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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

#201

Post by smsm42 »

jfk13 wrote: post #114
BoorishBears wrote: post #90

I worked under a CEO who had worked at Boeing before, and he said before that at times there was a number that a life was worth when making decisions while he worked there, in a conversation about diminishing returns in quality. Now I’m not sure if he meant that literally and there’s a number in the Boeing employee handbook, but he had a point. He said they could make planes cost twice as much and save a few lives th…

Sure. But the Ray Miller quote suggests that the issue was not that a modification to make the rudder mechanism more reliable was itself prohibitively expensive from an engineering point of view. Rather, the concern was that making such a modification could open up liability issues, as it would be an acknowledgement that the plane was faulty, and the FAA and Boeing were anxious to avoid being held liable. That is wha…

This looks like a system set up for catastrophic failures. I mean, if everybody involved that has means and knowledge to do anything about safety faults has a huge incentive to not do anything about them, how we expect not to have very bad outcomes? I think it'd be smart to move on from "boo selfish people, how could they!A" to "we must redesign the system so people are not hugely disincentivized from doing the thing we want to be done"? Otherwise we have hopeless war against human nature on our hands here.

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

#202

Post by interestica »

lutoma wrote: post #68
jackschultz wrote: post #46

I know these comments are kind of frowned upon on threads talking about an issue like this, but very interesting use of imgur. Effectively a blog post focused on images, which is a very good way of thinking about posts I feel. People love images rather than only words. Has imgur been looking at this? Trying to push it as another big use for its platform?

FYI, the post is by reddit user /u/Admiral_Cloudberg/, who has done a number of flight crash investigation posts on imgur like that: https://www.reddit.com/user/Admiral_Cloudberg/submitted/ Edit: Ooops, someone already mentioned this below. Oh well.

no oops. Your comment was what helped me find it. In a thread with hundreds of comments, it's okay to have information repeated if it's done so in a relevant way. The alternative would be a whole bunch of intra-thread linking that just isn't feasible. So, thank you.

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

#203

Post by pedrocr »

atomicbeanie wrote: post #180
atomicbeanie wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not agree in general, but I admit to not knowing the details of that system. Those of us in the industry have been waiting for 737 rudders to fail for a long time. The data was there. This is the same as waiting for a pilot to rip the tail off an airplane as happened over New York. The certification basis of those aircraft was not in harmony with the information the operators used to fly them and gravely distort…

There are many examples too. The concorde is one that has my current prize for being the most extreme example. One crash, retire them all. There was no reasonable way to operate that aircraft by modern safety standards. But it was certified in what, the 60's. One likely could have certified a barn door strapped to a Concorde engine in those days ;-)

The Concorde was not retired directly after the crash. It flew for three more years and was retired for financial reasons. The crash probably reduced the demand though and thus contributed.

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

#204

Post by glonq »

marcinzm wrote: post #40
cryptonector wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Boeing is a US military supplier and a strategic US asset in the airspace industry, the US government will ensure that they do not go under no matter how much damage they do (see car industry). Furthermore even if that wasn't the case the people who cause these issues have almost zero chance of facing personal liability. As a result, it's in the personal interest of the people running Boeing to cut corners and extrac…

So they are 'too big to fail' ?

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

#205

Post by hhmc »

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…

Is that 10^-6 figure is for any sort of accident, or just catastrophic ones?

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

#206

Post by rubicon33 »

>It is widely suspected that Boeing knew about the problems with the PCU for decades but had done nothing, despite the hundreds of reported incidents. Because no one was collecting all the accounts of rudder deflections, it was likely that no one except Boeing realized how common they were. It was not until people started dying in crashes that enough scrutiny was placed on the 737 to uncover this history of ignoring the problem.

I can't help but read these stories, and all the accounts of various other crashes, and question the whole "safest mode of transport" line we've been fed? "Safest" doesn't really mean anything to me, I guess.

Is it really outside of the realm of possibility that flying is less safe than the number we've all been given? I've certainly never seen the raw data myself, but it's hard not to take this skeptical perspective when you dig deeper into the number of crashes that happen world wide.

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

#207

Post by interestica »

humblebee wrote: post #186
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…

While this tragedy might sound like a typical crash scenario, it was particularly puzzling to the victim’s parents. Why? According to Atlanta magazine, she always wore her seat belt and never had a speeding ticket. So how did she suddenly lose control of her car on that fateful evening? Sadly, this unsettling question remained unanswered until several years later—after many more drivers suffered similar fates. I don'…

Maybe it's a question of why rainwater was accumulating there? Is the road design faulty?

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

#208

Post by smsm42 »

BoorishBears wrote: post #90

I worked under a CEO who had worked at Boeing before, and he said before that at times there was a number that a life was worth when making decisions while he worked there, in a conversation about diminishing returns in quality. Now I’m not sure if he meant that literally and there’s a number in the Boeing employee handbook, but he had a point. He said they could make planes cost twice as much and save a few lives th…

> but it’s interesting to realize yes, cost was spared in making your plane/car/boat/train as safe as possible

Isn't it always the case? Driving cars and flying planes is a risky activity (the former much riskier, but still). There are ways to reduce the risks, but millions of people choose to buy cars without most recent safety features. A lot of people choose to drive tired, intoxicated, distracted, under bad weather conditions, while using mobile devices, etc. - knowing it is risky. There could be more safety features in cars - stronger materials, more accident-preventing electronics, enforced speed limits, etc. - but nobody would buy a car that costs $200K and can go only 30 mph, even it'd be super-safe for the driver. So yes, we know we trade some safety for reduced cost (either directly monetary or convenience). There's no surprise there, and there's no surprise manufacturers participate in the balance too. Of course, the consumer can make voluntary decision about accepting risk only if they are informed about the risks - if the risks are purposely concealed from consumers, then it's a problem.

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

#209

Post by interestica »

imglorp wrote: post #20
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 deci…

This would be an awesome series. Blockbuster/Netflix. Fall and rise of certain social media networks. "Missed Connections"

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

#210

Post by foldr »

rubicon33 wrote: post #206

>It is widely suspected that Boeing knew about the problems with the PCU for decades but had done nothing, despite the hundreds of reported incidents. Because no one was collecting all the accounts of rudder deflections, it was likely that no one except Boeing realized how common they were. It was not until people started dying in crashes that enough scrutiny was placed on the 737 to uncover this history of ignoring…

Yep, it's pretty much outside the realm of possibility. You can't hide plane crashes in commercial aviation.
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