Boeing whistleblower suddenly found dead during deposition phase in court.
Took a while:
From todayās business pages in the Telegraph.
Itās one of the reasons I havenāt yet booked my flights to South America - the ābestā flight option is on a Dreamliner and I quite fancy arriving alive.
Well, the Dreamliner is a more mature type (compared to the 737-900MAX) , so I would suspect that if any ābuildā errors / concerns had shown up so far, there would be a bit of noise about it - Boeing are an easy tgt at the moment!
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Iām going to book this week, as Iāve now found alternative flights that include an A380 - an aircraft I really enjoy flying on. They also arrive at the destination late at night, which I prefer to do when travelling over several timezones as I find it reduces jet lag.
But the Dreamliner has had historic problems and Boeing have, ultimately, made themselves an easy target through their own actions over a prolonged period of time and several different models of aircraft.
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Share prices tell a story in themselves. Boeing have dropped 32% since the start of the year, and Airbus have gone up by 13% over the same period!
Not necessarily the only indicator - you can have a āgoodā product & manage to muck things up quite easily due to other circumstances:
White Star & Titanic
Air France & Concorde
Atari & ET game
Must be lots more!
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Iām actually fairly surprised weāre still going ahead with Boeing spacecraft at all, given the recent systemic issues with safety in their aircraft division.
Iām sure those on board didnāt see it this way, but it does confirm that there are worse places for your door to fall outā¦
Daily Wail trying to blame this one on Boeing - plus wildly inaccurate text, I bit, & emailed the numpty wot wrote it!
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I take umbrage, as a commercial pilot, at your laughable content:
Please look up the definition āto smashā - not relevant here - it was a controlled lowering of the nose of the aircraft onto the runway surface. From the video, it could probably be described as textbook handling of an abnormal undercarriage situation.
You also use the word ātatteredā within the text of the article:
āā¦planeās tattered fuselageā¦ā
Please can you elaborate - there is nothing to show significant damage.
There is little or no apparent blame that can be apportioned against Boeing; the aircraft is some 10 yrs old & there are several key items that could have failed (especially due to maintenance action).
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My understanding is that landing gear failure, whilst not a daily occurrence, isnāt particularly uncommon.
Fully understand the focus on Boeingās safety record at present, but this does seem to point to issues other than the manufacturer.
Plenty of videos online of abnormal landings.
My favourite is the shopping trolley nose wheel being ground down because it doesnāt know how to wheel.
That will polish out no problems!!
For such occurrences, if there is no frame damage, then itās a simple re-skin in some places.
Lots of nosewheel incidents, fortunately less so for individual main gear problems - that is a nasty configuration to land with (i.e. nosewheel down & only one main gear down) - good for a spin / flip / cartwheel if the wing tip catches on the ground.
Could have been several points in the gear sequencing, internal jack failure for the nosewheel leg itself, valve issue, cracked leg (unusual).
Luckily, this one happened whilst taxying, not at a higher speed (or landing) - Murphyās law - no built-in design to stop the (selector?) valve being fitted back to front! I was operating the A3400-B4 around then - a quick fleet check was made!
It just came out from a C Check maintenance program.
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Brand new Virgin Atlantic A340 at Heathrow port undercarriage failure, in the words of the controllerā the next aircraft will crashā.
Well, it was about 3 - 4 yrs oldā¦
That model had the central 2 wheeled bogie - think that the -300 series had 2 wheels on a single leg, whereas 500/600 had 4) - but not down for this emergency landing as per the QRH - but picked up only by the 3rd pilot (not surprising, considering the huge coordination aspects); QRH subsequently amended to reflect many points from this incident.
Anyway, another day where the double-winged master race earned their allowances! 
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