Why The Short-Fingered Vulgarian Doesn't Have a New Air Force One

Back in 2018, the FLOSS wanted a new Air Force One. His bright idea, at the time, was to buy one of the newish planes in the boneyard in Victorville and have it modified, instead of buying a new airplane and having it built as AF1.

The Orange Dumbo chortled how cheaper it was to buy an airplane from the boneyard. But those in the know, which included almost everyone with a pulse, pointed out that the final cost would be a lot higher, as retrofitting costs more than putting in the required upgrades as the airframe is built (the 747 production line was still open). Plus, retrofitting takes much more time.

But nooo, Demented Donnie knows all and nobody can tell him anything different.

And that's how it has played out. It's taking a very long time to build the new AF1s.

Which is why he strong-armed the Qataris to give him Bribe Force One.

Meanwhile the President of South Africa insulted the Dimwit of Queens to his face and he didn't even know it.

Jeebus, Boeing

The flight up on Starliner to the ISS was bad. As in between the devil and the deep blue sea bad.

What Passes for Good News for Boeing These Days

The Starliner didn't burn up on re-entry.

Boeing’s first astronaut mission ended Friday night with an empty capsule landing and two test pilots still in space, left behind until next year because NASA judged their return too risky.

Six hours after departing the International Space Station, Starliner parachuted into New Mexico’s White Sands Missile Range, descending on autopilot through the desert darkness.
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There were some snags during reentry, including more thruster issues, but Starliner made a “bull’s-eye landing,” said NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich.

Boeing insisted it was safe, but nobody at NASA seemed to be inclined to trust Boeing's word on that.

The next few flights should be made with people from the C-suite and the Board of Directors of Boeing. Let them put thier cushy asses on the line.

An Eight Day Trip to the ISS Turned Into an Eight-Month Trip, Thanks to Boeing

NASA decided Saturday it’s too risky to bring two astronauts back to Earth in Boeing’s troubled new capsule, and they’ll have to wait until next year for a ride home with SpaceX. What should have been a weeklong test flight for the pair will now last more than eight months.

I can't imagine how much this has upended their lives. Besides that, it also screws over the two astronauts who were going to ride that Dragon capsule to the ISS.

You can bet the farm that Boeing lobbied hard for NASA to fly the two astronauts back on the Starliner. Oh, they may claim they didn't and that they're good with NASA's decision, but the real world knows that's just bullshit and spin.

Boeing may fly again, but it'd be better with some crash-test dummies for the next flight.

Play Russian Roulette or Go to Space on Something Built by Boeing.

Boeing is operating the Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisisana and, basically, they are using unskilled or semi-skilled labor to build the rockets.

And NASA management doesn't seem to give a shit.

"According to Safety and Mission Assurance officials at NASA and DCMA officials at Michoud, Boeing’s quality control issues are largely caused by its workforce having insufficient aerospace production experience," the report states. "The lack of a trained and qualified workforce increases the risk that the contractor will continue to manufacture parts and components that do not adhere to NASA requirements and industry standards."

This lack of a qualified workforce has resulted in significant program delays and increased costs. According to the new report, "unsatisfactory" welding operations resulted in propellant tanks that did not meet specifications, which directly led to a seven-month delay in the program.

NASA's inspector general was concerned enough with quality control to recommend that the space agency institute financial penalties for Boeing’s noncompliance. However, in a response to the report, NASA's deputy associate administrator, Catherine Koerner, declined to do so. "NASA interprets this recommendation to be directing NASA to institute penalties outside the bounds of the contract," she replied. "There are already authorities in the contract, such as award fee provisions, which enable financial ramifications for noncompliance with quality control standards."

That's NASA-doubletalk for "We don't care and you can't make us." Each year, Boeing slips another year behind schedule. Which means that, at the current rate, the Heat Death of the Universe will occur before Boeing fulfils its contract.

The Biden Administtation seems to care not and neither does Gym Jordan and his crack-pack of investigators.

Boeing has to have some serious juice. And yes, it is as corrupt AF.

Gilligan in Space

When two American astronauts blasted off on a test mission to the International Space Station on 5 June, they were expecting to be back home in a matter of days.

But things didn't quite go to plan.

In fact, Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita Williams are still there, floating high above the Earth nearly two months later.

The pair - who are stuck indefinitely - now face the sudden prospect of missing the summer entirely and e.en spending Christmas and New Year in space.
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One potential option being considered, they said, is to attach the two astronauts to a mission that is scheduled to launch in September, and return them to earth with that mission in February 2025.

That flight to the space station will be made by a SpaceX Crew Dragon craft. The initial plan was for four crew members to be aboard, but two of the seats could be left empty if needed.

That plan would mean the astronauts would spend more than eight months – rather than eight days – aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Boeing, of course, is trying to pressure NASA to stick the astronauts on the Starliner and bring them back that way. Boeing's reputation is on the line, but that's nothing compared to what will happen if things go pear-shaped on the return flight. If they kill the astronauts, Boeing's manned space program will probably be zeroed out by Congress.

That there is any thought, at this point, of bringing the astronauts back on Starliner is evidence of severe dysfunction, if not mental defects. Does NASA really want to risk losing another crew burning up on re-entry due to, in this case, a known problem?

Worst comes to worse, the commander of the Starliner mission should think hard about sending an email from the ISS if the decision is made for them to ride that turkey back with a one word response: "Unable." Yes, it would tantamount to mutiny. It would mean the end of the space careers of both astronauts.

Starliner should return from the ISS without a crew and point-down, if necessary. They should cram-train the heads of the program at Boeing and have them fly the next mission. If there is one.

The Gilligan Astronauts

[A]fter multiple return trip delays, NASA officials said [at the end of June] that the Starliner will remain in space indefinitely while they try to figure out what’s going on.

I don't know if anyone at Felonious Aerospace knows what's going on, you know, the company that crowed that they had so much experience at manned spaceflight.

I'm not up for it, but somebody like Weird Al ought to rework the theme song for Gilligan's Island to fit the crew of Starliner.

Don't Worry, Some Fucker's Getting Rich Off of This Deal; Boeing Ed.

Boeing announced plans to acquire key supplier Spirit AeroSystems for $4.7 billion, a move that it says will improve plane quality and safety amid increasing scrutiny by Congress, airlines and the Department of Justice.

Boeing previously owned Spirit, and the purchase would reverse a longtime Boeing strategy of outsourcing key work on its passenger planes. That approach has been criticized as problems at Spirit disrupted production and delivery of popular Boeing jetliners, including 737s and 787s.

“We believe this deal is in the best interest of the flying public, our airline customers, the employees of Spirit and Boeing, our shareholders and the country more broadly,” Boeing President and CEO Dave Calhoun said in a statement late Sunday.

Boeing didn't "previously own Spirit." Spirit didn't exist, it was Boeing's Wichita Division. They spun it off because some of those assholes could make a boatload of money doing that (and break the union contracts) and now those same assholes are going to make even more money re-absorbing it. Calhoun is lying through his immaculately cared-for choppers: Boeing doesn't give a damn about "the flying public" and hasn't in the last three decades. They'd happily crash a fully-loaded 737 once every quarter if doing so made their stock price go up.

Boeing, the Shit Show Continues

Late Wednesday, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a strong rebuke to Boeing and said it will sanction the company.

The move follows comments by a senior executive who spoke to a media gathering on Tuesday and disclosed new information related to the cause of the Alaska Airlines fuselage blowout in January.

Boeing is a party to the NTSB investigation. However, by long-established rules and signed agreements, only the lead investigating agency — in this case, the NTSB — is authorized to reveal details of an investigation and to provide analysis of an incident’s cause.
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In a statement, the NTSB said Boeing “blatantly violated the NTSB investigative regulations and Boeing’s signed party agreement with the NTSB by providing nonpublic investigative information to the media and speculating about possible causes of the Jan. 5 door plug blowout.”

The NTSB said “few entities know the rules better” than Boeing. Accordingly, it will impose “a series of restrictions and sanctions” on the jet maker.

Basically, Boeing will now be treated as a witness and is no longer allowed to participate in the investigation itself. Because their executives figure that the rules don't apply to them, which is pretty much the way most of the C-suites in this country operate.

It took a long time for the chickens to come home to roost for Boeing, but they seem to be settling in.

The Seattle Chicago Arlington Pooch-Screwers Keep Screwing the Pooch

Boeing received orders for only four new planes in May — and for the second straight month, none for its best-selling 737 Max, as fallout continues from the blowout of a side panel on a Max during a flight in January.

The results released Tuesday compared unfavorably with Europe’s Airbus, which reported net orders for 15 planes in May — 27 sales but 12 cancellations.

Meanwhile:

Boeing and NASA announced Friday night that mission officials are again delaying the Boeing Starliner capsule’s return to Earth from the International Space Station.

The announcement is only the latest in a string of recent delays. Officials have pushed back the Starliner spacecraft’s departure date several times after the vehicle — which launched Williams and Wilmore to the space station on June 5 — experienced some issues en route to the space station.

Officials did not immediately announce a new return date, but the space agency indicated the return of Starliner’s crew, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, won’t come until July.

When Wilmore and Williams turn in for their sleep time ("night" being a tenuous concept in low Earth orbit), one wonders if they are pondering the choices they've made in life that took them into orbit on one of the biggest pieces of shit to fly on a rocket since Soyuz 1. And, you can bet that the last thing NASA wants is to see another manned spacecraft burn up on re-entry.

I don't know what the chances are of Starliner being jettisoned to burn up as space junk and those two astronaughts being stuck there until SpaceX can send up a Crew Dragon capsule with two empty seats, but they are definately non-zero. Even if Space Karen will be crowing about it until he strokes out.

Fly on a 787 Made in South Carolina. Maybe the Wings Won't Fall Off. Maybe

Some of the inspections that the crack workers in South Carolina were gundecking was whether or not the wings were properly attached to the fuselage.

The only thing that Boeing cares about is making more money so that the vultures perched in the C-Suites make even more money. If the airplanes manage to stay in the air, that's a lagniappe.

If one of those airplanes crashes, the passengers' families should be allowed to enter a lottery to be on the firing squads that execute Boeing executives.

There's an old story, from Soviet times, that a tall apartment building was constructed before someone realized that the design team left off the elevators. They were all given apartments on the top floor and ordered to live there. So maybe a couple of 787s with loose wing bolts can be set aside for the use of Boeing's executives and that's the planes they have to fly on.

787s: Maybe They Won't Fall Out of the Sky. Maybe.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Monday it has opened an investigation into Boeing after the beleaguered company reported that workers at a South Carolina plant falsified inspection records on certain 787 planes. Boeing said its engineers have determined that misconduct did not create “an immediate safety of flight issue.”

The crackerjack managers running Boeing set up a plant in South CArolina so that they could use cheaper and nonunion workers. It came out last year that Boeing's SC airplanes had quality problems. Well, no mucking fit. Setting up a plant based on low wages, cost-cutting and pushing product out the doors isn't a great idea for making blenders, let alone large jets.

Anyone who trusts Boeing to fairly investigate and correct this latest issue has a large amount of gravel in their cranium.

The smartest decision NASA has made in years was to not give Boeing a sole-source contract for their Starliner. NASA gave the lion's share of funding for that program to Boeing and a taste of it to SpaceX. SpaceX's Crew Dragon has made eleven flights to the ISS, Boeing, well, they have yet to get off the ground with people on board. NASA would still be stuck with flying crews to the ISS on Soyuz capsules if they had gone with Boeing.

More on the Shit Show That is Boeing

This is worth your time if you are interested in things Boeing.

Remember that "Spirit" is Spirit Aerosystems, which once was Boeing's Wichita plant, but Boeing spun it off in the '00s in order to make a quick buck, please Wall Street, and get more bonus cash for its C-Suite executives. It's not Spirit Airlines, which is its own flying shitshow.

It's probably going to take sustained governmental pressure to fix Boeing. The institutional shareholders and Wall Sgtreet don't give a fuck, as long as Boeing makes a short-term profit. Those people can't think much further past the lengths of their dicks, anyway.

ETA: Also, this.

If It's a Boeing, Take a Greyhound

Here is a listing of Service Difficulty Reports for the 737 Max. You can run the slider down to a few hundred hours and see the problems with new airplanes and see things such as doors not assembled properly so that it took a strong person to move the operating handle.

The big customers are pissed.

“I am more than frustrated and disappointed. I am angry,” Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci told “NBC Nightly News” in an interview that aired Tuesday night. “My demand on Boeing is, what are they going to do to improve their quality programs in-house?”

United CEO Scott Kirby said that Boeing needs “real action” to restore its previous reputation for quality.

Boeing workers at its 737 factory stopped work on Thursday to hold a special session to focus on quality.

Great, a one day "safety standdown" that will really do nothing. Boeing has to change the cuture that it has instituted since Harry Stonecipher changed it from a company run by engineers to one run by beancounters.

Remember when it came out that Boeing was outsourcing critical flight-control software to a company that paid its engineers less than burger flippers? Apparently, it is worse than that. Boeing outsources a number of sub-assemblies to other countries. Ones from South Korea look like precision instruments. the ones from a country about two hundred miles across the Yellow Sea to the west appear to have been hammered out by kids in the Kyber Pass and then dragged through the mud before crating them up.

I have heard that Boeing has a system in which anyone noticing a defect in something fills out a report chit. The thing is, there is zero incentive to find problems. Quite the opposite; a worker who files too many chits will find themselves in another (and not as good) job. It's sort of a Russian zero defects system: There's zero defects if nobody reports any defects.

Boeing is a fucking shitshow. Within the span of 25 years (1958-1983), Boeing certified the 707, 720, 727, 737, 747, 757 and 767. In the forty years since then, they've designed and certified two new airplanes, the 777 and the 787. They have nothing in the pipeline to replace the 737, which was 60% of a 727, anyway. Oh, they say they do, but it's not an active project, as far as I can tell.

To be fair, part of that is the fault of their customers who don't want to pay for their pilots' new type ratings. So they demanded that Boeing squeeze every bit of juice they can out of a sixty-year old design. But they didn't push Boeing to buy parts from third-world sheet-metal fabricators. They didn't make Boeing partially divest itself, that was the doing of Wall Street and the financial vultures, who don't care if Boeing slowly suffocates itself, as long as they can make a buck in the process.

Boeing, as I have commented repeatedly, began walking down the road it is on when it merged with McDonnell-Douglas and McD-D effectively took over the company. That was 27 years ago; changing the culture of Boeing will require massive reworking of the executive roster, which isn't going to happen. The company's board is made of the same level of compliant hacks as is that of the NRA.

Boeing is settling in to becoming a company that survives only on the Federal teat. The way Boeing is going, if you fly on a new full-sized airliner in fifteen or twenty years, it's going to be an Airbus.

It's Easier to Bribe Make Large Campaign Contributions to Politicians Than Build Good Airplanes

That is the essence of this long story about how Boeing has repeatedly made large campaign contributions to politicians.

I've been told that the CEO of Boeing has been making the rounds of the plants to try and rally the troops. But no new programs are being launched to improve inspections of work being done. No plans or promises to hire more QC inspectors. Just the usual management smoke, mirrors and fresh horseshit.

Along with upping the amount of cash going to the campaign coffers of strategic politicians, no doubt. At this point, Boeing is operating like a Russian corporation: Make shitty products and bribe the right people.

Fly in a recently-manufactured Boeing aircraft at your own risk.

Jeez, Boeing

Federal investigators say a door panel slid up before flying off an Alaska Airlines jetliner last week, and they are looking at whether four bolts that were supposed to help hold the panel in place might have been missing when the plane took off.

The comments Monday from the National Transportation Safety Board came shortly after Alaska and United Airlines reported separately that they found loose parts in the panels — or door plugs — of some other Boeing 737 Max 9 jets.

The door was part of the fuselage made by Spirit Aerosystems in Wichita, KS, which was Boeing's Wichita division until it was split off about twenty years ago in some of the usual corporate shenanigans after the MBAs and beancounters took control in the late nineties. The Wichita plant was the lead factory for B-29s.

Still, if there is a critical gizmo that needs bolts to hold it in place, shouldn't somebody be checking it? Hell, does somebody bother to check to see if the fucking wing attachment bolts are properly installed?

My suspicion is that this is the sort of shit that happens when the damned beancounters decide tha tthey don't need a lot of quality control, that they can give the workers a form to fill out with a checkbox for "check the bolts". After awhile, the box gets checked without thinking about it, because nobody is checking on the work.

Pretty fucking shoddy.

If It's a Boeing, Consider Not Going

Alaska Airlines grounded all of its Boeing 737-9 aircraft late Friday, hours after a window and piece of fuselage on one such plane blew out in midair and forced an emergency landing in Portland, Oregon. No one was seriously hurt.

The incident occurred shortly after takeoff and the gaping hole caused the cabin to depressurize. Flight data showed the plane climbed to 16,000 feet (4,876 meters) before returning to Portland International Airport.

If a time machine is ever invented, after the obvious, a prime mission will be to determine who the hell at Boeing thought that it was a good idea to merge with McDonnell-Douglas and whack them.

ETA: Boeing--Making Amtrak Look Good Since 1997.(tm)

Stand By for Some Epic Pooch-Screwing

The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday granted Boeing approval to begin flight tests of its 737 MAX 10 jet with FAA pilots on board. It’s a key step that allows the FAA to gather flight data for certification of the airplane.

In an internal message to employees, Mike Fleming, Boeing vice president who leads its commercial aircraft development programs, celebrated the move forward in what has been an unprecedently slow process — one that still has a long way to go.

“This is a significant milestone as we work to get the 737-10, the largest airplane in the 737 MAX family, certified to enter passenger service with operators around the world,” Fleming wrote.

I am of the mind that maybe it'd be best to not get on one for a few years, if possible. Boeing's QA/QC procedures aren't ones to inspire confidence. The company's reputation is one of shaving corners wherever possible.

Jeez, Boeing

Boeing discovered that its largest supplier improperly drilled holes in a component that helps maintain cabin pressure of the 737 MAX jet, threatening to derail delivery targets for its bestselling model.

The latest issue for Boeing’s cash-cow jet isn’t a safety threat, the Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday. But it’s another complication for Boeing as it speeds the manufacturing pace of the 737 family while dealing with supply-chain strains and the aftermath of a strike at Spirit AeroSystems, the supplier that builds about 70% of the narrowbody jet frames.

“During factory inspections, we identified fastener holes that did not conform to our specifications in the aft pressure bulkhead on certain 737 airplanes,” Boeing said via email Wednesday. The inspections have uncovered hundreds of misaligned and duplicated holes in some aircraft, according to a report by The Air Current.

I'm assuming that, nowadays, those parts get loaded into fixtures and a computer-driven gizmo drills the holes. So I don't have a clue how it could be screwed up.

But it seems that, if there is a way to fuck it up, Boeing will find it.

Boeing Starliner, Again

Boeing’s astronaut capsule faces more launch delays after the discovery of problems that should have been caught earlier, officials said.
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Until recently, the Starliner capsule was on track for a July test flight with two astronauts to the International Space Station, a planned trip that was already well behind schedule.

But final reviews uncovered issues with the parachute lines and other problems that were present on last year’s test flight with no one on board and, officials said, should have been caught years ago.

Some of the issues involve flammable materials, because the World's Most Space Companytm apparenlty forgot about the Apollo 1 fire. (Fun fact: The Apollo 1 capsule was built by Boeing. Well, actually North American, but Boeing absorbed them, so if Boeing can claim the MD-90 and the DC-3, they can damn well claim the Apollo capsure.)

Other problems "should have been caught years ago"... tell me again about Boeing's historic experience with manned space flight.