Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s • Hacker News Board

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#11

Post by gnud » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 4:16 PM UTC

howard941 wrote: post #5

FWIW the rudder hardover described in this very interesting link doesn't appear to be related to the Max 8 issues near MCAS.

The articles says that since the valve was redisigned, there has been no more accidents.

I think the point here was to show how Boeing has responded to issues in the past.

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#12

Post by iooi » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 4:17 PM UTC

Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#13

Post by usaphp » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 4:17 PM UTC

> Instead, Boeing tried to claim that flight 427 crashed because a pilot had a seizure and depressed the rudder. NTSB investigators dismissed this as ridiculous.

> Boeing had no choice but to carry out the changes, but the company never stopped trying to deflect blame. While the investigation was ongoing, it adopted a philosophy of trying to avoid paying out damages to families of crews because this could be legally interpreted as an admission of responsibility. It had tampered with the PCU from the Colorado Springs crash and repeatedly tried to misdirect the investigation with “alternative” theories.

Should not there be some criminal charges?

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#14

Post by fixermark » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 4:17 PM UTC

0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #7

Can't you just stop buying airplanes from them? Edit: Do the downvoters also want to throw the executives in jail for life?

Not really. Aerospace is a very tight-knit oligarchy where the devil you know is entirely too often (historically shown to be) leagues better than the devil you don't. A company ceasing to be a Boeing customer over an issue like this runs the risk that the next company they work with is just as bad in different ways, but now they're ways the company's ground technicians are wholly unfamiliar with.

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#15

Post by ams6110 » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

I had heard of the history of the "rudder hardover" problems with the 737 but have never heard that Boeing was actively subverting the investigation. Assuming it's true, I'd agree that it's appalling behavior, but this post alone doesn't convince me. A lot of complex systems can fail in unlikely ways and it doesn't imply malfeasance that the company was wrong about the cause.

How many times have you investigated a weird, intermittent software or system problem and gone down the wrong path (or paths) because what turned out to be the actual cause seemed so unlikely, even if there were clues that in retrospect you should have given more weight.

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#16

Post by georgecmu » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

This reminded me of the Yak-42 jackscrew failure due to a design defect, which caused a crash killing 132 onboard in 1982 [1]. The entire fleet was grounded for more than two years until the full investigation was completed and the defect was fixed. Three design engineers were convicted.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_8641

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#17

Post by cryptonector » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

fixermark wrote: post #8

howard941 wrote: post #5

FWIW the rudder hardover described in this very interesting link doesn't appear to be related to the Max 8 issues near MCAS.

Correct. Not to play psychic, but I'm assuming the original poster chose to share this as a friendly reminder that as a general rule, Boeing does not have a track record of placing human lives above their continued corporate profitability. "If Boeing knew about a problem with the MCAS, they'd have told the FAA and corrected it" is not a hypothesis in-line with their past behavior, should anyone be holding that hypoth…

I don't understand this. Each of these scandals is a mortal danger to Boeing. One of them might someday finally put it out of business. Whereas if they reacted to each case by being committed to finding the problem whatever it is, they could greatly reduce their liability by reducing the ultimate number of fatalities due to any one problem.

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#18

Post by amelius » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

If the extreme deflection of the rudder causes serious control problems, then shouldn't the extremes simply be set at lower deflections (using a physical barrier/limiter)?

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#19

Post by JustSomeNobody » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 4:19 PM UTC

0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #7

Can't you just stop buying airplanes from them? Edit: Do the downvoters also want to throw the executives in jail for life?

And.

And just stop buying airplanes from them.

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#20

Post by imglorp » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 4:19 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #3

That was harrowing... I feel like there should be quite a few Boeing executives in prison for life because of this.

Yeah, if things had gone just slightly differently. That, and also the company may well have ended and another gained US airline dominance.

I'd like to see a James Burke "Connections" style series on near-misses. What could have been. Another case I like to think about is Sears missing the boat on the Internet. They were catalog based 80 years before Amazon and well could have decimated the industry if a few key decisions were different.