Scary photos from news, wonder any Taiwanese on it. Ontario has flights to Taiwan
The flight was from Portland, Oregon to Ontario, California (not far from Los Angeles). The emergency landing occurred in Portland.
Our United flight scheduled for tonight was canceled because of this (737 Max 9s grounded pending inspection). Then the one we rescheduled on was also canceled. Finally got one for tomorrow, also on a 737 Max 9, but the only available aisle seat is in the same row that blew out.
Remember that certain Aloha flight from back in the day where the whole ceiling of the front of the plane basically came off?
This is one reason to keep your seatbelt on by the way, other than unexpected turbulence. No one died on that flight except for a flight attendant who fell from the plane when it happened.
Aluminum is kinda crap with metal fatigue, if steel wasn’t so damn heavy we’d make planes out of it. Scariest thing about metal fatigue is you can’t tell that it’s happening. At least with steel rusting you can see it right away, but steel doesn’t fatigue as long as you keep it within their limit.
But this is why air frame has flight hour limits and mandatory checks.
2 Likes
Also the headline is scarier than it sounds. It sounds almost like the plane crashed.
Another issue with the Boeing 737 MAX line
Even though everywhere it seems to say “section of the plane” it was actually a physical “plug” that is fixed in the place where an emergency exit door goes.
According to reports, the plane was only a few months old. Its a brand new plane.
1 Like
A brand new plane that was poorly designed.
Airbus planes have better safety record.
It’s still definitely a section of the plane. The plug is factory installed (an emergency exit is installed in its place on higher density configurations).
Betting this is a manufacturing vs a design issue.
3 Likes
737 max already had a bad crash a while back that grounded the fleet. Plane has problems. It wasn’t that long ago either.
That crash in Japan was the first loss of airframe for that particular Airbus model, and it was because either control tower issue or pilot error (on part of the other coast guard plane).
Actually as far as I know A380 hadn’t had much incidents either. They just got retired because it costs too much to operate.
Fact is Boeing has issues with 737 max. This many incidents over such a short period because of the plane itself, tells me the plane is either poorly designed or built.
Boeing needs to go out of business.
Sounds familiar. Maybe you can tell me more. 
Supposedly a 737 max crashed in Africa because of some software glitch and the entire fleet was grounded for a time.
I changed the titled of the thread. It previously said “Ontario, USA”. There are 16 Ontarios in the US according to Google.
Anyway, sad news! I wonder what caused the big hole.
1 Like
It is essentially a emergency door missing lots of parts such as the locking mechanism/micro switches and there should be bolts inserted locking it to the plane in the positions where the normal locking mechanism would go. It is then covered on the inside with standard panels so you won’t even know it is there. The idea is that if the plane was reconfigured in future to seat more people then the door way is already there.
Most likely someone at the sub-contracters (this is not a Boeing made assembly) forgot to put bolts in before it was shipped to Boeing.
1 Like
It’s their plane, their name, so therefore their responsibility.
If it was an outsourced component it was still a Boeing engineer who signed off on it, you would think they would be extra cautious too with the hammering the 737 Max brand has had.
Yea, especially for a plane given the insane amount of paperwork required to do anything to a plane. Like removing even a single screw must be logged.
That they subcontracted means they assume any responsibility for this.
The subcontractor responsible for that portion of the aircraft is Spirit Aerosystems. Formerly known as Boeing Wichita. Boeing split them off to an investment firm to “maximize shareholder value,” limit future pension and medical liabilities (they had lawsuits with spirit for years after the divesture over who was responsible for what), and made them bid for work they’d been doing for decades. Always a recipe for quality, right? So even then, from a cost cutting / half assing it perspective, I wouldn’t let Boeing off the hook so fast.
But even with Spirit responsible for the fuselage, from what I understand from 4th hand info (I have a Spirit guy sitting next to me (it’s 3rd hand info to him as well, as he doesn’t work that program - so maybe a little bit better info than average, but take it with a huge grain of salt) - they’re available as a sub to everyone now) - final installation of the plug doesn’t happen at Spirit. They deliver it in place, but Boeing removes it during assembly before replacing it and doing pressure testing.
Spirit has a lot of capability as a 1st tier supplier, but has had some quality issues including on the 737 max that halted deliveries.
Spirit also subs to Airbus btw, and has the former BAE aerostructures business.
4 Likes
At the end, who will pay for the new door Boeing or the builder? Will be tens of thousands of quid I guess.
2 Likes
Fixing the door will be the cheapest part.
Airline will have to be compensated as no doubt the airline would have to compensate passengers for this. It will be millions of dollars. Nothing about planes are cheap, and even the door will likely be half a million at LEAST.
Remember airline isn’t making much from passengers.