It seems there's a sense of malaise falling over everything and everyone in the USA. People at large simply cannot be bothered to care about anything, including torque specs for freakin' AIRLINERS
You're catastrophizing a bit. This isn't an America problem it's a Boeing problem.
American air travel is safer than it's ever been. Going years without a single fatality is now the norm, not an exception. The airlines are well run and do care deeply about safety. The regulators aren't perfect but generally do a good job. The NTSB is world-class.
Boeing will continue to lose marketshare to Airbus and feel some pain which is appropriate. Eventually they'll get their act together or they will continue to suffer real consequences.
Working conditions in the USA have come to a point where many don't care because the company doesn't care about them. People are fired at will after working for 20+ years with zero shits given. There is zero loyalty and in return workers just don't care either.
There are only so many checks and balances you can build in until this situation will catch up with you.
Doesn't amazon have such a huge turn over that they are running out of possible candidate to replace those workers?
Being pushed to deliver more and more packages in shorter time or inspect train cars in less time then required why would one care if a packages gets tossed or a rail car is not properly inspected?
In most jobs the only consequence is to be fired which is already possible for no reason what so ever in many states.
Sorry, but habe you ever worked in an aero assembly plant? You're making it sound like it's just like any other warehouse sweatshops job where you need to pee in a bottle while you work to meet your quotas when it's the furthest thing possible from that.
You definitely have enough time to work at leisurely pace and assemble every part right. There's not much rushing going on there. If workers get away with doing dodgy work you have a QA issue.
The report from Al Jazeera in 2014[1] about Boeing's assembly line for the 787 was pretty damning, workers were complaining exactly about quality control issues, Cynthia Cole was at Boeing for 32 years as an engineer and she mentions in the report she wouldn't fly on the 787.
So conditions at the plant in North Charleston haven't looked very good for almost 10 years...
In 1966, Boeing had 142k employees and thousands more employees working for them indirectly through suppliers. By 1970 they had less than 39k employees.
I know of a pretty famous car tuner in the US (I won't get too specific for various reasons) and despite most people in my community going to him for service over the years, multiple people have come out and proved he rarely if ever torques anything to spec. For the longest time he even allowed customers to watch in the shop space as he worked on their cars and he'd hand-torque many things that the car manual was very clear needed to be specifically torqued for safety and operational reasons.
The fact that people would share this and it didn't curb the amount of business and referrals he got just proved to me what you've said for the longest time.
People don't like to be troubled with details and they'd rather be ignorant of them.
I imagine at least part of this is that specs (and documentation generally) just suck now. It's nigh impossible to sort out which bits are CYA legalese, and which bits are "no, actually, do this or else <terrible outcome>".
That obviously isn't the problem with airplane manufacturing, and maybe not for car mechanics either. But it's totally endemic in the consumer world.
"Do not operate while driving" on car HUDs. "Do not consume if pregnant" on perfectly safe OTC medications. "Do not continue to ride after a crash" on bike frames.
It's not surprising most of this is just ignored now -- there's no information content. The documentation is nothing more than a list of things for which the manufacturer would like not to be liable, and the marginal cost of adding to that list is ~0. It will grow until we run out of room in the manual / space on the packaging.
"Store between 68 and 75 F." Or what? Is that a "must follow or else death", or a "it may reduce efficacy 0.5%" or a "we've never run a sufficiently powerful study under any other conditions, but there's no theoretical reason it should matter"? It matters quite a bit to me which!
I don't see how we can hope to have good-faith communication under such a heavy threat of litigation. I would not be surprised if /that/ turns out to be relevant to the Boeing issue, even if the rest is unrelated.
My beef is that torque specs are for factory assembly. If you’re using new parts, sure, but once they’re old/re-used parts with some corrosion due to dissimilar metals, age or salt belt, you’re flying blind and probably undertorquing if going by the book.
Given the amount of (soft) aluminum on aircraft, (737 is 80% aluminum), it would be insane to not precisely consider torque.
Why would the softness matter for torque, if there has been some shift or compression since original install the torque should still ensure the correct pressure between the fitting, no?
e.g. any slight boogering of the threads of a used fastener could translate into rotational torque that doesn't end up being converted to a clamping force.
(or in more extreme instances, some fasteners are torque to yield, and change shape after their first use, and must be replaced. But I'll presume that's not what they were talking about here)
A major concern is presumably over-torquing a screw and causing partial failure of threads in the material. This could be subtle and difficult to detect, but present as a problem over time.
Skipping that part is even more ubiquitous than failure to properly torque. It takes a lot of effort to buy the correct bolts, only specialists have them to hand for a given make. Even dealers might not have every bolt. So it means you need to procure many more parts you would otherwise (the part you're replacing, plus 20 specific bolts with part numbers).. Most mechanics don't bother unless it's something really big like cylinder head bolts or an axle nut.
That is probably valid reasoning when talking about a neighbourhood mechanic dealing with all brands but it does not hold for an aircraft maintenance shop. Skipping this step makes them liable for any problems caused by failure of related parts so I assume [1] they keep to the book in this respect. Anyone here who has experience with one of these shops want to chime in? When I work on machinery I tend to follow the rules when dealing with stretch bolts since these do tend to fail far more often when re-torqued but for normal (non-stretch) bolts I do often reuse them if they're in good enough shape. I work mostly on farming/forestry equipment and our personal vehicles though, not on airplanes.
The vast majority of fasteners on your car do not depend on being torqued precisely. Basically anywhere you need to worry about clearance (e.g. bearings). If it's a matter of ensuring nothing comes loose you'll have things like threadlocker or a cotter (split) pin.
How many times are the torque specs available to me when working on my car? I have no idea what random bolts are supposed to be so they get the good n tight click.
Buy a service manual for your vehicle? I have yet to see an important fastener without a specification (torque and pattern).
If you are a professional mechanic, it's your responsibility to obtain the specifications and follow them. This is especially true when it comes to a licensed and certified A&P mechanic and not your neighborhood shadetree mechanic.
To be fair, manufacturers are trying to discontinue the ability to 'buy' a service manual and make you pay for x amount of time of access. And IIRC they don't format the page into something that's offline friendly.
It's still doable to get the full manual off, just not easy anymore.
If you don't know what you are doing then better stay away from anything critical. There are 'stretch' bolts, bolts that are definitely not to be overstressed or they'll weaken and bolts that will cause damage to whatever they're bolted into if over torqued. Every workshop manual and every workshop process has specs for all fasteners.
It gets worse when bolts and part are of different materials (say: steel bolt in aluminum part), that's a very nice recipe for trouble (also in the long run, not just during assembly because oxidization will almost certainly occur on the interface and oxidized metal takes up more room than clean metal so unless you very explicitly protect against it the fasteners won't come out without massive damage to the part).
When I was in high school I helped a lot of my friends fix issues caused by quick tire and lube shops. Lots of snapped, stripped, and rounded fasteners.
I've worked in stage lighting and general construction at different parts of my career, and I never saw these being used by anyone despite them being very much required for a proper job.
WAGO clamp terminals are a godsend here - no need to take care about wire nuts going loose, screw terminals being too loose or too tight (leading to fracture), ferrules being properly crimped... just insert the cable, lower the lever, and off you go. Unfortunately, standard DIN fuses still come with only screw terminals.
I commented on another thread[1] but I feel like it would apply here:
> My theory is that this is not limited to Boeing or even aircraft design, it's a much deeper and systemic problem affecting all kinds of fields. We've had a lot of industrial accidents lately.
> When aircraft manufacturing was an emerging industry there were tons of undocumented safety margins and "slack" in the design and production pipeline.
Over time, the beancounters start optimizing stuff, so these undocumented safety margins are eroded in the name of efficiency/profit (and sometimes even documented safety margins too).
> Furthermore, workers back in the day had a much better life when it comes to purchasing power (especially when it comes to property), and so could actually "give more fucks" about the job than they do now which is a compounding factor. You used to get a lot of implicit quality assurance back then which you don't get now.
> We've now reached a stage where these undocumented safety margins have been eroded enough that it actually starts to cause issues, and the safeguards that are supposed to catch them aren't good enough, either due to 1) they've never been good enough but just weren't really needed before or 2) they too have been eroded in the same way for the same reason.
> People at large simply cannot be bothered to care about anything, including torque specs for freakin' AIRLINERS
It may have not been operator error with the torque wrench. Maybe the torque wrench itself was miscalibrated. Maybe the bolt had a flaw in the metal. It seems too early to make conclusions.
A bolt from an aircraft flap control unit fractured in the threaded region of the shank near the shoulder with the head upon installation after a major service. A metallurgical investigation was carried out to identify the cause of failure. The bolt was manufactured from cadmium-plated, high-strength steel. Material checks carried out on the bolt showed that it conformed to the required specification and was found to have an approximate ultimate tensile strength of 1380 MPa.
The fracture surface of the failed bolt was examined using SEM to identify the mode of fracture and determine if pre-existing defects were present that could account for the unexpected failure. The fracture surface exhibited two distinct modes of failure. [...]
The embrittlement in this case was attributed to the cadmium plating, which is applied to the bolts to provide corrosion protection to the steel. Hydrogen is evolved during the plating process, which becomes absorbed by the steel. The cadmium plating acts as a barrier to hydrogen diffusion at ambient temperature so that the hydrogen becomes ‘trapped’ in the steel. In high strength steels (>1100 MPa) this leads to embrittlement. To overcome this problem, high strength steel fasteners, which have been cadmium-plated, are baked at 175–205°C for 24 hours to allow hydrogen to diffuse through the cadmium. In this case, failure of the bolts was caused by insufficient baking after plating, which gave rise to hydrogen embrittlement.
I share much of the sentiment of the OP, but I wonder if it is simply my perspective changing as I take on more and more responsibilities. Maybe things have always kind of been this way.
I would be hesitant to say it's all going to hell in a handbasket because that tends to be one of those self-fulfiling prophecies. I prefer to look at things as "challenging, but workable".
>People at large simply cannot be bothered to care about anything
People care deeply about a lot of things, just not this. And why should they? When you have every business decision made either by private equity or public companies with a focus only on the next 90 days it turns out everything goes to shit. Wages are stagnant. Wealth inequality is massive. Our society is sick. Issues like this will only increase. Our rail ecosystem is experiencing the same issues for the same reason.
Amtrak and plane tickets are priced differently. For each class of ticket, Amtrak has X seats at price A, Y seats at price B > A, Z seats at price C > B, etc. When you check prices or buy a ticket, it will offer you the cheapest remaining ticket in that class. If you book Amtrak early, you'll find it is significantly cheaper than a plane ticket. Wait until a week until departure, and usually the airplane will cost less.
What is the reason behind this thought? I know that most people think like this. Train should be cheaper than air.
I guess it has to do with planes replacing plane, hence plane must be better, hence more expensive.
But the reality is that the plane won because of two things: speed and cost. Air is free. Miles of miles of railroad is very expensive to build and maintain.
Trains are a bit cheaper than planes. But they travel slowly. So cost per mile per passenger is lower for a plane.
Even when subsidized, the cost of rail travel is often more expensive per mile than air travel.
So when Europe and Asia now are building a lot of high speed rail, it's not to make it cheaper, but to lower carbon footprint and to make a more pleasant experience.
Presumably the "with layover" is something crazy like a Delta flight that goes via Atlanta. You can get some pretty crazy routing sometimes if you pick the wrong combination of airports and carrier. United has a non-stop with weekday first class tickets for ~$500, so I think the point stands.
Those prices are extreme, I regularly travel 1st class by train from Göteborg/Sweden to Amsterdam/the Netherlands at about €85 for a single with ICE/EC/IC, a ~15 hour trip.
Not OP, but as a simple physics exercise, the fact that it's cheaper to put a metal tube flying in the air instead of hurling it down a pair of low-friction steel rails firmly attached to the ground to get from the same point A to the same point B is mind-boggling. It becomes even more so when you consider that I was easily able to find a ~$500 first class flight for the same route that is non-stop for just 1.5 hours of flight time, so flying is going to be a much shorter door to door time for half the price and probably a better experience to boot.
I haven't ridden Amtrak in a long time, but I would be absolutely shocked if the first class experience on the Acella is as nice, much less worth a premium compared to flying. Regardless, there's pretty much nothing they could offer to make it worth the price premium.
Train travel tend to be much more comfortable than bus, car or plane. Especially if the plane takes as long time due to airports being located outside the city, security hazel, lots of stress at the airport and so on.
The train cost more, but you enter the train in the city centre, sit down and relax, go to the restaurant car and eat a nice dinner, relax som more and you arrive in the destination city.
This works better in continental Europe, where you have shorter distances and high speed trains between the capitols, often making the train faster from city centre to city centre than air travel. Traveling from Chicago to SF by train is pleasant, but take a couple days, not a couple of hours.
I'd pay extra to take the train for shorter trips. The entire experience is better, from not passing through a security theater production to the larger seats. I've never had a train sitting on the tarmac for hours, either, my plane trips frequently involve waits and delays.
I took the Amtrak a couple times from DC through WVA and have had several delays trying to get from VA to KY due to priority being given to the freight trains. I remember one trip having a one or two hour delay in the middle of no where while we were side tracked.
It is much, much more comfortable than a plane though.
I kinda knew I'd get called out on that, but, yeah, definitely more comfortable. You can even get up instead of, "everyone has to stay seated because any minute now we will be ready." Some trains have a food car. It's great.
The 'malaise' is the rot coming from uncurbed late-stage capitalism. Just about every single company only cares about short-term forecasts which leads to enshittification because there is no long-term planning or allowance for things like quality control.
Privately-owned companies or worker-owned companies are more resilient to this problem because the nature of their existence means a stronger focus on long term goals. Though there are still issues with publicly owned companies exerting enough influence to acquire and subsequently destroy private companies. For example, Rite-Aid acquiring Bartell Drugs then going bankrupt and proceeding to shutter most Bartell Drug stores leaving Seattle with a deficit of pharmacies.
“Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.”
Welcome to the outcome. When companies look at employees and employee training as an expense, and when the only way to improve your salary is to go to a new company, expect to see these companies to be hollowed out shells of untrained people.
But when you have a quota, then you must ignore better qualified applicants in order to satisfy the quota. It's a mathematical fact.
I am not saying this is the reason why Boeing is turning to shit. But it's an interesting observation.
I myself am a "minority/POC" and I'm also extremely competent at my job. So I'm not saying that minorities are incompetent, because I am not incompetent.
When I interview candidates I give zero fucks about their colour/gender/whatever. If they are morons then I won't hire them.
It’s a current Fox News talking point. Don’t have a link at hand currently, but one host in a recent segment drew an explicit line between this disaster and DEI initiatives in general, with zero evidence. (As always, it was under the guise of “just asking questions.”)
Culture problem as we hire people of a generation who were not educated or engrained with responsibility they avoid doing the right thing and this happens.
I don't think it's generational per se, but I've noticed a declining level of concern for safety in product design compared to even like 20 years ago. I think people got used to the idea that everything is generally very safe and now there's less of an emphasis, so given enough time we'll start seeing dangerous products again and the cycle will start anew.
I agree. We need way younger CEOs (and legislators!). This current crop is perfectly fine rushing QA to ship defective products as long as it lines their own pockets. In industries where failures won't directly kill people they actually plan the obsolescence to happen.
Leadership from a more environmentally-conscious and empathetic Gen Z would definitely have safer products that last longer.
Also an issue, short term success does not equal long term success. Lots of people in the c-suite management are short sighted making 1 year goals and not more.
For example a company of 400 people laying off vital talent is literally shooting themselves in the foot. If I was a CEO I would take a cut till I could course correct. Losing talent with a layoff is way more expensive.
You end up paying three to six months for that talent to not work. This is a huge problem.
Get this generationalist BS out of here. It isn't supported by the facts. Airline safety has improved with each generation. There were many more plane crashes in the 1970s-1980s when boomers were in their prime. Five times as many!
Heh, I remember back then when they said "Airplane crashes come in threes", while I don't think that's exactly true, the number of large fatal crashes was much higher.
