United Airlines pilots said pedals that control rudder movement on the plane were stuck as they tried to keep the plane in the center of the runway during the Feb. 6 landing.

The pilots were able to use a small nose-gear steering wheel to veer from the runway to a high-speed turnoff. The rudder pedals began working again as the pilots taxied to the gate with 155 passengers and six crew members on the flight from Nassau, Bahamas, according to a preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board.

Boeing said this is the only rudder-response issue reported on a Max, although two similar incidents happened in 2019 with an earlier model of the 737 called NG or next generation, which has the same rudder-pedal system.

The manufacturer said the issue was fixed by replacing three parts. The plane has made dozens of passenger-carrying flights since then, according to data from FlightAware.

  • Shizu@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I think Boeing should rethink their strategy. How are their Stockprices not at the bottom of the ocean yet? Cutting so many corners and risking so many lifes should not be legal. This should definitely be prosecuted. Either ban all the current executives or ban the planes.

    • Gork@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      Because they’re busy buying back their stock, causing the stock price to go up.

      I don’t think public companies should be able to do this, but they seem to do it all the time.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
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      8 months ago

      Because the stock market knows the US government would never let Boeing fail. Ever since the 2008 crisis investors have been acting on the assumption that every company that is too important for the US economy will be bailed out (as in, given low interest loans, not nationalised like a sane government would do).

      • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
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        8 months ago

        Boeing doesn’t need to fail. They’re not going to, government assistance or not, they are still a profitable company of their own right. This isn’t a case of bad investments like in 2008. So unless every company buying aircraft cancels their orders, which they won’t, Boeing will continue to be fine. Besides, simple fact is Airbus doesn’t have enough production capacity to replace Boeing.

        That said, I would love to see their stock price tank. That doesn’t bankrupt the company. It will fuck up their investors though. And those investors are the ones who would demand new management and, if they act collectively, can actually force new management to happen within a year. Any shareholder can put forward a shareholder resolution. A shareholder resolution could replace any or all of the company management. And if a majority of shareholders vote for it by proxy at the next annual meeting, then that’s what happens.

        If I were a Boeing shareholder, I would put a shareholder resolution that upper management must step down within the next 8 months, and the company headquarters must move from Washington DC back to Seattle where they build airplanes. Furthermore, the company charter would be amended to say that only someone with an engineering background may serve as CEO or in certain other upper management roles.

      • trafficnab@lemmy.ca
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        8 months ago

        Boeing is a national strategic asset, even if its commercial airliners ended up in the toilet the DoD would keep it alive on gov contracts alone

          • trafficnab@lemmy.ca
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            8 months ago

            Thinking about it, it’s not just peacetime military contracts, the entire company is a national security asset

            I doubt the gov would ever actually let Boeing’s domestic commercial airliner market share decline too far because they need the engineering capabilities and the production capacity left intact just in case we ever suddenly find ourselves at war, they’d just place tariffs on Airbus airframes until production is where they want it

            • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              That’s why you nationalize the parts you need. Someone else will rise to make commercial planes.

    • skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de
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      8 months ago

      It is one of the annoying side-effects of capitalism. Many companies start in a good place with quality setting them apart from others, and they then experience natural organic growth. Then they go public, go through some merger/takeovers, the original owners are either forced out, retire, or die, and at that point, the focus is shareholder profits and not what got them there.

      Their lack of QA eventually catches up with them, people die, bad things happen. They’ll up their quality, hire QA engineers again, claim they are doing the best for quality for a few quarters until the public eye is off them. Then they’ll just start cutting quality back again.

      Publicly traded companies eventually never care about quality, or safety, or human lives. It is in their nature.

        • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Hilarious. We either let corporations kill people or we live in Russia. There’s nothing in between there. Nothing at all.

          • Tja@programming.dev
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            8 months ago

            In the latest Boeing news (door plugs, bolts, this rudder thing) there have been 0 deaths. Nothing at all.

            • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              This time. Nobody went to prison for killing 400 people with MCAS or for lying about it after. And the documents that have come out prove they knew it was a deathtrap. Their own test pilots reported it was unrecoverable.

                • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  No it isn’t. You pointed out that the recent news has zero deaths. But it’s just a matter of time until something critical fails and a Boeing falls out of the sky. If we don’t hold them accountable for previous failures, they will not change.

        • Rusty Shackleford@programming.dev
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          8 months ago

          The prevalence of incompetence in large organizations and institutions is independent of economic and political systems, and is more so from the dilution of talent and accountability as it grows.

          • Tja@programming.dev
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            8 months ago

            Well, that’s not what the guy above said, it’s all capitalism’s fault, apparently.

            • Rusty Shackleford@programming.dev
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              8 months ago

              One of my favorite activities, as someone who had to actually read both Adam Smith and Karl Marx in college, is to ask AnCaps and Tankies (and pretty much every other political and economic pontificator) to strictly define capitalism and socialism. Then I ask them if they think “pure” versions of those systems have ever existed.

              🅖🅞🅞🅓 🅣🅘🅜🅔🅢

            • girlfreddy@lemmy.caOP
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              8 months ago

              Last week John Oliver essentially said it is both, with capitalism (stock buybacks and cost cutting) being primary.

              • Tja@programming.dev
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                8 months ago

                So is Airbus also equally bad? Also capitalist economy…

                Or is it maybe greed, which exists in any system, and in this case has cough up with Boeing and the drop in share price is exactly what they wanted to prevent?

      • girlfreddy@lemmy.caOP
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        8 months ago

        Last week’s John Oliver had a great episode on how Boeing backslid after merging with McDonnell Douglas.

    • cozy_agent@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      That’s what I don’t get, their stock goes down for a while but then people think it’s a good time to buy and it goes back up. Like it doesn’t affect them at all. Casually kill 400 people and barely anything happens.

      • ebits21@lemmy.ca
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        8 months ago

        The stock market is pretty damn efficient at processing all the information related to the stock price. Stock goes up because realistically Boeing isn’t going anywhere.

        They are still going to make money.

      • CountVon@sh.itjust.works
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        8 months ago

        Every time there’s a bad-news dip in Boeing’s stock price, traders are treating that as a discount to buy the stock because they don’t think the US government would ever allow Boeing to fail. Sadly, they’re probably not wrong. If Boeing’s financials get into deep trouble the US government would likely bail them out because they’re a large employer and a strategic component of US economic hegemony.

        • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          and a strategic component of US economic hegemony.

          Not to mention, they build a lot of the toys the military plays with.

    • BoscoBear@lemmy.sdf.org
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      8 months ago

      They are an arms manufacturer, too. I think this helps hedge their position(even though that side is having some issues also.)

      Mostly I think it is because there is no competition.