As a matter of fact, the same issue did occur to US-based-airlines, and the pilots did catch it. That does not however answer the question of whether they just got lucky, or were more skilled, though there are some indications that it may have been skill.

A former air accident investigator who works as an aviation safety consultant said "It's extraordinary that Boeing concluded that a failure of this part would not have safety consequences," and said the report was "disturbing"

Doesn't seem like gray to me. It seems a company who has a history of cutting corners and ignoring or downplaying safety problems did exactly that in this case too which resulted in the deaths of many people. UPS made an error here as well in trusting Boeing when they said it wasn't a safety issue and they should have installed the revised bearing assembly out of an abundance of caution, but I don't know much they would have known back in 2011 about the changes at Boeing that prioritized profit over safety following the merger with McDonnell Douglas

I am wondering what the exact fail mode here is.

Because my naive conclusion after looking at the part in question is exactly the same "would not result in a safety of flight condition." if the bearing cracked at the point in question it is going nowhere, the bearing is still captive in its housing. hell it looks like it could have been designed as two pieces and it would work the same. the large bolt is what is holding the engine on.

The best I can come up with is that a split bearing causes increased wear on the mounting bracket and nobody noticed for a long time.

Anyhow, here is the ntsb update in question https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Documents/DCA26MA024%20I...

The FAA has not determined that this flaw did lead to a safety of flight condition. Investigation is still ongoing.

Apparently they expected it to blow up on the ground, so technically the plane wasn't flying yet ...

Yeah saved boeing losing face and sales by requiring all the planes be grounded and fixed. Just eye it up every 5 years, if you want to.

AA Flight 191 in 1979, 273 dead. American Airlines invented their own engine removal procedure using a forklift and damaged a pylon and mounting bracket. The engine ripped off the wing on takeoff.

33 percent attrition and could only fly once a week.

I know satellites and drones have replaced the sr71 but it would be cool if someone would build a plane as capable again.

12/32 SR71s were lost in the 33 years they were flying. 11/200 MD-11s have been hull-lost from 1988-2025. Not to mention that passenger/cargo planes will put on a lot more flight hours than the SR71s did in a given year.

the SR-71 leaking fuel on the ground was not a design flaw. it was designed to be operated at speed where things would expand to fill in. if they were filled in on the ground, they'd have no place to expand at speed/temps. the risk assessment was that it was better to leak fuel on the ground rather than blowing up at speed/temp

They learn pretty quickly to downplay things when their whistleblower collegese either fall down the stairs or kill themselves after telling loved ones that if they die it was not by their own hands.

Are you talking about Starliner? Starliner's 2 flights have been problematic to say the least, but Orion's single (uncrewed) flight went pretty well.

Thanks for this post. I’m blown away by that 50,000 hours figure.

The article mentions the cost and that Boeing underestimates it. When you divide the cost by the number of hours, it seems very reasonable. Parts and materials being included. I’m surprised any job that extensive isn’t even more expensive.