United Airlines has blamed Boeing for a $200m (£161m) hit to its earnings in the first three months of this year.
The carrier was forced to ground its Boeing 737 MAX 9 fleet for three weeks after a mid-air cabin blowout on an Alaska Airlines flight in January.
United said that pushed it to a pre-tax loss of $164m for the first quarter.
Was the door plug issue all of Boeing’s fault though? The airline doesn’t have any inspectors itself?
Boeing wrote the service manuals and maintainance schedule. If the airline was supposed to do a test to catch the mistake but didn’t, boeing would mention it.
A door plug is part of the fuselage, and it is hidden behind wall panels. An airline isn’t expected to disassemble the entire interior to check the structure upon taking delivery of the plane.
The pressure fault the plane had before the blowout wouldn’t have lead to a check of the door plug even if it had gotten the service before the blowout.
There are like a million bolts on a plane, and not all are easily accessed or listed as things to check on regular maintenance. It sounds like these were not easily accessible.or seen and not something that would be regularly checked.
Like how a lot of bolts on cars and trains and aubways are not readily accessible or checked before the vehicle is put into seevice becsuse it is assumed that the factory’s quality control took care of them.
If you bought a car and the door just fell off while you were driving to work one day, would it be your fault for not checking the bolts?
It is much easier to check the bolts on your car door than the bolts on a door plug. They’re not hidden behind a wall like the door plug bolts.
On the other hand, airplanes come with much stricter maintenance schedules. You don’t have to replace the engine of your car every 500 hours, you might need to in an airplane.
The question is what is in the service manual. It might look unreasonable, but it’s part of the deal when buying a plane. If a competitor makes a plane that needs less maintenance, airlines will buy more of that plane.