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

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

#291

Post by aabeshou » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 10:35 PM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #232

aabeshou wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an excess of capitalism: those with capital are given too much power, and their self interest ends up being entirely selfish at the expense of society at large. Capitalism needs regulation, and if the system ends up entrenching itself so that regulation becomes impossible (because of corruption, self-interest, short-term gains, etc), then it means the entire system of capitalism is faulty.

Regulation is exactly why the problem that you're complaining about exists. Only in the presence of regulation does a company become "too big to fail." That's not an attribute of market economics. Note that I'm not making a value judgment about regulation in the general case, just pointing out that you've misidentified the problem in this particular case.

I'm not saying market economics is the problem. I think that concept gets conflated with capitalism too often. I think markets are a good tool for economic organization. The problem is the system of capitalism, i.e. the centralization of power and capital in the hands of the few, and the rules of a system that incentivize and enable that. This bad system of rules, capitalism, is certainly a form of regulation (is that what you mean?). But when I use the word regulation, I mean a rule that checks the otherwise unlimited exploitative power of capital, rather than any rule at all. Maybe you think that any rule at all would cause this, and I think that's not true.

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

#292

Post by FrankBooth » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 10:44 PM UTC

Admiral_C wrote: post #255

syllable_studio wrote: post #252

Wow and this content is just posted on imgur with no link to sources? Is anyone already working on posting this through a legit source? If this content is real, it seems wild that it's not even published somewhere that is searchable online.

The source is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/adl0jk... I wrote this. I noticed it jumped 12,000 views and I got no username mention on Reddit, so I asked around and found it came from here. Made an account just to post the source. I'm pretty pissed that someone linked it completely without credit. As for what it is, it's part of a series I write for reddit where I read as many sources as…

I'm not sure you have the right to be upset about lack of attributions when your articles lack attributions for the sources of information and all of the images.

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

#293

Post by Glyptodon » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 10:44 PM UTC

I think these kinds of shenanigans (stonewalling/hiding/papering over safety issues/corruption) should be able to be penalized with forced stock splits, maybe something like 1:3, where 1/3 of the split shares go to the gov/court/victims and become a fine essentially.

The fact that ownership doesn't have any real risk makes it so there aren't appropriate corrective pressures from the market side.

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

#294

Post by fopen64 » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 10:45 PM UTC

Put all Boeing engineers flying nonstop around the globe in Max 8 planes until someone breaks down and speaks up :)

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

#295

Post by azernik » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 10:45 PM UTC

jfk13 wrote: post #9

Wow. The quote from Capt Ray Miller is particularly telling: “I have been told by my company . . . that the FAA and Boeing (were) aware of the problems with the spurious rudder inputs but considered them to be more of a nuisance problem than a flight safety issue. I was informed, that so far as everyone was concerned, the rudder hardovers were a problem but that the `industry' felt the losses would be in the acceptab…

A side note: there is a well-defined value of "acceptable range", i.e. regulators regularly make decisions based on whether the cost of a change would be more than the "statistical value of a human life". (https://www.theglobalist.com/the-cost-of-a-human-life-statis...)

The question is whether, through regulatory capture or negligence, monetary costs are being valued too highly.

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

#296

Post by will4274 » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 10:48 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #191

rwc wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> 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

Of course, this is also true for cars. The vast majority of cars on the road would be illegal to manufacture today.

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

#297

Post by dabbledash » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 10:52 PM UTC

JoshuaRLi wrote: post #267

> A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? 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. -…

What is the alternative to a cost benefit analysis though? We could spend an infinite amount on diminishing safety gains.

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

#298

Post by cat199 » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 11:02 PM UTC

jethro_tell wrote: post #250

wycy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Southwest is probably called out specifically here because they're somewhat unique in the airline world in that their entire fleet is 737s. This allows them to save on maintenance costs since there's so much commonality among their fleet, but puts them in more peril when something affects the entire class of craft.

Also, because boeing said, 'we should label these switches like this and put them here', and southwest said, 'no, that will change the type and we will have to retrain pilots, we'd rather have things be the same type with an asterisks and just let our pilots know than retrain' And because southwest is the largest consumer of the 8max, Boeing did it. From what I understand, that was a precondition of sale for the cont…

i've seen nothing of this southwest feature request in the coverage thus far - is there a source?

either way, a customer requesting a design change doesn't make the customer part of the 'decision process' - customers request changes to the vendor, who then decides whether or not the change makes sense, and if necessary tries to influence customer expectations or at worst lose the business if necessary if it does not.

If Boeing had a reasonable expectation that the avionics changes for the new jets would impact flight characteristics to the point that the pilots needed to be retrained, then they should have dealt accordingly, even if this meant sticking to the original design you claim and insisting southwest 'suck it up' as far as pilot retraining, and the decision not to do this, if true, was solely theirs to make.

also, this wouldn't explain the 'buggy avionics software relying on a single sensor' which could also be part of the equation as I understand it.

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

#299

Post by jayrot » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 11:07 PM UTC

rocketraman wrote: post #226

Leaving aside the (unconvincing) possibility that Boeing was actively covering up issues (which, if they were, is potentially a criminal issue due to fraud), there is a deeper philosophical point to be made about how people should view industry in the modern world, which includes aviation, but also all other production, ranging from farming and mining, to the manufacturing and use of products, and even to services. I…

Thanks for this. Perspective is refreshing sometimes.

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

#300

Post by oldgradstudent » Thu, Mar 14, 2019, 11:07 PM UTC

georgecmu wrote: post #16

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

Maybe the FAA should study how Soviet authorities responded to a crash of a new type of aircraft?

> Operation of the entire fleet of Yak-42 aircraft until the elucidation of the causes of the disaster and the elimination of the identified deficiencies was suspended until 1984.