next to an empty row of seats if you think about it…what are the odds…
In the past airline selected people to go in the emergency row if they looked fit enough to open the door, now anyone can buy the seat….

 

Funny you should mention this. I'm a big dude and I always pay extra to sit in the exit row for the leg room. Going forward, I'll make sure that my seat belt is cinched tightly and that my phone is tethered to me! I also know that had the Alaska Airlines flight been at crusing altitude instead of at 16,000 feet, there likely would have been a very different outcome. Explosive decompression is a very bad thing and it's made worse by exterior air temperatures of -60 degrees below zero at 37,000 feet.

 

In the linked article below Zeynep Tufekci writes about what makes airplane travel so safe, even when things go wrong (as with the Airbus A350 in Japan and the Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9 incidents)... the last paragraph quoted below is the kicker...

“Both incidents could have been much worse. And that everyone on both airliners walked away is, indeed, a miracle — but not the kind most people think about. They’re miracles of regulation, training, expertise, effort, constant improvement of infrastructure, as well as professionalism and heroism of the crew.

“But these brave and professional men and women were standing on the shoulders of giants: competent bureaucrats; forensic investigators dispatched to accident investigations; large binders (nowadays digital) with hundreds and hundreds of pages of meticulously collected details of every aspect of accidents and near misses; constant training and retraining not just of the pilots but the cabin, ground, traffic control and maintenance crews; and a determined ethos that if something has gone wrong, the reason will be identified and fixed.

As Tufekci notes, when the capitalists are left to their own devices, corners are cut in the pursuit of shareholder value:

“The Boeing 737 Max line holds other lessons. After two eerily similar back-to-back crashes in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people total, the planes were grounded. At first, some rushed to blame inexperienced pilots or software gone awry. But the world soon learned that the real problem had been corporate greed that had taken too many shortcuts while the regulators hadn’t managed to resist the onslaught.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/09/...unlocked_article_code=1.Mk0.TmqM.xFMXtCMIPXYv

 

From my understanding it wasn't the exit row door that blew off it was a "door plug" an opening that could include an exit if an airline‘s seat configuration allowed it. In the Alaska air situation they had decided to go for the door plug instead of an exit door to increase capacity... i.e. reducing safe exits to increase capacity and make more money... which leads me back to the last paragraph I quoted above.

 

And this is precisely what I worry about - not what has been discovered because that will be fixed, but as Zman4eva notes above, what has NOT been discovered yet that is attributable to cutting corners at the corporate level. It's one thing if your car leaves you stranded due to a manufacturing defect. It's quite another if a rudder falls off a commerical airliner during flight.

 

Good point.

My petty rage, over the additional $54 from my last flight, has put blinders on me.

 

Those of us who are old enough to remember know that "Main Cabn Extra," "Premium Economy" and so forth are nothing more than gouging by the airlines by requiring passengers to pay for extra room that used to be standard -- and free -- for all who traveled in economy class. It's infuriating.

 

The airlines/Boeing are allowed to "plug" those door openings because they are operating with LESS capacity. FAA mandates the number of exit doors based on seating capacity. They (Alaska) did not configure the seating of the Max9 to maximum capacity, so they could eliminate 2 exit doors.

 

I'm pretty sure @Twocats is a jetliner mechanic. I would love to hear his thoughts on all this.

I'm still in the it's statistically way safer to fly than drive camp though.

 

Flying on the Max is a non brainer for me, i flew on Max 8 right after they where allowed back to fly in 2021, of course someone screwed up forgetting to screw the door properly , the concept of that door ils 15 years old since the NG generation , what Boeing make it wrong was to chase money against money and some shortcuts have been done only with financial savings that is the problem with boeing.

I really loved to get back to B727 or DC10 but this era is over .-))))

 

Hahahahahhahahhhaha

 

I flew on a 737-Max from SFO to AUS in March 2019 before the mass grounding, and I've flown them a few times since they got back in the air. I believe the earlier problems have been sorted out and the plane is safe, we really don't know the cause of this plug blowout out yet. Could be a one off of improper installation. The news always rushes with hysterical headlines, and this is no exception. The public has demanded lower and lower fares and that's what the industry is doing, giving the lowest fares and then upcharging for 'extras'. But people will book one airline over another to save $20, so something has to give in the process. I'm more concerned with keeping the quality of the flight deck at high standards, but with some of the nonsensical policies these airlines are coming up with in future hiring plans, that gives me pause.

 

Sorry too tempting

 

This. And my understanding is that this is a designed configurability. As in you can order it with a number of internal seating arrangements and if you go for one of the configurations that has less seating the door is no longer a door but a bolted part of the fuselage. I believe the investigation is looking into the bolts that hold the plug in place.

There's a good video on the investigation by blancolirio on YouTube.

 

Promise the last one )))