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- cross-posted to:
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A Boeing 747-400 with 468 people aboard was forced to make an emergency landing in Indonesia on Wednesday after one of its engines caught fire and began shooting out flames during takeoff.
The Garuda Indonesia flight was bound for Medina, Saudi Arabia, which is the entry point for many Muslims making their pilgrimage to Mecca. It left from Indonesia’s international airport in Makassar, where clips showed one of the plane’s four engines becoming engulfed in flames during takeoff on Wednesday evening.
Videos of the engine fire were shared online by JACDEC, a plane crash data evaluation firm, which showed that the flames began just as the plane had lifted from the runway.
The last 747-400 passenger plane rolled off the production line in 2005. This is either going to be a maintenance issue or the engine ingesting debris or a bird, not faulty construction. Boeing doesn’t even make the engines, it’s either GE, Pratt & Whitney, or Rolls Royce, depending on the original owner’s preference.
This here. As much as I hate the new Boeing philosophy, they used to build good planes and this issue is most certainly a maintenance problem or bird strike etc…
But it is rumored the bird was actually a suicidal whistleblower.
Ok but how does this stuff keep happening to Boeing planes?
Boeing is under increased public awareness, any issues get picked up and amplified by the news.
There’s about 100,000 flights a day in the world. Until very recently Boeing was the largest provider of commercial aircraft, and it’s still second largest next to airbus. It’s basically a duopoly with those two manufacturers providing the vast majority of planes. Even with the small rate of accidents, with so many flights every day involving Boeing planes there’s going to be a few.
Editors know anything relating to an airline accident and Boeing right now will get lots of clicks, they just throw that it’s a Boeing aircraft in the headline, then bury relevant facts indicating there’s really no way this could have anything to do with Boeing quality control in the article. And many of these are about events that happen from time to time anyways but wouldn’t normally make any sort of splash in the international news media, so suddenly it feels like you’re being bombarded with Boeing news. If the headline writer put GE or Rolls Royce airplane engine fire due to likely accidental bird collision, or Garuda Indonesia airline repair standards are subpar or something, it wouldn’t get any clicks.
Shit happens to lots of planes. You just hear about the Boeing ones because reporting on them is in vogue.
I recently set up FlightRadar24 to alert me whenever a plane anywhere in the world starts squawking 7700, the emergency code. It’s REMARKABLE how often it happens. At least a few times per day, it seems like. There are well over 100,000 flights every day, and occasionally stuff goes wrong.
(And yet, whenever a fatal commercial air incident occurs it’s global news, because those are still exceptionally rare.)
Airbus has a ton of new planes grounded due to engine failures since before the door blowout. But you won’t hear about it because shitting on Boeing is what got clicks instead.
Garuda has an abysmal safety record. I’m banking it wasn’t a design or production issue with the 747.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Garuda_Indonesia_incidents_and_accidents
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garuda_Indonesia#European_ban_(2007–2009)
Why would it being a maintenance problem make it any better at all?
“Don’t worry guys, the planes aren’t inherently defective, we’re just not maintaining them correctly!”
Super comforting.
Every time a Boeing plane has issues these days people are quick with low effort “Boeing bad” posts. Maintenance isn’t Boeing’s responsibility, it’s the airline’s.