Passenger sees Boeing 757-200 “wing coming apart” mid-air — United flight from San Francisco to Boston makes emergency landing in Denver

L4sBot@lemmy.worldmod to Technology@lemmy.world – 520 points – Passenger sees "wing coming apart" on United flight from San Francisco to Boston; flight forced to land in Denver
cbsnews.com

Passenger sees Boeing 757-200 “wing coming apart” mid-air — United flight from San Francisco to Boston makes emergency landing in Denver::A United Airlines flight to Boston was diverted to Denver because of an issue with the plane's wing.

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Damn, imagine working in the marketing department of Boeing.

"When it hasn't been your day, your week, your month, or even your year."

I'll be there for youuu

When the plane starts to stall

I'll be there for youuu

When the wing is no more

I'll be there for youuu

To state the claims are untruuu-uuue

So no one ever known a flight could've ended up this waaay

The starboard wing has broke

Cabin door's flying awaaay

You're out of hope, you lost your landing geeear

But our stocks are the lowest they've been so far this fiscal yeeeear, so

I've a job to doooo

Get prepared for that bull

Remind all the neeews

It's never happened before

I've a job to doooo

And I guess I'm pretty gooo-oood

Should I send this to Airbus marketing team ? 😂

Plot twist—they work for airbus.

I know a guy who works at Boeing

He says right now it's pretty rough due to recent events but things were finally cooling down

That was before this news broke

He's probably going to have a shitty day tomorrow with more visits from the FAA and other regulators

A believe there have been quite a few articles published with interviews from former Boeing execs with who were around when the company went from engineer ran to finance ran. One of them I remember the former executive said part of why they will continue to not trust Boeing is they are only grounding planes to solve one problem at a time after it's caused massive failure and not trying to engineer and solve all the problems they can so these failures stop happening mid flight.

You take the population of vehicles in the field (A) and multiple it by the probable rate of failure (B), then multiply the result by the average cost of an out-of-court settlement (C).

A times B times C equals X. This is what it will cost if we don't initiate a recall. If X is greater than the cost of a recall, we recall the cars and no one gets hurt. If X is less than the cost of a recall, then we don't recall.

I don’t feel bad for your friend. One bad day at work or 100+ people dying?

Didn't they cut all of those jobs recently? Wait. No. That was all their 900 QC door bolt retention confirmers that were 'unnecessary'

Repeat after me:

"Everything's fine. Nothing to see here. Move along."

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"Sitting right on the wing and the noise after reaching altitude was much louder than normal. I opened the window to see the wing looking like this," user octopus_hug wrote. "How panicked should I be? Do I need to tell a flight crew member?

Holy shit, redditors are a special breed. Yes, you should probably tell someone.

I should go and find the comment.

Now, all the AI are going to wonder how panicked they should be if their plane disassembled mid-flight

I saw the wing fall off a plane full of people but posted it for points instead of helping. AITA?

The right thing to do is to post it on X and @ the airline.

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What the fuck is going on at Boeing? Are they cutting that many corners?

This occurred on a 29 year old plane. This is almost certainly just a one-off issue. Unless it starts happening frequently with other 757s, it’s nothing to be overly concerned about. And in that case, the NTSB would figure out why it’s happening and issue a directive.

Planes are designed on a “Swiss cheese” model. Swiss cheese (as Americans call any variety resembling Emmental) is full of holes, but you can’t usually see all the way through a block of it. On a plane, something might fail and you can’t always prevent that, but you can make sure that there is enough redundancy that if something does go wrong you’re still covered. For something to cause a plane to crash, the “holes” have to line up so something could pass all the way through the “cheese.”

Very nice explanation of industry safety without getting too caught up in the details!

This "one-off" issue was spotted on dozens of 737s.

This "one-off" issue was spotted on dozens of 737s.

This issue with a damaged wing slat on this particular 29-year-old 757 was spotted on dozens of 737s? Do you have a source for that?

Unless you’re confusing this with the 737 MAX 9 door plug issue. That is not a one-off, that is a manufacturing/assembly issue. And that’s my point. The door plug situation is a systemic problem on many brand new planes, whereas this story is about a relatively small issue on a 29-year-old plane.

Something being damaged on a 757 shouldn’t shake people’s confidence in Boeing. Shit going wrong in the design and manufacturing of the 737 MAX series should.

I wish the article said how old the plane is. A lot of Boeing jets are 50+ years old and at that point, you have to blame the airline. But this article doesn’t say.

At least in Europe, passengers jets are new because more fuel efficient at the "normal" speed. These old jets are then transformed in cargo where they go very slow so fuel efficiency goes up by other means (and the old jet is way cheaper).

This was a passenger plane so i doubt it was anywhere close to 50 years old

If you've got like 24 minutes this video gives a pretty solid explanation.

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

this

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Didn’t they fire like half their QA staff a couple years ago?

Nothing for this case at least.

It's completely unrelated to Boeing per se. Likely a maintenance issue, maybe repair done wrong.

Boeing please stop picking Gremlins as the in flight movie

Shows 'Twilight zone: the movie' instead.

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This is more on the airline not doing their maintenance

Where does it say that the airline didn't send the plane for maintenance?

Airlines don't do their own maintenance, they send them back to Boeing.

A plane isn't like a car, you don't just have a go at changing the oil or fixing the brakes yourself and then hope for the best, you send it to the approved place when scheduled or you don't fly.

Where did you get your information that airliners send planes back to Boeing for maintenance? My quick search tells me that they generally don't, and they either do it themselves, or rely on third parties called Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) providers for heavier maintenance. In the case of United airlines, their MRO provider is called United Technical Operations, their own division.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/airplane-maintenance-disturbing-truth
https://simpleflying.com/aircraft-maintenance-checks/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_maintenance_checks

This is not true at all. You're right that planes aren't like cars, but airlines absolutely do their own maintenance. The maintenance program is initially provided by Boeing and modified by the airline based on statistical monitoring of issues.

The entire field of reliability-centered maintenance comes right out of aircraft maintenance in the 60s and 70s, term itself was penned by people working for united. It's responsible for massive improvements in aircraft reliability, there's a reason that you can point out specific events like this in the modern era.

On a different note, a lot of the guys I worked with out of uni were all aircraft mechanics who had served in the air force.

I knew a mechanical engineer that worked for an airline doing repairs. The plane would only go back to Boeing under serious need

This is certifiably false information and seeing this sort of disinformation spread with this amount of certainty is disgusting.

Source: Aerospace engineer working for a competing Prime.

That's a pretty old plane last produced in 2004.

Eh, idk if plane age really matters. They are completely disassembled and reassembled per standard every year to ensure that they are good to go.

Student planes are like 1960s, give or take.

E: I'm being told by comments that they do not do teardowns. Idk. I fly planes, not work on them. My CFIs have told me they do annual teardowns. So.. Idk. Maybe, maybe not?

It does matter. Shows this is more a maintenance issue than a defect in the model.

They are absolutely not “completely disassembled every year.” Where do you people come up with this stuff?

My FBO/CFIs said that they teardown the airplanes every annual to every nut and bolt. I applied that and assumed that meant the big ones, too.

They're just plain facts. Did you know that the pilots each have to take a shit before they board? The airlines force them to do it, to conserve on fuel.

No the FUCK they're not

There are inspections and flight worthiness manuals. Nobody is going to complete tear down a fucking jet and bolt it together again, that's literally less secure.

You should read what's done in an annual. For GA, aopa had a good article recently talking about doing the right maintenance because doing everything your AP suggests may be more intrusive and less healthy for the plane. It's not as aggressive you're claiming.

Also as others note, age matters in determining where the issue came from. Eg this almost certainly isn't a Boeing issue.

As a new pilot I really recommend watching the show Mayday Aircraft Investigations, it's very informative. The accidents are for commercial aircraft, but still I think seeing all the details and the root causes and breakdown in process is enlightening even as a private pilot.

Thanks, I'll check it out. My exp. with flying was... I was in school for commercial aviation. I think I made it 2 years in? Got my PPL and was making my way through instrument before I made a life decision to buy a house for my family. I could either afford school or the house, but not both.

I love aviation and flying is the single greatest thing in the world to me.. Besides my family.

The air safety institute videos are a great watch, too. Also check out Lucaas, Captain Joe, or 74 gear for more aviation videos.

But also, even though they’re older, they’re still loved by pilots and are good in difficult conditions because they’re pretty over-engined

There are Douglas DC3s still flying in commercial service (not many, but a few). Those were built in the 1940s. 2004 is not all that old a plane.

Still, it's old enough that problems like this should be attributed to lack of maintenance on the airline's part rather than an issue in the design or manufacture of the plane.

Point is, it's a maintenance issue, the media is quick to shit on Boeing. I mean they earned that but try to have integrity while reporting.

This particular plane is 29 years old.

That said, commercial airliners can go for decades just fine as long as they are maintained properly. Newer planes will be more efficient and have some newer features, but a tried-and-true airframe that has been well maintained is worth keeping around.

That's why oanss have two wings, duh. for redundant sea.

Redundant sea, right next to the north sea obviously!

Well with that wing is the sea you get at some point in the future.

Dear passangers, fasten your seatbelts and don't look on the left side. If you already did, don't worry, self-dissasembling bus from Saint Petesburg does not fly near us, in fact this is our left wing.

Holy cow. My sisters VW Beetle did this once, too. It was quite fresh out of inspection/repair, and whatever those guys did to the motor, they forgot to pull the screws tight again...

Oh man, I would piss myself laughing if this happened in front of me.

So with airlines needing bailouts, price gouging, and cost cutting affecting safety, maybe bring back the CAB era laws?

This is the best summary I could come up with:

BOSTON - A United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Boston was diverted to Denver on Monday because of an issue with the plane's wing - and a worried passenger on board captured the apparent problem on video.

"Just about to land in Denver with the wing coming apart on the plane," Kevin Clarke says in a video shared with CBS News.

Clarke said the wing issue became apparent after takeoff from San Francisco.

The passengers were put on a different plane and landed in Boston early Tuesday morning.

Boeing has been under scrutiny since a door panel on a different kind of aircraft, a 737 Max 9, blew off during an Alaska Airlines flight in January.

Earlier this month, the head of the FAA pledged to use more people to monitor aircraft manufacturing and hold Boeing accountable for any safety rule violations.

The original article contains 286 words, the summary contains 143 words. Saved 50%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

After watching Masters of the Sky this looks like just a scratch.

Did they see it coming apart and say nothing to the crew?

E: another passenger did. Apparently not the clowns that had to get firsties posting to social media.

Does it not seem like something may have hit the wing on takeoff; a bird perhaps? This might not be anyone's fault.

Birdstrike doesn’t cause the type of damage which would produce this type of result.

the last time I was on an airplane was december 31, 2000.

nothing since that time has encouraged me to break that boycott.

Flying sucks, but not seeing the world sucks more.

I was about to say. There's a million concerns over environmental and economic effects (that I'll own up to ignoring when visiting family or exploring), but safety is still wayyy down the list. The statistic about being 20x more likely to die in a car crash on the way to the airport than the flight itself still holds very firmly true (and I'm being SUPER conservative about those numbers in case recent events tilt it, it's still a ~800x per-mile ratio).

Yeah I agree, despite all the recent events, I’m still not worried at all about flying. The number of car crash complications I watch on YouTube make me extra cautious while driving, but I’ve never felt in danger while flying, even in heavy turbulence

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