Here is a list of those three crashes that comprised first loss of life and complete hull loss of a 777 all that occurred within about a year's time which is what I stated to my co-worker (Elkan) back in 2012 as a sign that Boeing would become a hiss and a byword (without course correction):
Asiana Airlines Flight 214 was a scheduled transpacific passenger flight originating from Incheon International Airport near Seoul, South Korea. On the morning of July 6, 2013, the Boeing 777-200ER operating the flight crashed on final approach into San Francisco International Airport in the United States. Of the 307 people on board, three died; another 187 were injured, 49 of them seriously.[1]: 13 Among the seriously injured were four flight attendants who were thrown onto the runway while still strapped in their seats when the tail section broke off after striking the seawall short of the runway. It was the first fatal crash of a Boeing 777 since the aircraft type entered service in 1995.[2]
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 (MH370/MAS370) was an international passenger flight operated by Malaysia Airlines that disappeared from radar on 8 March 2014, while flying from Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia to its planned destination, Beijing Capital International Airport in China.[1] The cause of its disappearance has not been determined. It remains the single deadliest case of aircraft disappearance in history, with all 239 of the plane's occupants presumed deceased.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17/MAS17)[b] was a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that was shot down by Russian-backed forces[4][5][6][7] with a Buk 9M38 surface-to-air missile on 17 July 2014, while flying over eastern Ukraine. All 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed.[8] Contact with the aircraft, a Boeing 777-200ER, was lost when it was about 50 kilometres (31 mi; 27 nmi) from the Ukraine–Russia border, and wreckage from the aircraft landed near Hrabove in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, 40 km (25 mi; 22 nmi) from the border.[9] The shoot-down occurred during the war in Donbas over territory controlled by Russian separatist forces.[10]
Those three crashes I stated would be a sign that my statement that Boeing (Commercial) would become a hiss and a byword if they did not repent of corruption.
I cannot remember what triggered that statement from me in 2012 - but it likely was over something that got me pissed off when something corrupt went down.
I was on the 747 line at the time doing MRB and we were trying to make it lose 6,000lbs. It was an active campaign amongst designers and MRBs out on the floor. I had made no significant addition to that effort other than auxiliary help on blankets that used a more fire-resistant material and were lighter than those on the original design. But, I was working on a problem with the windows and one of the mechanics complained that it took forever to cinch down the 12 clips holding them in because the titanium screws were too long. If done a certain way, you could get by with screws about half of the design length and still have enough thread engagement to not strip out the clips.
So we found the optimum screw for every case (front windows are thicker to allow for birdstrike potentiality) and I submitted a design change. When I went to the drawing for those screws, I saw that it was already at Rev J within an 18 month period from first release. I went to the design engineer to consult on our findings and I was shut down. Even though this would have saved 60 lbs on every 747 that went out the door (lots of windows on the 747-8).
In normal fashion, when stymied, I went for the end run and the next person above this particular individual was a Director who was a female. Usually, you had four or five levels above you before you hit a Director. She clearly was being mentored and groomed to assume some role. As I dug in more and more, I realized that she was black (no I am no prejudiced) and female and had been trained at an Ivy League school. So, she was a DEI hire that had been tapped to do the meteoric rise to the top based on her skin color and sex. That kind of stuff does chap me.
Regardless of all that, I wanted credit for that sixty pounds and all that work I put in and I was not about to let the whole PC thing get in the way of common sense. That 60 lbs was 1% of our 6,000 lb goal in weight reduction. When it comes down to shaving things off a million pound behemoth, 1% of almost nothing is significant. So I pushed the changes through. Mind you, if there was a good reason, I would have backed off, but this "shooting star" did not know what the hell she was doing and it took half the alphabet of revision changes to finally get the drawing she initiated to more or less stick. I ran through every revision and the mistakes were ridiculous. I felt justified in tweaking it one more time.
Well, I guess to save face, someone somewhere high up handed my boss an edict that, weight savings be damned, and that this change was not going to happen.
You start out at a company like Boeing hoping to make a huge difference and then you realize that everything comes down to politics and who you know instead of what you know.
I am sure that got me spun up enough to ruminate on things until I was given a "don't worry, you are on the right path. Keep going in spite of the shit show". It is often at times like these that I have gotten some of the most poignant manifestations - when I am striving or when there are enormous pressures to compromise or to give up, put on me. The most striking was when we lost our kid to SIDS and you just want to throw the towel in and say, "What is it all for?!? It just ends up going to schitt anyway." But the veil was parted and we were given a beautiful glimpse of the "bigger picture".
Those are when you get the love bumps from the other side and then you just stick your nose back on the grindstone and power on. Often those are the Abrahamic tests - but they are usually accompanied by a greater measure of love or power or manifestation (thinking of Jesus having the angel there to uphold Him in the Garden of Gethsemane).
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