WHY I STILL FLY ON BOEING AIRCRAFT

"Todd, do you still fly on Boeing aircraft?" It’s a question people ask me. My answer is “Yes” without hesitation. I wrote this article to explain why. Just to make the point, I am writing this while sitting next to the exit door, at 35,000 feet, on a 737. I shot the photo from my seat in 13A - yes row 13.

The US commercial aircraft industry is in crisis mode. Many people have lost confidence in it. More than 300 people died because Boeing delivered, and the FAA certified, some really bad software on a 737 Max aircraft. One aircraft crashed. Boeing, and the FAA, still did not ground planes flying that software. Then it happened again. This negligence was inexcusable.??Boeing, the FAA, and our entire industry must be held accountable. We must do better.

Boeing did out of station rework on the door plug of a different model 737 aircraft, and did not reinstall it correctly. The error should have been caught by an inspection, but that inspection was also not done correctly. The first few flights of that new aircraft loosened the door plug, until the pressure differential finally sucked it off the fuselage. Fortunately, this happed at a relatively low altitude, and no one was killed. This negligence was inexcusable.??Boeing, the FAA, and our entire industry must be held accountable. We must do better.

These are not the only things going wrong with commercial aviation. It the past several months we have seen one plane land on top of another, landing gear wheels fall off inflight, a seat that caused the pilot to put an aircraft in a steep dive that tossed passengers into the ceiling, and an engine that caught on fire. It’s no wonder the flying public is losing confidence.?

Boeing executives are being held accountable, and they should be. But, you have already read all these things in a host of other posts in your LinkedIn feed. I want to tell you the rest of the story that I do not see in most of those other posts.

I am the VP of Aerospace & Defense Industry at Siemens now, but I haven’t always been an aerospace executive. I spent most of my 30 year career as a flight control systems engineer designing and testing many of the military and commercial aircraft in service today. I understand better than most people the process of aircraft design, test, and commercial aircraft certification and conformance that missed these two 737 Max issues.

The flight my wife and I are on today is just one of more than 120,000 flights that will take off and land without incident today. There were 120,000 flights yesterday.??There will be 120,000 more flights tomorrow. With the all the problems we are reading about, why aren’t more planes crashing? Let me explain.?

There were a host of preflight checks that the ground crew and flight crew performed on my 737 before we took off today from Phoenix, but these checks were limited. Modern aircraft have millions of parts, and millions of lines of software.??It would take months to check them all before each flight. That is why only a limited number of them were checked today. Fear not, all of the parts and software on my 737 were checked at some point, just not today.?

All aircraft systems are not created equal. Some are more important than others. If I had to choose a flight with a loss of an engine, or the loss of Wi-Fi, I’m choosing to lose the Wi-Fi every day and twice on Sunday. You would too. It would be a bummer to browse the inflight magazine instead of streaming reruns of the Big Bang Theory, but we would still get to Baltimore safely.?

Safety critical systems like the engines, fuel, flight controls, and even structure are checked before each flight. Engines, fuel, and fight controls have a “Built-In-Test” that must pass before takeoff. You have probably watched a pilot do a walk around preflight inspection. She is looking for signs of airframe fatigue and improperly maintained hardware.

Even with all these preflight checks, none of them would have found a flight control software error, or missing bolts on that door plug. Those are called “Latent Failures”. Latent failures are problems with an aircraft that are not found until the system is exercised inflight. Engineers spend years looking for and correcting or preventing these failures. Does my 737 have any undetected latent failures, maybe, but I am still not worried. My 737 is also full of redundancy. Most safety critical aircraft systems have redundancy.??

Redundancy is adding extra things that can take over if something else fails. You can see redundancy if you look at an aircraft. This 737 has two engines, even though we could land safely with just one. The wing has multiple slat panels, even though having just a single larger panel would be lighter, and just as effective. We even have two pilots in our cockpit, while just pilot could fly this aircraft. For all the redundant things you can see, there are thousands more you cannot see. Engineers spent years and years designing and testing all the levels of redundancy on this 737.

There are a few safety critical things that are not redundant. For example, there is only one fuselage. If the big metal tube I’m sitting in separates from the wings, no one on this flight is getting to Baltimore today. These critical non redundant systems are over designed in ways you cannot see, to last far longer that they are required to operate. This aircraft is also periodically taken out of service for detailed inspections to find hidden structural problems so they can be corrected before something bad happens inflight.?

If we look back at the two 737 Max incidents, it was not just one thing that went wrong, it was several failures and mistakes that aligned to cause the inflight incidents. Inflight incidents like these are rarely caused by a single problem. Many systems and processes have to break down before a serious flight incident occurs.

The 737 Max MCAS software crashed two aircraft because its was incorrectly designed, without redundancy. The software was improperly tested and certified. Both aircraft had an inflight sensor failure, and the pilot’s response to that failure was wrong. Their response was wrong because they were not properly trained. They were not properly trained because Boeing had not disclosed that this new safety critical MCAS feature even existed.

The door plug that was sucked off the side of a 737 last January had been properly designed with redundancy. It had four bolts to hold it in place. The problem started when the door was incorrectly installed in the fuselage the first time. It was removed to correct the original issue. When the door was reinstalled, the door's four retaining bolts were left off. This should have been caught by the post install inspection, but that inspection was also done incorrectly.??The interior trim was installed over the area with the missing parts, and the problem was not found until the flight incident report. Part of the reason no one was killed, was that the incident happened just after takeoff. Everyone still had their seatbelt on.?Seatbelts are another key layer of redundancy and safety.?

Boeing and the FAA used to be the gold standard for quality and safety. That is no longer true. However, I am confident that a culture shift that includes investment and focus on improved engineering design, manufacturing quality, proper inspections, and effective certification and conformity processes can fix what is broken at Boeing and the FAA.

As I said, there will be 120,000 take offs and landings today without incident. While flight incidents should never happen, they are still very rare. This is because years of engineering, redundancy, over design, testing, skilled manufacturing, inspections, and certification processes go into every aircraft in the sky. These things all worked together to make my 737 flight to Baltimore safer and for more convenient than any other form of travel. My trip in rush hour traffic from Tucson to Phoenix yesterday was more dangerous than this flight.?

All these things are why I still fly Boeing aircraft. That is why I still put my wife, children and grandchildren on Boeing aircraft, but I’ll probably insist they wear a seatbelt. However, maybe airlines should consider following the lead from hotel elevators, and remove row 13.?