At this point the planes either need to be retrofitted with their original engines or scrapped. They will remain flying deathtraps no matter how much software is piled on to patch the issue.
How many cycles does the airframe have to go through in order for this to become a problem? I tend to think that if the FAA gave a shit about general aviation maybe we wouldn't be flying planes from the 1960s
Not trying to move the goalposts, but how old were these Airbus planes at the time of their incidents? Were they months old off the assembly line, or were they several years in where slips in maintenance and inspections came into play?
yeah i live under the flightpath of a lot of flight school traffic and this weighs a bit on my mind. pretty busy flight area too. Who knows the damage really? are there tests you can take?
It's different in that it starts to look as though there was a fairly concerted effort to keep the planes flying even though it was known to have a pretty big flaw.
We should look at the root cause, which is Boeing installing much more powerful engines on an old frame that wasn't designed for it. They haven't properly done it.
I think the issue is that the cracks start to appear only after future projections badly miss, like when finished planes get parked. Did that happen with Airbus?
But that is highly likely to be a trailing indicator. Some things like door plug blowouts apparently happen a few months after poor manufacturing processes occur, the question is how long do loose screws, cable frictions, or incorrectly bored holes in pressure bulkheads take to manifest?
It seems to me that we’re only at the start of statistical changes to the 737’s historic accident to operating hours ratio.
Do I want to be an unexpected data point or death and injury there? Not so much. A320-series or 737NGs for me for the foreseeable future I think, and those flights don’t generally cost a penny more.
Does this make any of you fearful about getting on a plane? I mean, with all this airing of dirty laundry and scrambling I feel like mistakes are more likely now than ever, plus no new planes = we are stuck on old hardware, and when those planes do go back into service they will have been outside collecting rust.
That just shows: you never know. Perhaps something had been done to this plane too, indeed. The only thing I would exclude at this point is bad maintenance. It's so unlikely that that part needed maintenance in less than 2 months. But your example shows we really should wait for the report.
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