Boeing grounding up to 50 aircraft due to cracks

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(Reuters) - Boeing (BA.N) has grounded up to 50 planes globally over cracks

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Bad news just keeps hitting Boeing atm.

Can one of those billionaires trying to make spaceships do us all a favor and make a decent damn airplane already?

Sheeeeit. We going to be flying to Mars, before it's safe to fly NY to LA.

a reply to: frontieruk

That's not really bad news though. That's out of almost 900 that required inspections almost immediately. That's not a bad ratio. Things like this happen to all aircraft.

a reply to: Archivalist

The 737 has over 10,000 examples built. They've had something like 80 accidents since they were first built 50 some odd years ago, and have flown damn near 250 million flights in that time.

All aircraft have issues discovered over time. They can't test for every possible situation that will develop over the aircraft's life cycle.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I agree. As someone who is scared of flying (or at least was, am not so much now that I fly regularly), this information does't scare me.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Boeing Co (BA.N) said on Thursday that airlines had inspected 810 of the company’s 737 NG jets around the world and found 38 structural cracks requiring repair and replacement of the affected parts.

Reuters

a reply to: and14263

...said on Thursday that airlines had inspected 810 of the company’s 737 NG jets...

I don't think of myself as an aircraft newbie (or any kind of expert), but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have to read that twice lol

originally posted by: MerkabaTribeEntity
a reply to: and14263

...said on Thursday that airlines had inspected 810 of the company’s 737 NG jets...

I don't think of myself as an aircraft newbie (or any kind of expert), but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have to read that twice lol

Haha, same. I had to read three times. I kept getting stuck at 810 out of 737. Huh?

I get it now.

The Twitter picture appears to show an inspection on the VS, whether that's is a relevant picture or just a library one I don't know.
I'm wondering then if there is a pattern of some kind, perhaps the stabilisers and/or rudders are carbon fibre and not up to the job, or even if some 737s still have all alloy parts the same.

Certainly there have been incidents of Rudders breaking off, the A300 incident, and the A310 incident are both controversial,
but different events, or even if the carbon fibre tech, and parts inspections are still not up to scratch, as far as aircraft are concerned.

a reply to: smurfy

The cracks have nothing to do with the rudder or vertical stabilizer. There were two aircraft undergoing conversion to freighter in China that they found cracks in the pickle forks. Each aircraft has four of them, used to attach the wing to the fuselage. It was thought that each would last the complete life cycle of the aircraft, but both of these aircraft were between 35,000 and 40,000 cycles.

Aircraft above 30,000 cycles had 7 days to complete their inspections (about an hour per aircraft). Aircraft from 22,600-29,999 cycles have 1,000 cycles to complete their inspection (roughly seven months).

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: smurfy

The cracks have nothing to do with the rudder or vertical stabilizer. There were two aircraft undergoing conversion to freighter in China that they found cracks in the pickle forks. Each aircraft has four of them, used to attach the wing to the fuselage. It was thought that each would last the complete life cycle of the aircraft, but both of these aircraft were between 35,000 and 40,000 cycles.

Aircraft above 30,000 cycles had 7 days to complete their inspections (about an hour per aircraft). Aircraft from 22,600-29,999 cycles have 1,000 cycles to complete their inspection (roughly seven months).

That's fine then, there was no information when I looked at the Reuters link...them I had to go out.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: frontieruk

That's not really bad news though. That's out of almost 900 that required inspections almost immediately. That's not a bad ratio. Things like this happen to all aircraft.

It’s not bad on the scale of aircraft out there and in service, it’s just more bad news for a company who lets be honest need a win at the moment.

a reply to: frontieruk

They do, but the media is blowing every little Boeing issue completely out of proportion. You haven't heard a thing about the A380 crack inspection, the A350 software concerns, or the A320/321 pitch control issue. But let someone on the Boeing production line sneeze and it's breaking news.

a reply to: Zaphod58

That's the media taking care of their trial lawyer friends. When the 737 MAX comes back and one of them hits a bit of turbulence or has an altitude drop totally unrelated to its current problems, the lawsuits are going to fly. Many of the segments on shows like Dateline, 20/20, Meet the Press and others are produced and paid for by trial lawyers. The shows are actually paid to show the segments.

Anybody old enough to remember the segment about a certain pickup truck's gas tanks? You know the one where they had to use model rocket engines to make them burst into flame.

This is a picture of one of the cracks found on an unidentified 737-

a reply to: Zaphod58
As of today we found 3 in our fleet of 75. I'd bet dollars to donuts its a change in the manufacturing process for drilling those HiLock holes. Maybe they had to speed up the process and they aren't being drilled or reamed out the same anymore? The edge distance on that fastener appears to be within standard practices but if one was going to crack I would expect it to be that one. The repair shouldn't be too big a deal, possibly a doubler. Whats laughable about all this media hysteria is that the 737NG's have had crack issues of one description or another for decades. Its very common to see repair doublers on the lower horizontal stab surfaces due to them beefing up the stab stringers compared to the 737-3/4/500 series, cracking in the chemically milled crown skins on some aircraft and the belly where it sweeps up to the empennage. And that's just on 737's. As you pointed out earlier the A-380's have again a highlighted wing crack inspection directive going on right now on the trailing edge and nobody is having kittens about it. I reckon on any aircraft you let me loose on I have a 50% chance of finding cracks in a known inspection area within about 1 hour. I used to play a game on 747's to see how many missing dome head rivets I could find below/up the sides of the APU exhaust and aft of the access doors. Never found a single aircraft that doesn't have at least 1 missing. Smells of Boeing bashing to me, welcome to Airbus's world!

a reply to: thebozeian

That's what I was thinking too. Something changed that's allowing them to crack. Looking at the picture, without having seen it on the aircraft, I'm not surprised by the location either.

I'm also not surprised to see you guys are getting them all done well ahead of the requirement.

It makes me laugh to see all the aerospace engineers educated by the media going on about this and the Max like either of them are going to destroy Boeing.

Boeing traded at a a high of $446 a share in Feb before the second Max crash when it lost ~17% in a day and closed around $360 a share. That's nearly $30 BILLION in value evaporated overnight. It closed today under $339, so the bleeding hasn't stopped.

While the media is definitely playing a doomporn game for ratings, the loss of of that kind of market value is less easy to make light of. Carriers care when a substantial portion of their fleet are grounded indefinitely for months on account of unanticipated reasons while you fix the issues contributing to two mass casualty events, or when parts designed to last an airframe's entire lifespan without repair or inspection suddenly is grounded for inspection and failing in some instances at ~33% of it's anticipated lifetime. If they aren't flying, they aren't making money.

The fact Airbus is also a #show, isn't really redeeming for Boeing...

I had to look at this old lady for a long time before they finally got her off the ramp.

I reckon on any aircraft you let me loose on I have a 50% chance of finding cracks in a known inspection area within about 1 hour. I used to play a game on 747's to see how many missing dome head rivets I could find below/up the sides of the APU exhaust and aft of the access doors. Never found a single aircraft that doesn't have at least 1 missing. Smells of Boeing bashing to me, welcome to Airbus's world!

Loose static probe rivets were a good one too..

originally posted by: thebozeianSmells of Boeing bashing to me, welcome to Airbus's world!

Right... so the structural cracks are a nothing-burger according to you. And the grounding of 5% of the planes is just bashing because of Airbus. LOL