flight safety detectives episode 200 - United airlines finds loose bolts on 737 max 9 aircraft

United Airlines has reported loose bolts on five of their 737 MAX 9 aircraft plug doors. This is the latest in the unfolding look at what happened in the incident involving Alaska Airlines Flight 1282.

John and Greg use insights from their decades of experience inside NTSB and other aviation safety incident investigations to explain the latest developments. They cover the information that has been released so far and what is to come.

John goes through the steps that aircraft mechanics would have used to address earlier reports of pressurization warnings on this specific aircraft. Mechanics likely would have checked the pressurization system and focused on the hardware. “It wasn’t quite there yet” to escalate to pressurizing the plane to check for leaks.
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John and Greg return to earlier discussions of the status of quality inspections at Boeing. The internal safety review that has been reported isn’t the right step to fix safety and quality issues. This latest black eye makes it clear that is time to address manufacturing process issues and “get some good planes out the door.”

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