Originally Posted by
gums
Salute!
There are some disturbing comments from Boeing at the "briefing" the other day;
Gums sends...
Salute gums
I poked some of my AWACS friends and there does seem to be (added to with the KC-46 temporary delivery stoppage) evidence of some very sloppy work, on repairs of AWACS and on new deliveries of KC-46s. To be clear, Boeing does not perform all AWACS repairs and contracts much of them out, particularly FMS. But, given the market pressures (both from the US gov't and commercial) I have some significant concerns about QC in the entire assembly for each of the new airframes that are being developed. Nobody can forsee every event, but Boeing is becoming more and more reliant on SW as opposed to cable and pully. That is a fundamental paradigm shift for Boeing. Airbus (as did GD) committed to that decades ago. There are lessons learned. As an industry, they should be shared. There is no winner in any commercial aircraft type taking hundreds of lives and I would expect the airlines that fly both types to put immense pressure on the common good. Probably asking too much, but having read AB's test plans for FBW, they learned a lot - even if they didn't learn everything.