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How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

seattletimes.com

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Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

#171

Post by lokicat »

wnevets wrote: post #61
MockObject wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're discussing a failure of the FAA, that's the right context to bash regulation, not "self regulation".

That is misleading at best. The FAA was instructed to let the industry to regulate itself more, a typical republican/libertarian belief. Boeing being allowed to self regulated created this mess. https://www.forbes.com/sites/marisagarcia/2019/03/18/did-tru... >Still, the US DOT mandated that the FAA begin the process of review to reduce regulations. The FAA assigned this task to ARAC, effectively putting the question…

The industry has been trending this way for some time now. Pretending it's been a 'republican/libertarian' belief problem does no service to anyone. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/faile...

Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

#172

Post by cmurf »

MockObject wrote: post #52
wnevets wrote: post #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?

If we're discussing a failure of the FAA, that's the right context to bash regulation, not "self regulation".

FTA: The FAA, citing lack of funding and resources, has over the years delegated increasing authority to Boeing to take on more of the work of certifying the safety of its own airplanes.

Self-regulation as a consequence of the FAA getting insufficient funding is distinctly on-topic.

Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

#173

Post by cmurf »

briandear wrote: post #104
wnevets wrote: post #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?

How many 737s crashed while under FAA jurisdiction? The US has had one commercial airliner fatality since 2009, so it would seem that the FAA is doing something right. Maybe Kenya and Indonesia need some improvements?

In effect two, because the countries in which crashes occurred deferred to the FAA certification rather than require their own, as compared to Brazil. And what's Kenya got to do with this topic?

Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

#174

Post by azernik »

Thrymr wrote: post #139
linuxftw wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Accident investigation is a slow process, and slow processes are frustrating. Information comes in a trickle. It's natural to want to piece together whatever details we have, wherever we can find them. In our hunger to find out what happened, how these 346 people lost their lives, let's not lose sight of the fact that the information we have right now is incomplete. Slow, and possibly corrupted process. If we belie…

This is likely one reason that the French have been put in charge of part of the investigation of the Ethiopian crash. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/why-france-is-analyzin...

Also has a lot of the specialized hardware and equipment required - Ethiopian Air tried shopping their blackbox around to Germany, but they didn't have the hardware to connect to so badly damaged a specimen.

Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

#175

Post by ceejayoz »

sokoloff wrote: post #153
mey wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very unlikely they will be scraped. There isn't just a handful out there, but more than 300. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_737_MAX_order... My uninformed assumption is that once a suitable issue is isolated some sort of remediation (training/software/airframe/cockpit) all under the onset of various international gov bodies. No idea if the is a 1 year or 5 year process.

I would expect them to be flying prior to the end of the year. The airplane has two AoA inputs and, between that and limiting the authority of the MCAS and adding an MCAS indicator on the panel, I suspect this is a short, mostly flight control software patch. ("Short" in aviation still might be 3 months.)

They might be able to get away with requiring additional training in the meantime, as well.

There are big PR risks in that approach, though.

Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

#177

Post by aidenn0 »

trt808 wrote: post #41

So what's the most likely outcome for all the grounded planes at this point? As someone who has some fear of flying I'll definitely make sure none of my trips include a 737 max in the future, no matter how many patches or upgrades boeing releases

Actually, assuming this article is correct, the 737 MAX will possibly be safer than other planes because Boeing's leash with the FAA is about to get a lot shorter.

Ignoring all other issues pointed out in TFA, two really stand out: The use of a single AoA sensor for a "Hazardous" component seems flat out wrong to me. The ability of MCAS to cause maximum deflection of the trim, rather than some limit (2.5 vs 0.6 is a quibble compared to 2.5 vs unlimited) also seems bad.

Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

#178

Post by dmix »

tracker1 wrote: post #147
dmix wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never heard anyone criticizing the size of the FAA or calls for airplane manufacturers to be deregulated. Do you have examples of this? Or are you just making a general politicized point about deregulation? On the other hand I've seen many people complain about "regulatory capture" between FAA + Boeing repeatedly. That's even on the Wikipedia for FAA. > The FAA has been cited as an example of regulatory capture,…

See: personal drones.

Drone hobbyists are calling for airplanes to be deregulated?

Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

#179

Post by refurb »

jfk13 wrote: post #95
refurb wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might be true for the FAA, but it's not true for the FDA. They will ask companies for original data and then replicate analyses.

But do they replicate how that "original data" was generated or gathered?

No, because the FDA doesn’t have the resources to actually redo a trial.

What they do is ask the manufacturer to lay out how they run the trial before they start.

If you bring data back to the FDA that doesn’t match up (fewer patients, different measurements) you can expect a rejection.

Re: How Boeing, FAA certified the suspect 737 MAX flight control system

#180

Post by ineedasername »

WalterBright wrote: post #169
ineedasername wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your counter is that now, a hundred years after they ceased to be widely used for personal transport, the free market has a solution? After centuries of their use where it did not solve the problem? That is pretty weak reasoning. I'm honestly not sure if you're just trolling me now. It amounts to saying something like "evolution can solve all problems". Even if true, the timeline leaves a bit to be desired, and a bit…

I think you're discounting societal shifts in attitude about what the problems are and who is responsible for them. For example, it wasn't that long ago that heresy would get you burned at the stake, but a sexist/racist joke didn't even merit comment. Today, it's the reverse.

You're talking about cultural norms while the examples we're using here are in the context of economic transactions. Even still, yes, there were differences in who was considered responsible for problems. 100 years ago and more, the government was seen as less responsible, i.e, less regulation. This is why I chose it: Closer to an unregulated free market. That makes it more apt for examples where the free market had an opportunity to arrive at solutions for common problems, yet failed to do so.
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