A United Airlines flight that took off from San Francisco International Airport Friday morning landed in Oregon with a missing external panel, according to officials.
United says the missing panel wasn’t discovered until the plane landed safely in Medford and that pilots had no idea during the flight that something had happened.
The tire falling off doesn’t feel like a Boeing thing. At least on smaller aircraft, it’s a pin that holds it on. It feels like a United maintenance issue
It’s getting old how everyone seems to think that Boeing does all maintenance for all airlines. In what world would that make sense
The same world where McDonald’s contracts with a single company for all the maintenance on their ice cream machines nationwide.
Yes, it would be more analogous if it was United contracting a single company for all their maintenance. For really big companies, it’s not unusual for them to have one contract with another big company to handle a certain thing at all their locations. For example, custodial services, truck maintenance, stuff like that. Aircraft maintenance seems reasonable.
And it’s also possible that Boeing says “if you want us to work with us, you must use our approved maintenance contractor(s), otherwise you’re on your own”, and United certainly has the money for it.
But that’s an educated guess. For a factual point, remember that Boeing writes the maintenance manuals. If they write a manual that says “use grade N bolts”, and grade N bolts aren’t actually sufficient, the maintainer is still going to use grade N because that’s what the manual says. And Boeing accountants and middle managers wouldn’t really overrule the metallurgical engineer to save a couple cents on each bolt, would they? Nahhhhh.