The continuing and almost daily airline incidents in recent weeks, with planes repeatedly being forced to make emergency landings because of mechanical failures, has too often been blamed by the media on Boeing and the airplanes it builds, when almost all of these mechanical problems have had nothing to do with that airplane manufacturer. Once Boeing sells a plane to an airline, it becomes the airline’s responsibility to maintain it and keep it airworthy. Boeing itself might have serious management and quality control problems making its new planes suspect, but when older planes fail it is not Boeing’s fault. For example, all of the recent failures at United were clearly due to failures of United’s own maintenance staff, failures quite likely instigated by that company’s decision since 2020 to make race and gender the primary qualifications for hiring, not skill, talent, or knowledge.
We are now seeing the same phenomenon at American Airlines (AA), which since December has experienced its own string of flight emergencies:
- December 6: 2023: An Airbus plane made an emergency landing at Phoenix when the flight crew reported one of the plane’s flaps had failed.
- December 6, 2023: A different Airbus was forced to return to Phoenix because of low oil pressure in one engine.
- December 23, 2023: An Airbus A319-100 was forced to make an emergency landing because of a brake issue detected during take-off.
- January 8, 2024: A Boeing 787 made an emergency landing in Los Angeles due to an as yet unclarified “mechanical issue.”
- February 29, 2024: An Airbus A321 was forced to make an emergency landing when one engine stalled in flight and could not be restarted by the crew.
- February 29, 2024: A Boeing 777-200 on its way to Madrid had to turn back to Boston due to a cracked windshield
- March 11, 2024: An Airbus A321 had to turn back to Raleigh-Durham airport because a sensor told the crew a cargo door was still open.
- March 13, 2024: A Boeing 777 made an emergency landing in Los Angeles when the crew detected low pressure in one of the landing gears.
As always, woke ruins everything it touches
Delusions of Adequacy 