Tag: air travel

I’m Traveling To Hell This Week

When I say hell, of course I mean Portland. It’s a shithole now. Oregon is beautiful, but for some reason all the shit not in California or Washington is in Portland. It’s the required trip to the family.

All I hear or read is about problems with Boeing jets, DEI in Air Traffic Control and parts falling off of jets because maintenance workers require diversity. I don’t want to get on a plane, but there is no way out. I figured the statistics are with me and if some shit does go down, my rare flights should exempt me.

When I get there, I’ll get to deal with a city rampaged by Antifa, BLM and many other miscreants. Other than SF, it is the homeless capital of the world, not to mention walking on the streets to the freak show and shit on the sidewalks.

I’ve scheduled some posts and meme’s to enjoy, including stories and observations of mine. It’s a look into my head when I put these out. I’ll cover introverts, the gym fashion show, sibling hell, lots of meme dumps and other stuff.

I may get a post in about my adventures while there, but no promises. Maybe I’ll keep some readers, like Ellie K, a new subscriber. With all the shit I post, I’m surprised she’s still there, but there you go.

Boeing’s Uncontrolled Descent, How the Aerospace Manufacturing Company Declined over the Decades

The history of Boeing over the past thirty years is a story of a critical American institution that sold off its engineering culture and embraced an asset-light focus on margin instead of product vision, and then executed that strategy poorly. In 2024, Boeing is producing fewer planes than it did a decade ago and faces an onslaught of headlines about spectacular accidents, nagging regulators, and disappointing earnings.

A large part of the issues can be traced back to the Boeing-McDonnell Douglas merger in 1997. The deal seemed like a good idea at the time. By 1996, McDonnell Douglas commanded only 4% share in U.S. commercial aviation, and its production lines were languishing. Meanwhile, Boeing had a $100 billion backlog, and needed more assembly capacity to ramp deliveries and fulfill its orders. Yet in the event, the joke on Wall Street became that “McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing’s money.” McDonnell Douglas CEO Harry Stonecipher and John McDonnell, the chair of McDonnell Douglas’ board, became the largest shareholders of the combined entity after a stock swap worth $13 billion and they brought McDonnell Douglas’ bureaucratic defense contractor culture of margin-focused, risk-averse financial engineering with them.

But DEI is only part of the problem. Historically, Boeing has achieved great results by centralizing authority and control in the hands of the most exceptionally talented engineers. Today, the culture at Boeing is the opposite: listening sessions with the downtrodden, coddling the broken, and tiptoeing around the oppressed. Authority diffused throughout an entire organization’s hierarchy is no authority at all; accountability to technical results becomes challenging, if not impossible, when managers are serving two masters.

Meanwhile, management is rearranging deck chairs to make them more diverse. In 2022, Boeing tied managers’ incentive compensation to the ‘diversity’ of their interview slates, meaning that their bonuses depended on whether or not they considered women, racial minorities, and the disabled for positions they were hiring for. In Boeing’s Global Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (GEDI) 2023 Report, Sara Bowen, vice president of GEDI, Talent Intelligence, and Employee Listening, wrote: “We know diversity must be at the table for every important decision our company makes — every challenge we face, every innovation we design. Equity, diversity and inclusion are core values because they make Boeing — and each of us individually — better.”

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The DEI disaster now appears to be hitting American Airlines

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.

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As always, woke ruins everything it touches

DEI Gets Another Boeing Plane

SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — A United Airlines flight that departed from San Francisco International Airport Friday morning lost a panel, which was discovered after landing in Oregon, the Rogue Valley International Medford Airport confirmed to KRON4.

Flight 433 landed safely at Medford Airport around 11:30 a.m., according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The missing panel has not been found. At this time, it is unknown how the panel fell off the plane. No damage to the plane was reported, and normal airport operations resumed, Medford airport officials said.

United did not declare an emergency landing as there was no indication of damage to the aircraft during the flight. According to the airline, there were 139 passengers and six crew members on board. The plane involved was a Boeing 737-800.

This afternoon, United flight 433 landed safely at its scheduled destination at Rogue Valley International/Medford Airport. After the aircraft was parked at the gate, it was discovered to be missing an external panel. We’ll conduct a thorough examination of the plane and perform all the needed repairs before it returns to service. We’ll also conduct an investigation to better understand how this damage occurred.United Airlines Spokesperson

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I can tell Boeing how it happened. It’s just like the others that just happened. When you hire based on diversity, you get crappy quality. Hire on meritocracy and the planes won’t fall apart in mid air. Don’t let it be lost that it was United, who leads the industry in this farce

Remember When Boeing Said It Promoted Diversity?

An American Airlines flight had to make an emergency landing in
California on Wednesday evening after the pilot reported a potential
mechanical issue with the Boeing 777 aircraft, the airline said.

Flight345, which had taken off from Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, landed at Los
Angeles International Airport at around 8:45 p.m. without any incident,
according to American Airlines. The plane was able to taxi to the gate
under its own power, and passengers disembarked as usual.

There have been at least six reported incidents involving Boeing planes in the past week. It was reported that a blown tire might have caused the emergency landing, but American Airlines did not confirm this.

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Just like the air traffic controllers, they want people to die instead of hiring competent employees

DEI In The Air Is Going To Kill Us

A group of almost a dozen attorneys general across the United States have sent a letter to the Biden administration warning that DEI hiring practices within the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are putting airline passengers in danger.

“We are troubled by some recent reports regarding your agency’s hiring practices and priorities,” Kansas Republican AG Kris Kobach and 10 other attorneys general wrote to FAA Administrator Michael Whitaker. “It seems that the FAA has placed ‘diversity’ bean counting over safety and expertise, and we worry that such misordered priorities could be catastrophic for American travelers.”

DEI in the air causes safety issues

According to the letter, the FAA under the Biden administration “appears to prioritize virtue-signaling ‘diversity’ efforts over aviation expertise” and “this calls into question the agency’s commitment to safety.”

Kobach and the other attorneys general allege that the FAA is no longer focusing on merit when hiring employees and has instead put its focus on diversity and pointed to statements made by the FAA related to a “five year strategic plan” to “diversify its workforce by rethinking its hiring practices and capitalize on opportunities to hire people who will bring new and diverse skills to the agency and reflect the demographics of the U.S. labor force.”

“These efforts follow on work that reportedly started under the Obama Administration when the agency shockingly sought out applicants with ‘severe intellectual’ and ‘psychiatric’ disabilities to staff the agency responsible for air traffic control, aviation safety, major airports, commercial space regulation, and security and hazardous materials safety,” the letter states.

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And I hate it because my ass has to fly soon.

Update: Boeing nightmare continues (VIDEO)… 757 emergency landing after wing rips apart midair…

Four bolts were missing from a door panel that blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight last month while the Boeing 737 Max 9 plane was flying over Oregon, according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board.

The bolts are there to prevent the non-operational panel, known as a door plug, from moving upward, the NTSB said. But last year, before the plane was delivered to Alaska Airlines, the door panel had to be opened and four bolts removed at Boeing’s Renton, Wash., factory to replace damaged rivets nearby, the report says.

As part of the investigation, the agency found that the “absence of contact damage or deformation” around holes associated with vertical movement bolts indicates that four bolts of the door panel were missing before the panel moved up off the stop pads, according to the report.

It’s unclear why the bolts were missing. Records show that the rivets were replaced, but photos obtained from Boeing Co. by the NTSB show that the door panel was put back without bolts in three visible locations. The fourth location is obscured in the photo by insulation, the NTSB said.

LA Times

Controlling The Masses Like The Soviets Did, DHS Plans to Steal Biometric Data at All Federal Airports

Buried below are the words that the DHS allows illegals to fly without ID’s. That tells you a lot. They controlled groups of people in Germany during the 1940’s by putting them on trains and taking them to camps. This is the digital train ride.

According to the MSN, the CAT-2 scanners incorporate facial recognition technology by capturing real-time pictures of travelers and comparing them against their photo IDs. They will be expanded to every federal airport.

These units have been deployed at nearly 30 airports nationwide and are expected to expand to 430 federal airports in the coming years.

For now, it’s optional for passengers. How long will that be the case?

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Office of Field Operations, officers take biometric photos of passengers prior to boarding a flight at Houston International Airport on February 12, 2018. ..Photographer: Donna Burton

A bill, The Traveler Privacy Protection Act, has been introduced with bipartisan support. It calls for the government to end the invasive policy and stop expansion without congressional approval.

After the bill was announced, that’s about the time that DHS decided to move ahead.

Storage of the Biometric Data

According to MSN, “The TSA emphasizes that photos are not stored after a positive ID match, except during limited testing for evaluating technology effectiveness. This testing involves two to four weeks at specific locations, with data collected and submitted to the DHS Science and Technology Directorate for independent analysis.”

Allegedly, TSA won’t keep the data, but how long will Homeland Security and other entities keep it, and who can control what they do with it?

This is the DHS that lets illegal aliens fly without IDs. They aren’t trustworthy and don’t care about the safety of the people. So, why are they doing it?

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Do not comply

We’re Gonna Die In The Air: FAA created “secret code words” for blacks so they could one-up whites and Asians…

It’s no secret that the US airline industry is currently plagued with scandal, fear, and a lot of turbulence. Much of the turmoil is linked to their obsessive focus on the left’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) agenda. DEI prioritizes factors like skin color, gender identity, and sexual orientation over actual skills and talent in their hiring process. Let’s look at four recent examples of failed DEI hires.

Austen:

This is one of the craziest things I’ve ever read.

First, the FAA gave secret code words to students in the Black Caucus of Federal Aviation Employees to put in their resume that would skip them to the front of the line.

In another instance of the signals to go to the front of the line was to say the high school class you received your lowest grades in was “Science.”

Yes, they literally shot you to the front of the line if you said your worst grades were in Science.

story

DEI In The Sky Is Going To Get Us Killed

That, Medicine and law enforcement are the wrong places to be cutting corners. We have to get rid of it. Judging based on the color of skin is racist, any color….or gender

Aircraft mechanic shortage reaches ‘critical’ point

I don’t even want to get on an airplane right now. Between DEI in the Air Traffic Control and woke pilots, not to mention sudden deaths from the Covid Jab the pilots were forced to take, it’s a gamble now to fly.

A new report from AAR Corp., a company that provides aviation services to commercial and government operators, MROs, and OEMs, warns that the aircraft mechanic shortage has reached a critical point.

The company’s 2023 Mid Skills Gap report urges employers to “break down silos” and collaborate with high schools, colleges, non-profit organzations, and elected officials to expand early access to aviation maintenance curriculum and training.

“Mid skills” describes careers that require industry certifications but not a college degree, including aviation mechanics, according to officials with AAR, which has been putting together the report since 2011.

The 2023 report includes several suggestions to increase the number of aviation mechanics, including:

  • Work with lawmakers and state agencies, nonprofits and educators to launch a national campaign to raise awareness of aviation careers.
  • Encourage training programs to teach people with industry experience how to instruct others to build the faculty population.
  • Ask lawmakers to pass common sense immigration policies that allow aviation companies to recruit talent from abroad to meet demand and keep airplanes flying safely.
  • Make it easier for veterans to quickly transition their skills to appropriate industry jobs.
  • Push to eliminate restrictions on AMTs taking the FAA general exam as pilots can do with their written exams. Getting these exams completed early will lead to increased certifications for the industry, officials noted.
  • Increase training capacity by creating programs to make experienced retirees instructors in education programs.

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DEI In The Airlines, Failure In The Air

The CEO of Alaska Airlines said new, in-house inspections of the carrier’s Boeing 737 Max 9 planes in the wake of a near-disaster earlier this month revealed that “many” of the aircraft were found to have loose bolts.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News senior correspondent Tom Costello, Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci discussed the findings of his company’s inspections so far since the Jan. 5 incident, in which a panel on one of its Max 9 jets blew out midair on a flight carrying 177 people.

“I’m more than frustrated and disappointed,” he said. “I am angry. This happened to Alaska Airlines. It happened to our guests and happened to our people. And — my demand on Boeing is what are they going to do to improve their quality programs in-house.”

Story.

And this:

So, as I predicted in 2008, after a moderate first term helped Barack Obama get reelected in 2012, in 2013 Obama let loose his people to pursue their agenda of Diversity-Inclusion-Equity (DIE).

White House officials decided in 2013 to purge the hiring list of over 1,000 graduates of the air traffic control course at colleges like Arizona State who had also passed the cognitive exam for hiring. Instead, it made air traffic control job-seekers start over with a new “biographical” test to “add diversity to the workforce.”

This was in response to complaints from the National Black Coalition of Federal Aviation Employees that only 9.47 percent of FAA workers were black compared with 17.6 percent in the federal civilian workforce. “Thus, the FAA would be required to increase their complement of African American workers by 8.13 percent to reach parody [sic] with the Federal Civilian Workforce.”

This is not a parody.

The Obama administration’s new biographical test was blatantly rigged to boost blacks and hurt whites by leaning in to anti-black stereotypes. From the lawsuit against the FAA filed by the Mountain States Legal Foundation:

…a candidate could be awarded 15 points, the highest possible for any question, if they indicated that their lowest grades in high school were in science…. In contrast, an applicant was awarded only 2 points if they had a pilot’s certificate and no points were awarded for having a Control Tower Operator rating or having Instrument Flight Rules experience…. In addition, one question on the Biographical Questionnaire awarded an applicant 10 points, the most available for that question, if the applicant answered s/he had not been employed in the prior three years. Another question awarded 4 or 8 points if the applicant had been unemployed five or more months in the prior three years. Statistics from the Department of Labor indicate that African Americans had the highest unemployment rate in 2010–2014.

Even the federal organization that made up this absurd biographical test reported to the FAA that it hadn’t been validated.

I’ve never wanted to get on a plane less than I do right now. They have crazy people in Air Traffic Control with mental issues and DEI ruining aircraft maintenance. A pilot who couldn’t qualify other than through diversity almost crashed his plane because he shouldn’t have been flying to begin with.

Diversity and woke ruins everything it touches, but in this case a plane is coming down soon because some assholes think that equality and diversity is more important than skill and training.

speaking of diversity

Not Flying United Either – United Airlines CEO Admits to DEI Quota Because There are too Many White Men Flying Airplanes

Look, I don’t care what color the pilot is. I want the one that is going to get my ass there without crashing, not one that got hired on diversity. Racism is racism no matter what the color you discriminate against.

Meritocracy is dead.

United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, in a recent interview, admitted that they are no longer seeking the most qualified candidates to safely transport their passengers on commercial flights.

Instead, Kirby says, “We have committed that 50% of the classes will be women or people of color,” instead of the most qualified individuals they can find.

What could go wrong with putting one’s skin color or gender over safety and competency?

Anti-whiteness appears to be evolving into a trend in the airline industry.

Wall Street Silver, a popular finance account on X, warned people that they should not fly with an airline that puts woke DEI standards over safety:

“At this point, I think people really need to think twice about flying on United. The top priority of any airline on 100% of their hiring, especially pilots and mechanics, needs to be safety. Anyone who thinks DEI (racism) should play any role in hiring, that person needs to be removed from the process. The board of directors should terminate the CEO immediately and focus on safety, and only safety.”

Elon Musk also chimed in, saying, “This is messed up.”

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And this: United Airlines questioned about DEI impact on hard landing in Houston

The hard landed occurred on July 29th as a previously uneventful United Airlines Boeing 767-300ER flight from the Newark Liberty International Airport to the George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) in Houston turned awfully dramatic.

“According to the [National Transportation Safety Board’s] preliminary report, while landing at IAH, the First Officer was flying and, despite best efforts to keep the nose wheel from bouncing, the nose wheel made contact with abnormal force,” as reported by Simple Flying, an aviation news source.

“The airplane appeared to bounce, and he reacted by pulling aft on the control yoke, in an effort to keep the nose wheel from impacting the runway a second time. Subsequently, the speed brakes deployed, and the auto brakes engaged which resulted in a second bounce of the nose wheel.”

These bounces reportedly caused significant damage to the airplane.