The problem Boeing has is that any significant accident that has causal factors linked to design or manufacturing failures by Boeing will be an extinction level event for Boeing.

If the door plug had come off at FL360 instead of 16,000 feet the airplane and everybody in would likely have been lost, so only luck saved Boeing on that “quality escape”. There is no question in my mind if the airplane had been lost due to the door plug blow out the MAX would still be grounded and Boeing would be in its death throes.

The “Latest News from Boeing” seems to be missing an understanding and acknowledgement that they are now runway limited. They have used up all their room for maneuver and simply can’t afford another egregious Fu*k Up, therefore immediate steps need to be taken to address the systemic issues in design and production even if it results in a short to medium term hit to profitability and share price.

Eliminating ODA is not the same thing as eliminating delegation. Delegation with appropriate and independent FAA OVERSIGHT has a long successful history, ODA is too rife with the OEM fox watching the chicken coop, with locks to keep the regulator out and busy with paperwork. The FAA executives that allowed and even promoted ODA bear a great deal of blame. You can find them now, retired from FAA, and enjoying lucrative industry jobs.

Congress legislates the function of the FAA and oversees the funding of the FAA and has not been providing the funding required to keep the FAA attractive enough to hire enough people skilled enough to do the job they are expected to do.

FAA has always had a divided charter - to promote the aviation industry and to promote aviation safety. Clearly the FAA cannot do both and be effective at both.

I remain unconvinced that FAA would have noticed the potential that pilots would not trim an airplane because the stall warning was sounding at the same time. ODA or not, that problem was going to remain. FAA already accepted that a false stall warning could be sounded and stick shaker enabled when there was no stall.

Greater oversight by the FAA on the factory floor would very likely have called a halt to production out of Spirit a long time ago, avoiding the door departing due to out-of-sequence re-work, but that's a Congressional funding issue for not having enough FAA inspectors vs supporting Boeing and Boeing customers getting the planes sold and used to promote aviation.

Accepting so much discrepant material seems the bigger problem and it seems unreasonable that instead of Boeing inspectors in Wichita they had Spirit re-work teams in Renton.

Actually the part about promoting aviation was removed from the FAA charter several years ago.
That being said, the FAA is still obligated to consider the 'cost effectiveness' of its various dictates. For example, if you look at proposed (and issued) Airworthiness Directives, it has a section where it estimates the costs of compliance with the intent of the AD.

I completely agree with Global about the delegation vs. ODA. The FAA has used delegation for many decades (DERs and DARs being just one example). The difference being that a DER reported directly to the FAA (I was a DER for nearly 20 years before Boeing went ODA). DERs were selected by the FAA, and I had an FAA advisor that I could contact whenever I had a question or concern. With ODA, everything had to go through the Boeing compliance office - which not only had little knowledge of the intricacies of Propulsion), I was specifically bared from unilaterally contacting the FAA without going through the Boeing compliance office.
It also dumped far more responsibility on the ARs - along with the potential for 'undo pressure' from management. Personally I never experienced undo pressure as an AR (although, interestingly, I did as a DER - my case actually went into the development of the rules regarding undo pressure when Boeing went ODA) - and even had a Supervisor tell an engine manufacture to stop pressuring me when I raised concerns about functionality of a new FADEC s/w that I was responsible for certifying.
I don't know how much of it was the concept of ODA being fundamentally flawed, and how much was just the horrid Boeing implementation, but many of us raised concerns that the Boeing ODA was flawed and bound to fail.

tdracer, The delegated examining system worked well in Britain back in the 1980s when I was a flight training manager (I have no idea what it is like now). And I always emphasised to the instructors that when, they were conducting pilot tests, they were working on behalf of the CAA and, by extension, the safety of the travelling public.

Equally, when we did CofA air tests on aircraft, we were acting on behalf of the ARB and later the CAA.

Delegation works well so long as the integrity of the process is maintained.

Seattle times has an interesting response from Boeing to the 787 whistleblower claims. Google ‘Seattle Times Boeing’. Two comments:

Boeing engineer says ‘at normal loads’: I thought the acceptance criteria was ‘good for the design load at end of life’? A much tougher acceptance criteria.

And we are asked to believe Boeing redesigned the assembly process and delayed deliveries, at significant cost, to address a non problem?

This gentlemen may have a point.

It was actually several decades ago. Which is why trotting out the old "dual mandate" meme is so tiresome, and marks the person who posts it as ignorant of basic aviation regulation.

It was changed after the ValuJet crash. Remember ValueJet? The Critter? Way back before Y2K and all that? The dual mandate was removed with the passage of the Federal Aviation Reauthorization Act of 1996.

I am not ignorant of aviation, thanks very much. The political reason FAA exists is to reassure the flying public that aircraft and aviation are safe, not primarily to ensure that aircraft are safe. They removed it from the charter as it was a visible conflict of interest, not because they were changing their attitude about it.

More people die in the USA every year under FAA management in GA crashes than in the two 737 MAX crashes. Ever see the FAA demand before Congress more authority to decrease those deaths? Nope. Because makers of general aviation equipment want the public to remain confident in their products and operations and their lobbyists are in Congressional offices. So FAA papers over the flaws and reassures the flying public.

@ MechEngr "More people die in the USA every year under FAA management in GA crashes than in the two 737 MAX crashes. Ever see the FAA demand before Congress more authority to decrease those deaths? Nope. Because makers of general aviation equipment want the public to remain confident in their products and operations and their lobbyists are in Congressional offices. So FAA papers over the flaws and reassures the flying public."

Your Fox News view of the world is jaundiced.

I never watch the pro-Putin, Mudoch news. I'm also skeptical, not jaundiced.

Pretty sure the folks in the parts of the FAA that manage the operations of the NAS would bristle, even if only slightly, at the . . . jaundiced overall indictment of the agency. Beyond that, as the part of the federal interagency that operates the National Airspace System, I think your characterization of its reason for being is incomplete and to that extent at least incorrect.

On whether FAA's role and responsibilities for safety in any and all sectors of aviation in the United States is infected and corrupted by conflict of interest, I'd pay good hard-earned lowly cabdriver money to watch a moderated discussion between someone advocating the viewpoint you articulated about conflict of interest and, say, a recent or current Administrator. Maybe recent would be better, because unconstrained by political static and signals in D.C. (Part of your viewpoint refutes itself. FAA doesn't need or want to "promote" aviation, because the armies of lobbyists have that task list constantly "in work", as you contend.)

Insofar as commercial aviation has an excellent safety record in the United States, why would anyone think FAA needs to reassure the public of something that has become a cliche - flying on an airliner is safer than any other form of transportation. It's a cliche, and it's the truth, too, is it not?

As to GA, what solution would be recommended? No to product liability law reform, or, bring on the trial lawyer bar? Tight up licensing rules so fewer persons who shouldn't be operating an aircraft cannot do so?

Just in case, totally just contingency - anyone who regards you as ignorant is a complete fool.

AP on today Senate hearings https://apnews.com/article/boeing-wh...7cd74b9ea264e3

​​​​​​​

And about Boeing statements rejecting some allegations

AP on today Senate hearings https://apnews.com/article/boeing-wh...7cd74b9ea264e3

AP article very helpfully includes link to [correction: letter to Boeing CEO from Chair and Ranking Member of Permanent Investigations Subcomm.] - which cites letter to FAA Admin. from Mr. Salehpour's attorney.

(FWIW, any attorney can slap a brief or pleading together but correspondence to official addressees and subject matter of high importance - something of a lost art in most offices, though fortunately for Mr Salehpour, not in his law firm representation.)

Any news from the actual hearing?

I seem to have missed Sully's interview on MSNBC from end of March

Today’s hearing available from multiple news sources. This ABC News video seems to be complete. Recommend viewing at 2X speed if you don’t want to waste 100 minutes of your life.

I'm not fully convinced of Sam S. worries regarding 787 fuselage tolerances. I speculate:
He probably was applying metal knowledge and did assume that composite fuselage stress works the same
They initially took it serious but too many experts contradicted him. Even two company engineers (not known what leadership level) came forward to defend it as safe in public.
I think too many people were tired of Sam S. stubborn sticking to the issue although proven wrong.

They then transferred him to the more conventional 777 - wait a minute - is the 777x still conventional, apart from the skin?

For the benefit for him I hope I'm wrong, but this needs to be looked at with open mind, what's the truth.

The 777X wing is composite, as are several other major structural elements (this going back to the original 777) such as the cabin floor and some of the tail. The fuselage itself is still aluminum but has been redesigned to be 'slimer' structurally so making the inside of the cabin wider (something like six inches IIRC).

For the sake of Boeing (and millions of the traveling public) I hope you're right.

On the same day, the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on a somewhat more structured (no pun intended) subject. It heard three witnesses, each with qualifications most people would say make them "experts", on the subject of the final report of the FAA's Organization Designation Authorization Expert Review Panel. As anyone following the Boeing saga will know, the Panel was mandated by the Aircraft Certification, Safety and Accountability Act - the legislation which served as the vehicle for Congressional urges to "do something" after the MAX accidents as well as vehicle for arguably meaningful reforms.

Witnesses: Dr. Javier de Luis (lecturer at MIT Dep't of Aeronautics and Astronautics);
Dr. Tracy Dillinger (Manager for Safety Culture and Human Factors, NASA); and
Dr. Najmedin Meshkati (Professor, USC School of Engineering, Aviation Safety and Security Program).
link for Chair Sen. Maria Cantwell (D. Wash.) opening statement:
https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2024...safety-culture

It almost never fails to amaze me how a hearing before a legislative committe can be mistaken for, or viewed as, the equivalent of full fact discovery in civil litigation in federal district court. I mean, to cut this short without stomping on parts of it to make it fit together, there is no equivalent of obligation to produce all relevant information, and nothing equivalent to cross-examination (partisan rotation of questioning, no, that's not cross).

I won't prejudge the individual whistleblowers' stories on the merits of what they've said and are saying. I will, however, say that their respective recitations depend on their having first painted a picture in which they not only are doing the right thing in the specific situation, and doing it in reasonable ways, but every action taken by company management in response is malevolently directed against them. Sometimes that picture turns out to be true, correct and valid. But it is far from the default setting, and cannot be taken as the default merely by reciting "whistleblower". Perhaps too much paper chasing of billable hours has turned this SLF/attorney cynical (or even, jaundiced).

Whatever the actual facts pertaining to each individual's situation turn out to be, do their stories really add content of significance to what already is known about Boeing's drift away from engineering first and down to bean-counter depths? Is it really new, does it add information not already assimilated into the overall set of facts? I guess we'll find out. The Subcommittee chaired by Senator Blumenthal is for Permanent Investigations, part of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. If this were a dispute between two labor organizations over which one has jurisdiction of the work (the subject matter), I think Senate Commerce and its Aviation Subcomm would win, hands and gavels down. But then, over at Senate Commerce, Senator Cantwell and Senator Cruz were in charge of a hearing (see above) with less p.r. drama, just the Expert Texpert Choking Smokers Panel stuff. (name the Beatles song, 50 points)

I always appreciate the time you take to follow this stuff, and translate it into something closely related to English for us plebs to understand. :ok: