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Boeing MAX production cut signals long grounding

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Re: Boeing MAX production cut signals long grounding

#71

Post by sseveran »

panarky wrote: post #3

Not only a longer grounding, but some airlines are canceling orders and many passengers don't want to fly in them. The 737 Max could become the Edsel of airplanes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsel

That is unlikely. The A320neo family currently has an order backlog of over 6000. The only airline I know that is actually pursuing cancellation is Garuda. Given that the A320neo family is really the only competitor to the 737MAX family airlines don't really have anywhere else to go.

I also doubt customers will really vote with their feet given that the number one factor when booking a ticket is price. If some people choose not to fly on them it will create supply/demand imbalances in the market which would be interesting.

Re: Boeing MAX production cut signals long grounding

#72

Post by pintxo »

XMPPwocky wrote: post #58
rootusrootus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FAA absolutely has regulatory authority over plane manufacturers in the United States, regardless of where their aircraft are flying.

Is this written into law, or is it "well, you at least need a ferry certificate for anything built in the US, because what're you going to do, push it onto a barge?"

Does it matter? We are talking about type approvals here. And this type is also sold in the US.

Re: Boeing MAX production cut signals long grounding

#74

Post by bronco21016 »

joshbaptiste wrote: post #73

The 737MAX was designed to compete with A320NEO .. why Did Boeing have to move the engines forward while Airbus did not ? AFAIK the NEOs weren’t a complete redesign either

The 737 rides significantly lower. Check out the 737-700/800/900 series and you’ll notice the engine cowl (inlet) is not perfectly round at bottom because of ground clearance. This is likely a design choice leftover from the original 737 series that used JT8D engines which are turbojet engines rather than high bypass turbo fans that make modern airliners efficient. Because Boeing has been so set on retaining the original type certificate they’re restricted in how much they can change the airframe. The only way to slap bigger more efficient high bypass turbo fans was to move them forward and up.

Re: Boeing MAX production cut signals long grounding

#75

Post by andrewflnr »

test6554 wrote: post #60

Fixed Title: A halt in the production of Boeing MAX airplanes is a sign that they will be grounded for a long time.

> (((Boeing MAX) production) cut) signals (long grounding)

I had a heck of a time parsing that. I kept trying to read the "grounding" as something related to electrical grounding, wondering what "long grounding" was in that context and how Boeing had screwed it up

Re: Boeing MAX production cut signals long grounding

#76

Post by ak217 »

thechao wrote: post #14
tibbydudeza wrote: post #9

Like the Toyota unintended acceleration issue we need third parties to look at the flight control software and engineering decisions taken for the MAX line and give a an independent report. Certainly not the FAA who delegated their oversight to Boeing. 346 people died because of their ineptitude.

Toyota never had an “unintended acceleration issue”—that was purely human error. A Toyota engine can’t overpower its brakes, unless there was gross negligence in the care of the brakes, i.e., they were totally inoperative. Just to make sure we’re clear on the braking thing: if you were to accelerate a Toyota sedan (any of them) to 70mph, then stomp on the brakes while holding the accelerator to the floor, the car wil…

No, that was never proven, and as another poster pointed out, the independent audit of Toyota's practices suggests that random and uncharacterized faults in Toyota's ECUs cannot be ruled out as causes for the unintended acceleration episodes.

As another sign of this, Toyota both stonewalled the investigation and later fired the director of the division in charge of ECU engineering, and rebuilt the division.

Re: Boeing MAX production cut signals long grounding

#77

Post by stingraycharles »

sseveran wrote: post #71
panarky wrote: post #3

Not only a longer grounding, but some airlines are canceling orders and many passengers don't want to fly in them. The 737 Max could become the Edsel of airplanes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsel

That is unlikely. The A320neo family currently has an order backlog of over 6000. The only airline I know that is actually pursuing cancellation is Garuda. Given that the A320neo family is really the only competitor to the 737MAX family airlines don't really have anywhere else to go. I also doubt customers will really vote with their feet given that the number one factor when booking a ticket is price. If some people…

Why do these airplane manufacturers all have such massive order backlogs? Is it that difficult to scale production?

Re: Boeing MAX production cut signals long grounding

#78

Post by bilbo0s »

tus87 wrote: post #5

I wonder how high the scandal goes. I mean does the CEO have to sign off on design decisions like the engine misplacement on the MAX?

I'm pretty familiar with how all this works on the FDA side with medical devices/software.

If it's the same general setup as on the medical side with the FDA, then it's a virtual certainty that liability will fall with some compliance and QA types, as well as any engineers or engineering managers who signed the relevant documents. Those signatures are all legally binding, and represent to everyone up the chain that the systems in question are functioning properly. If the government can show that the systems in question could not have been functioning properly, they got you. (Another thing we learned from our lawyers about the FDA side, each document that you signed, represents one count of lying to the federal government at a minimum. Multiply that by the number of documents signed to get a single system through, and you get an idea of why you should never sign anything if you have any reservations at ALL. No matter how slight the reservation. No matter how much pressure the higher ups put on you. I think the rules are the same on the FAA side. So these guys have really stepped in it.)

That said, they may be able to snag a few executives here or there, but only if they can prove who knew what, and when. Execs, you would think, would be pretty careful about liability type things, so they could look very hard and not find anything on any of the execs. It would not be collusion or preferential treatment, it's just hard to find that kind of a smoking gun in a mountain of electronic documents and messages. (I strongly suspect that if the government were to press hard enough though, that some of the engineering managers and compliance types would turn state's evidence to get lighter sentences. At that point, you could probably get some execs I'd imagine? Still might be hard though.)

The engineers and QA/Compliance folks, though, should really be consulting with outside counsel. Just as a precautionary measure. I wouldn't trust Boeing execs to not throw me under the bus.

And this time around, it looks like a pretty big bus. I don't think you survive this hit.

Re: Boeing MAX production cut signals long grounding

#79

Post by tus87 »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #18
tibbydudeza wrote: post #9

Like the Toyota unintended acceleration issue we need third parties to look at the flight control software and engineering decisions taken for the MAX line and give a an independent report. Certainly not the FAA who delegated their oversight to Boeing. 346 people died because of their ineptitude.

> 346 people died because of their ineptitude. This might be too hot of a take for HackerNews, but... look at how many people the FAA has kept safe over the past 30 years. I'm pretty sure the number of people who travel without dying is very, very high. I don't disagree that their might have been some ineptitude (I'm sure you could find that anywhere for anything since it's opinion driven), but to say the FAA is all…

Who said all of FAA is rotten again? Or do you really think straw-men win arguments?

Re: Boeing MAX production cut signals long grounding

#80

Post by iforgotpassword »

amartya916 wrote: post #36
thechao wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toyota never had an “unintended acceleration issue”—that was purely human error. A Toyota engine can’t overpower its brakes, unless there was gross negligence in the care of the brakes, i.e., they were totally inoperative. Just to make sure we’re clear on the braking thing: if you were to accelerate a Toyota sedan (any of them) to 70mph, then stomp on the brakes while holding the accelerator to the floor, the car wil…

I do not know why you are getting the downvotes, but you are correct. The DoT and independent inspectors backed up this scenario. https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15125313/its-all-your...

This doesn't mention the horrible spaghetti code NASA found when reviewing the code. 250k lines of C with thousands of global variables. It leaves a pretty bad taste.

Then again, I still wouldn't be surprised if most people were just too perplexed if their car suddenly accelerated like crazy and not stay calm and hit the brakes as hard as possible right away. It might take you a second or two to get what's going on, and by then you might already have lost control.

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