Hence my comment. The A340, A380, and now 747 are all OOP and Falcon is only exec-jet sized. Looks like except for the odd 747, most world leaders use twinjets, but Air Force One has some additional duties that other head of states transports don't.
and those duties will be done by something else, probably made in Europe or China, when they run out of spares to keep the current Airforce One functional.
But y'know what? the guys who made the decision on Boeing's side? they're still going to get their bonuses, even though they screwed up and lost the chance to BID on that contract.
THAT is the kind of mess that SHOULD be getting executives shown the door, with a boot to the ass to make sure they leave.
The current mess w/rt the 737 Max has a lot to do with execs focusing more on irrelevancies than on the core business, and passing that shifted priority down through the layers of bureaucratic management to the shop floor, because that mess? it's multilayered and multileveled.
Tag gets written, TAg turns into NCR, Mechanic starts working the NCR, Mechanic gets interrupted, QA buys off some of the work, but not all of it, because it ain't all finished.
Plane moves a position, nobody followed up. Now, the Mechanic didn't because it's factory work and if it's important, someone on the next shift or past that usually gets assigned to finish it. The QA doesn't for the same reason, but the guys in the next position? the ones getting an OK to close in that area? they didn't even CHECK, and neither did the QA in that area, or the Customer Representative, so this open paper saying "Hey y'all the envelope's compromised" gets forgotten about through Interiors, paint shop, Delivery center, and the FAA guy who's supposed to review the paperwork before the airplane gets its registry number and is legal to fly.
Because that's the procedure that's existed since the 1930s, Final delivery gets a paperwork review from both the Customer, and the FAA, before the plane can be delivered to load passengers.
so how many failures is that? It's a LOT of failures.
as reported in the news weeks ago, they figured out the cause
because the rework document was still incomplete.That means Alaska Airlines's rep didn't review the paper on the plane, neither did the FAA guy whose job is to issue the registry certification, but those guys shouldn't HAVE TO, and that's where you get into the internal problems with optimistic scheduling and overlooking details to 'make delivery'.
What was driving that? remember a couple planes going all nose-down and crash with full passenger loads because someone in the executive suite decided to make having three sensors instead of one an expensive option on a software that requires two-to-one comparison parity?
iirc, one of those was Lion Air?
Grounded the Max fleet for a couple years right during Covid?
yeah.
The people who made that call, got their bonuses despite making a choice that killed people. They're not the shareholders, they get their bonuses from their peers at corporate HQ.
where do THOSE guys get it? from a Board of Directors that doesn't include a single engineer or aviation professional, but does include several hedge-fund managers and lobbyists.
You know, people who know 'Tech is money' but don't know how or why it works.
They make us take an annual ethics course that mostly focuses on actions none of hte people I work with, will ever be in a position to do. Nobody is ever going to bribe a guy who beats metal into airplane parts (or shapes) over a procurement contract, I'm never going to be at risk of overcharging the company on a business trip. (not even if I get into AOG), I will never have the ability to hire a relative who is unqualified, because I don't have access to that level.
Why do we have those classes? because executives have been caught doing all those things. They act unethically, we get to take a class telling us why it's wrong.
OTOH, falsifying a rework document, doing unauthorized rework or modifications, claiming to have done a process and not doing it? those come with ACTUAL LEGAL CONSEQUENCES. Not just 'fired' but "Hello mister federal marshall please don't break my wrists as you arrest me".
See, that production paperwork? and the rework documents? those are LEGAL documents. You put your stamp on it and it wasn't done, they can toss your ass in LEAVENWORTH.
The prison, in Kansas, not the charming german-theme tourist town with the cool Octoberfest in Washington.
so, y'know, multiple failures and there's a good chance that if DoJ wanted to, people would be under arrest, under indictment, and facing a judge over this, but it won't be the guy who didn't claim the work was finished, at least, if anything happens at all beyond some fines and embarrassment.
