I wonder who at Boeing pushed to redesign the landing gear. At this point it would have been the cheaper option.
How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system
21–30 of 195 posts
Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system
#22There is a big difference between how you behave when you're calm, vs how you behave when you're under stress. Basically, you start hitting sub-sentient "defaults." You default to your training. You default to inherited flight or fight behaviors. Emergency procedures and training need to be designed with this in mind, or they will fail.
(Presentation preparation is like this. My last presentation failed because by self-training wasn't designed with this in mind.)
Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system
#23>, “Boeing 737-800 pilots were required to receive some additional training on the MAX 8, which included an hour lesson on some differences. Additional training was not required, as the 737-800 and the MAX 8 have same type certification.” How are those type certifications determined? It seems to me that there should be an instance checking if the type certifications make sense. Or perhaps they did, and they just real…
More and more of this has been delegated to the manufacturers themselves. They simply assert to the FAA that the aircraft meets the type requirements. Boeing showed the FAA their test results, said that with MCAS the aircraft meets requirements, doesn't require extra training, and the FAA took their word for it. Authorities in most other countries trust the FAA, so they took their word for it too. That's an oversimpl…
More and more of this has been delegated to the manufacturers themselves.
They simply assert to the FAA that the aircraft meets the type requirements.
To assert this, but also change such a critical emergency procedure, which is made more critical by a decision motivated primarily by economics -- this just sounds bad.
Basically, we've set up a situation where short term thinking is eventually, over many thousands of iterations of such decisions which go into producing such a complex product, going to override long term safety thinking.
Unfortunately, substituting regulations for good thinking has the potential to nonsensically stymie progress if done incorrectly.
Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system
#24With all the sensors on an aircraft, obviously the ones physical exposed out side the aircraft are more likely to malfunction, but I’m sure there are many unexpected behaviors that have yet to be discovered when other sensors fail too.
Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
> has a chance of facing a stall at lower speeds than earlier 737 variations No, that's not the issue. The issue is that, because of the pitch up moment created by the engines, at higher angles of attack the force required to move the yoke decreases instead of increasing. That's (a) a highly undesirable characteristic since the changing feedback confuses pilots and makes it hard for them to know when a stall is immin…
You're correct, however without MCAS it could be easier for the pilot to accidentally pitch into a stall when flying manually. That is why the requirement for consistent feedback, as you say. So the people who say the MAX engine placement makes it "more prone to stall" are not entirely wrong. The media has done a poor job of communicating exactly what MCAS does and why it was developed. With today's media motivated b…
With today's media motivated by virality, ad clicks and eyeballs, most seem more interested in reporting this as dramatically as possible.
In 2019, we need to wise up to these shenanigans. Fear isn't the only mindkiller. It turns out that Outrage Virality is very synergistic with fear. Our society needs to become very skeptical and notice when something is evoking that particular emotion. We need to view people hawking outrage like we now view medicine shows.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
EDIT: If someone has gotten one to really hate a person, really want to harm them, and wonder if they're really sentient, or wonder if they're looking at the same reality, or wonder if they're really human -- this is a big red flag. This is precisely the state of having those in-group/out-group instincts tweaked. Word to the wise! Expert tip: It even counts when one is shocked at someone else's groupthink! Perhaps especially so.
Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
More and more of this has been delegated to the manufacturers themselves. They simply assert to the FAA that the aircraft meets the type requirements. Boeing showed the FAA their test results, said that with MCAS the aircraft meets requirements, doesn't require extra training, and the FAA took their word for it. Authorities in most other countries trust the FAA, so they took their word for it too. That's an oversimpl…
More and more of this has been delegated to the manufacturers themselves. They simply assert to the FAA that the aircraft meets the type requirements. To assert this, but also change such a critical emergency procedure, which is made more critical by a decision motivated primarily by economics -- this just sounds bad. Basically, we've set up a situation where short term thinking is eventually, over many thousands of…
“Unfortunately, substituting regulations for good thinking has the potential to nonsensically stymie progress if done incorrectly.”
Help me understand this statement. Are you suggesting that regulation in this instance would not help with safety?
Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system
#27This will all fall on the shoulders of Boeing. They installed a feature without properly notifying pilots and airlines. Thus when things went haywire, the pilots had no idea what was going on.
Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system
#28This article seems to be second-hand reporting some of the information originally broken here [1].
There's a lot of damning information, not only for Boeing, but also a lot of negligence at the FAA for pushing engineers to 'delegate' reviews of certain components back to Boeing themselves.
[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/faile...
Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
More and more of this has been delegated to the manufacturers themselves. They simply assert to the FAA that the aircraft meets the type requirements. To assert this, but also change such a critical emergency procedure, which is made more critical by a decision motivated primarily by economics -- this just sounds bad. Basically, we've set up a situation where short term thinking is eventually, over many thousands of…
“Unfortunately, substituting regulations for good thinking has the potential to nonsensically stymie progress if done incorrectly.” Help me understand this statement. Are you suggesting that regulation in this instance would not help with safety?
Are you suggesting that regulation in this instance would not help with safety?
Not at all. Often regulations help with safety in the short and medium term. The problem is that they aren't written by oracles, so they can become outdated and fail to account for changes in technology. (How does "stymie progress" translate to not helping with safety?)
Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system
#30>FAA for pushing engineers to 'delegate' reviews of certain components back to Boeing themselves.
How much more proof do we need as a society that self regulation is a fool's errand?