To belabor the point and repeat a bit from Wikipedia, this was bar-none the absolute perfect flight crew possible. A flight crew with over 65000 hours experience and, riding as a passenger, a training pilot with a further 23000 who had specifically practiced this exact failure (total loss of hydraulics) after a lost craft four years prior.
Despite the fatalities, the accident is considered a good example of successful crew resource management. A majority of those aboard survived; experienced test pilots in simulators were unable to reproduce a survivable landing. It has been termed "The Impossible Landing" as it is considered one of the most impressive landings ever performed in the history of aviation.
Reminds me of the Gimli Glider, and the incredible coincidence of having an experienced glider pilot as the Captain of that flight: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider
Sioux City Approach: "United Two Thirty-Two Heavy, the wind's currently three six zero at one one; three sixty at eleven. You're cleared to land on any runway."
Haynes: "[laughter] Roger. [laughter] You want to be particular and make it a runway, huh?"
Pilots need to be calm under high pressure, because they know that panic means certain death. I suspect that selects for a certain type of personality who can make light of any situation.
Critically the material is still titanium. Some of the paperwork is counterfeit so there’s concerns around quality control etc not what it is.
> Spirit is trying to determine where the titanium came from, whether it meets proper standards despite its phony documentation, and whether the parts made from the material are structurally sound enough to hold up through the projected life spans of the jets, company officials said. Spirit said it was trying to determine the most efficient way to remove and replace the affected parts if that ended up being necessary.
Unfortunately it's not enough for it to just be titanium. A hard alpha inclusion in an ingot used to make turbine blades was the root cause of the deaths of 112 people aboard United Airlines 232.
Technically it was in the fan disc, and not a turbine blade. And while there was a defect, a big part of the problem was that an inspector most likely missed a crack during overhaul. The crack was present at a previous inspection, which they knew because there some fluorescent penetrant remaining in the defect.
I worked in a turbine engine component repair shop for 8 years. We had an NDT inspector fall asleep a lot in his booth and miss cracks. I’m pretty sure they ended up firing him. But maybe not as quick as they should have.
> Spirit is trying to determine where the titanium came from, whether it meets proper standards despite its phony documentation, and whether the parts made from the material are structurally sound enough to hold up through the projected life spans of the jets, company officials said. Spirit said it was trying to determine the most efficient way to remove and replace the affected parts if that ended up being necessary.
Why are they even considering keeping the counterfeit parts in?
Is the situation that Spirit AeroSystems believes the eventual answer will be that the aircraft can't be used with known-counterfeit parts, but they're dancing around liability or PR, or they don't want to grandstand upon their customers' toes?
It's not exactly counterfeit parts. It's that the paperwork for the titanium supplied wasn't right. So I guess it could be ok titanium with just bad paperwork rather than bad titanium. Also I guess it costs a lot to change.
I talked with a business man who said that the Chinese would absolutely perform to contract but no more. Early samples would be excellent, full production would be exactly and only what you asked for. Almost malicious compliance.
I talked with a Chinese salesperson who said they always signed contracts with foreigners using their English name. Such contracts are unenforceable. Almost malicious compliance.
It's hard for me to have sympathy for complaining about people doing the least they can when you're trying to pay the least you can.
It's difficult to enforce any international contract, particularly in a country like the People's Republic of China. That said, I don't think signing a contract with a different name gets you anywhere; if your counter-party can show that you signed the contract, or in a corporate context that someone who can reasonably have been presumed to have signing authority did so, you (or the company) is on the hook.
I watched a documentary that said Spirit came when the Boeing bean counters divided up the company to make a quick profit and be able to shift Blake to Spirit. They replaced vertical integration with circular blame.
For anyone immediately going to UAF 232 as an example please realize that this is titanium used in the air frame not the engine. The engine is under dramatically higher loads and is far more material fault intolerant. I'm not saying this isn't serious issue but this is not as severe a concern, otherwise the planes would be grounded already.
Readit News
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232
The accident wasn't total only because of magnificent actions of the flight crew.
For further reading, https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/fields-of-fortune-the-cr...
Sioux City Approach: "United Two Thirty-Two Heavy, the wind's currently three six zero at one one; three sixty at eleven. You're cleared to land on any runway."
Haynes: "[laughter] Roger. [laughter] You want to be particular and make it a runway, huh?"
https://youtu.be/pT7CgWvD-x4
Though buying from a relatively little known Chinese vendor without thorough testing on your own seems a bit reckless.
[1]: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/aluminum-extrusion-manufactur...
[2]: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-nasa-metals-fraud-201...
> Spirit is trying to determine where the titanium came from, whether it meets proper standards despite its phony documentation, and whether the parts made from the material are structurally sound enough to hold up through the projected life spans of the jets, company officials said. Spirit said it was trying to determine the most efficient way to remove and replace the affected parts if that ended up being necessary.
I worked in a turbine engine component repair shop for 8 years. We had an NDT inspector fall asleep a lot in his booth and miss cracks. I’m pretty sure they ended up firing him. But maybe not as quick as they should have.
Poor design leading to the loss of all flight control surfaces in the event of an uncontained engine failure is what led to their deaths.
Deleted Comment
Why are they even considering keeping the counterfeit parts in?
Is the situation that Spirit AeroSystems believes the eventual answer will be that the aircraft can't be used with known-counterfeit parts, but they're dancing around liability or PR, or they don't want to grandstand upon their customers' toes?
Dead Comment
I talked with a business man who said that the Chinese would absolutely perform to contract but no more. Early samples would be excellent, full production would be exactly and only what you asked for. Almost malicious compliance.
I talked with a Chinese salesperson who said they always signed contracts with foreigners using their English name. Such contracts are unenforceable. Almost malicious compliance.
It's hard for me to have sympathy for complaining about people doing the least they can when you're trying to pay the least you can.
Heh, they're the good guys in this story apparently.