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“I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

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Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#51

Post by j_4 »

chippy wrote: post #33

"I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period and I can absolutely guarantee this happened." was in response to this comment: "I would be very surprised if in a few years from today a bunch of engineers don't testify that ample of warning was given to management about this. " Reddit doesn't make it easy to find what they replied to.

On the old layout there's a "parent" link under every comment.

If you're not logged in, you can just add "old." at the start of the url.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#52

Post by koolba »

> To this day, I refuse to fly on a 787. I'm sure that the Dreamliners that came off the assembly line after about a year or so were fine but there's that first year of production that, as far as I'm concerned, are ticking time bombs. I talked to many engineers who had worked on that program to know just how badly they rushed that initial production.

Ouch. Anybody know where to get a list of who’s operating the planes from that first year of deliveries?

Do airlines publish the serial numbers for upcoming flights? ie is it possible to check the delivery order of the plane you’re potentially flying on?

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#53

Post by usrusr »

spectramax wrote: post #2

Btw, the new "fix" for the MCAS has just been announced and discussed by a 40-year experienced pilot [1]. Turns out that while we shouldn't be doing armchair analysis and assuming the worst of the engineering, management and executive team; the software fix released appears to be rather elementary and MCAS should have been designed with these safety checks in the first place. Why it wasn't is a huge concern and we wo…

I wonder if the new iteration will also get an intermediate disable state, where you keep powered trim but shut out all automatic inputs. Defense in depth.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#54

Post by salty_biscuits »

m_mueller wrote: post #35
atemerev wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Russian, I hope that nuclear weapons still provide enough deterrence to avoid large-scale war between superpowers. However, this might not be the case, as said superpowers can just decide to avoid nuclear confrontation (because of immediate counterstrike) and still fight conventionally — just like chemical weapons weren’t used on large scale in WW2, compared to WW1.

What worries me is that the mechanics of MAD may be approaching their end. With increasing space technology, perimeter defense against ICBMs have become feasible (albeit still very expensive). Thinking this forward a couple of decades, I think that defense may become cheaper than offense, even with multiple warheads per ICBM. In a way that's good, as nuclear annihilation might be averted, on ther other hand it could…

Hypersonic cruise missiles are an "interesting" development to the equation as well. Much harder to shoot down but also more sneaky so harder to have the mutually assured part.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#55

Post by dx034 »

koolba wrote: post #52

> To this day, I refuse to fly on a 787. I'm sure that the Dreamliners that came off the assembly line after about a year or so were fine but there's that first year of production that, as far as I'm concerned, are ticking time bombs. I talked to many engineers who had worked on that program to know just how badly they rushed that initial production. Ouch. Anybody know where to get a list of who’s operating the plane…

Sometimes, online flight trackers estimate the registration prior to the flight and they usually have the serial number as well (otherwise you can look it up on airfleets, plane spotters etc). For some flights it's easy to estimate the registration yourself (if the only plane available is a current inbound flight).

But generally, you won't get that info more than a day in advance. Airlines won't even know it more than a week in advance, they only know that it'll be one of a pool of planes of the same type.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#57

Post by 6nf »

ilogik wrote: post #37
spectramax wrote: post #2

Btw, the new "fix" for the MCAS has just been announced and discussed by a 40-year experienced pilot [1]. Turns out that while we shouldn't be doing armchair analysis and assuming the worst of the engineering, management and executive team; the software fix released appears to be rather elementary and MCAS should have been designed with these safety checks in the first place. Why it wasn't is a huge concern and we wo…

> Original MCAS system used only 1 AOA sensor and switched back and forth between the two after every flight. Who the fuck thought that was a good idea??? Let's make it 10x more difficult to detect that there is a problem.

Just to explain a bit more: It uses the main pilot side AOA sensor, and pilots switch seats every flight.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#58

Post by dx034 »

noir_lord wrote: post #16
noncoml wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brilliant engineers are still there. We haven’t gotten stupider as a species in 30 years. It’s the economics that changed. As people say “They don’t build stuff like they used too anymore”. First we started going cheap on the materials. Now we are going cheap on the engineers too. Why pay a senior “brilliant” engineer $$$$ when a fresh out of college “average” engineer can write the “same piece of code” for $$

> “They don’t build stuff like they used too anymore”. In fairness part (but far from all) of the reason we don't build stuff like we used too, is because we have much better understanding of material limits so we don't need to over-design structual elements like we used to. How that understanding of material limits feeds into design obsolescence is where I do get annoyed though. With everything we know now we could…

The problem is that if a company gives customers (both b2b and b2c) the choice between a cheaper product with minimal guarantees vs. a product that is indeed better and can last longer, not enough customers will choose the better (more expensive) product to justify development cost (there are exceptions obviously).

Partly, companies are even forced if the lowest bidder for pre-defined specification gets the contract.

I believe there are more than enough engineers and companies that would like to build better and more durable products but demand just isn't there.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#59

Post by ddalex »

ilogik wrote: post #37
spectramax wrote: post #2

Btw, the new "fix" for the MCAS has just been announced and discussed by a 40-year experienced pilot [1]. Turns out that while we shouldn't be doing armchair analysis and assuming the worst of the engineering, management and executive team; the software fix released appears to be rather elementary and MCAS should have been designed with these safety checks in the first place. Why it wasn't is a huge concern and we wo…

> Original MCAS system used only 1 AOA sensor and switched back and forth between the two after every flight. Who the fuck thought that was a good idea??? Let's make it 10x more difficult to detect that there is a problem.

If you're looking from an engineering PoV that's absurd.

If you're looking from a regulatory compliance PoV towards optimising sales - that's actually desired behaviour - if it's overly complex to diagnose it's less likely that somebody understands and point fingers back at us. You know, basically what happened after the Lion Air crash - Boeing being all over "it's not us, it's them"

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#60

Post by NeedMoreTea »

noncoml wrote: post #10
ptidhomme wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how we, humans, collectively build extraordinary monuments while we individually rest on stilts My take is that we used to have brilliant engineers in the time where computational ressources were scarce (60s, 70 , 80s...), and they thought out their design thoroughly starting with a fucking paper and pencil. Aerospace indutries still rely on the designs from these times. But now engineering seems to be : l…

Brilliant engineers are still there. We haven’t gotten stupider as a species in 30 years. It’s the economics that changed. As people say “They don’t build stuff like they used too anymore”. First we started going cheap on the materials. Now we are going cheap on the engineers too. Why pay a senior “brilliant” engineer $$$$ when a fresh out of college “average” engineer can write the “same piece of code” for $$

I think it may be that brilliant engineers still exist somewhere, but I suspect they're less likely to go into aerospace than in the 50s, 60s or 70s. Heck or even the 40s.

Immediately after the war aerospace was red hot - there were countless countries and companies putting out new jet designs - both commercial and military. The competition and pace was intense and there was quite some cachet and public interest in aviation.

Since roughly, I guess, the 90s aerospace is rather settled and a very mature market. There's only a few major players left, and very very few new products; many of those are variations on the previous. Not nearly as much place or appeal for the brightest stars.

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