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Author Topic: Boeing 737 exposee  (Read 10749 times)

holt

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Boeing 737 exposee
« on: March 26, 2019, 09:34 AM »
'problems with Boeing 737 next generation with structural dangers reported SBS​ dateline Australia'

This is NOT the recent 'software programming' issue; this is a whole different, long-overdue, mind-blowing exposee of shabby workmanship coverup and whistleblower betrayal at the highest levels of Boeing in cozy illicit collusion with a corrupt FAA.
« Last Edit: April 26, 2019, 12:39 PM by holt »

holt

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Re: Boeing exposee
« Reply #1 on: March 28, 2019, 10:09 AM »
"lThere may be old Boeing passengers, and there may be bold Boeing passengers, but there are no old, bold Boeing passengers."
« Last Edit: October 10, 2019, 07:08 PM by holt »

holt

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Re: Boeing Exposee
« Reply #2 on: April 13, 2019, 06:22 PM »
Another whistle-blower exposee, reporting shabby workmanship, about a completely different airliner, also manufactured by Boeing, the company whose aircraft never crash, they just go 'boeing-boeing':
Boeing 787 Broken Dreams
"Our journalism reveals the deeply-held safety concerns of current and former Boeing engineers, who in some cases fear to fly on the 787, the plane they build. We uncover allegations of on-the-job drug use, quality control problems and poor workmanship."


IainB

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Re: Boeing 737 exposee
« Reply #4 on: April 28, 2019, 10:31 PM »
@holt: Thanks for that video and subsequent posts. Very informative.   :Thmbsup:
I happened to be on a project conference call meeting with several people from different countries last night, discussing a software development project. One of the people happened to have been a highly qualified aeronautical engineer and a systems lead designer (software control systems) at Boeing.
At the end of the conference call, when just he and I were left on the line discussing the meeting minutes I was to write and distribute, I took the opportunity to ask him, "Bearing in mind recent aircraft accident reports, if I was going to go on an international flight very soon, what Boeing aircraft should I avoid travelling on?, and straight back came the reply "Statistically, the 737 MAX and MAX 8" and he mentioned that the nomenclature seems to be changing, possibly to hide the pea. I asked him to explain.
In a nutshell, he said that:
  • (a) Statistically, safety was clearly at risk: the reported accidents indicated ab initio a relatively high probability that these aircraft were unsafe, something which no potential passenger should ignore, as a matter of self-preservation and preservation of their family members and colleagues - so, for safety, it would be rational and prudent to boycott all services using those risky aircraft, on that basis alone. That was why they had been grounded.

  • (b) Statistically, the accidents were predictable anyway - as night follows day, because the FAA standards and expertise had been emasculated or watered down to such an extent that the FAA inspectorate now deliberately concealed or ignored risks (also QED per the video above). He said this had reduced the emphasis on minimum safety and quality control standards and was probably largely attributable to cost-cutting within Boeing and Boeing's increasing control over the FAA (compromising the FAA's independence), and that the rot seems to have set in and become endemic within Boeing, due to policy decisions - as made by and following the appointment of an ex GE executive to the position of CEO at Boeing (and who apparently had earned himself the nickname "Chainsaw Mc-someone", or something). Those policy decisions were apparently largely focused on cost-tutting and short-term enhancement of shareholder profit, so the guy would presumably have "just been following orders" (sounds somehow familiar?) and getting well paid for it to boot.

  • (c) The cost-cutting measures included the reduction of costs of engineers. Generally speaking, aeronautical engineers are more highly paid the more highly-qualified and experienced they are, because they are the brains that design the aircraft and its systems, which keeps those aircraft in the air and flying safely over their working lives (and I was evidently talking to one of these people over the phone). However, the cost-cutting measures apparently included - wherever possible - laying off approx. the highest-paid two-thirds of the more expensive engineers in any sector of engineering, "leaving Boeing with the bottom turd." - which was not to say that they weren't any good, just that they were much less qualified and experienced than those laid off. This would essentially have meant that they were less competent, by definition. 

  • (d) There was a revolving door operating between Boeing and the FAA - with the remaining bottom turd engineers moving into the FAA for cushy and highly-paid jobs. Thus, the incompetent watchmen were overseeing the "standards" being maintained by their incompetent colleagues in their work. What could possibly go wrong in such a scenario? Well, the answer to that is presumably what we now are allowed to read about in the news, and it includes deaths on quite a large scale.

  • (e) But isn't it the aircraft that are at fault? Yeah, right. Just like it's the gun's fault whenever there's a mass shooting at some college or other place in the US. Oh, wait...

Some people (not me, you understand) might say that, the amazing thing is the whistleblowers' testimonies in the video, and from this guy I was talking to on the phone, which would imply very strongly that, either they are a pack of liars, or there is/was government and corporate collusion here and which has inevitably led to hundreds of people being already killed and countless more being put at risk of death through these "unfortunate" aircraft accidents, but I couldn't possibly comment. I mean, no government would do that, surely?  :o
I mean, it would be like turning a blind eye and doing nothing to (say) stop the mass importation of Fentanyl from China even though it might have been causing 6,000 deaths per three months in the US already. Oh, but wait...

That looks like one sick puppy you have there...
« Last Edit: April 29, 2019, 06:14 PM by IainB »

IainB

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Re: Boeing 737 exposé - Report By Pilot, Software Designer
« Reply #5 on: April 28, 2019, 11:50 PM »
Relevant, and similar to (along the lines of) what I wrote above:
Mish: Boeing 737 Max Unsafe To Fly, New Scathing Report By Pilot, Software Designer

Attached is a .mhtml copy in case it gets lost down the memory hole (I don't trust Wayback):
« Last Edit: April 28, 2019, 11:59 PM by IainB »

holt

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Re: Boeing 737 exposee
« Reply #6 on: April 29, 2019, 10:17 AM »
@IainB Awesome feedback, Iain.  :Thmbsup:
I'm reminded of tests showing that a less 'flammable' fuel was developed, less prone to igniting in a crash, then discarded as less profitable, due to 'gallows engineering' (or 'gallows economics').
In aircraft design theory, 'aerodynamics' is prioritized above 'anti-corrosion' (or something of 'words to that effect'), which it should be; then every means of employing anti-corrosion into the design is employed. Thus; corrosion-prone aluminum was/is used (prior to the invention of composites) in construction; then it is electroplated wherever possible with corrosion-resistant anodize and epoxy primer, 'wet-installed' with more epoxy primer and catalytically cured silicone rubber, with drain holes to eliminate natural sumps (hidden pockets where water can collect and corrode), and so on. But -as per my ^first video- if holes that are supposed to be pre-drilled by CAD/CAM in sub-assemblies with micro precision (for later assembly into the main body) are instead pre-drilled by hand (being 'sighted in' by macro eye-balling), then the aircraft mechanic ends up having to 'wobble' the drill bit to 'match up' the matching holes in sub-assembly and main body or next-larger assembly, thus 'going oversize' and ending up with oval holes anyways, that weaken the design and become pockets of future corrosion-prone 'design discrepancies'. Please excuse me for waxing a bit wordy, but I am a former 'blue collar' aircraft industry worker-mechanic (not an engineer), and I've seen (and avoided) such.
It sounds like the bottom turds could benefit from a liberal application of 'de-turd-gent' to clean up their revolving door act.

BTW, every individual aircraft part (be it a leading edge slat, or an angle, or a stringer, whatever) was always pre-stamped with a serial number, ending in a dash-even for right hand, or dash-odd number for left hand, assembly. In the 9-11 Twin Towers documentary, an aircraft engine ended up on a sidewalk, battered into junk; every part of it should have had such a serial number pre-stamped onto it, identifying both the part, and the aircraft type (but I never saw anyone's investigation of that).
Thanks for your most informative and professional feedback.  :up:
« Last Edit: April 29, 2019, 10:23 AM by holt »

IainB

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My mind can't abide a puzzle. It habitually seems to set itself in a sort of alert, problem-solving state, almost as though looking for something to occupy itself with. When it finds something interesting - which could vary from (say) figuring out the best way to clean a laundry utility-room, or fixing a car's wing mirror, or analysing a puzzling situation, program error, or maths puzzle - it becomes fascinated and won't let it go until satisfied that the area of interest has been understood sufficiently fully. Very often, it won't let me sleep. It's difficult sometimes to determine which part of me is the master and which the servant.

At school, I had a pretty useless maths teacher and so I used to teach myself maths, using books of past UK Cambridge GCE "O" Level exam papers, with worked examples of all the answers. I would study at night up till bedtime, and sometimes - with a particularly knotty problem - I would refuse to look at the worked answers and would go to bed with an unresolved math question still puzzling my mind, and I would tell my mind to solve it whilst I was asleep. Invariably, the answer would be clear in my mind on waking. I had read about this idea in a book on self-hypnosis, so I applied it, and it seemed to work.

Well, I had invested quite a bit of my cognitive surplus in the subject of this interesting post by @holt and it must have grabbed the attention of my subconscious, because, though I thought I had finished with the subject by contributing what I did above, for a couple of days I have had a niggling feeling - my subconscious sort of tugging at me - that I was missing something very relevant to this subject, that I actually already knew about, but had not put in the puzzle to explain it.
When I woke up this morning, it was there in my mind - I already knew about the type of legal, government-sanctioned corporatised, careless and indiscriminate killing of innocents that the Boeing case seemed to typify - the word "Aberfan".

I went to school in North Wales. An important aspect of the Welsh character is that they understand the need for education as a tried-and-tested way out of serfdom/poverty/dependence, and they take up teaching posts where they tend to remain fiercely nationalistic and teach that nationalistic sense (as propaganda - e.g., making Welsh compulsory) to children in school – and why shouldn’t they? It’s their country (or it was), after all, and they are heartily sick of the history of the English trampling all over them and oppressively milking them economically for all they are worth – e.g., in the coal and slate mining industries. – and with an utter disregard for the safety/lives of the Welsh (No, don't mention all those accidental pit deaths. Oh dear, what a pity, never mind.).

If there is any single event that indicated unequivocally that the English were unfit to rule Wales – either economically or otherwise – one that stands out would have to be the Aberfan disaster. (Refer Wikipedia, and which I wrote about in
Re: Thermageddon? Postponed!
as an example of corporate psychopathy.)
This was a disaster waiting to happen – a manmade ticking timebomb building up in Aberfan. It was the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip in the Welsh village of Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil, on 21 October 1966, killing 116 children and 28 adults. It was caused by a build-up of water in a waste tip, the accumulated rock and shale, which suddenly started to slide downhill in the form of slurry.
The black humour at the time had it as: “What’s black and goes to school on Friday? A number 7 tip.”

This was an avoidable disaster: it had been predictable and was a predicted risk, yet the risk had been ignored in characteristically cavalier fashion by the English National Coal Board. The official inquiry blamed the National Coal Board for extreme negligence, and its Chairman, Lord Robens, for making misleading statements. Parliament soon passed new legislation about public safety in relation to mines and quarries. (Oh dear, what a pity, never mind.)

The Welsh were arguably second-class citizens then, and will probably remain such until they gain full sovereignty for Wales. After that, they will only be able to hold themselves accountable for any further corporate negligence.

You could thus label the Boeing 737 MAX crashes "the Aberfan syndrome", because the Aberfan event predated the Boeing 737 MAX crashes. They are of the same type - i.e., legal, government-sanctioned corporatised, careless and indiscriminate killing of innocents. But that's not enough - what about the cause? The resulting disasters are created/caused by a Corporate Psychopath.
In the film The Corporation, they reviewed the personality disorder "psychopathy". (A psychopath is a person with chronic psychopathy, esp. leading to abnormally irresponsible and antisocial behaviour.)
They gave this checklist of criteria to identify the disorder:
    1. Callous unconcern for the feelings of others.
    2. Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships.
    3. Reckless disregard for the safety of others.
    4. Deceitfulness: repeated lying and conning others for profit/financial gain.
    5. Incapacity to experience guilt.
    6. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviours.

In the film, these criteria were shown to be met by many/most of the legal entities (legal persons) known as "corporations", thus demonstrating that society has legalised these special kinds of psychopaths to operate in society, where they can and do cause tremendous harm - e.g., including such things as economic dependency and control of communities, or a deadly (toxic) environmental footprint - sometimes both, as in the case of the US corporation Exide in their factory in Mexico.
« Last Edit: May 02, 2019, 12:47 AM by IainB »

holt

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Re: Boeing 737 exposee
« Reply #8 on: May 04, 2019, 06:15 PM »
Matthew 9:16 No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse.

Mark 2:21 No man also seweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment: else the new piece that filled it up taketh away from the old, and the rent is made worse.

If the Aircraft Sheetmetal Mechanic is presented with a pair of predrilled parts that go together, and if either part has hole/s that are even 1mm off, s/he has no choice but to wobble the drill bit and oval or oversize the hole at least enough to put in a fastener. He is not allowed to substitute a different kind of fastener than specified, so unless it is a squashable rivet that can be deformed to help fill up the oblong hole, he must go oversize, such as reaming and substituting a 1/4 inch fastener in place of a 3/16 inch one.
If he does, it will change the flexibility of the entire row of fasteners, creating a stress point in the oversize hole location; the oversize fastener will not allow even flexing of the part, throwing an uneven, greater burden on surrounding adjacent fasteners and parts.
Now, add a few tiny gaps where the oblong hole did not quite get totally filled up; magnets for corrosion. On a large scale we call areas that collect liquids such as rain water, hydraulic fluid, and the like, as ''natural sumps', and often the instruction is to drill a drain hole to keep it drained out (believe me, they don't drill holes randomly, they follow instructions dictated by Engineering in AFCs [Air Frame Changes]). In a little gap in an oblong hole, it's just a 'gap', but prone to corrosion.

Intergranular corrosion - aluminum has 'grain' just like wood grain. Much the same way that termites furrow deep into the core of a solid piece of wood, intergranular corrosion can take advantage of tiny gaps in oblong holes to invade deep into solid aluminum parts. It does take time, but it's not supposed to happen at all. 

holt

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TWA Flight 800 Remastered Re-creation
« Reply #9 on: June 05, 2019, 07:52 AM »
TWA 800 Animations

TWA Flight 800 Remastered Re-creation
Combination of light-hearted student passengers and dreadful 'impending disaster' music.
(edit: This is a seriously disturbing video. In case you are not prepared, I'll post here a repeat of a few viewers' comments:
quote:
-Mostly just upsetting.  Recommend do not watch.  God rest their souls.
-This has to be the scariest way for anyone to die...
-That may be one of the most horrifying things i have ever watched....I think i need a tranquilizer.
-Horrible...absolutely horrible to go this way...Poor souls RIP ..
-I wished I wouldn't have watched this. My stomach has been in a knot ever since. My prayers to all affected by this tragic loss of life.
-No one deserves to die this way. It is so sad to see what they had to experience. May God bless them and those who suffer in the aftermath of this tragedy.
-I can’t believe they actually used Final Destination. I mean we all know the movie based it on the crash, but come on.
-This is about as bad as it gets.....what a horrific way to die.
end quote
Please note: the music and part of the TWA Flight 800 Remastered Re-creation vid is a rip (not by me) from Final Destination, but proper credit is given and it really fits.

IainB

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Re: Boeing 737 exposé
« Reply #10 on: June 06, 2019, 11:14 PM »
@holt: Just watched that videoTWA Flight 800 Remastered Re-creation today. Hadn't seen it before. Was a very interesting documentary/reconstruction - including the physical reconstruction of the aircraft from the assemblage of the recovered scattered airplane debris located and salvaged from the ocean floor covering a wide area after it had progressively blown to bits and fragmented along its flight path. Really smart investigation - though interestingly based on the initial and false premise that it was an on-board bomb that had caused the explosion. Closed all the gaps. Thanks for posting.  :Thmbsup:

Interesting too that the FBI left that case as Suspended and Active status, rather than Closed. That means it doesn't necessarily prohibit the introduction of new information/investigation at some future point.

Did they ever do something similar for 911, to close the gaps? I don't recall. Presumably there would have been all the aircraft debris from two aircraft there, all easily located within a small radius around Ground Zero.
« Last Edit: June 07, 2019, 12:04 AM by IainB »

IainB

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Re: Boeing 737 exposé
« Reply #11 on: June 06, 2019, 11:51 PM »
On the subject of the Boeing 737 MAX apparently murderously effective collusion of corporate/government chicanery, there seem to be two quite separate aspects to distinguish:
  • The failure to maintain relevant engineering quality/safety standards in the aircraft construction.
  • The software developed for the MACS, which was apparently not fit-for-purpose by a long shot.

In both cases, the motive seems to be profit - cost-containment/reduction - and with a total (psychopathic) disregard for the entirely predictable risks to life that this would necessarily entail as night follows day. It's deliberate - more than just incompetence or negligence.

I was reminded of this today when I happened to be browsing "great engineering mistakes" on duckduckgo and saw this:
Most people, when buying an airline ticket go for the cheapest available flight. Few consider the safety record of the airline. So it takes government or other regulatory intervention to enforce safety standards. The same applies in other sectors. Seat belts are now mandatory on UK coaches. Prior to this becoming a legal requirement, few coach operators fitted them because customers weren’t interested in paying a bit more to travel in a coach fitted with them. Yet, they are known to save lives.
 - Comment by Chris Chris Nabavi, 5th May 2010 at 1:28 pm at Engineering’s Ten Biggest Mistakes

So I went and re-read the article Mish: Boeing 737 Max Unsafe To Fly, New Scathing Report By Pilot, Software Designer. That was mostly about a software engineering mistake in attempting to compensate/conceal a fundamental design failure in the updated aircraft.

These bits jumped out at me:
Design shortcuts meant to make a new plane seem like an old, familiar one are to blame.
This was all about saving money. Boeing and the FAA pretend the 737-Max is the same aircraft as the original 737 that flew in 1967, over 50 years ago.
Boeing cut corners to save money. Cutting corners works until it fails spectacularly.
It all comes down to money, and in this case, MCAS was the way for both Boeing and its customers to keep the money flowing in the right direction. The necessity to insist that the 737 Max was no different in flying characteristics, no different in systems, from any other 737 was the key to the 737 Max’s fleet fungibility. That’s probably also the reason why the documentation about the MCAS system was kept on the down-low.

Put in a change with too much visibility, particularly a change to the aircraft’s operating handbook or to pilot training, and someone—probably a pilot—would have piped up and said, “Hey. This doesn’t look like a 737 anymore.” And then the money would flow the wrong way.
So Boeing produced a dynamically unstable airframe, the 737 Max. That is big strike No. 1. Boeing then tried to mask the 737’s dynamic instability with a software system. Big strike No. 2. Finally, the software relied on systems known for their propensity to fail (angle-of-attack indicators) and did not appear to include even rudimentary provisions to cross-check the outputs of the angle-of-attack sensor against other sensors, or even the other angle-of-attack sensor. Big strike No. 3.

None of the above should have passed muster. It is likely that MCAS, originally added in the spirit of increasing safety, has now killed more people than it could have ever saved. It doesn’t need to be “fixed” with more complexity, more software. It needs to be removed altogether.

There's presumably a warning note to software developers about professional liability/culpability implicit in that...
« Last Edit: June 07, 2019, 12:58 AM by IainB »


IainB

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Re: Boeing 737 exposee
« Reply #13 on: November 28, 2019, 06:58 PM »
@holt:
EDIT 2020-01-09: Just pointing out that the above video is a repeat from the post you made earlier:
Another whistle-blower exposee, reporting shabby workmanship, about a completely different airliner, also manufactured by Boeing, the company whose aircraft never crash, they just go 'boeing-boeing':
Boeing 787 Broken Dreams
"Our journalism reveals the deeply-held safety concerns of current and former Boeing engineers, who in some cases fear to fly on the 787, the plane they build. We uncover allegations of on-the-job drug use, quality control problems and poor workmanship."

@holt: [Regarding that video.] Yup. A while back, I met an engineer (retired ex Boeing, at a conference in Australia) who wished to remain anonymous, but said that the Dreamliner design was aerodynamically very sound - including the performance of carbon fibre in construction - but that Boing had effectively ensured that their incompetence and disregard for engineering build quality, safety and compliance, coupled with an emasculated and now servile FAA puppet, would kill the plane - which it did - what a surprise (NOT). He said, from an engineering perspective, it was predictable, but the management seemed to be blinded by greed and a seemingly psychopathic disregard for the safety of others.
He also said that the Al Jazeera video made a good point about the trouble seeming to stem from the point in 1997 when MacDonnel Douglas and Boeing merged. After that point, he reckoned, there was an increasing statistical probability that each new Boeing product could be a potential death-trap, and time seems to have shown that to be the case.
The engineer advised me to avoid Boeing planes, for my own safety. I still use flight insurance, but I won't fly on a Boeing aircraft now and I won't book flights for my family members on them either. I'd rather have a living wife, son, or daughter than a fat paycheck as compensation for their loss of life.
« Last Edit: January 08, 2020, 06:36 PM by IainB »

holt

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Re: Boeing 737 exposee
« Reply #14 on: December 14, 2019, 07:49 AM »
"You can fool all of the passengers some of the time, and some of the passengers all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the passengers all of the time." -Abraham William Boeing

IainB

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Re: Boeing 737 exposee
« Reply #15 on: December 14, 2019, 09:37 AM »
@holt:
Where you wrote:
"You can fool all of the passengers some of the time, and some of the passengers all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the passengers all of the time." -Abraham William Boeing

This is my "updated" version:
"You can kill all of the passengers some of the time and some of the passengers all of the time, but you cannot kill all of the passengers all of the time without FAA approval." - Boeing MacChainsaw
« Last Edit: January 08, 2020, 06:38 PM by IainB »

holt

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Re: Boeing 737 exposee
« Reply #16 on: December 14, 2019, 09:52 AM »
With the B-52, Boeing created an aircraft with an admirable service life and the world's most oddball -but xlnt- landing gear. Now, with the 737, instead of dropping ordnance, they have goofed by making the entire aircraft into a projectile.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2019, 02:28 PM by holt »

IainB

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As it is about a Boeing 737-800 "accident", this BBC news item of 2020-01-09 0941hrs (NZT) about the recent airplane crash in Iran may be relevant to this discussion thread:
I don't usually trust BBC (aka British Biased Corporation) when it is reporting on what could be religio-political ideological issues, but its factual reporting on world events and that do not require investigative journalism seems otherwise quite competent.
Iran plane crash: Tributes to three British nationals killed.
... They were among the 176 people from seven countries who died in the crash.
Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 crashed just after taking off from Imam Khomeini airport at 06:12 local time (02:42 GMT).
The airline said the plane underwent scheduled maintenance on Monday. ...
________________________
... As well as the three Britons, the victims in the crash included 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians - including all of the crew, 10 Swedes, four Afghans and three Germans, Ukraine foreign affairs minister Vadym Prystaiko said. ///
________________________
'''Ukraine's state aviation service has forbidden its national airlines from using Iranian airspace from Thursday, with the restrictions in place until an investigation into the cause of the crash has concluded.

Ukraine's embassy in Tehran and Iranian state television both initially said technical issues caused the crash.

But the embassy later removed this statement and said any comment regarding the cause of the accident prior to a commission's inquiry was not official.

Ukraine said its entire civilian aviation fleet would be checked for airworthiness and criminal proceedings would be opened into the disaster. ...
________________________

"The airline expresses its deepest condolences to the families of the victims of the air crash and will do everything possible to support the relatives of the victims," a statement said.

The airline, which is investigating the crash, said the aircraft - a Boeing 737-800 - was built in 2016 and had its last scheduled maintenance on Monday.

There was no sign of any problems with the plane before take-off and the airline's president said it had an "excellent, reliable crew".

A statement from Boeing said its "heartfelt thoughts" were with all those affected following the "tragic event".

There are several thousand Boeing 737-800s in operation around the world which have completed tens of millions of flights. They have been involved in 10 incidents, including this crash, where at least one passenger was killed, aviation safety analyst Todd Curtis told the BBC.

This is the first time a Ukraine International Airlines plane has been involved in a fatal crash. ...
________________________

My take on this is that Ukraine International Airlines and its passengers may not have got the memo regarding potential risks around flying Boeing 737-800s. "Flying coffins"(?) as someone remarked in one of the videos - even Boeing employees involved in the aircraft assembly were apparently recorded as saying they wouldn't fly in these aircraft after seeing "what sh*t went into them" (or WTTE).
« Last Edit: January 11, 2020, 09:52 PM by IainB »

IainB

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Re: Boeing 737 exposee
« Reply #18 on: January 11, 2020, 10:37 PM »
My take on this is that Ukraine International Airlines and its passengers may not have got the memo regarding potential risks around flying Boeing 737-800s. "Flying coffins"(?) as someone remarked in one of the videos - even Boeing employees involved in the aircraft assembly were apparently recorded as saying they wouldn't fly in these aircraft after seeing "what sh*t went into them" (or WTTE).
Well, what a stunning about face admission from the Iranians - after previously making a blanket and absolute denial of responsibility for causing the crash with a missile hit - that they did indeed accidentally shoot it down and they're very sorry about it, but it was a result of heightened alertness and "US adventurism", or something, that led to the disaster (so it's not really their fault??).

So the Boeing 737-800 was presumably airworthy, so it's not another of Boeing's failures at any rate, which is why that particular airplane had not been included in the worldwide grounding of the fleet.
I guess Ukraine International Airlines needs to review the advisability of flying its civilian passenger airlines around actual/potential war zones where there could be a risk that "air defence systems" may be controlled by nervous or trigger-happy incompetents. Oddly enough, I would have thought that taking that risk was already an absolute "no-no" for most civilian airlines, but I could be wrong, of course. That rather seems to take it back to caveat emptor - so the passengers would presumably not have understood the flight risks they were about to be exposed to by their flight captain.
« Last Edit: January 11, 2020, 10:46 PM by IainB »