Statistically, there is no difference between a new plane and one that's been flying for 18 years [1].
Given dying because an installer fucked up feels mighty similar to dying because a maintenance tech fucked up, I don't see a rational reason to over-penalise fabrication errors to the extent that it overrules millions of successful flight miles. (Design mistakes are categorially different.)
I'm pretty sure if you personally drove a new car off the lot and the door fell off you would not believe that quality were unchanged from your prior impression of that car company.
Just because it's happening to other people doesn't make it okay to hand-wave away safety.
And by the way, so far NTSB believes it's not a fabrication error but an assembly error. NTSB suspects 4 bolts were never screwed in.
> if you personally drove a new car off the lot and the door fell off you would not believe that quality were unchanged from your prior impression of that car company
As a layman, no. Were I looking for more than a Twitter level of analysis, it would be an indication for investigation. Not grounds for conclusion.
More directly, even as a layman, if I were to use that anecdote as grounds to condemn the state of car manufacturing in summa, that would be irrational.
> NTSB suspects 4 bolts were never screwed in
Source? Last I saw, they couldn't find the bolts. It takes lab work to ascertain whether they ever existed.
NTSB are doing that lab work right now in Washington D.C.
You seem to not know the meaning of suspect, so here is the definition:
Dictionary
Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more
sus·pect
verb
3rd person present: suspects
/səˈspek(t)/
1.
have an idea or impression of the existence, presence, or truth of (something) without certain proof.
"if you suspect a gas leak, do not turn on an electric light"
Suspicion doesn't mean baseless hypothesis, e.g. "Mars is an orange." The NTSB would never say (and has not said, as you've conceded) it "suspects" the "bolts were never screwed in."
Were there a lack of marks where the bolts should have exerted clamping force, there would be basis for suspicion. That isn't proof. But it's more than a hypothesis.
I mean you can believe what you want but NTSB literally had a guy at a podium say into the mic last night that there is so far no evidence "the bolts were ever there", around the 17-18 minute mark if you have nothing better to do. Good luck with your investments.
> NTSB literally had a guy at a podium say into the mic last night that there is so far no evidence "the bolts were ever there"
Where are you getting this? Crookshanks said the NTSB had "not yet recovered the four bolts" and "have not determined if they existed there" [1].
Your source, for which I'm genuinely curious, is categorically false in suggesting the NTSB "suspects" the bolts were never there, or that Crookshanks said "there is so far no evidence 'the bolts were ever there'". (The latter being particularly reprehensible, given it involves materially misquoting an aircraft investigator.)
