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Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

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

#191

Post by avar »

rwc wrote: post #165
avar wrote: post #49

Aside from this specific issue, all of aviation works like this. E.g. the reason the 747 was decommissioned from passenger flight in the US when it was is because they flew it right up to the day that the FAA mandated that they couldn't fly it anymore. The reason was that they didn't have then-mandatory fuel tank inerting. For something like a decade there were a bunch of planes in the air carrying people that were k…

"E.g. the reason the 747 was decommissioned from passenger flight in the US when it was is because they flew it right up to the day that the FAA mandated that they couldn't fly it anymore." I'm sorry, what? Do you have a source?

In 1996 TWA 800, a 747 flight, exploded[1]. The cause was lack of fuel tank inerting. The FAA subsequently published a rule in 2007[2] saying that by December 26th, 2017 all passenger airliners needed to have an inerting system by manufacture or retrofitting.

UA and Delta[3][4] flew such variants of the 747 to within a month of the FAA deadline. The final flight was on November 7, 2017. You can still fly the 747 into or within the US (as e.g. BA does), you just need to have a newer or retrofitted 747. The rule also doesn't apply to cargo planes.

Sorry about the "[747] flight[s] in the US" ambiguity. I was referring to the domestic fleet at the time. Also it wasn't literally "right up to the day" of the rule going into effect, but in the grand scheme of things that's accurate enough. The phase-out was planned to coincide with that rule going into effect, among other reasons.

The point being that airlines can and will fly airframes that in one way or another would be illegal to manufacture today for safety reasons, or which will be grounded by the regulator tomorrow unless an expensive retrofitting is carried out.

I think that's fine, but apparently the fact that airlines are allowed to fly planes with fixable flaws that have "already killed people" just to save some money is surprising to some. It's all a cost/benefit trade-off, and is considered normal by regulators.

There's some more details in this HN comment chain at the time in 2017 that I contributed to[5].

Edit: Some weird HN glitch or mod action seems to have happened. My comment upthread is now a top-level comment, but initially I'd replied to the "already killed people" top-level comment by jfk13[6], and that's definitely how it was rendered for a while.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800

2. https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...

3. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/todayinthesky/2...

4. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/todayinthesky/2...

5. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16015304

6. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19390633

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

#192

Post by inferiorhuman »

rwc wrote: post #166
kenneth wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

747s are not flying any passengers in the US. They are flying passengers to the US. No US carrier still operates the queen of the skies, though that's mostly due to fuel efficiency. Some US carriers had the 747-400 until a couple years ago when United ditched their last one. I loved flying that bird! A few foreign carriers (Korean, Lufthansa) have the much newer 747-8i, which is a lovely plane but hasn't done well co…

But parent alleges that the 747 is outside of certification requirements, which is demonstrably false.

Neither United nor Delta retrofitted a fuel tank interting system, that's why they retired their 747s earlier than expected.

https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...

Paragraph 2-8 indicates the dates compliance became mandatory (Dec 26, 2017 with a potential one year extension). There are 747-400s flying in the United States, however they've all had interting systems retrofitted, are foreign registered, or both.

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

#193

Post by Retric »

stcredzero wrote: post #152
Retric wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not really social pressure when managers have so much direct power not just in major events like a lay off or promotion, but also day to day tasking. This generally results in people becoming hypersensitive to their boss’s disapproval. Social networks on the other hand have far less direct impact which results in less socially accepted statements becoming common.

This generally results in people becoming hypersensitive to their boss’s disapproval. In 2019, there are lots of examples of people being quite sensitive to approval over social media. This differs by individual circumstance. However, in 2019 there are entire fields where people must ascribe to some form of group consensus, or basically become un-personed from it. Media work seems to be particularly sensitive to this…

Over 32,000 journalists are working full time in the US, social media focus on a minute fraction of them.

Social media can be a near full time job. One many successful people simply don’t have time for.

So sure many NYT reporters might post their wedding photos online, but deeper interactions are often limited to people focusing on such things.

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

#194

Post by jplayer01 »

mbostleman wrote: post #164
jplayer01 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Cost-benefit_analys... These are companies driven by greed. If they're in any way culpable, they should suffer consequences. There's nothing else to it.

The root motivation may very well be greed - I'm not attempting to go that deep. And whether or not they should or shouldn't suffer consequences is also a different issue.

It's not a different issue. If they're responsible, there should be consequences.

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

#195

Post by lutorm »

btmiller wrote: post #76

This makes me wonder how we'll view space travel generations from now. Will the descendants of companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin face outrage and calls for criminal charges like Boeing is receiving now? Risk is inherent in fast modes of transportation, and I think it's very easy for us to ignore the underlying complexity of these feats. Great example: regular air travelers I'm sure are use to the preflight safety…

"when was the last time you (of the royal variety) actually stopped what you were doing, focused on the briefing, and made a mental note of the plane's safety features?"

Every. Single. Time. I fly.

I'm a pilot, and I know the chance of an accident is small and the chance of a situation where my actions will make a difference to the outcome are even smaller. However, since I'm locked in a seat with nothing important to do, paying attention and noting where the life vest is, how you put it on, and where the exits are in relation to my location has an opportunity cost of zero.

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

#196

Post by macspoofing »

asdff wrote: post #104
macspoofing wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Did Boeing executives go to jail for this disgusting cover up? Did you read this one imgur blog and assume that what is stated is an accurate representation of reality?

You do know this one imgur blog isn't the only source of this information, right?

The interpretation of what transpired (that there was a nefarious cover-up) is from this blog.

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

#197

Post by Lorkki »

DuskStar wrote: post #170
marcosdumay wrote: post #125

Aviation has an well known acceptable risk level at around 10^-9 for each issue. That's the number that leads government intervention, pilot procedure designing, aircraft designing and everything else. It's expected to lead to a less than 10^-6 chance of accidents per flight. (Somebody calculated the B783 Max odds on 4*10^-6 yesterday, what is a crazy high level.) That number has been higher in the past, and is movin…

> Somebody calculated the B783 Max odds on 4*10^-6 yesterday, what is a crazy high level. I think that may have been me (1/250000), but that was based on a couple of generous assumptions - two crashes across 4 flights/day on 350 planes for an average of 365 days. Unfortunately I think a more reasonable flights/day number is 3 or lower - a lot of Max 8s are on longer routes - and the flight day average is almost certa…

Also, I believe the statistic of interest here is incidents per operating hour, not per flight?

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

#198

Post by dsfyu404ed »

js2 wrote: post #179

Somewhat related: https://nsc.nasa.gov/resources/case-studies This one is interesting: In March 2010, a 29-year-old shift nurse left her job in Atlanta, Georgia and headed to her boyfriend’s house. She was driving her 2005 Chevy Cobalt on a two-lane road as she approached a half-mile downhill straightaway. As the road leveled after the straightaway, she approached an area where some rainwater had accumulated. Shortly…

In my opinion the GM ignition switch thing was over blown.

Getting worn out and sloppy and failing in one of several ways (e.g. turning the car off unexpectedly) is not an atypical failure mode of old ignition switches. The only reason it was a big deal was because wealth-ish people (i.e. not someone driving a 1993 Corolla) driving fairly new (at the time) vehicles died.

Their cover up was somewhat scummy but I don't think it wasn't the kind of thing they should not have had to cover up.

Edit: should not have

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

#199

Post by organsnyder »

Lorkki wrote: post #197
DuskStar wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Somebody calculated the B783 Max odds on 4*10^-6 yesterday, what is a crazy high level. I think that may have been me (1/250000), but that was based on a couple of generous assumptions - two crashes across 4 flights/day on 350 planes for an average of 365 days. Unfortunately I think a more reasonable flights/day number is 3 or lower - a lot of Max 8s are on longer routes - and the flight day average is almost certa…

Also, I believe the statistic of interest here is incidents per operating hour, not per flight?

Given that the Max crashes both happened shortly after takeoff, I'd be more interested in a per-flight statistic. But I'm not sure how the industry does it.

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

#200

Post by lutorm »

ams6110 wrote: post #48
g-erson wrote: post #21

Was that the final resolution then; that Boeing were ordered to replace the part, and the crashes stopped happening? Was there ever a formal investigation into whether Boeing knew the true cause of the rudder hardover, and chose to ignore it and blame other stuff?

Without doing any research I'd assume that either there was an investigation and insufficient evidence was found, or that there was not because there was not even probable cause to begin one. To think otherwise is to believe in a conspiracy between Boeing, NTSB, FAA, and the FBI or whichever law enforcement agency would have jurisdiction. The FAA has some conflict of interest in its mission, but the NTSB does not and…

The NTSB is in the business of determining causes of accidents, though, not of assigning blame and certainly not of assigning criminal liability.
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