Boeing grounds 777X test fleet on failure of engine mounting structure,

I’m not an engineer or a pilot, I’m a retired nurse. Boeing’s management changes clearly had profound changes on its corporate culture, which is associated with both engineering and production problems that ironically have had catastrophic effects on the company’s books.
IMHO, Boeing commercial clients (airlines), seeking to maximize their profits are packing passengers like sardines (more weight) into planes optimized for efficiency (less weight) constrain aircraft design. Moreover, it seems to me that, for lack of a better word, “safety tolerances/redundancy, etc, are less generous in part because that means more weight and less efficiency. (Two very large engines vs four/three smaller). Higher fuel costs!
Materials get more exotic, and manufacturing intricacies much more complex. There are fewer companies with workforce skilled to manufacture these components that have critical design specifications that may or may not be fully described initially. Case in point the 777 thrust link.
In the pursuit of less weight and more powerful within the “profitability constraints” some engineers may been constrained from opining that the FEA software modeling the wings and engine mounts lacked robustness to adequately describe new harmonics generated by the increased mass and thrust vectors. Moreover the older modeling software may not adequately account for thrust link deformation (anisotropy under deformation).
If corporate culture, if managers do not encourage discussion and ownership, then that junior engineer who might recommend using Crystal plasticity finite element method (CPFEM) to proof the thrust link would never be heard.
Changes in corporate culture take time and commitment. Moreover, the stock market has to support it. So much of the focus is on short term profits without building companies and work forces.

Think about your health care. Look at quality indicators for HCA hospitals decades ago before Scott (Columbia), then Bain Capital. My advice to you: seek out Magnet hospitals (pick top ranked hospitals), choose insurance plans that allow you to choose your hospital and providers.
Take some time to Google “US healthcare system world ranking”.

BTW: that pilot who tried to pull the fire suppression system mid-flight - do you think he had good psychiatric care? Do you think the rules rt medical/psychiatric illness in pilots is helpful or not so much? How many pilots are flying with hypertension and/or severe undiagnosed heart disease? (High stress, lack of exercise, interrupted circadian cycles, poor diet, etc.) Boeing’s culture isn’t the only culture that needs to be changed.

Bowing encountered a thrust link problem during the original certification of the GE90/B777 back in the mid 90s. ETOPS certification took place after the plane was certified for general operations and the FAA held up ETOPS until this and several other issues were resolved.

Isn’t this one of the reasons for test flights? To find any potential problems that may come up in the future especially with new technologies.

A few things to consider - The 777X uses an extremely powerful engine ( GE9x) . In engine testing, it was able to produce 134000 pounds of thrust. The 777X also features a composite wing structure. The 787 series has engines mounted to a composite wing. But AFAIK for 787, maximum thrust per engine is (approx.) 70000 to 80000 pounds thrust. Not making excuses for Boeing - just stating facts. Guessing the 777x engine mount migh be derived from 777-300 mount design, but adapted to composite wing ? Only a guess.

We were in and out of Boeing stock for decades. Did well by us. We quit investing when the bean counters took over. I think we all know where its long running problems come from.

1.
The comments about space suits and bringing astronauts home have absolutely no bearing on this T7X testing regime. Same company but entirely different division.

2.
The complaints about Boeing playing PR games with these issues is just the same old 'Boeing is bad' narrative. For crying out loud, we wanted the accountants to let the engineers have more say and now the engineers are saying, "we aint releasing this bird until its ready". Thats what we wanted and thankfully we seem to now be getting that.

3.
This airplane has amazing new technolgy including the largest and most powerful engines ever strapped under an airliners wing and of course folding wing technology which although not new by any means is certainly new to large commercial airliners. Testing is therefore going to throw up challenges and has to be comprehensive. What looked good on paper doesn't always translate to actual in flight operations. Engineers know that and dillegently seek out the weaknesses in original design.

4. in saying all this, there is just one thing that niggles me a bit. Ever since those fuel efficient ETOPS twins pushed aside the 3 and 4 holers, the mantra seems to be that two engines are better than any thing else. To satisfy that demand and meet ever heavier take off weights and longer cruise distances, and of course fuel economy, reduced noise and emmissions targets etc, the industry has developed these enormous engines both in size and power. After strapping them to the T7X it is perhaps not too surprising that the engineering concepts that 'just worked' in the past, may have just reached a limit beyond which 3 or 4 smaller engine designs would actually be more practical?. Just a thought.

This makes me wonder of we’re hearing more reports of Boeing uncovering and publicly reporting newly found failures as being

1) genuine reports, disconnected from their historical behavior,
2) genuine reports unconsciously intended to function as PR stories, or
3) genuine reports consciously disguised as PR stories?

The corporate game seems to be played such that its damage control spins up its efforts to start covering all the past, bad press as best it can. All reports, therefore, seem to forever be in a grey area where we’ll never know if their reports are genuine or contrived. How sad.

Once lost, trust cannot be reestablished to the same level.

Although hard to do, I think that’s what this post attempts to put into words.

And now we find out the Boeing space suits are not compatible with those of other manufacturers. NASA, you blew this one for sure.

Hope it gets resolved Please bring home those Astronauts safe my prayers

Hope it get resolved...Bring home those Astronaut save My prayers

Seems like Boeing continues to get the basics wrong. Workforce hiring or culture?

The article says, "...test plane operated a Kona flight..."

Does anyone know what this means? Is it a typo? I assume they weren't doing a test flight in Hawaii?

Boeing WTF it's getting really scary, really bad engineering. more bad Boeing