Summary
Whistleblowers at Boeing allege widespread safety lapses, including missing or defective parts and improper assembly practices, driven by pressure to maintain production schedules.
A January incident where a door panel blew off a new 737-9 Max mid-flight has sparked investigations, with insiders like Sam Mohawk revealing that thousands of faulty parts may have been installed on planes.
Other whistleblowers describe similar concerns over quality control failures, managerial indifference, and retaliation for speaking out.
Boeing denies safety risks but faces ongoing FAA investigations amid heightened scrutiny over its practices.
Can you link to sources for this?
Also, it makes sense to retire a plane when it’s 20-30 years old, essentially because it becomes extremely inefficient. That said There are nearly 200 A300s flying. They were introduced in 1974.
I have a friend who is the chief engineer for a charter airline that has a 4 plane fleet, A320, First gen. From the 80s or early 90s.
Your claim doesn’t seem to hold up.
I’ve worked on several fleets of cargo aircraft that are mostly comprised of PAX to cargo conversions or dedicated freighters. When they exceed their airframe hours for passenger service, they go to cargo to live out the rest of their lives. I’ve worked on multiple fleets that were built in the 70’s. B767-200’s, A300’s, and DC-10’s. The DC(MD)-10’s on my current fleet are all retired now due to economic reasons, but the airframes are still absolutely solid. The A300’s are still flying but are steadily being retired due to Airbus not approving major repairs for issues related to the age of the aircraft. All of the A310’s at my company have already been retired due to Airbus dropping aging fleet support. The B767-200’s will keep flying for a long time because Boeing has a very extensive aging fleet program. The only limit for the B767’s longevity is the owner’s wallet. With that being the case, the retired A300’s and MD-10’s at my company are being replaced with factory-new B767-300’s and B777-300’s.
Also, the B757’s I’ve worked on will last just as long as the 767’s. The oldest ones I worked on had over 150,000 flight hours and were factory freighters. The company that owned them finally retired them at 200,000 flight hours. They were still airworthy, but they were becoming pretty expensive to maintain and the owner replaced them with slightly newer but less used 757-200F’s and 767-300’s. The 767’s were freshly retired from PAX service (got the IAI P2F conversion), and the 757’s were from another freighter line.
I don’t have any links. I’m actively working in the industry on the maintenance side of widebody aircraft, currently for a company that owns over 400 aircraft. I’ve worked on several fleets and airframes beforehand for a MRO doing similar work.
What you explain sounds totally reasonable. The thing is that older Boeings And DCs and MDs have an American old school philosophy about them, think of the muscle car era, while Airbuses have been conceived different from the start. Even the 300/310 (2nd gen, with the two man cockpit) adopted a computer driven approach, while on the American ones, the computers were simply an auxiliary feature. The result is that certifying such an integral part of the system, based on computer systems is an iffy proposition. I have seen this same issue, with ATMs. While the hardware may be totally sound, getting computer spares has become extremely expensive. Replacing 286 CPUs, for example is really difficult, you can’t really find new ones on the market. Solutions exist but it’s really about economics. These solutions can extend A300’s life, up to 60 years. That’s fairly long.
DC 3’s still fly, but many have been essentially rebuilt, to the last rivet. Apart from the warbirds, the commercial ones are still used because it’s very hard to find modern planes that can replace the DC3’s unique capabilities. Rough landing strips, robustness, easy low tech maintenance, etc. They are expected to be flying into their 100th birthdays.