Wheel of a Delta Boeing 757 flew off while it was preparing to take off at ATL
twitter.comAll airliners occasionally have problems with wheels and/or tires. And occasionally have cracked window glass. And occasionally have engine failures. And occasionally have pressurization problems, Read avherald.com for a few days and you'll see that it happens to Airbus, Boeing, Embraer, Bombardier, and others. And with the number of flights worldwide, some kind of problem serious enough to cause a return to the aiport or diverting to an alternate happens almost every day.
Boeing has some serious questions to answer about their engineering and QA processes. But attributing random normal problems to that just confuses the issue.
Plus B757 stopped being manufactured in 2004 so whatever problem this is, is unrelated to recent boeing manufacturing problems.
Is a wheel coming off of the front of an airplane a "normal problem" on par with an engine failure or a cracked window glass?
Various things related to it are common "enough" that you can find discussion around them - for example the Airbus sideways landing gear: https://safetyfirst.airbus.com/landing-with-nosewheels-at-90...
Of course, these are "normal problems" that shouldn't happen and need to be investigated, but it's not quite "the front fell off": https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM
And all airliners ocasionally have two complete-loss crashes a few months apart?
(346 people died in two similar crashes: Lion Air Flight 610 on October 29, 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10, 2019)
All that grandparent comment is saying is that this specific news story is a nothing burger, not that we should ignore other, bigger issues. In fact, they're saying that mentioning small issues like this is a red herring and a distraction. Presumably they agree that the recent Alaska Airlines door plug mishap and the total losses you mentioned are important.
Had a physics teacher in highschool, worked on a submarine. Told me that with government equipment like submarines, workers replace parts based on dates regardless of the wear and tear of the part. "If this screw is supposed to last 10 years, we're ordered to replace it in 7 years regardless of the condition."
With for profit companies, they'd try to push the parts to last 12 years instead of 10 by inspecting them and confirming they're still good.
Saving money this way isn't too big of a deal if you're McDonalds and it's an ice cream machine.
But if it's a for-profit airline it can turn into a problem.
It’s called predictive maintenance and it is the norm in many critical industries. Replacing equipment every fixed number of X years (no matter what the condition of the equipment is) is wasteful, costly disruptive and does not actually guarantee better reliability. (although it makes people feel better).
Most predictive maintenance is done with data — updated sensor data processed through a mathematical model derived from principles from reliability engineering. In a sense it’s actually more realistic than the X years model (which is a once off number derived from some reliability model too but doesn’t have the benefit of being updated with real data — it’s usually an overly conservative number)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_maintenance
There is no evidence that predictive maintenance is the cause of Boeing’s mishaps.
That's true, but also beside the point.
Flatcircle's point wasn't really predictive maintenance vs. fixed lifetime, it was about government using conservative design margins vs for-profit industry's riskier design margins.
Predictive maintenance lets you achieve a better cost-vs-risk curve, but the organization still needs to select a point somewhere along that curve.
The other thing replacing the part can do (but not always) is guarantee you still have a source for those parts in the future. That's important for the military that might need to make more without much notice.
I've heard the word AI being used around this before... and it scares me.
Why?
It’s just a marketing term. Most predictive maintenance models are ML or statistical learning models and have a great track record. Some call it AI to sound hip (you can any ML model AI these days) but it’s probably just a standard model from reliability engineering.
Remember when every train derailment was 100% evidence that the USA was a failed state like Ancient Rome? That period lasted for a few months, I can’t wait till this one dies the same death.
Here comes the confirmation bias.
Now, every issue with a Boeing plane will be noticed, reported on and magnified. I'm not saying this is necessarily bad as there actually do seem to be some significant issues at Boeing. Hopefully, the result is an intense shakeup resulting in increased focus on quality.
Unless the plane was brand new from Boeing, it's difficult to see how this is a Boeing failure rather than a Delta maintenance failure.
I guess that's a consequence of directly causing the deaths of 346 people. We are right to scrutinise them harshly.
Here is a list of the top ten causes of death in the US [1]. You will have a much better chance of reducing your risk of dying by giving up drinking and eating fatty foods than by giving up flying on a Boeing aircraft.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm
1. This is misleading because the number of people flying on airplane is significantly lower than those who have a chance for heart disease because they have a heartbeat.
2. Not flying on Boeing aircraft is much, much easier to do than avoiding heart disease.
This is a really weird response, man.
And how does that negate Boeing's maintenance woes?
What is your point?
> Now, every issue with a Boeing plane will be noticed, reported on and magnified.
It is a safety critical industry. Did you expect something different? Would we be "better served" by acting differently?
The goal of someone flying is to get there alive, not win the war against bias.
> Would we be "better served" by acting differently?
We would be "better served" by actually scrutinizing [all] the parties that need scrutinizing, not latching on to one scapegoat out of fear and sensationalism as opposed to actual safety consciousness.
Pearl-clutching at Boeing about an aircraft the company delivered in the _1990s_ does absolutely nothing to "get [someone] there alive". Where is your outrage at e.g. Delta for flying a 30+ year old plane that has clearly been poorly inspected/maintained?
The tone of your comment confuses me. I didn’t say it was a bad thing at all.
I was reacting to the suggestion that people will only react to this out of misplaced "confirmation bias." Your statement was qualified as "it's not _necessarily_ bad."
The suggestion is that a negative or useless human emotion may, in this case, be incidentally useful.
My suggestion is that it is not at all useless or negative, and due to the safety factors involved, this is more due to survival bias than confirmation bias.
I sort of felt you were punching down into the public crowd gathered around this issue, and I took some umbrage with that.
LOL. Requesting permission to use the phrase "the goal is not to win the war against bias" in future, highly relevant situations. ;)
I think this has been happening since the Ethiopian Airlines incident. Individuals should be extremely careful about using the news as a reliable way of measuring personal risk.
There were plenty of rumblings about Boeing's poor quality control after the MCAS issues. Didn't seem to change much. But then again, maybe this is the straw that breaks the camel's back in terms of PR.
The last 757 flew away from Boeing in 2004. It's surely the case that the landing gear issue that happened today has little or nothing to do with Boeing's quality control and everything to do with airline maintenance actions/responsibility.
Maybe different problem here: while MCAS was an engineering problem, door was an assembly problem, here it would more likely be a maintenance problem (757s have been built years ago), which is on the airline or not directly Boeing?
Yes. The youngest 757 is 20 years old, oldest is 40. This would be a maintenance issue of some sort.
Great visualization of the outbound stack in the video.
I'm sure ATC was super happy to have orderly departures thrown into disarray.
Looks like a misleading tweet, in the video it sounds like the tire came off like it was a flat maybe?
Americans commonly use "tyre" and "wheel" interchangeably. Drives me nuts especially in motorsports where the distinction is important. But it is what it is. This was a case of a wheel coming off.
Americans don’t use tyre
That's highly unusual. How do their cars move?
On tires.
The tire is the rubber, the wheel is the whole assembly. If you're talking to people who talk about it in detail.
Everyone else refers to them interchangeably.
We roll on polyhedrons where s approaches infinity.
S hit infinity on my first car's tires
Not sure if I missed your joke. But this is probably a joke based on the spelling of the word being British. So Americans use tires and the British use tyres.
I wasn't joking, I'm not going to use the American spelling just because I'm talking about how Americans use the word. They really do use "wheel" and "tyre" interchangeably.
I'm an American, and I disagree, mostly. I've never heard someone say a "flat wheel"; it's always flat tire. Also if an American says a wheel came off when they mean a tire, they misspoke/misunderstand what they are talking about. There are plenty of Americans that know next to nothing about their vehicle despite it usually being the most expensive or second most expensive thing they own.
Disclaimer: Midwest USA here, can't speak for other parts of the US.
This, 200%.
I can't think of anyone other than the most archetypal ditz (think, 'Friends' character, Phoebe) who would conflate the idea of the rubber part that touches the ground with the metal or other hard material the first term is mounted on. (Naming abstractions removed for clarity.)
Here is a sample of common Americans casually referring to wheels as tyres, which I found from less than a minute of googling.
https://www.espn.com/racing/story/_/id/37768342/fan-vehicle-...
https://www.reddit.com/r/sports/comments/13ww9d1/fan_with_ve...
https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/comments/14yprzk/ot_tire_c...
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/13utnr9/...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Wellthatsucks/comments/s8lsjk/my_ti...
https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicAdvice/comments/10i5rmf/my_...
https://www.reddit.com/r/cars/comments/2qwxyj/a_tire_just_ca...
https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicAdvice/comments/te2dle/my_t...
https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/16p1z0...
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=301598278822335
https://myfox8.com/sports/nascar-motorsports/indy-500/tire-f...
https://www.nascar.com/videos/franchise/nascar-cup-series-hi...
Yes there are Americans who don't get it. But if you work at a tire shop (I did for a while), the majority of the customers get it right.
In the video:
> It just rolled off the runway behind you.
That doesn't really answer it, most tires hold enough shape to be able to roll on their own.
You're right, they do. And I'm certainly no expert, but I have a more difficult time imagining a tire coming off the wheel intact without some catastrophic "blowout" impeding it's ability to smoothly roll than I do imagining a whole wheel coming off.
Leak, low pressure becomes no pressure, various lateral forces encouraging the tire to fold this way and that under mass, and soon enough the tire alone escapes its tormentor (because it’s being bent and pushed in ways similar to those that originally encouraged it to pop onto the wheel) and scurries away toward an unsuspecting fence.
Well, I did say that I was no expert. This explanation makes sense. Thank you.
Is this going to become a 'thing' in which every airplane malfunction becomes a major news event.
For a few weeks anyway. Attention is fickle.
The link is just a clip from this video: https://youtu.be/basogKN3QSQ
(The tweet author credited the video creator!)
This happens from time to time for all aircraft models. It's why you should never be in the direct path of an aircraft taking off if you're plane spotting.
It seems that the departure has been delayed by a 1h20min but the plane did take off?
They pulled the donut out of the trunk and slapped it on.
From youtube comments:
"You picked a fine time to leave me loose wheel"
Okay this is too on-the-nose in terms of metaphor
Actually it sounds like the problem is it was no longer on the nose...
“The wheels are coming off”, you say?
Very relevant skit
Cardboard is right out. No cardboard derivatives.
But are these planes built to very rigorous aerospace engineering standards??