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Boeing MAX production cut signals long grounding

leehamnews.com

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Re: Boeing MAX production cut signals long grounding

#81

Post by agumonkey »

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…

perspective is good but it seems they did a superb mistake here, not an average 'subtle systemic error'..

Re: Boeing MAX production cut signals long grounding

#82

Post by inferiorhuman »

stingraycharles wrote: post #77
sseveran wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes. Take a look at the issues Boeing had with the 787 production or even just the distance which both Airbus and Boeing ship giant pieces of airplane.

Re: Boeing MAX production cut signals long grounding

#83

Post by inferiorhuman »

tus87 wrote: post #10
kyrra wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incorrect. They still have a backlog of 4600 planes to deliver. And they aren't laying anyone off. https://www.npr.org/2019/04/05/710477435/boeing-to-slow-prod...

Then why are they slowing production? Interesting how the article doesn't explain that. > had a common link of a malfunctioning flight-control software called MCAS. My understanding is the software was fine, it was faulty sensors with no redundancy and poor feedback displays to pilots.

My understanding is the software was fine, it was faulty sensors with no redundancy and poor feedback displays to pilots.

The software is quite flawed (and operates differently than how it was described to the FAA) but there are two (thus redundant) sensors being used in a not-so-redundant manner.

Re: Boeing MAX production cut signals long grounding

#84

Post by tanilama »

cryptonector wrote: post #59
foobarbazetc wrote: post #27

This plane is dead. People just haven’t accepted it yet.

I think that would be unfortunate. I don't think it should die over this. The issues are eminently fixable. But a number of executives may have to exit Boeing, and the FAA, in order for the plane to not die, and all the issues must be fixed of course.

> The issues are eminently fixable

Not really. I am no expert, that is why I no longer trust FAA/Boeing telling me it is safe any more, at least in this particular case. As a passenger, I would avoid buying tickets from this plane even it means more cost

Re: Boeing MAX production cut signals long grounding

#86

Post by acqq »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #47
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Do you mean to argue that Boing and the FAA and / or any other regulatory bodies who approved the 737MAX should get a free pass due to their outstanding work over the past 30 years? That doesn’t sound like an argument anyone would intentionally make. They’ve done good work, great. But these two incidents represent a fall from grace, and both organisations should be pilloried for that incompetence especially because t…

Exactly, it's not about the "blame" is some abstract sense, it's about the process that has to be permanent in order to keep the risk low. Different people already mentioned here a work of MIT Prof. Nancy Leveson

http://sunnyday.mit.edu/

An important quote from her book "Engineering a Safer World" section "Questioning the Foundations of Traditional Safety Engineering":

"Old Assumption

- Major accidents occur from the chance simultaneous occurrence of random events.

New Assumption

- Systems will tend to migrate toward states of higher risk. Such migration is predictable and can be prevented by appropriate system design or detected during operations using leading indicators of increasing risk."

So it's: either the organizations are themselves able to keep the risk from increasing (as quoted, that is even "predictable" and of course it "can be prevented") or there have to be the external influences in that direction.

In this case, the organizations themselves failed.

Re: Boeing MAX production cut signals long grounding

#87

Post by petilon »

cryptonector wrote: post #55
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

All it takes to destroy a great reputation is one massive moral screwup. That's what happened here. And all over a relatively minor technical and economic issue: whether to require additional training. (Also there is the issue that two sensors is not enough redundancy, and using only one of them is a result of that lack of redundancy.)

There is more: the airframe of the 737 MAX is not in and of itself stable. Because of the forward positioning of the large engines, the MAX's airframe has a tendency to pitch up when accelerating. Boeing decided to fix this hardware problem with software. This is flawed design. In a multi-layer system, each layer should be intrinsically safe. The job of the higher layers should be to add functionality, not fix flaws in lower layers.

Re: Boeing MAX production cut signals long grounding

#88

Post by 4thaccount »

fmihaila wrote: post #68
4thaccount wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a percentage pie chart for what was used on the MAX? Like 80% Ada, 15% C++, and 5% C? I wonder if we'll see a move to things like Spark where proof verification becomes more standard? I don't know much about avionics software, so any educated comments are welcome.

> Is there a percentage pie chart for what was used on the MAX? Like 80% Ada, 15% C++, and 5% C? I wonder if we'll see a move to things like Spark where proof verification becomes more standard? I don't know much about avionics software, so any educated comments are welcome. It's not about software verification. In this case, the verifier would have given it a pass (with respect to this particular accident). It's abo…

Agreed that static analysis/proof verification only gets you so far. I was just thinking that the visibility of the incident might lead to some companies asking how they can go even further to make things safer. Of course the first and most important steps consist of what you're saying above, followed by doing whatever they can on the software front if they aren't doing it already.

Re: Boeing MAX production cut signals long grounding

#89

Post by gruez »

ak217 wrote: post #76
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…

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.

>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.

>cannot be ruled out

That seems like a very weak statement. If you asked a software auditing firm to inspect your massive codebase they're not going to "rule out" any bugs either.

Re: Boeing MAX production cut signals long grounding

#90

Post by FabHK »

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…

> I also doubt customers will really vote with their feet

Agreed. As the article points out:

"Passengers eventually returned to flying the 787 and to other airplanes that were grounded: the McDonnell Douglas DC-10, the Douglas DC-6, the Lockheed Constellation and even the de Havilland Comet."

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