Just heard a quick blurb on BBC that another panel fell off a Boeing mid-flight which landed in Oregon. No harm done… wasn’t noticed until after they landed. United Airlines.
I think it’s important for these stories to continue getting attention because there are Boeing patrons who think “they’ll fix that problem and get it sorted”. They seem to have a lot of loyalty as they proudly claim Boeing is safe to fly on.
Or maybe I should ban myself from posting about Boeing here. My rationale is that Boeing is extra harmful for the environment because amid their #greenwashing they are an #ALEC member who finances #climateDenial. And bashing ecocidal travel is fair game for a sustainable travel community. And I guess this community is low volume enough that it’s good to have a heartbeat of sorts to give a sign of life here.
update
I just heard Boeing still sells t-shirts that say “if it’s not Boeing, I’m not going”. Surely they must be having a hard time selling those now. Someone could probably make a fortune selling a modified version of that at airports with one of the “not”s striken (not).
So I’m against flying in the Max family of planes. The FAA or whoever absolutely need to re-certify that group of planes, they diverge too much from the original platform, and clearly have issues with the flight controls. Added to that are production woes in general, so new planes are questionable.
In this case, as with all the news this week, the issue seems to be with United Airlines’ maintenance. Planes have regular maintenance checks that range from mechanical observations of all plane systems to full teardown, inspection, and rebuild of the plane. If an airline is doing proper checks, parts should not be falling off of the plane
Stay away from United until they get their act together. It can be done. Alaska Airlines completely turned around after the 261 disaster. However, I doubt we’ll see any changes from United until people die
I don’t think it’s until people die- it’ll be until United takes the blame. Right now, everyone’s pointing at Boeing, and that lets United off the hook.
That said, I’m not even sure that will matter. I swore off United a decade ago when they repeatedly battered their paying customers, but that didn’t seem to be an issue for them.