Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 on the Day Before Deadly Crash

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 269 posts

Re: Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 on the Day Before Deadly Crash

#221

Post by jyounker »

veryworried wrote: post #110
shiven wrote: post #43

From my point-of-view, two opinion points: 1. I am glad that 737 MAX has been grounded. May it stay that way, globally, until this issue is provably resolved. 2. The entire Boeing chain of management that resulted in these crashes should be publicly flogged, their remuneration & benefits clawed back & subject to a mandatory minimum prison sentence. Who the hell am I kidding! Neither is very likely to happen in the pr…

One thing that bothers me about this generation is this thirst for infinite punishment. People hunger for someone to blame, rattling off a long list of maladies that should befall that person, until they have been thoroughly satisfied, but they are never satisfied. They always feel there should be someone else, something more, something deserved . The truth is, there is no point to such a punishment here. It is unlik…

The news that I'm hearing now is that Boeing has been working on a software fix for this problem since at least January.

Where were the glaring safety warnings to the airlines, their customers?

Re: Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 on the Day Before Deadly Crash

#222

Post by tim333 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #195
RandomTisk wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redundant wings? Fuselage? Just 2 obvious examples, back to my armchair.

Those are silly examples and clearly not what anyone meant in terms of components.

Also there is a kind of redundancy in the wings say by making the internal structure much stronger than generally needed. You can have a fracture in one part without the wings falling off.

Re: Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 on the Day Before Deadly Crash

#223

Post by virusduck »

WalterBright wrote: post #92
shiven wrote: post #43

From my point-of-view, two opinion points: 1. I am glad that 737 MAX has been grounded. May it stay that way, globally, until this issue is provably resolved. 2. The entire Boeing chain of management that resulted in these crashes should be publicly flogged, their remuneration & benefits clawed back & subject to a mandatory minimum prison sentence. Who the hell am I kidding! Neither is very likely to happen in the pr…

I'd fly on a 737 MAX tomorrow. But I might ask the crew during boarding if they're familiar with the stab trim cutoff switches.

I'd bet more than a few of them are pretty familiar now

Re: Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 on the Day Before Deadly Crash

#224

Post by SamuelAdams »

philpem wrote: post #199
torqueTorrent wrote: post #197

The saddest thing, as many HN users should know all to well, is that there can be no excuse for automated systems like airliners to experience catastrophic failure and loss of life, if only due to the availability and application of modern SDLC principles and CI/CD etc. Smoke testing could have been performed such that all possible combinations of transducer input could be considered and evaluated thoroughly for clos…

Speaking as someone who's done this (though not on a something as big as an airliner!) Yes, you can test control loops -- you can even turn it into a unit test. At least in theory. The problem is that to do the test you need either a working, physical system or a good model. So if you're making a shutdown valve for a chemical plant, you need a physical build of that control valve. Even on that scale, you're talking a…

> It's certainly possible, but it's only possible with a good sized team, and supportive management who realise that the test is absolutely necessary.

Agreed. According to other sources [1], management rushed the development work so they could come out ahead of one of their competitors.

"But several FAA technical experts said in interviews that as certification proceeded, managers prodded them to speed the process. Development of the MAX was lagging nine months behind the rival Airbus A320neo. Time was of the essence for Boeing."

[1]: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/faile...

Re: Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 on the Day Before Deadly Crash

#225

Post by [deleted] »

TomMarius wrote: post #186
tomnm wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a single data point / anecdote. A single data point is still a data point.

An irrelevant one in this case. This report needs to find out the technical/training/... reason, not why the other pilot needed a ride. I'm sure they'd have included it if they wanted to recommend having three pilots on every flight.

[deleted]

Re: Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 on the Day Before Deadly Crash

#226

Post by kkarakk »

fjfaase wrote: post #212

I am almost sure that some engineer of Boeing has noticed that there was a major design flaw with the function of the MCAS, but that he was overruled by a less technical (and probably younger) superior.

more likely the flaw was noted but it would be more expensive to redesign than to eat the cost of whatever lawsuit they'd be hit with

Re: Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 on the Day Before Deadly Crash

#227

Post by matthewdgreen »

jki275 wrote: post #84
markdown wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> though I find it embarrassing the FAA was one of the last regulatory bodies to respond The top 3 officials at FAA are unfilled, with seat-warmers there in an "acting" capacity. I wonder if that's related. https://www.faa.gov/about/key_officials/

Honestly, those top positions in almost any organization are often political appointments that have little to do with day to day operations. The current "actings" are generally the ones who "advise" the political appointees on how to handle things. Obviously there are some exceptions, but most bureaucracies tend to run that way. Not to comment specifically on this as FAA isn't my area, but if the secdef doesn't come…

The value of having confirmed appointees in those positions is not necessarily their native technical expertise. As you’ve noted, that expertise can be provided by career employees. The value of political appointees is the political clout they carry. Given that they’ve been appointed directly by the President and confirmed by the Senate, it is much harder (or politically fraught) to simply threaten or replace them when they take an unpopular stand like “let’s ground an airplane.”

The US government is a complex system, and like most complex systems it works best when you, a non-expert, don’t randomly yank out pieces and declare them unnecessary.

Re: Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 on the Day Before Deadly Crash

#228

Post by CivBase »

> A malfunctioning sensor is believed to have tricked the Lion Air plane’s computers into thinking it needed to automatically bring the nose down to avoid a stall.

That is ridiculous logic to implement in a "safety" system. An automated system should never cause a plane to dive unless it also knows that it has enough altitude to safely do so - much less in a way that makes it difficult for pilots to override.

Re: Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 on the Day Before Deadly Crash

#229

Post by matthewdgreen »

jki275 wrote: post #134
mikeash wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amusing example, considering the Secretary of Defense has been vacant since January.

Well, Shanahan is acting and will be confirmed when the senate gets around to it... that's kind of the point though. DOD is still running and will continue to run, exactly as it has, with only minor political differences from the top. They have a lot of theoretical power, but little ability to actually change day to day operations of anything.

The purpose of confirmed political appointees is to create a layer of empowered leaders who can do more than simply steer the ship in a straight line, or react slavishly to orders from above. The confirmation process serves two purposes: (1) it ensures that relatively independent thinkers with high political capital are in those spots, and they see their allegiance to the entire system and not just one man, (2) it provides a safety valve (via resignation) when the confirmed appointee does not agree with orders from above. The danger of the DoD is that it’s an agency that can give the appearance of running itself when there’s no crisis, but may need expert leadership when there is one. Since the entire purpose of the DoD is to manage crises, lack of high-level leadership is a serious concern. Ditto the FAA.

Re: Pilot Who Hitched a Ride Saved Lion Air 737 on the Day Before Deadly Crash

#230

Post by proaralyst »

CivBase wrote: post #228

> A malfunctioning sensor is believed to have tricked the Lion Air plane’s computers into thinking it needed to automatically bring the nose down to avoid a stall. That is ridiculous logic to implement in a "safety" system. An automated system should never cause a plane to dive unless it also knows that it has enough altitude to safely do so - much less in a way that makes it difficult for pilots to override.

Given the system assumed it was in stall, which means loss of altitude anyway, surely it's safer in general to go nose-down to avoid the stall? At least then you have a chance of recovery, which you don't in a stall. (Except of course, going nose-down.)
Post reply on HN