Please reread what I said about the -10. I refered only to the early aircraft. I have friends that have thousands of hours in the left seat of -10's with multiple airlines and they all had reasonbly nice things to say about the later versions of the aircraft, and some even raved about it, but all had frustrations with the earliest ones in their respective fleets.
With new aircraft, there tends to be a lot of things that get into production that have some poor design features that cause some problems with the early versions, but eventually get improved. Test programs are designed so that most of these problems can be sorted out and corrected prior to the aircraft getting too far into production. Unfortunately, it's impossible to test for every possible event or scenario, or the companies would never get the aircraft or product out to the customer in a reasonable amount of time. Designers are human and not infalable, and if it can be screwed up, it's bound to happen at some point in the life of the product. I see stuff like this happen on occasion since I've been involved in flight testing aircraft for more than 75% of my aerospace career.
As to the door problem, as a passenger I've been moved off of early -10's at least twice due to the inability of the ground crew to get a cargo door latched properly. A couple of other times we were delayed in pushback because the crew kept getting an unlocked warning on the door. After numerous attempts, it would finally properly lock. From talking with crews that I knew, until the doors were modded, there were persistant problems with getting the doors latched properly.
AA's problem wasn't the procedure per se, it was that the mechanics who chose to beat a fracture critical pin into a close tolerence hole, when it should have been able to be inserted with light pressure. If it wouldn't go in, there was obviously an alignment problem. It was also a supervision and inspection problem for allowing it to knowingly happen. When stuff gets to the real world, procedures and fixtures get changed all the time because field operations sometimes find better or easier ways to do things. Engineers don't always design things with maintenance or repair in mind, and the wrench turners sometimes find methods or develope changes to procedures that improve things. Sometimes they manage to find ways to screw things up... AA came up with removing the entire pylon/engine assembly to overcome a proble with the original factory method. Unfortunately, it created a situation that was not forseen and AA management allowed a poor workmanship practice to become a common practice.
As to the DeathStar moniker, I heard that for the first time way back in 1980 from various pilots, mechanics and FA's that I knew. Once the problems had been found and corrected, it didn't deserve the nickname, but in typical fashion, it stuck, although by the time it was nearing the end of production, it was starting to fall out of usage.
Souix City was a fluke due to an engineering design reality. The turbine parts from the uncontained failure chopped up the only area where all three hydraulic system main lines were in close proximity to each other. It was a failure that the design engineers had considered to be so remote, that there was not much concern about it. If we as manufacturers had to build products to cover every possible failure, then there would be nothing ever produced. Sometime stuff happens that no one ever thought of. A good example is the schoold districts around here removing all the mulching materials from the playgrounds due to the fact that we have had an unusual set of circumstances that has resulted in at least 5 playgrounds spontaneously catch fire! Ever consider that due to the weather that your flower beds or playgrounds would catch fire? Even the fire saftey guys with decades of experience are scratching their heads over this in our area...Who would have thought that some wet mulch would be a fire hazard?
It's my job to be harsh on things, If I, as a trained engineer and mechanic can screw it up or break it or damage it when we proof out these things, then there is a problem with the design or procedure and we work to fix the problem, hopefully before the product gets to the user. It's a problem because in any industry, things have to be designed to be as idiot proof as possible, but the customers keep producing better and better idiots
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I've ruined several thousands of dollars of new parts because I managed to install a supposedly simple tool out of alignment. The tool designer thought it was impossible to do this, but I managed to do it. A simple mod to the tool made it impossible to ever do it again. When you have tens of thousands of tools and procedures to manufacture and maintain a product, it's going to happen and more than once in the life cycle of it.
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