The future of flying

I'm starting to save now so I can afford to buy a ticket on a private jet. I'm assuming qualified technicians are attending to those planes and I figure it's worth the extra money.
 
A Boeing 763 cargo plane was forced to make a 'belly landing' at Istanbul Airport after its front landing gear malfunctioned. The FedEx freight plane was on the final leg of its Paris to Istanbul route when the pilots notified the Istanbul Airport control tower to request the emergency landing.

 
Usually these Boeing DEI failures would happen once a week or every couple of days, now there are multiple within a 24 hour span!

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Boeing 737 Crashes After Failed Takeoff At African Airport​



Boeing's PR team must be highly frustrated or possibly even overwhelmed, as yet another Boeing plane has experienced a mishap in the last 24 hours.
Daily Mail reports that a Boeing 737, operated by Senegalese carrier Transair, crashed after a failed takeoff attempt, sending the plane skidding off the runway at Blaise Diagne International Airport in Senegal.

The aviation news account FL360aero posted images of the wreckage on X.

"A Transair Boeing 737-38J aircraft (6V-AJE) received substantial damage after it did a Runway excursion at Blaise Diagne International Airport (AIBD) on Thursday, 9 May 2024 at around 1 am," FL360aero said.

Local media The Dakar Journal posted footage on X of the 737 on fire (this footage has yet to be confirmed).
"A Transair plane crashes after leaving the runway, 10 injured including a pilot," the X account said, which was translated by Google.

One day before, a Boeing 767 cargo plane operated by FedEx crash-landed at an airport in Turkey after a nose landing gear failure.

These two crashes, occurring within a day or so, have added to Boeing's mounting problems. The company is currently under intense scrutiny by the US federal government over the quality control of its aircraft.
 
Samseau said:
Nowadays when buying a ticket one must also check to see what kind of plane is being used.
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You should also check out the actual company flying the plane. Often when you buy a ticket from a major corporation like "Delta" or "American" you are actually flying on a totally different company. Some of these "airlines" use dozens of smaller companies which have their branding painted on the plane, but otherwise are totally unrelated to the company you bought the ticket from. These smaller companies exist because they do things cheaper than the main carriers (Delta / American / United) do.

Frontline did a big story on one called Flying Cheap about a second rate carrier Continental used. Passengers buying a ticket from Continental generally had no idea they were actually flying "Colgan Air." The plane crashed and all 49 souls on board were killed. The plane was a fairly safe model, but it crashed due to errors made by the pilot.

(Frontline is really top notch, not sure if they have declined recently but very good investigative journalism).


You can generally look in the fine print and see "Delta Connection flight operated by Shabby Air, Inc" on your ticket. The frontline doc tells you how you can then research that fake carrier and see what their safety record is.

I used to work in this industry, and the way these small companies operate, they are designed to have problems (one of the most egregious, is that the crew does not get paid until the plane takes off, so that if there is some iffy / risky weather, and they sit at the airport for 2 hours and then go home, they get NO MONEY. Whereas if they risk it and fly anyway, to get their rightfully due paycheck, the plane may be at risk of crashing. Really scary stuff. I avoid the 737 Max and some of the no name carriers, but due to the places I'm traveling too, it's hard.

You are actually worse off than flying a supposed "third world country's" airline in a lot of these cases, as something like Avianca of Colombia flies all of Avianca's flights and will be better trained and maintained, and with better rules, than something like Colgan Air.

before joining Colgan, the pilot failed three "check rides", including some at Gulfstream International's training program, and "people close to the investigation" suggested that he might not have been adequately trained to respond to the emergency. Investigators examined possible crew fatigue, as the captain appeared to have been at the Newark airport overnight prior to the day of the 21:18 departure of the accident flight. The first officer commuted from Seattle to Newark on an overnight flight.
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Rax Moscow said:
You should also check out the actual company flying the plane. Often when you buy a ticket from a major corporation like "Delta" or "American" you are actually flying on a totally different company. Some of these "airlines" use dozens of smaller companies which have their branding painted on the plane, but otherwise are totally unrelated to the company you bought the ticket from. These smaller companies exist because they do things cheaper than the main carriers (Delta / American / United) do.

Frontline did a big story on one called Flying Cheap about a second rate carrier Continental used. Passengers buying a ticket from Continental generally had no idea they were actually flying "Colgan Air." The plane crashed and all 49 souls on board were killed. The plane was a fairly safe model, but it crashed due to errors made by the pilot.

(Frontline is really top notch, not sure if they have declined recently but very good investigative journalism).


You can generally look in the fine print and see "Delta Connection flight operated by Shabby Air, Inc" on your ticket. The frontline doc tells you how you can then research that fake carrier and see what their safety record is.

I used to work in this industry, and the way these small companies operate, they are designed to have problems (one of the most egregious, is that the crew does not get paid until the plane takes off, so that if there is some iffy / risky weather, and they sit at the airport for 2 hours and then go home, they get NO MONEY. Whereas if they risk it and fly anyway, to get their rightfully due paycheck, the plane may be at risk of crashing. Really scary stuff. I avoid the 737 Max and some of the no name carriers, but due to the places I'm traveling too, it's hard.

You are actually worse off than flying a supposed "third world country's" airline in a lot of these cases, as something like Avianca of Colombia flies all of Avianca's flights and will be better trained and maintained, and with better rules, than something like Colgan Air.
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Excellent additional info. Which flight carriers do you recommend?

Still, if it's Boeing, I'm not going.
 
It's almost comical now, 3 days in a row....
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United Airlines Boeing 737 Makes Emergency Return To Japanese Airport After Wing Flap "Irregularity"​



Wednesday:

Thursday:

Good morning, readers. There has been another Boeing incident overnight. This news is particularly alarming for anyone flying domestically or internationally on a Boeing jet, especially given the two Boeing mishaps earlier this week.

Aviation news website Simply Flying reported a United Airlines Boeing 737-800 that departed from Fukuoka Airport in Japan earlier today experienced an "irregularity" with a wing flap(s).

UA166, which was taking off from Fukuoka Airport to Guam Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport, climbed to an altitude of 10,000 feet after takeoff, then leveled off and held a holding pattern. Around this time, pilots detected a wing flap(s) issue.

"Eventually, after holding for more than 30 minutes, the aircraft began its approach to FUK by descending and lining up on the airport's sole runway, runway 16/34, with the United Airlines aircraft landing at the aircraft on the former configuration," Simply Flying said.



Simply Flying, local media outlets nor officials provided additional information about the flap 'issue.'



What's important to understand here is that flaps are crucial for producing additional lift in takeoff and landing procedures. For the pilots out there, the flaps are critical for more lift on a 'normal' approach that provides reduced speed and controlled flight ahead of the round-out phase of landing. In other words, with full flaps deployed, a steep approach on landing means reduced speed and shorter runway distance is needed. A straight-line approach with no flaps deployed means higher speed and more runway distance required.



Given the brief aviation lesson about wing flaps, the 737-800 usually requires 6,500–7,000 feet for landing. Many calculations go into that, including weight and wind. Data shows the plane used the entire 9,186-foot runway, a possible indication of wing flap issues.



The good news is that the plane landed without an issue, and all 49 souls onboard were safe.

Another day, another issue with Boeing.
 
Is it possible that this used to happen all the time with Boeing planes and it's now just got a media spotlight on it?
 
While Boeing clearly has a lot of problems with quality, I think a lot of these problems are properly pinned on the airlines and their maintenance procedures.

I don't know how old the various planes were in these incidents, but I assume they weren't new. Planes can typically have a long useful life with many millions of flight miles, but this requires proper maintenance.

If a plane from one of these incidents is in the middle of its usual lifespan, and has been operated safely up to now, then I would think the problem was due to poor maintenance, and not due to a fault in the original manufacturing. For instance, if it is a 15 year old Boeing plane, I think Boeing was still pretty good 15 years ago.

I definitely question newer Boeing planes, especially the 737-800. On the other hand I know airline pilots who say all the 737-800 accidents were pilot error.

It seems like the whole industry is going downhill.
 
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Thomas More said:
While Boeing clearly has a lot of problems with quality, I think a lot of these problems are properly pinned on the airlines and their maintenance procedures.
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But isn't maintenance done only by Boeing certified personnel - who trains them, who checks the quality of their work, who grants the seal of approval to local workshops, who mades the spare parts ?
 
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TruckDriver9 said:
But isn't maintenance done only by Boeing certified personnel - who trains them, who checks the quality of their work, who grants the seal of approval to local workshops, who mades the spare parts ?
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That could be. I have the impression that it's still on the airline management to run a high quality maintenance department. Boeing can't do it for them. If the airline uses DEI hiring practices and the written maintenance procedures aren't followed, what can Boeing do?
 
Thomas More said:
While Boeing clearly has a lot of problems with quality, I think a lot of these problems are properly pinned on the airlines and their maintenance procedures.

I don't know how old the various planes were in these incidents, but I assume they weren't new. Planes can typically have a long useful life with many millions of flight miles, but this requires proper maintenance.

If a plane from one of these incidents is in the middle of its usual lifespan, and has been operated safely up to now, then I would think the problem was due to poor maintenance, and not due to a fault in the original manufacturing. For instance, if it is a 15 year old Boeing plane, I think Boeing was still pretty good 15 years ago.

I definitely question newer Boeing planes, especially the 737-800. On the other hand I know airline pilots who say all the 737-800 accidents were pilot error.

It seems like the whole industry is going downhill.
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So why aren't other airlines and other airplanes having these constant disasters?

"Muh maintaince" doesn't pass the smell test.
 
Samseau said:
Excellent additional info. Which flight carriers do you recommend?

Still, if it's Boeing, I'm not going.
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There used to be a link on the Frontline story that showed a website where you could search the safety record of the small subcarriers. I don't see it now but maybe if you watch the story you can see where they show you this. I tried searching the FAA website and it looks like they have purposely hidden the data (This is a trend: the US Census website became incredibly user unfriendly in 2020). Another thing about the subcarriers, they pay their pilots frighteningly little. A decade ago they were paying like $28,000 / year. For the pilot. (A major carrier pilot can easily earn 6 figures).

A good option is flying Southwest Air when possible, as 100% of their flights are Southwest flights. I have also started taking a ground shuttle or bus to a major airline hub like Atlanta or Charlotte (there are many bus and van services throughout the country that do this), where you are likely to get on a real major carrier jet (they typically use the subcarriers for smaller airports). You can often come out cheaper doing this than if you flew from your home airport. And if youre doing an international flight you can bring back liquor / liquids and avoid the TSA!

As for the question on the frequency of the Boeing problems, "Maybe this always happened" I wondered the same thing because it reminded me of how they tried a similar lie after the East Palestine Ohio toxic train crash (Oh yeah there's actually a thousand train derailments a year, you just never noticed them before). lol suuure

Also in my day we had equipment (plane) delays frequently but I NEVER experienced anything like wheels or doors falling off EVER, on ANY airline and I worked at a mid sized airport for years.
 
The Boeing disasters are daily.


A Boeing 737 carrying 85 people caught fire and skidded off a runway at Senegal's main airport, injuring 10 people including the pilot
“The pilot told us everything was under control and that we’re going to try to take off again,” he told the AP. “The second time, smoke started coming from one of the wings.”
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On Wednesday, space agency contractor ValveTech publicly called for the launch to be put on hold until the Starliner is deemed safe and warned of a potential disaster. According to media reports, a buzzing sound indicating the leaking valve was noticed by someone walking by the Starliner minutes before launch. This sound could indicate that the valve has passed its lifecycle.”

NASA needs to re-double safety checks and re-examine safety protocols to make sure the Starliner is safe before something catastrophic happens to the astronauts and to the people on the ground.”
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lol sounds like a random stranger caught a problem before the whole thing blew up.
 
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