Originally Posted by
b1lanc
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.
It could be argued that the whole point of certification is to allow safety standards to be racheted up and lessons learnt to be shared.
However as long as certification is used as a non-tariff barrier to competition on both sides of the Atlantic, the lessons won't be shared. The 737 couldn't be certified today - that's the whole point - so a competitor couldn't bring in a plane as cheap to fly as the 737 and comply with current rules - someone on the thread has remarked on that. And in Europe any FBW plane will be held to a higher standard today than Airbus when they started out.
Paradoxically this situation may make the industry safer beccause the new entrant is always held to a higher standard than the incumbent.
Political favoritism isn't going away soon. But managers at the FAA certifying the Max in a hurry without input from their own techs and Boeing delegates - that may be a step too far even for the FAA's brief to favor the domestic incumbencies, and on the far side of the line of personal criminal liability.
A city hall supervisor who certifies a building as safe without even waiting for an ok input from the visiting inspector may land in prison when people die.
Edmund