Passenger sees Boeing 757-200 “wing coming apart” mid-air — United flight from San Francisco to Boston makes emergency landing in Denver::A United Airlines flight to Boston was diverted to Denver because of an issue with the plane’s wing.

    • Gormadt
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      9 months ago

      I know a guy who works at Boeing

      He says right now it’s pretty rough due to recent events but things were finally cooling down

      That was before this news broke

      He’s probably going to have a shitty day tomorrow with more visits from the FAA and other regulators

      • thesilverpig@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        A believe there have been quite a few articles published with interviews from former Boeing execs with who were around when the company went from engineer ran to finance ran. One of them I remember the former executive said part of why they will continue to not trust Boeing is they are only grounding planes to solve one problem at a time after it’s caused massive failure and not trying to engineer and solve all the problems they can so these failures stop happening mid flight.

        • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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          9 months ago

          You take the population of vehicles in the field (A) and multiple it by the probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the average cost of an out-of-court settlement ©.

          A times B times C equals X. This is what it will cost if we don’t initiate a recall. If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we recall the cars and no one gets hurt. If X is less than the cost of a recall, then we don’t recall.

      • Haha@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I don’t feel bad for your friend. One bad day at work or 100+ people dying?

    • j4k3@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Didn’t they cut all of those jobs recently? Wait. No. That was all their 900 QC door bolt retention confirmers that were ‘unnecessary’

  • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    “Sitting right on the wing and the noise after reaching altitude was much louder than normal. I opened the window to see the wing looking like this,” user octopus_hug wrote. "How panicked should I be? Do I need to tell a flight crew member?

    Holy shit, redditors are a special breed. Yes, you should probably tell someone.

    I should go and find the comment.

  • arefx@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    What the fuck is going on at Boeing? Are they cutting that many corners?

    • TheRealKuni@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      This occurred on a 29 year old plane. This is almost certainly just a one-off issue. Unless it starts happening frequently with other 757s, it’s nothing to be overly concerned about. And in that case, the NTSB would figure out why it’s happening and issue a directive.

      Planes are designed on a “Swiss cheese” model. Swiss cheese (as Americans call any variety resembling Emmental) is full of holes, but you can’t usually see all the way through a block of it. On a plane, something might fail and you can’t always prevent that, but you can make sure that there is enough redundancy that if something does go wrong you’re still covered. For something to cause a plane to crash, the “holes” have to line up so something could pass all the way through the “cheese.”

    • pulaskiwasright@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      I wish the article said how old the plane is. A lot of Boeing jets are 50+ years old and at that point, you have to blame the airline. But this article doesn’t say.

      • diffusive@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        At least in Europe, passengers jets are new because more fuel efficient at the “normal” speed. These old jets are then transformed in cargo where they go very slow so fuel efficiency goes up by other means (and the old jet is way cheaper).

        This was a passenger plane so i doubt it was anywhere close to 50 years old

      • PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocksB
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        9 months ago

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    • supercriticalcheese@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Nothing for this case at least.

      It’s completely unrelated to Boeing per se. Likely a maintenance issue, maybe repair done wrong.

    • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Holy cow. My sisters VW Beetle did this once, too. It was quite fresh out of inspection/repair, and whatever those guys did to the motor, they forgot to pull the screws tight again…

  • ctkatz@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    the last time I was on an airplane was december 31, 2000.

    nothing since that time has encouraged me to break that boycott.

      • gsfraley@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I was about to say. There’s a million concerns over environmental and economic effects (that I’ll own up to ignoring when visiting family or exploring), but safety is still wayyy down the list. The statistic about being 20x more likely to die in a car crash on the way to the airport than the flight itself still holds very firmly true (and I’m being SUPER conservative about those numbers in case recent events tilt it, it’s still a ~800x per-mile ratio).

        • Stache_@lemmy.ml
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          9 months ago

          Yeah I agree, despite all the recent events, I’m still not worried at all about flying. The number of car crash complications I watch on YouTube make me extra cautious while driving, but I’ve never felt in danger while flying, even in heavy turbulence

  • unphazed@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    So with airlines needing bailouts, price gouging, and cost cutting affecting safety, maybe bring back the CAB era laws?

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    9 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    BOSTON - A United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Boston was diverted to Denver on Monday because of an issue with the plane’s wing - and a worried passenger on board captured the apparent problem on video.

    “Just about to land in Denver with the wing coming apart on the plane,” Kevin Clarke says in a video shared with CBS News.

    Clarke said the wing issue became apparent after takeoff from San Francisco.

    The passengers were put on a different plane and landed in Boston early Tuesday morning.

    Boeing has been under scrutiny since a door panel on a different kind of aircraft, a 737 Max 9, blew off during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.

    Earlier this month, the head of the FAA pledged to use more people to monitor aircraft manufacturing and hold Boeing accountable for any safety rule violations.


    The original article contains 286 words, the summary contains 143 words. Saved 50%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!