TOKYO: A domestic flight of Japan's All Nippon Airways returned to its departure airport on Saturday (Jan 13) after a crack was found on the cockpit window of the Boeing 737-800 aircraft midair, a…
TOKYO: A domestic flight of Japan's All Nippon Airways returned to its departure airport on Saturday (Jan 13) after a crack was found on the cockpit window of the Boeing 737-800 aircraft midair, a spokesperson for the airline said.
Flight 1182 was en route to Toyama airport but headed back to the Sapporo-New Chitose airport after the crack was found on the outermost of four layers of windows surrounding the cockpit, the spokesperson said, adding there were no injuries reported among the 59 passengers and six crew.
The aircraft was not one of Boeing's 737 MAX 9 airplanes. These have been in the spotlight after a cabin panel broke off a new Alaska Airlines jet in mid-air last week.
"The crack was not something that affected the flight's control or pressurisation," the ANA spokesperson said.
The United States aviation regulator on Friday extended the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplanes indefinitely for new safety checks and announced it will tighten oversight of Boeing itself.
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The plane in question was JA56AN [0], which according to PlaneSpotters.net was delivered in June 2009 [1]. Forbes [2] indicates that the service life of a fight deck window is ten years (it's not clear if that applies to the windshield as well as passenger windows)—if that's accurate, it's likely that this is completely unrelated to Boeing's significant manufacturing problems lately. Unfortunately for Boeing it doesn't matter, anything involving a 737 will get news coverage right now.
[0] https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/nh1182
[1] https://www.planespotters.net/airframe/boeing-737-800-ja56an...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisagarcia/2018/05/19/airplan...
Boeing made a business decision to brand a new model as a "737". They wanted to trade of the reputation of the 737. Instead they tarnished it.
Branding didn't really matter. The MAX had to be a 737 for certification and crew training.
Boeing cut corners during development, MCAS. And it seems that they are cutting corners as well in manufacturing, supplier management and quality insurance.
There is nothing to funny about any of that.
By the_mitsuhiko 2024-01-1316:294 reply > The MAX had to be a 737 for certification and crew training.
I don't believe that this is correct. They could have called it anything, it's the type rating that matters.
By seanmcdirmid 2024-01-1320:071 reply Boeing was trying to piggy back on existing 737 certification. If they certified it as a new plane, the certification would be more extensive and the pilot training would be different (which could have been a better route given the size of the engines they installed on it).
No, it is a variant of the 737 so using the certification is correct. They weren’t trying to avoid additional certification, it just wasn’t required as it’s a variation of an existing type
By seanmcdirmid 2024-01-145:30 It is definitely a variant of the 737, but tacking on those extra large radius engines that the original airframe wasn't designed for and 737 pilots weren’t trained for virtually made it into a new plane.
By onetimeuse92304 2024-01-1318:055 reply That's absolutely not true. 737 MAX IS 737, lengthened. It is not a completely new plane, it is not a plane that just accidentally or by design looks like 737. It IS 737, with slightly different behaviour because of the fact it is lengthened and it has engines moved.
And the story of the MCAS is that Boeing needed this system to make 737 MAX to behave in entire envelope. But introducing new major system would require re-certifying pilots so the hid the fact, downplayed importance of it.
By Dylan16807 2024-01-1319:25 > 737 MAX IS 737, lengthened.
That wasn't under dispute. The question you responded to is whether they had to use the 737 brand.
And personally, I think that once you lengthen it and move the engine, it would not be weird at all to give it a different number. Even just 738 would give it better distinction than "MAX".
By Retric 2024-01-1318:39 The point is they could have called it “Blueberry” instead of “737 MAX” and have it still share the same type rating as the 737.
Which is perfectly reasonable as changing the branding alone isn’t particularly meaningful from a safety, airworthiness, or training perspective.
By throwaheyy 2024-01-140:37 No, what parent said is true: they could have changed the model number if they so chose to, and kept the same type rating. The 757 and 767 have the same type rating for example.
Whether they call it 737, 737 Max, 73Seven, 838 or whatever else is just marketing and has no bearing on keeping training compatibility. Only the type rating matters for that.
By zirgs 2024-01-1321:49 > But introducing new major system would require re-certifying pilots so the hid the fact, downplayed importance of it.
Is it typical to hide critical systems from pilots in the aviation industry? Or is only Boeing doing that?
By nearlyepic 2024-01-1318:33 You're right on. For example, the 757 and 767 share a common type rating.
By beowulfey 2024-01-1316:46 they kept the 737 branding to indicate backwards compatibility with existing jetways so airlines wouldn't need to upgrade other equipment.
Further, they allowed the old planes to tarnish the reputation of the new ones. If they had made of completely different brand name, then a 10-year-old 737 wouldn't get mixed up with a new plane.
By seanmcdirmid 2024-01-1320:09 But its more like the opposite: the new MAX planes are tarnishing the reputation of the older ones. This one incident being a more standard problem that hasn't gotten much attention in the past.
By mihaaly 2024-01-1316:04 True. I augmented the 737-800 with MAX in my head incorrectly reading the title first, corrected later on reading the article, will need to work on erasing this story from the MAX list in my head.
They wanted to trade on the wake of the 737 so badly they ruined it big for the generic audience (those paying for it by buying tickets).
I almost said they wish they did not use 737 and make a new aircraft instead but of course they give no f, not at all, top managers care about the coming year or two only, the top salary and bonuses, thats it, the rest could sink or die for them. They will go on elsewhere ruining something completely else for the rest of us. Prosper and thrive regardless of the wreck caused and others will let it without comparable consequences.
By steve1977 2024-01-1320:14 I think the problem was rather that they did not actually develop a new model, but instead pimped their existing one to compete with Airbus neo variants.
By smdyc1 2024-01-1318:54 Window cracking isn't uncommon. Cockpit windows are typically made of layers of acrylic glass sandwiched together, with heating elements in the middle. They are exposed to incredible forces, the forward airflow on the outside, positive pressure from the inside, cold on the outside and warmer on the inside, then there's the internal temp when the anti icing elements are on. And despite all of this, they're so strong that a crack can be discovered on one side and the aircraft can still be safely landed.
By notahacker 2024-01-1318:141 reply Cockpit windows are also manufactured by a third party specialist glass company (i.e. PPG Aerospace, not Boeing), cost about the same as a new car precisely because they get subject to the sort of stress that is inclined to break a layer, and subject to regular inspection. Plus in this case it appears the other layers of the window did their job and avoided anything more than an annoyingly expensive but routine return to base.
So in summary, Boeings break down like MacDonnells[1], but it’s not Boeing’s fault, it’s the fault of the entire ecosystem, but not Boeing, just everyone involved with Boeing, we get it. Entire denial of ownership of problems should be patented as a business model. So that no other manufacturer can copy it for 20 years.
[1] McDonnell planes were known for falling apart, doors flying in the air, lengthened planes which didn’t adapt the airframe for the new length, or just pieces falling off. Remember the Concorde getting pierced in the fuel tanks by a metal frame dropped on the airstrip by the previous plane and crashing into a hotel? Yup, it was a piece that fell off a McDonnell.
By lolinder 2024-01-1319:14 Their point is that cracked windshields are neither uncommon nor (typically) dangerous. They happen regularly across all manufacturers and have redundancy in place to make sure they don't hurt anyone.
Boeing has a lot of problems, more so than other manufacturers, but this isn't a good example.
By notahacker 2024-01-1320:12 no, in summary, airframers all contract out their windshields to the same few specialists, whose replacements are routinely retrofitted without OEM involvement, and cracks developing in a windshield designed to be resilient to a crack developing in one of the layers is not an unexpected phenomenon.
(And fwiw the bit that fell off the DC-10 that the unlawfully overloaded Concorde ran over was an engine part on a GE engine incorrectly retrofitted [twice] by Bedek and Continental respectively shortly before it detached, so it'd be difficult to imagine anything that had less to do with the half of the airframe OEM that didn't design the the non-engine parts that didn't fall off over quarter of a century earlier. Might as well get angry at Bill Gates for air traffic control failures)
By justinclift 2024-01-155:53 Hadn't heard of that incident before, so looked it up:
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/flaming-concorde...
Everyone on board died. Damn. :(
By FartyMcFarter 2024-01-1316:021 reply I don't understand why the service life is relevant here, unless ANA wasn't maintaining their planes properly which I doubt is the case given the reputation of this airline.
I included it because in theory it shows that the windshield was either overdue for replacement or it wasn't an original windshield, so it's not evidence of failure on Boeing's part in the initial manufacture of the plane.
Admittedly, I don't know much about how maintenance works for these planes, so there could be something I'm missing.
By jacquesm 2024-01-1316:39 I'd wait with any judgment until the inevitable investigation has run its course because there are just as many ways in which it could be a Boeing issue as there are ways in which it can't. Anything specific about this failure is right now mostly speculation. Also, and maybe surprisingly to some, cracked cockpit windows are not a big deal as long as they stay in place until the landing because they are multi-layered and ridiculously strong to begin with.
By JumpCrisscross 2024-01-1316:57 > or it wasn't an original windshield
Put another way, it’s a recently-fabricated windshield. Which could be read as it being less resilient than the original.
That’s not how I’m reading it, absent further information. L
By 35mm 2024-01-1320:25 It sometimes feels dishonest whenever an event is published in the news without having the typical frequency of occurrence.
I would imagine the windshield is a recently manufactured replacement rather than the original article. There was a more recent 787 that suffered from a cracked windshield last December in London too.
The thing that really surprises me is that the regulatory bodies arent catching this stuff either, safety standards are not mutable.
By lolinder 2024-01-1317:35 It also happened in April 2022 on a Bombardier CRJ-700 [0] and in October 2020 on an Airbus A319 [1]. After the 2022 incident the local newspaper reported that it had happened more than three dozen times in the previous five years. If Boeing is disproportionately represented in those stats that's one thing, but so far I don't see any reason to believe they are.
[0] https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article260551697.html
[1] https://thepointsguy.com/news/smashed-windshield-how-pilots-...
> if that's accurate, it's likely that this is completely unrelated to Boeing's significant manufacturing problems lately.
I'm not sure how "recent" lately is referring to here, but it seems Boeing have had engineering/manufacturing issues for quite some time.
About the 787 Dreamliner:
> Early 787 operations encountered several problems caused mainly by its lithium-ion batteries, which culminated in fires onboard some aircraft. In January 2013, the U.S. FAA grounded all 787s until it approved the revised battery design in April 2013. Significant quality control issues from 2019 onwards caused a production slowdown and, from January 2021 until August 2022, an almost total cessation of deliveries.
Maybe it's just finally catching up with them?
By hx8 2024-01-1317:43 > Boeing moved its corporate headquarters [there] in 2001 when they opted to leave Seattle for Chicago.
It's been going downhill since management physical separated itself from engineering/production.
This is one of those stories that wouldn't be noticed if not for the attention on anything Boeing related right now. Instead it's near the top of the front-page.
This hyper selective attention is very bad. It leads to all kinds of wrong inference about the background frequency of events, because suddenly when under the microscope we notice all kinds of things that would have previously gone unnoticed.
> This hyper selective attention is very bad.
> because suddenly when under the microscope we notice all kinds of things that would have previously gone unnoticed.
They knew that was a risk when they started cutting corners. Now they are paying the price. Can't say I feel for them. It's a nice deterrent.
In the context of just Boeing, that makes sense.
In the broader 'news' context, it's bad, because there are a crapton of things that really aren't as significant as they are made out to be to the layman. It's not a firehose we should be drinking from, instead, the most significant things are supposed to be selected by specialists so we have enough space in our heads to focus on things we choose to instead of just whatever happens to be getting firehosed at us.
(you can probably elaborate the 'selected by specialists' with complete departments or even organisations that specialise in various things - the world is much too big and made of too many pieces for just some person or small team to do all the 'is this thing important' work for everything, and definitely not in a single outlet)
We don’t in fact drink from the firehose. There are actually specialists who select what stories we are exposed to. The simple fact is that their incentives of politics and profits don’t align with yours of general knowledge and a peaceful learned population, and what we see today is the end result of these incentives.
By sdenton4 2024-01-1315:40 Specialists who carefully wield their HN up votes to make sure you see stories like this one...
By tiahura 2024-01-1319:07 Yep.
Another example is the stranger kidnapping scare of the ‘80s.
There’s an unhealthy paradox at work: The rarer a highly emotional event occurs, the more media attention attention it gets. The more media attention something gets, the more people think it’s actually common.
Another example is police killing unarmed black men.
Trying explaining to someone that something is in the news because it’s rare is futile.
By genocidicbunny 2024-01-1314:505 reply On the other hand, the hyper focus on Boeing might result in some actual change instead of more of the same as before. Perhaps a little of the stick to contrast with the carrot?
By williamcotton 2024-01-1314:563 reply I wholeheartedly agree. They need to get an aerospace engineer back at CEO and not some MBA optimizing for quarterly reports.
People are absolutely dying because of an incoherent understanding of the value chain. The decision to outsource may please Wall Street for three months but it certainly hurts the brand in the long term. Boeing is in the business of R&D and production. That’s their value add. Fuck the investors, they’re literally killing people!
By rpeden 2024-01-1315:34 The previous CEO was an aerospace engineer. As was the CEO who moved the company's headquarters from Seattle to Chicago. So I'm not sure an engineering background is any guarantee they'll do better.
But perhaps the company's recent problems will give an engineering-minded CEO a little more leverage to steer the company back toward engineering excellence, even in the face of pressure from the board and shareholders.
> Fuck the investors, they're literally killing people
epitaph of the new century. from water that makes your teeth black to illegal drug trials in poor countries. corporations are amoral by design and we have to assume they will do literally anything to make a buck.
By agumonkey 2024-01-1315:38 It's a toxic relationship. "I fund you so I decide whether you matter or not"
By NoZebra120vClip 2024-01-1316:28 Fluoride is known to discolour teeth; also, inactive dental caries will turn dark, and most dentists will jump at the opportunity to drill that shit out.
By chmod775 2024-01-1315:36 Tried to google it and found something about tap water with high iron content.
By dontupvoteme 2024-01-1316:56 Perhaps the government should create a fund which guarantees a hefty reward for whistleblowers on aviation companies/airlines, enough that they don't need to fear for their own livelihood and can effectively retire without loss of income if they expose something significant.
Apparently AF261 had a whistleblower who had to sue in court for damages. That's not correct, that's not how this should be done.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/faa-increase-oversight-...
> Jan. 12, 2024, 8:07 AM CST / Updated Jan. 12, 2024, 8:54 PM CST
> The Federal Aviation Administration will increase its oversight of Boeing production and manufacturing, the agency said Friday, one day after announcing it had opened an investigation.
> The FAA says it will audit Boeing's 737 Max 9 production line and its suppliers "to evaluate Boeing’s compliance with its approved quality procedures."
> The results of the initial audit will determine whether additional audits are needed, the agency said.
> "It is time to re-examine the delegation of authority and assess any associated safety risks," FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said in a statement.
> ...
The linked statement: https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/faa-increasing-oversight-boeing...
By rainsford 2024-01-1317:12 Maybe, but if the perception is that they're going to get the stick no matter what they do, I'm not sure that creates much pressure or incentive to do the actually do the right thing.
Either way, I don't think it's a net positive for us to choose to be less correctly informed about an issue or encourage the same in others, even if it's in pursuit of an otherwise worthwhile goal.
By stjohnswarts 2024-01-147:34 yeah anything to get them to start being an engineering company again instead of a "let's squeeze all we can out of this profit center and not listen to our engineers"
You’re fighting human nature if you think people aren’t going to be hyper attentive to things like this after the (latest) Max 9 incident. Also, it is not in any way “very bad.” In fact, it’s very good. Plane makers should believe one faulty decision could completely ruin them, that’s how they should be attacking any engineering problems related to putting people in the air. Clearly Boeing’s leadership is ok with putting profits before safety, they need to be shown there is no profit without extremely tight safety margins.
By ReptileMan 2024-01-1315:471 reply >Plane makers should believe one faulty decision could completely ruin them
In that case nothing will ever be done, improved or innovated. The optimal is close, but greater than zero on faulty decisions.
By lxgr 2024-01-1316:10 Inaction/no decision is a decision too, although that idea is often a surprisingly hard sell in the media.
From a 2022 report, trivially searched-for on Google:
> According to the Federal Aviation Administration, more than three dozen instances of cracked windshields have been reported by airlines over the past five years.
By jbverschoor 2024-01-1315:355 reply https://avherald.com/h?search_term=cracked+windshield&opt=1&...
Most of them are Boeing it seems:
14x Airbus 35x Boeing 5x Bombardier 3x EmbraerBy kube-system 2024-01-1315:50 And until last year, most of the planes in the sky were also Boeing. And the Boeing planes in the sky, on average, are older.
By discordance 2024-01-1315:492 reply For a fair comparison, this should be measured against flight hours per manufacturer
By krallja 2024-01-1316:13 Takeoff/landing cycles, actually. Cruising at high altitude is much less rough on the airframe (including windows) than the strains that happen when changing altitude.
By jbverschoor 2024-01-1317:43 A quick search gave me 12K vs 10K planes. I couldn't find the actual hours or number of flights
By avereveard 2024-01-1318:16 Blatantly Overlooked Engineering Inadequacies, Now Grounded
By JimBlackwood 2024-01-1315:45 Does Boeing also have more plans in service and/or more flights?
By stjohnswarts 2024-01-147:36 those don't mean much with out at least a "out of X planes from manufacturer Y"
By scrlk 2024-01-1314:56 The most infamous incident with a cockpit window is probably British Airways Flight 5390. An incorrectly installed window blew out, causing one of the pilots to be partially ejected.
By sseagull 2024-01-1314:58 Here's a link to an Aviation Herald search for "windshield crack". Looks like a lot of bird and hail, but also a fair number of them just cracking.
https://avherald.com/h?search_term=windshield+crack&opt=0&do...
There are lots of Boeing on there, but unsure what the ratio of Boeing to Airbus there are in service. Certainly some Airbus on there as well.
By a12k 2024-01-1314:50 This article from 2014, predating all of Boeing's recent failures, claims it is a regular occurrence and is also not always reported because it's a relatively minor thing to happen:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140507001219-90103575-crack...
By jjulius 2024-01-1314:50 A cursory Google suggests that it is not an uncommon occurrence.
By brunohaid 2024-01-1314:51 ~ weekly, globally.
By hcs 2024-01-1314:48 Since this involves a window I can't help but think of the windshield pitting epidemic,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_windshield_pitting_epi...
By dontupvoteme 2024-01-1316:39 Even if it normally wouldn't be news, given the shitshow that the MAX is and how they're now trying to get MAX-10 certified, this might be a case of the media being a functionally broken clock.
The FAA should have hell to pay if they certify it and this will put pressure on them, as at the end of the day they answer to the American public, even if boeing only answers to shareholders.
By callalex 2024-01-1318:51 Kinda like how every train derailment was evidence of a failed society a few months ago and now nobody cares again.
By mmaunder 2024-01-1315:10 Agreed this is a nothingburger but the side effect of having a spotlight on Boeing is helpful. There are fundamental changes needed at Boeing to move the finance guys off the helm and move engineering back into leadership roles.
AS1218 is probably not the cause of extra attention to airplanes _in Japan_.
They had arguably much worse events on Jan 2 (landing JAL516 A350 crashed into a earthquake relief Coast Guard DC-8 on landing; killed 5, and both aircraft caught fire).
By eterm 2024-01-1315:05 It's the cause of extra attention of "Hacker news" to this story, which otherwise wouldn't be paid much attention outside of regional news.
Instead right now it's the #1 story on HN.
By adastra22 2024-01-1315:05 Sure but that had nothing to do with the intrinsic safety engineering of either plane.
By hindsightbias 2024-01-1317:38 I measure societies by what they’re hysterical about. It’s the best measurement of character there is imo.
By mihaaly 2024-01-1316:10 They wanted to trade on the hyper selective attention and binding new and old very tightly together, but this thing has double edge, everyone knows it, they must eat what they cooked! They wanted the good ignoring the bad in their deliberate half blindness.
By bdcravens 2024-01-1317:07 True, but we see the same cycle frequently. Apple keyboards, Teslas and FSD, Apple antennas, Samsung phones catching fire, etc, all created an environment where tangential stories received elevated attention.
By Cacti 2024-01-1315:56 Every single Boeing story here is filled with comments from Seattle tech people thinking they know something special about Seattle aerospace, but they don’t, and they’re completely unaware of this.
Mostly it’s people repeating their parents stories and they’ve never bothered to fact check them, or it’s people who have never like Boeing doing military aircraft and simply shit on them for that.
It has zero impact though outside of extending the ignorance of HN readers and promoting fear, uncertainty, and doubt. No one doing aerospace cares what HN thinks or even knows about HN for that matter.
By lessbergstein 2024-01-1315:27 [dead]
By nswest23 2024-01-1315:22 Covid?
By PedroBatista 2024-01-1315:44 Funny, because the broad non-attention is what lead us to the situation we are in now.
It's a weird point to make. Does Boeing need your defense? In real life this is what happens. Bad students. Repeat offenders. Criminals. Neverdowellers. Their actions get spot lit and they're put under a microscope
I don't see how making a stink over Boeing's constant little problems isn't a tiny cosmic balancing act against their decades of negligence.
I'm not defending Boeing. I've said elsewhere I wouldn't fly on a max.
I'm attacking the way in which the media (and audience, the media is mostly just chasing ratings) gets obsessed about a topic to the exclusion of other stories, only to dramatically flip-flop around and completely dump a topic once it's bored of it.
By whynotmaybe 2024-01-1315:151 reply Are you new here? (Jokingly...)
I don't know what percentage of HN is about AI & LLM in the past few months but it's like nothing else important is happening in the ICT world.
It’s not just HN, you all seem to be upset with basic human nature here. Something happens, and then you notice related events more often because they feel more salient. You might as well be upset that people recognize patterns, it’s just part of how people are wired.
By tiahura 2024-01-1319:15 Some of us choose HN to receive our preciously minuscule free time on because we expect it to be of a higher signal to noise ratio than average.
By tekla 2024-01-1314:53 Hysteria is hysteria.
This is how journalism and social media have been working in the Internet Age: keep bombarding people with the topic du jour because it sells (or it is easy HN karma), and then move onto the new thing.
For many, like OP, Hacker News is the place to post random news that have nothing to do with computers or hacking. (I blame HN's vague and simplistic guidelines that allow "anything that our users might find interesting")
By JKCalhoun 2024-01-1315:22 > Hacker News is the place to post random news that have nothing to do with computers or hacking.
Thankfully. If HN was just posts about Docker or Web stacks I would have left a long time ago.
By supernova87a 2024-01-1315:012 reply "...Flight 1182 was en route to Toyama airport but headed back to the Sapporo-New Chitose airport after the crack was found on the outermost of four layers of windows surrounding the cockpit, the spokesperson said..."
Hopefully people can tell routine maintenance issues from newsworthy improper design and implementation / manufacturing problems.
By rootusrootus 2024-01-1315:38 > Hopefully people can tell routine maintenance issues from newsworthy improper design and implementation / manufacturing problems.
100 upvotes and counting. There's your answer.
By alpaca128 2024-01-1320:02 No reason to pretend like HN is some special noteworthy kind of echo chamber. You won't find any large online community where the majority reads more than the headline.
