The jet cockpit door is designed to open during decompression. This is a mistake for two reasons. The door blowoff incident at Alaska airlines exposed both issues.
Cockpit Door Vulnerability
The Wall Street Journal reports Alaska Airlines Blowout Reveals Cockpit Door Vulnerability on Boeing Jet
After an emergency exit-sized hole opened in the side of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 at 16,000 feet, a separate chaotic episode erupted when the cockpit door mysteriously flew open.
That meant the pilots were subjected to the deafening wind and noise from the back of the plane—and also made the cockpit accessible to anyone inclined to try to force their way in.
What the flight crew didn’t know at the time, federal investigators said Monday, was that it was supposed to happen that way. Boeing had designed the cockpit door to open during a rapid decompression incident, they said. The company just hadn’t said so in the manual.
“There was a lot of energy put into getting those doors secured so they only open from the pilots’ side,” said Ray White, a former regional director of the Transportation Security Administration. “To find out that they blow out in an emergency, boy that is a vulnerability.”
“They’ll have to go back and revisit the whole security piece of this,” White said. “Once you put it out in the public domain and the bad guys now know that’s a potential area they can exploit, then I think you have to take some additional steps now.”
Desmond Ross, an aviation and security analyst at Pegasus Aviation in Dublin, likewise said that he hadn’t heard of it. “No one wants the door open on the descent into the airport.”
He said it was critical for pilots to be properly informed of measures that can affect them in the cockpit. “Pilots need to know, they need to know all this stuff.”
National Transportation Safety Board chair, Jennifer Homendy, said “They [the pilot and copilot] had trouble hearing each other, they had trouble hearing air-traffic control and they had trouble communicating during the event.”
“This was a really significant event with zero information at the time,” said Homendy.
Boeing had no comment.
Major Design Flaws
On March 17, 2019, I commented Boeing 737 Max Major Design Flaws, Not a Software Failure
Short Synopsis
- Boeing 737 Max aircraft have aerodynamic and engineering design flaws
- The sensors that can detect potential problems were not reliable. There are two sensors but the Boeing design only used one of them.
- Boeing cut corners to save money
- To save even more money, Boeing allowed customers to order the planes without warning lights. The planes that crashed didn’t have those warning lights.
- There were pilot training and maintenance log issues.
- Finally, the regulators got into bed with companies they were supposed to regulate
Is Cutting Corners Boeing’s Top Priority?
On January 7, I asked Door Falls Off Mid-Flight: Is Cutting Corners Boeing’s Top Priority?
In the wake of yet another cost-cutting Boeing fiasco, one must wonder what the top priority is at Boeing.
Hopefully, the cockpit fix is a simple software update.
Even if so, as with the 2019 deadly crashes, pilots were not aware of things they should have been aware of.
Exit rows have more leg room. Just sayin’
Tyler Durden: You know why they put oxygen masks on planes?
The Narrator: So you can breathe.
Tyler Durden: Oxygen gets you high. In a catastrophic emergency, you’re taking giant panicked breaths. Suddenly you become euphoric, docile. You accept your fate. It’s all right here (points to emergency card from seat pocket). Emergency water landing, 600 miles an hour. Blank faces, calm as Hindu cows.”
No wonder they ERASED the Cockpit Voice Recorder! Some love for Boing must have been expressed Verbally on tape!
I am not an engineer, but served in the submarine service and would note the nature of doors between compartments in those ships. They are massive because they are designed to counter extreme pressure differences between compartments in the event that one compartment is flooded at depth and the other is not.
So, are you suggesting that the cockpit door should remain closed so that the cockpit can remain pressurized when the main cabin depressurizes? That would require a much more massive door than I have ever seen on any airplane. If you want the cockpit to depressurize along with the main cabin, how is that going to happen if the cockpit door does not open? What other openings between the main cabin and main cabin are large enough the permit that equalization with sufficient rapidity to prevent damage?
Put simply. I suspect that for structural reason the cockpit door has to open when the main cabin depressurizes.
Still waiting for someone to blame this on Trump. After all, he negotiated such a good deal on the new Air Force One that Boeing had to cut corners on other jets to make ends meet. 😉
The design of the plane and the applicable FAA regulations were during the Obama years. But really, Boeing bears the major responsibility.
You all now WATCH: the Boeing CEO and his “Cabinet” will all get record bonuses this year as the Company is shorting its own stock.
How does this sort of cost cutting save money? The cost of grounding fleets, the cost of messed up schedules when fleets are grounded, the cost of repairs and patches. That is just the immediate cost.
Long term the airlines have planes with lower resale value and flying planes that many passengers will not buy tickets for and those buying are passengers who are willing to fly on cheap budget airlines.
It’s the American way!
Yep, let’s throw in FOOD prep, and the Medical Establishment and it makes you wonder why so many people are dying young?
Wonder which DEI hire decided this was a good “saaaaaaaaaafety” feature?
Actually it was several Jack Welch acolytes that have hollowed out another once great company in the name of “short term gains”
I fly A LOT. I am seriously considering never setting foot on a Boeing aircraft again.
And if you do take that risk then perhaps don’t get the seat next to the exit doors. Luckily this time that seat was vacant
Well, that seat was next to a door plug, not an exit door. It was 100% concealed from view prior to the blowout. Unless you were an expert on aircraft design, you would never have known you were in danger. Ironically, sitting next to an actual exit door is probably infinitely safer. But the key takeaway in all this is WEAR YOUR SEATBELT.
The ones designed,and better yet built, back when American companies were still at least partly owned and ran by somewhat literate people, are as good as any plane.
As for new designs: Just like wrt any other complex undertaking requiring any form of competence, brains and organizational management at scale: “Our” companies are now 30 years behind the Chinese ones when it comes to skills required to supply commercial planes competitively. And that despite the Chinese hardly even making planes yet.
Can the cockpit door be opened with a toothbrush?
No, but reportedly you could probably find an old toothbrush inside the door.
No, no force needed. It came out by itself in the air.
You saw first cockroach and second and they are not isolated.
More are coming.
Don’t be surprised.
https://lacotech.com/system/resources/attachments/000/000/131/original/altitude_press_conv_table__low.pdf?1480452827
air pressure at 16000 ft is 8 psia. If the cabin was pressurized to 10,000 ft, that is 10 psi. So two pounds of force on every square inch of the door. How big is the door? If it’s 72 by 28 that is 2016 sq. in. So 4000 lbs on the door. Even worse, the entire bulkhead between the cockpit and the rest of the plane would also have to support a 2 psi differential, and considerably more at higher altitude.
That is why the door is designed to blow open.
The 737 Max is the Ford Pinto of airplanes.
I was thinking that it’s more along the lines of the Yugo or Trabant.
DEI
Short Synopsis
3.Boeing cut corners to save money
3.Boeing cut corners to save money
3.Boeing cut corners to save money
Sorry, i am stuck on number 3.
… and some rich prick got richer.
Boeing is no different than any other company. Companies relentlessly pursue cost cutting strategies to stay competitive. They have entire departments dedicated to saving money.
As per usual, air travel woes are magnified despite being the safest form of travel.
Putting on oxygen mask and a heavy coat in a jiffy before grabbing the levers with heavy gloves, is standard military practice – in Siberia.
Maybe the university graduate who designed the cockpit door guidelines had that in mind?
“Maybe the university graduate who designed the cockpit door guidelines had that in mind?”
The underlying problem is that said university graduate isn’t working at Boeing.At least not in any decision making capacity.
Instead, he is working for some Flash Gordon believer who “made money from his home and inveeestments.” Designing self flying teleportation devices in Powerpoint. Which his moronemployer is selling for 10x Boeing’s lifetime revenue to abject retards made “billionaires” by nothing other than pure debasement theft. All while those same retards have now also been handed complete “ownership,” hence control, of Boeing. Where they, being retarded and nothing but, of course are completely incapable of telling the difference in ability to deign and build planes between intelligent engineers and other rank retards like themselves. So,they hire the retard. Since “he thinks like us!” (meaning, not at all)
It’s the same story across all of America: All wealth have been handed to genuinely stupid idiots. Who don’t know better than to 1)hire other idiots for all positions of influence. And 2)hence wreck and destroy absolutely anything and everything which generation upon generation prior may have built up. That’s really it. There are no exceptions. Nor any yabutts. Communists really are almost infinitely better than “us” at absolutely everything now.
And also: Even if we did somehow manage to change course; we’re now so far behind that it would take literally decades to catch up. Only Argentinians (of any nationality) are stupid and gullible enough to still believe that if only they elect the right Dear Peron this time, they’ll magically become an advanced nation again, instead of just another third world dump at best a century behind even Indonesia. America has much,much more in common with Argentina now,than it does with more advanced societies like China.
After a deep dive divers have to decompress. If somebody blow a hole in 737 Max at 30K/33K feet, not at 16K feet, passengers veins and brains might pop out, without pressure suits. 0.22 instead of 9 mm.