[HN Gopher] Boeing 737 Max Aircraft: Preliminary Investigative F...
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Boeing 737 Max Aircraft: Preliminary Investigative Findings [pdf]
Author : ddulaney
Score : 129 points
Date : 2020-03-07 16:06 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (transportation.house.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (transportation.house.gov)
| nrki wrote:
| This is huge.
|
| It confirms basically everything I've read over the past year on
| the topic (mainly on hn). Culture of concealment, production
| pressure, self-oversight, conflicts of interest, faulty
| assumptions.
|
| Like many other lessons borrowed from commercial aviation, these
| are supremely relevant to tech companies.
|
| Edit: BA stock down 1.27% in after-hours trade. I guess the
| market has decided that this behaviour is fine.
| nrb wrote:
| > Edit: BA stock down 1.27% in after-hours trade. I guess the
| market has decided that this behaviour is fine.
|
| Like you said, this basically confirms everything we already
| knew. So it stands to reason that the stock is already priced
| accordingly and a large drop wouldn't be expected. It's already
| down about 35-40% since the crashes.
| Scipio_Afri wrote:
| Right but until regulators or congress acts on a plan moving
| forward with BA, the stock will continue to slide based on
| the time out of the market not selling this aircraft. There
| is still uncertainty over how long until they're able to sell
| this aircraft again, if at all, and if so to what extent they
| need to retrofit. So costs to retrofit, time before they get
| revenue in and the profit or lack there of from this product.
|
| Also, seems doubtful but possibly additional issues may still
| be found with this aircraft design as it is. Possibly though
| retrofits aren't found to fully solve these problems or
| themselves create other issues.
| nrki wrote:
| I posit that we should account for their stock price before
| the employees of Boeing embarked on the road of corruption,
| fraud and manslaughter.
|
| i.e.: before their profits, especially due to sales of the
| MAX, are taken into account.
|
| I guess the markets have a short memory as long as you only
| kill people instead of simply losing people's money.
| xfitm3 wrote:
| > Culture of concealment, production pressure, self-oversight,
| conflicts of interest, faulty assumptions
|
| Funny - these same attributes are prevalent at my employer. But
| all we do is make software.
| s0rce wrote:
| Hopefully not software for airplanes
| dboreham wrote:
| In my experience it can take the "experts" on Wall St some time
| to realize that some obvious fact is true. E.g. the recent
| drops due to coronavirus happened two days after anyone reading
| HN knew that it was bound to happen.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Boeing is too nationalist to fail; there is no way the US
| government will allow itself to be without a civilian airliner
| builder and have to buy planes from Airbus or Embraer. Plus
| they'd take with them the absorbed remains of McDonnell
| Douglas.
| jammmety wrote:
| Boeing are poised to acquire Embraer:
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-embraer-m-a-
| boeing/boeing...
| iso947 wrote:
| Wasn't the a ton of whining from the US when airbus bought
| bombardier?
| DuskStar wrote:
| Yes, there was - but now that Airbus has small planes,
| Boeing's lineup "needs" to expand to match, and buying a
| smaller manufacturer is the easiest way to do that.
| cmurf wrote:
| It should be disallowed. It's more anti-competitive
| conglomeration, and risks the contagion of corruption.
| Anarch157a wrote:
| Don't expect it to blocked under our current president.
| Bolsonaro is basically a Bazilian Trump.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| While Boeing may be too important to the U.S. for the U.S.
| government to let it fail, it will need to resume sales in
| places like Canada, the E.U., Japan, etc. etc. I think it is
| safe to say that their overseas sales are in jeapardy. Almost
| half of Boeing's sales are non-U.S.:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/680130/revenue-of-
| boeing...
|
| Note that this is FY2019, after losing 737MAX sales. If they
| are without a direct competitor to the Airbus A320 for years,
| it will be a big hit, not least because several Boeing-only
| airlines will be forced to start buying Airbus.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| If it is 'too nationalist' to fail, shouldn't it be
| nationalized?
| haltingproblem wrote:
| (edits: formatting).
|
| Cue the obligatory comment of Boeing is a company with an
| insanely great engineering culture and their engineers lived in
| an idyllic culture of building great and _safe_ products. This
| great culture was all lost as a result of the merger with
| McDonnell Douglas [1], [2], [3].
|
| Somehow the Boeing apologists want you to think that the unholy
| trinity of the ghost of McDonnell Douglas through the CEO at the
| time of the merger Harry C. Stonecipher (the father) and Dennis
| Muilenburg (the Son) who greenlighted the 737 MAX are responsible
| for this abomination. So much so that of the thousands of
| engineers who worked on the 737 Max not a single one raised
| issues with the engineering of the aircraft or wrote a blistering
| memo calling out its failing or quit in protest. They were all
| held in thrall by the power of this unholy trinity!
|
| In the theory of causation, we distinguish between proximate vs.
| ultimate causality. Every proximate event can plausibly be
| claimed to be the cause for a subsequent event. As they say for
| want of a nail the war was lost. What is plausibly the cause for
| the engineering fiasco of the 737 Max? Why go back to the merger
| and why not blame the 9/11 or the election of G.W Bush or even
| Barack Obama's for this disaster? Why go back to the 1997 merger
| with McDonnell Douglas? Because it allows Boeing engineers to
| deflect blame for the terrible product they built and foisted on
| the flying public by coasting on their past reputations.
|
| Eventually, all stellar organizations, public or private, become
| complacent (e.g. Israeli Intelligence Failure, 1973). Boeing made
| an unstable plane with a dangerous MCAS to get it to market fast.
| They then topped it off by making it rely on a single sensor and
| made the dual-sensor an _upgrade_. A sophomore engineering
| student with a 101 course on probability can see that this is
| tailor-made for diaster. They made an essential safety feature an
| upgrade!! They then proceeded to hide this monstrosity from every
| regulator and airline on the planet and insist that the plane was
| no different in every aspect of its flight behavior than its
| predecessor which was over 30 years old.
|
| Boeing had become so criminally blatant that the head of airline
| training at Lion Air inquired about extra training for the 737
| Max and they rebuffed him. After the Lion Air crash, Boeing
| proceeded to cast aspersion on the safety practices of Lion Air.
| Lion Air _does_ have a spotty safety record but in this case,
| Boeing rebuffed their requests for additional training because it
| would set a precedent for other airlines in SE Asia. When that
| lack of training was a factor in the crash, Boeing proceeded to
| blame Lion Air. The mind boggles at the sheer chutzpah!
|
| The recently released messages show how Boeing employees worked
| in unison to ensure no extra simulator training was required.
| Great engineering culture obsessed with safety, this aint!
|
| Go ahead and blame the McDonnel Douglas merger for this. Or
| accept that whatever stellar engineering culture existed at
| Boeing is dead. We as a society need to stop scapegoating
| imaginary forces in the past and giving Boeing's engineers a
| pass. We need to start agreeing that strong regulation is
| necessary to ensure the safety of the products Boeing puts out.
|
| [1] https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-
| merg...
|
| [2] https://fortune.com/longform/boeing-737-max-crisis-
| sharehold...
|
| [3] https://www.perell.com/blog/boeing-737-max
| larsga wrote:
| > This great culture was all lost as a result of the merger
| with McDonnell Douglas
|
| Not because of the merger, but because management deliberately
| set out to change the entire company culture from being
| engineering-driven to being business-driven. Business-driven as
| in: cut corners to save money.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing...
| haltingproblem wrote:
| That is exactly the point I am refuting. That is non-
| falsifiable. The claim you are making that the merger changed
| culture which changed their safety outcomes is as non-
| falsifiable as the dot-com crash killed their morale which
| changed safety culture.
|
| Of course the merger argument sounds more plausible i.e. it
| is a better rationalization but again non-falsifiable.
|
| Whatever killed Boeing's engineering culture is irrelevant.
| Arguing over that is a distraction from the fact that
| Boeing's _current_ engineering culture pushed this product to
| market.
| jcadam wrote:
| > Whatever killed Boeing's engineering culture is
| irrelevant.
|
| Oh I'd disagree. To fix the problem and prevent it from
| happening again at Boeing or elsewhere, it would be good to
| figure out how the culture at Boeing became so broken in
| the first place.
|
| I worked for Boeing back when the corporate HQ was moved
| from Seattle to Chicago. At the time I remember thinking
| how bizarre that seemed. Why would someone in a leadership
| position want to separate themselves from the rank and file
| and lose that valuable insight and visibility into
| operations?
|
| Eh. My problem was likely in assuming that most corporate
| leadership positions are filled with actual leaders.
| larsga wrote:
| I'm not discussing whether their safety outcomes were
| changed.
|
| My point is that management deliberately set out to create
| a completely different company culture that would no longer
| be engineering-driven. I don't see how anyone can seriously
| dispute that.
|
| > Whatever killed Boeing's engineering culture is
| irrelevant. Arguing over that is a distraction from the
| fact that Boeing's current engineering culture pushed this
| product to market.
|
| You know what? The insanity of this argument is going to be
| so obvious to any reader that rather than argue against it
| I'm just going to emphasize it by quoting it.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Boeing also withheld knowledge that a pilot would need to
| diagnose and respond to a "stabilizer runaway" condition caused
| by an erroneous MCAS activation in 10 seconds or less, or risk
| catastrophic consequences.1
|
| Both the LA and EA crews did respond withing 10 seconds and
| restore normal trim using the electric trim switches. LA worked
| on the issue for 5 minutes, EA for a couple minutes.
|
| The findings did not mention that Boeing issued an Emergency
| Airworthiness Directive to all MAX crews after the LA crash that
| contained correct instructions on how to recover from it -
| restore normal trim with the electric trim switches, then cut off
| the stab trim with the console switch.
|
| Both crews were able to restore normal trim repeatedly with the
| electric trim switches. But LA never cut off the trim, and EA cut
| off the trim when it was in a dive, not after restoring the
| normal trim.
| acqq wrote:
| I was not the pilot error, neither the first nor the second
| time. The planes behaved exactly how no plane should be allowed
| to behave, effectively turning on the "I'm afraid I can't let
| you do that Dave" reaction many times. And there are no
| reasonable excuses to that.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I'm not arguing that Boeing didn't make mistakes with the
| design, they did. I'm pointing out that the "10 seconds"
| thing is not the cause of the crashes, and that both crews
| (especially the EA one) did have the information they needed
| to recover.
|
| Runaway stab trim should never happen, but the reason the
| cutoff switches are there are so it can be recovered from.
| It's the same with fire extinguishers on airplanes. Fire
| should never happen on an airplane, but we expect the pilots
| to know how to use the fire extinguishing systems when it
| does.
| V_Terranova_Jr wrote:
| Having worked with Boeing on other aerospace programs (not
| commercial though) and having been on the Gov side, the basic
| findings ring true. Boeing's culture really is as flawed as the
| report reads. The idea that Dennis Muilenburg, however,
| originated or did more than prior company management to foster
| this culture, is nonsense. They remain, even today, operating
| with this culture. The real problem that stands in the way of
| "fundamental structural reform" is that regardless of specific
| aerospace market, few alternatives to Boeing exist. And don't
| think the corporate cultures at other traditional US aerospace
| primes is consistently better.
|
| The points about Government acquiescence to Boeing pressure in
| performing regulation also resonate. Beware the tendency to make
| this a single-axis "more vs. less" regulation issue. The solution
| isn't "more regulation". The central concern should about
| regulatory culture. Ultimately, responsibility lines must be
| drawn, standards established, adjudication performed, and unique
| or specific situations accommodated. Inevitably, the "less
| regulation" crowd corrodes the kind of regulatory culture that
| serves the best interests of the populace in these processes.
| Good regulation depends on having highly-competent, wise,
| empowered, and apolitical persons on the Government side. While
| providing regulatory organizations lots of funding doesn't ensure
| that they hire, empower, and maintain such a cadre, starving them
| of resources and implying the Government can never be competent,
| so it should reflect the role back to Industry, is pathological
| and will produce outcomes like the 737 Max.
|
| We need to not just empower and provide adequate resources to
| regulators, but also demand and foster a culture of competence
| and good judgment^. Making that happen is a lot harder than
| arguing about "more or less", but necessary for proper outcomes.
|
| ^"good judgment" here explicitly excludes decision-making with
| regard to political implications
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| > "good judgment"
|
| I'll add the concept of 'good faith'. I feel like fashionable
| neoliberal economics fails because you can't incentivize good
| faith. And indeed the amoral foundations is corrosive to it.
| And here we are.
| lisper wrote:
| Can confirm from first-hand experience: I worked for NASA for
| about 15 years (1988-2003) so I got to see how the aerospace
| sausage is made. Everything you say rings very true to me. It's
| actually kind of amazing to me that there aren't more problems
| like the 737-max. Even in my day there were strong dis-
| incentives for anyone to raise a red flag when they saw corners
| being cut or decisions being made for political rather than
| technical reasons (which happened a lot). That's ultimately why
| I quit: I was faced with a very stark choice between doing what
| I thought was the Right Thing and torpedoing my career, or
| keeping my very cushy and vert well-paid job and becoming part
| of the problem. Apply that incentive structure to a few hundred
| thousand employees and the result is MCAS.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > and foster a culture of competence and good judgment
|
| I agree.. but I don't think you can do that organically. I
| think part of the issue is the size of the corporations, the
| concentration of that corporate power, and the inability of the
| market or regulatory agencies to function correctly when this
| is the case.
|
| You get cultures of competence and good judgement when there is
| a real competitive market with multiple strong players each
| vying to have the best products.
| pgsbathhouse2 wrote:
| >You get cultures of competence and good judgement when there
| is a real competitive market
|
| This doesn't even happen in markets that are highly
| competitive. Only professional and strict engineering
| standards work.
|
| Not voodoo economics.
| V_Terranova_Jr wrote:
| I should have been more clear and said "foster a culture of
| regulatory competence and good judgment".
|
| This is certainly achievable with the right leadership, wide-
| basis political protection (cannot be achieved when an
| agency's leadership is subject to unprincipled undercutting
| by the President), and sufficient resources.
| unlinked_dll wrote:
| Most troubling to me is this:
|
| > AA technical and safety experts determined that certain Boeing
| design approaches on its transport category aircraft were
| potentially unsafe and failed to comply with FAA regulation, only
| to have FAA management overrule them and side with Boeing instead
|
| from the linked citation [0]:
|
| > In 2015, the FAA drafted an issue paper, finalized in 2016,
| that offered Boeing a chance to establish compliance without
| implementing a design change.4 At least six FAA specialists
| refused to concur
|
| >It is our understanding that non-concurrence by FAA technical
| specialists is fairly infrequent and not to be taken lightly. In
| addition, my staff has been told that it was virtually
| unprecedented for six or more FAA specialists to jointly non-
| concur on a single issue, highlighting the gravity of their
| concerns regarding the rudder cable issue. Despite all of this,
| in June 2017, the F AA's Transport Airplane Directorate upheld
| the controversial issue paper
|
| Someone needs to name names, and those people should be
| investigated for corruption.
|
| [0] https://transportation.house.gov/news/press-releases/amid-
| co...
| cptskippy wrote:
| Sounds like the FAA needs to do some house cleaning in there
| upper management because they're in bed with Boeing.
| unlinked_dll wrote:
| It's the White House that is responsible for doing that
| "house cleaning" of the FAA's upper management, since those
| folks are political appointees that serve at the pleasure of
| the President.
|
| I don't know about you, but I don't see the current admin
| prioritizing the flushing out of regulators in bed with
| industry.
|
| That's why I say name some names.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| Agreed, as much as the current administration has pledged
| to "drain the swamp" the hill is looking just as corrupt as
| ever, if not more so. Instead of corrupt industry insiders
| and lobbyists, we just have corrupt industry outsiders or
| those who will immediately bow to the administration.
| drevil-v2 wrote:
| I'd like to point out that vast majority of this lax
| enforcement of FAA oversight of the Boeing 737 Max
| certification happened during the Obama Administration by
| political appointees of Barrack Obama and the Democratic
| Party.
|
| I am centre-left political (socially liberal, fiscally
| conservative) and It really really bothers me to see the
| double standards. Once you start to notice the pattern of
| one-sided appropriation of blame in pretty much every f
| __king scenario, you end up discounting any criticism of
| republicans as bias.
| briandear wrote:
| > Once you start to notice the pattern of one-sided
| appropriation of blame in pretty much every fking
| scenario, you end up discounting any criticism of
| republicans as bias.
|
| Exactly this. What people like me are tired of is the
| legions of armchair experts that opine in such way as to
| support their prejudices while pretending to be rational
| and intellectual about it.
|
| For example: complaints about the complicated tax filing
| system, yet when Ted Cruz offers a postcard-sized tax
| return as a proposal, that idea is ignored and
| "Republicans" get blamed for being in bed with TurboTax.
| When Rand Paul calls out and presents proposals against
| excessive government surveillance, he gets ignored and
| this crowd still overtly or tacitly support the party to
| which they belong, rather than supporting the actual
| ideas that claim to care about. If Obama cut taxes, it's
| "good," when Republicans do it, it's "for the rich" or
| whatever tribal argument is en vogue. When Republicans
| wanted to reduce SALT deductions, all hell broke lose (in
| California at least,) while the increase in the standard
| deduction gets ignored. Nancy Pelosi argued the tax cut
| was "for the rich," while saying that the $1000 average
| in lower taxes for working people was a pittance. $1000
| isn't a pittance for many people.
|
| In the current discussion, the FAA is "bad," but only
| because Trump is in office, despite the Max certification
| happening with officials appointed by Obama. When Obama
| put kids "in cages," the media literally ignored it. When
| Trump did it, there was mass outrage, ironically using
| Obama-era photos as "proof" of how bad Trump is.
|
| Even the Coronavirus is being politicized beyond all
| reason. The Democrat aligned media makes it seem like we
| are all about to suffer a zombie apocalypse, despite a
| low American infection rate. When the economy was up,
| that was because of Obama's policies, yet when it's down,
| that's because of Trump.
|
| San Francisco "liberals" are every bit as tribal and
| biased as some NRA bubbas in an Arkansas Cracker Barrel
| -- and both groups are wrong. The answer is somewhere in
| the middle. But the middle has dissolved because
| honestly, the near non-stop Trump hatred has turned the
| country into a place that is barely removed from some
| warlord-infested tribal region in Africa. Republicans
| weren't fans of Obama, but they didn't launch non-stop,
| media fueled investigations over and over again. First it
| was Russia. Then Ukraine. Now it's Coronavirus. We had
| the FBI at the highest levels sending text messages
| vowing to stop Trump.. even before he was inaugurated.
| Imagine if the George Bush FBI started wiretapping the
| Obama campaign and then, Republicans calling for
| impeachment before he even took office. Imagine if Trump
| directed the head of the IRS to not testify to Congress
| over proven discrimination over tax exempt statuses of
| left wing groups. That would be considered obstruction,
| yet Obama did exactly that when Loris Lerner refused to
| testify about IRS targeting of conservative tax exempt
| groups. Was Obama impeached over that obstruction? Of
| course not.
|
| There is a huge double standard fueled by an intellectual
| class that's offended that the crowd that shops at Bass
| Pro Shops has just as much a right to their opinions as
| some writer at the New Yorker. Some cafe-culture liberal
| doesn't have more right to their opinion than anyone
| else. Hillary Clinton actually called half of the country
| "deplorable," and Bloomberg said farmers were essentially
| stupid.
|
| It's evil, this environment. Bill Maher even publicly
| wished for a recession so that Trump wouldn't be re-
| elected. There are Democrats actually hoping this
| Coronavirus thing gets worse because, as Rahm Emmanuel
| once said, "Never let a good crisis go to waste." It's
| disgusting.
| stevehawk wrote:
| It's really disappointing to see this comment downvoted.
| Apparently we're all fine with blaming the current
| administration for not firing them but we're not ok with
| blaming a previous administration for hiring them?
|
| We've also had countless posts talking negatively on the
| very merger that lead this iteration of Boeing (McDonnel-
| Douglas) with no regard for the administration that
| basically encouraged the merger.
|
| It's okay to admit it guys: both parties suck and are
| corporate shills.
| 1shooner wrote:
| Appointing someone that ends up breaking the law vs.
| keeping someone that is known to have. These are not the
| same thing.
| pdpi wrote:
| They're not the same thing, no. But that doesn't change
| the fact that stuffing the FAA with Boeing insiders is a
| dumb idea.
| unlinked_dll wrote:
| > Apparently we're all fine with blaming the current
| administration for not firing them but we're not ok with
| blaming a previous administration for hiring them
|
| One of these two parties has the ability to affect
| change. It's not the latter.
| unlinked_dll wrote:
| My comment wasn't on who appointed the regulators but on
| the likelihood of the people who have the power to remove
| them to do so.
|
| I'm sorry if that was unclear.
| nolok wrote:
| Just a remainder: at the start of his presidency, Trump
| wanted to appoint his own personal pilot at the head of the
| FAA. So yes, don't expect too much from them in cleaning
| the upper levels.
| briandear wrote:
| Maybe appointing a pilot would be a good idea. Probably
| better than appointing someone who never flew an
| airplane. Obama's appointee had zero aviation experience.
| He had transportation experience, but appointing a non-
| pilot to the head of the FAA is like appointing a non-
| doctor to be Surgeon General.
| V_Terranova_Jr wrote:
| More important is to appoint someone with the right
| motivations and with a technical background. A pilot with
| a good formal technical background might be a fine FAA
| leader, but so might someone with technical expertise in
| the operations of the national airspace, or a Chief
| Engineer type involved with aircraft certification.
| What's critical though is that they remember they are
| supposed to work on behalf of the people, not the short-
| term economic interests of the regulated, and not to see
| themselves as firstly serving political patrons.
| pyrosome wrote:
| More effective would be to put in place a lengthy blackout
| period (years) for aviation industry employees before
| allowing them to join the FAA and vice versa. The point
| being to significantly degrade the influence and political
| utility of "revolving door" hires.
| jakoblorz wrote:
| Why would anybody then switch from industry to the FAA?
| No industry related pay until hired by the FAA - thats a
| bold transition
| V_Terranova_Jr wrote:
| FAA acquiescence to Industry, especially these days, is
| probably not much worse than a lot of other Government
| regulatory agencies. As much as the current administration
| has zealously populated high-level leadership roles with
| people whose ideology tends toward "what's good for the
| short-term economic interests of the large enterprises we
| regulate is good for the people", the corrosion and
| inadequate response to Industry pressures has been going on a
| long time. 737 Max, for example, was mostly developed in the
| Obama era.
|
| I do have strong views about which US administration and
| present-day political party has been worse for the people in
| terms of quality of regulation, but rather than go down that
| road, we may be able to make progress if we can seek explicit
| agreement that "what's good for the short-term economic
| interests of the large enterprises we regulate is good for
| the people" cannot be the philosophy underlying regulation
| and public policy.
| OscarTheGrinch wrote:
| ..and the irony is that Boeing would be better served by a
| truly indipendant FAA: finding fault before planes start
| falling out of the sky.
| thrwaway8347346 wrote:
| > In March 2016,Boeing sought,and the FAA approved,removal of
| references to MCAS from Boeing's Flight Crew Operations Manual
| (FCOM),ensuring 737 MAX pilots were unaware of this new software
| and its potential effect on the aircraft's handling without pilot
| command.
|
| Are the execs in jail?
| mrtksn wrote:
| There was an interview with the new Boing CEO quite recently:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/business/boeing-david-cal...
|
| He pretty much blamed it all on the previous CEO.
|
| Asked whether he believed American pilots would have been able to
| handle a malfunction of the software, Mr. Calhoun asked to speak
| off the record. The New York Times declined to do so.
|
| "Forget it," Mr. Calhoun then said. "You can guess the answer."
|
| Does it mean that Boeing maintains its position that the MCAS was
| not "that bad" and it's on the pilots for not handling the
| Boeing's mistake? Is he suggesting that we should avoid Boeing
| Aircraft unless the pilots are American?
| bumby wrote:
| This seems like a rationalization in the CEO's part.
|
| Boeing's system safety analysis categorized MCAS as
| 'hazardous'. Even with the wrong categorization (there's a
| strong argument it should've been labeled 'catastrophic') if
| they followed their own design procedures hazardous systems
| should have redundant sensors. Besides the fact his reply
| defies a good understanding of human factors in engineering,
| when management deflects responsibility to their customers it
| is extremely troubling.
|
| Cognitive dissonance is dangerous in leadership.
| mazsa wrote:
| The key technical reason is this one: "While multiple factors led
| to these accidents, both crashes shared a key contributing
| factor: a new software system called the Maneuvering
| Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which Boeing
| developed to address stability issues in certain flight
| conditions induced by the plane's new, larger engines, and their
| relative placement on the 737 MAX aircraft compared to the
| engines' placement on the 737 NG."
| [deleted]
| mazsa wrote:
| Cf. "How the Boeing 737 Max Disaster Looks to a Software
| Developer / Design shortcuts meant to make a new plane seem
| like an old, familiar one are to blame"
| https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-boeing-...
| kuon wrote:
| Knowing this, how fixable is the 737 MAX technically and
| politically?
| gpm wrote:
| I don't think the hardest challenge they face is either
| technical or political. I think it's company culture. They need
| to somehow change that so they don't run into the same issues
| down the road, and I don't think anyone fully understands how
| to do that.
| samstave wrote:
| I find that the sense of safety in the public eye is really
| whats at stake here.
|
| FFS flying is stressful enough in general - but when you have
| specific events (the crashes) and specific evidence of
| corporate [corruption/concealment/negligence/malfeasance or
| whatever the truth is within Boeing] which detracts from the
| faith in the safety of their life critical product(s) -- it
| has just destroyed a fair amount of trust in the company and
| the industry as a whole.
| hn3333 wrote:
| Not sure why flying is stressful.. It's a super fast mode
| of transport, it's usually comfortable, the view out the
| window is amazing and I even like the airport shops. Ok I
| guess if you are afraid of flying maybe it is, but that is
| fixable..
| iEchoic wrote:
| I'm always tired after flights - even comfortable ones -
| and air pressure changes make my ears hurt and/or leave
| my hearing messed up for hours afterwards.
| meddlepal wrote:
| I don't find flying stressful either (I wouldn't say it's
| comfortable...), but it is important to remember everyone
| is wired different. My mother turns into a mess if she
| needs to get on a plane.
| lapnitnelav wrote:
| You're locked in a big tin can flying hundreds of miles
| per hour, high in the sky and if things go wrong, you
| better be emotionally ready to meet your maker. And
| that's just the flying bit.
|
| Not to detract from your points, but if you have any
| inclination to anxiety, yeah flying is stress-inducing.
| roelschroeven wrote:
| I have to concur with other comments: flying for me is
| stressful. I'm not afraid of flying at all, that's not
| the point. There's a lot of other things that stress me
| out:
|
| - The stress of getting to the airport on time, and
| finding transportation from the airport to my
| destination.
|
| - Standing in line for security checks together with
| hundreds of strangers, all impatiently waiting and
| shuffling in line.
|
| - Waiting until boarding begins, trying to relax but at
| the same time trying to check of the gate doesn't change
| at the last moment.
|
| - Getting crammed in seats that are too small, and having
| to sit there for hours.
|
| - The high-pitched noise of the jet engines works on my
| nerves. Noise-isolating earbuds or noise-cancelling work
| wonders for that, luckily.
|
| - Changes in air pressure often hurt my ears, and it
| sometimes (when I have a bit of a cold) takes a few days
| to disappear completely.
|
| - I get airsick sometimes, especially in rather strong
| turbulence, so turbulence stresses me out too.
| Fortunately there are medications that work pretty well.
|
| Not a lot of that is caused by the flying itself. Taking
| the Eurostar across the Channel for example has much of
| the same unpleasantness. And I imagine flying in a
| private jet or a Singapore Airlines A380 First Class
| Suite (as in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_O2_nTt1N6w)
| can be very pleasant.
| ferzul wrote:
| getting to an airport is hell and ex'ensive, if you miss
| your flight tough shit so you have to leave hours early
| and just wait. airport shops are so expensive it costs
| more to buy tax free there than at the nearest shop at
| home. what's to like?
| wizardforhire wrote:
| Like anything flawed from the gitgo, it'll take a complete
| overhaul to fix these planes and this company.
| phire wrote:
| Large parts of the certification process were skipped or
| glossed over.
|
| All they really need to do is recertify the entire aircraft,
| which is no small task.
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Technically - easier. They have to remove MCAS and retrain the
| pilots as a new type.
|
| But rebuilding the trust will be harder.
| masklinn wrote:
| The source, the entire cause of this mess, was to have the
| 737 MAX _not_ be a new type.
|
| If the "fix" is to not do that, then the 737 MAX is not
| fixable because it loses the entire reason for its existence.
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| > The source, the entire cause of this mess, was to have
| the 737 MAX not be a new type. If the "fix" is to not do
| that, then the 737 MAX is not fixable because it loses the
| entire reason for its existence.
|
| There are a ton of existing 737 MAX, and Boeing's
| production lines are all geared up to produce more. The
| MCAS etc are there so that it could be called a 737, but
| the "entire reason for its existence" was to mount larger
| more fuel-efficient engines.
| masklinn wrote:
| > the "entire reason for its existence" was to mount
| larger more fuel-efficient engines.
|
| __On a 737 type __. Not on a completely different type
| which would require retraining all 737 crew and lose
| months worth of flight time. Even less so for companies
| like Southwest which fly 737s _exclusively_.
| carlmr wrote:
| Without MCAS and with retaining you'd need to redesign the
| whole mechanics properly.
| kozak wrote:
| Or add a third angle of attack sensor.
| JshWright wrote:
| Even adding a second (as a standard, not an upgrade) would
| be a start...
| anticensor wrote:
| There are already two of them installed in each plane.
| Zak wrote:
| Two are installed, but MCAS only used one, and the
| disagree warning light was not operational despite the
| documentation saying that it was.
| phire wrote:
| You can't certify the plane without MCAS or some replacement.
|
| MCAS wasn't added because the plane didn't fly the same as
| the 737. MCAS was added because the plane didn't fly the same
| as all other certifiable aircraft. It doesn't meet FAA
| regulations on how the controls need to feel when approaching
| stall.
|
| The type rating mess only caused Boeing to hide MCAS from
| pilots. This triggered various dangerous design decisions,
| including designing it to be impossible to disable and making
| it only take data from one sensor.
| Zak wrote:
| The aircraft could probably be safe and pass certification
| with MCAS in place, but the following issues made it
| dangerous:
|
| * It was undocumented.
|
| * It had too much control authority. It was able to adjust
| the trim such that the elevator could not overcome the trim's
| pitch-down force, and such that the average pilot did not
| have enough strength to use the manual trim wheel to
| neutralize the trim in a dive.
|
| * They removed the switch to turn it off. On older 737s,
| there's one switch to turn off automated control of
| stabilizer trim, and another to disconnect power to the
| motor, completely disabling electric trim. On the Max, both
| switches perform the latter function.
|
| * They made it rely on only one sensor. I can't imagine the
| logic for that since two sensors are physically present, and
| damage to AOA sensors is not rare.
|
| * The AOA disagree warning light, which would have clued
| pilots in to the presence of a faulty sensor was not present
| in most aircraft, despite documentation to the contrary.
| cesarb wrote:
| > They made it rely on only one sensor. I can't imagine the
| logic for that since two sensors are physically present,
| and damage to AOA sensors is not rare.
|
| The logic for that is really simple: each sensor is wired
| to one of the two computers. Each computer uses its own
| sensor. This was an already existing design, MCAS is just a
| new function added to these computers.
|
| (AFAIK, other aircraft like Airbus have multiple sensors
| wired to each computer, so for them it would be natural to
| use more than one sensor.)
| cesarb wrote:
| It might not be that easy. Making the 737 MAX a new type
| could mean losing grandfathered exemptions from new rules,
| which might require several other changes to the aircraft.
| anticensor wrote:
| It is not; in fact, it does violate whole books of rules
| which has been grandfathered to by exemptions.
| chx wrote:
| OMG do you have links where I can read more? So that's
| why they did this whole mess! It never made sense to me
| that saving a little money on certification was the
| reason for this but if the plane couldn't be certified
| today as a new plane ... that'd make a lot more sense.
| mopsi wrote:
| https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-
| aerospace/boein...
| [deleted]
| leeoniya wrote:
| > These five recurring themes paint a disturbing picture of
| Boeing's development and production of the 737 MAX and the FAA's
| ability to provide appropriate oversight of Boeing's 737 MAX
| program.
|
| No, these five recurring themes paint a disturbing picture of
| Boeing's development and production of ALL its aircraft.
| gpm wrote:
| I don't think the statement even needs to be limited to
| aircraft. We can see the same themes in the development of the
| CST-100 starliner capsule (spacecraft).
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Boeing engineering has been systematically trained to paper
| over problems, even over the showstopping kind. A major
| aerospace contractor and one of the world's two manufacturers
| of widebody planes has been completely hollowed out. It's a
| national security issue, nothing less.
| SilasX wrote:
| Hah, good catch! Reminds me of that Saturday Night Live sketch:
|
| "The big lesson of the Vietnam War: stay out of Vietnam!"
| pdonis wrote:
| _> these five recurring themes paint a disturbing picture of
| Boeing's development and production of ALL its aircraft_
|
| Not ALL; just all after the merger with McDonnell Douglas.
| Which means the 787 and the 737 MAX as far as commercial
| aircraft go.
| phire wrote:
| Don't forget the 747-8 and the 777X.
|
| Both major new versions of old designs made post merger. Same
| kind of thing as the 737 MAX.
| ps747 wrote:
| Wow, this is incredibly damning and all but blames the Boeing and
| ineffective FAA oversight for the tragic crashes.
|
| I hope this leads to significant fines for Boeing and jailtime
| for the more egregious actors involved; according to the report,
| their negligence directly led to the loss of lives. Knowing how
| important Boeing is to national security/the economy, I'm
| skeptical that enough will be done...
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