Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

The engine that fell off (!) had been worked on for two hours at Louisville, KY immediately before takeoff. Occam's Razor suggests that whatever they did right there is to blame.




> Occam's Razor suggests that whatever they did right there is to blame.

Ordinarily yes, but in this case there are reports that the plane underwent a "heavy maintenance check" from Sep 3 to Oct 18, which may have included engine removal and overhaul (source: pprune.org, from a poster who's not given to flights of fancy.)


In the Reddit /r/aviation thread, there are people who spotted that specific plane at San Antonio International airport since it was apparently being serviced at a major service facility there. So yes to major service potentially at issue, and no to international work being at fault.

ST Engineering MRO is located in SAT as SAA. They have the MD-11 contracts for C and D checks for FedEx and UPS.

Despite the enshittification of Reddit, it is still unparalleled for situations like this. There is more friction for the Fediverse to have an equivalent community, but I hope more people realize the smoothness is not free.

Have you ever heard of the phrase "a distinction without a difference"? The delta between "domestic" and "international" has basically been erased for all intents and purposes over the last 25 years. H1-B can and is used for Aviation Mechanics, not to mention that approximately 25 million of the official 60 million in the US that were not born American citizens have been granted citizenship in that period.

You seem to be trying to defend "international", but reality is "international" has become "domestic" as the USA turns into something other than the USA.


How exactly is the USA turning into something other then the USA?

Is this an honest question, or just a snark after being another reddit tier downvoters in hopes of making reality go away?

But I’ll bite in case it’s an honest question by an honest person; you’ve surely heard of the story based on the ship of Theseus, but what if the ship was replaced with not even ship replacement parts, but totally different things? Would and should you still call it a ship at all? Would it still serve the purpose and function of a ship of it was instead a pile of rocks rather than the components of a ship perfectly joined in a way that allows its characteristics of a ship to serve their purpose in general, even if the specific ship was replaced part by part?

If I could magically snap my fingers and replace all of India or all of Germany with Japanese people or maybe aboriginals of what is today called Australia; would it still make sense to call India, India or Germany, Germany? Why still call them India and Germany at that point since it’s just nonsensical to do so when no one there is Indian or German?

On a more specific level, what is the USA without the ethnicity and cultures that not just made it and everything we take for granted that came from it … all that democracy and freedom stuff… possible in the first place, but the people who built it on those foundations?

To me it seems like over of those PE leveraged buyouts that ends up hitting the whole company to siphon off the value and leave an empty just in its place; you know, like what has essentially been done to all of America for the last 50 or so years. Now people wonder why the whole collective west cannot even muster the industrial capacity to even supply the Ukraine, let alone ourselves.

Maybe it will be something, and it might even still be called the USA if you swap everything behind the branded facade out with something totally different like how Berkshire Hathaway still carries the name but has absolutely not a single connection to either of the original companies. But keeping the name does not make Berkshire Hathaway a textile manufacturing company. What is America when people have successfully replaced the people and neutralized and eradicated the Constitution that is a thorn in the eyes of extremely terrifying people?

It always baffles my mind a bit that such basic things have to be explained like what you are essentially asking, i.e.,” how can replacing something with something totally different mean it is not the same thing as it was before”. I don’t mean that as a personal insult, it’s just concerning and curious how fundamental lower order thinking is failing or maybe just being eroded or even just driven out. It feels like full fledged civilization cognitive devolution, like being asked why one should avoid doing things that will cause death; on the level of collapse of the most fundamental survival instincts. It’s quite curious from a historical perspective.


The Mayflower WASPs didn't build the space program, that was largely down to those paperclip German scientists.

What is the USofA other than wave after wave of immigrants mixing together with Chinese railway workers, Spanish speaking holdovers from New Spain, and migrants from every corner of the earth?


I’m not sure you understand the correct nature of American history. Yes, Germanic people created America from start to finish. But no, Chinese railway workers or even other Europeans like the Spaniards and some wayward Slavs, and definitely not “migrants from every corner of the earth” are the basis of the creation of the USA.

That is a propaganda psyop that was the wedge that Americans were not in any way equipped to see or defend against because they thought they were untouchable in “fortress America” protected by seas and weak neighbors. For context, for the first 200 years of America’s existence until 1975, America was basically a purely Germanic European civilization and even nation, depending on your definition. For context; the Anglo Saxons, the Dutch, the Germans, i.e., the founders of America; are all Germanic people. Although they played a rather secondary role, even the French, i.e., the Franks (I don’t want to hear it, French people! Yes, you’re special and unique flowers.) are also a Germanic people, even though that gets a bit more complicated the more special you get.

There are literally not even any Africans that made it to the Americas on their own volition to this day. Not one. There are no founding stock Hindi speakers. There are not even Spanish founders of America since Germanic culture did not and clearly still does not mesh well with whatever we want to call the culture of the group called Hispanics in America; and I personally appreciate Spanish and Hispanic culture and countries on an individual level.

It was no Semitic philosophy that could have even produced the Constitution. It was neither Hindu or any other reincarnation based mindset that restrained government power through the Constitution … how would it when you believe you just reincarnate and this is not a one-shot? It cannot … thus, it, among all the other cultures, did not. It all, solely and only came out of European cultures; people who respected the Greeks and Romans for their accomplishments, and didn’t instead try to destroy them and erase and replace their culture and knowledge and history as is being done now all throughout the “west”.

What happens when you’ve strangled the single most effective and productive engine of civilization in human history, Europe? I sure don’t know exactly because it’s never been done in 3000+ years of civilization, but someone’s going to find out, even if it happens after I’ve gone and we haven’t just let narcissistic psychopaths snuff out life on this planet and possibly even in the whole universe.


Or whoever was working on it said "Wait, this plane isn't ready yet" and the people in charge said "we've waited long enough, get it on the runway".

This doesn't excuse the engineer as "just obeying orders". They are making a tradeoff between being ethical and being unemployed/unemployable, which understandably can be a very hard decision, but it's still their decision and they aren't guilt-free if something happens.

MBA-driven decision instead of engineering decision.



Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: