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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

#311

Post by londons_explore »

jacquesm wrote: post #115
stcredzero wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing's more general attitude of dismissing signs that there was a problem with the equipment Having worked in software for decades, I've noted a particular sort of bias in myself and other developers. We tend to feel that our creations are like our children, and we are far too ready to blame the user. I've caught myself doing this. I've been caught out by QA doing this. I've caught fellow developers doing this, whe…

That's why dogfooding is so powerful. The best way to first hand experience the shortcomings of your product is to use it. This makes me wonder if anyone at Google is using G-Suite themselves.

Nearly everyone at Google uses GSuite.

Arguably, not enough people at Google use the competitors stuff. The employees are sitting there thinking they're making a great minidisc player while the rest of the world has moved on to streaming audio...

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

#312

Post by stcredzero »

cco wrote: post #212
stcredzero wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing's more general attitude of dismissing signs that there was a problem with the equipment Having worked in software for decades, I've noted a particular sort of bias in myself and other developers. We tend to feel that our creations are like our children, and we are far too ready to blame the user. I've caught myself doing this. I've been caught out by QA doing this. I've caught fellow developers doing this, whe…

In my experience end users are very often wrong, QA departments are rarely wrong. If pilots are saying I pressed the rudder and it didn't move healthy skepticism may be needed, I'd hazard less skepticism than for an average end user as the pilots are presumably highly skilled users of the product. But if after very thorough investigations a large group of pilot reports and the NTSB are telling you something is wrong…

In my experience end users are very often wrong, QA departments are rarely wrong.

This is true. However, even in the cases where I have spent considerable time analyzing the situation and have included specific information, I get the distinct impression that devs simply don't listen to what users say. I get the distinct impression that most of them simply disdain me and don't even listen to what I have to say.

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

#313

Post by cc439 »

cdolan wrote: post #265
kibwen wrote: post #174

To add a human element to this story, I'm from north of Pittsburgh and the crash of flight 427 is one of the events from my childhood that I can determinedly recall. One of my classmates--eight or nine years old--lost her father in that crash. Our class planted a tree outside our middle school with a plaque to memorialize him. I bother saying this only because, while air travel is impressively safe overall (hats off…

Also from Pittsburgh, and my wife lost her dad in this crash. The top comment on this thread (re: "acceptable loss"), is infuriating.

Reading both of your comments, one has to wonder if your wife and their classmate were one in the same.

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

#314

Post by userbinator »

caconym_ wrote: post #306
dabbledash wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There is a difference between proactively pursuing safety, which will yield diminishing returns sooner or later, and acting to correct a known defect that puts human lives at risk via a clearly understood mechanism.

You could say that everything is a known defect. Pilots can make fatal mistakes or just become suicidal, all the engines could be overwhelmed by birds, etc.

The argument against that is, succinctly, "life is a risk." Humans do things all the time with the full knowledge that what they're doing could kill them.

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

#315

Post by cc439 »

tuna-piano wrote: post #91

While we're bashing Boeing, let us not forget how they tried to swindle taxpayers into buying their tankers... a scandal which led to their CFO going to prison. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2003/10/06/t...

Honestly, I can't understand how this was a bad thing given just how dated and stretched-thin the KC-135 fleet was at the time and those problems have only growm worse. The Air Force has been trying to replace thr KC-135 for decades since the newest airframe was produced in 1965 and their entire in-flight refueling logistics rely on these aircraft. Yes, it is unseemly to slip something into a continuing resolution to fund a war effort but when the bureaucratic roadblocks to purchasing something so critically important yet so unsexy as a flying gas station, one has to wonder if the people involved were acting out of good-willed desperation to help avert a massive problem with critical defense infrastructure. While $16 Billion for 100 aircraft may seem exorbitant, it has taken until this past year for the KC-135's replacement to enter servjce at a cost of $179 million per unit. That still beats the inflation adjusted cost of $160m per 767 tanker but think about how !uch money has been wasted on upfit and restoratiom programs for the 60+ year old KC-135 airframes over the 15 years since that "scandal".

Source on KC-46 info and general issues with the agjng KC-135 fleet: https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2019/01/16/pe...

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

#316

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

kibwen wrote: post #174

To add a human element to this story, I'm from north of Pittsburgh and the crash of flight 427 is one of the events from my childhood that I can determinedly recall. One of my classmates--eight or nine years old--lost her father in that crash. Our class planted a tree outside our middle school with a plaque to memorialize him. I bother saying this only because, while air travel is impressively safe overall (hats off…

My next door neighbor died in this crash (flight 427). I'm from Virginia. I remember this crash vividly and I was only 10 at the time.

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

#317

Post by infinite8s »

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…

That's also assuming there's no correlated issue causing all the crashes.

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

#318

Post by [deleted] »

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. -…

[deleted]

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

#319

Post by AnssiH »

Admiral_C wrote: post #268
coryfklein wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, does Imgur not allow you to modify the text passages in the album after you create it? If it does and I was the author, I would certainly be putting my name/username and a link to the Reddit post in there!

Since I'm not logged in to Imgur when I post the albums, it allows me to modify the text only within 12 hours after posting. This annoys me a lot but I've yet to find a better platform that has all the attributes I want. (I don't want to make an account and actually upload it there because then I'm submitting it to an audience that I have no intention of engaging with and know nothing about.)

You don't need to make the gallery "public" just because you are logged in.

The gallery will not be shared publicly unless you click the "Share to community" button - it will just be available through the URL, exactly like now. With the benefit that you can edit it afterwards.

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

#320

Post by alluro2 »

nerpderp82 wrote: post #278
stcredzero wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when you know all the quirks you won't when notice that you constantly work around them. Unfortunately, we programmers are particularly good at doing this. We are extremely good at being "nice" to software. ("Mechanical sympathy")

My child has bypassed the lock screen on my laptop and caused a gray-screen-of-death, just by banging on the keyboard. I saw it, I am unable to replicate it. Everything should be tested by a child before it can enter production service.

I know exactly what you mean - from toggling a mode on a mechanical keyboard I didn't know existed and spent 20min looking for how to turn it off, to managing to delete several Powerpoint slides that were not on the screen at all, solely via keyboard (so that I didn't notice it until saving/closing the file and losing them forever). It's amazing :)
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