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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”

#231

Post by eitland »

phkahler wrote: post #81
Scarblac wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse than having one sensor, the chance that one of two breaks is larger than that just a single one breaks. And by alternating you ensure that the broken sensor will be used.

Was talking to my flight instructor about twin engine planes. He was adamant that they were LESS safe than single engines because 1) you are twice as likely to have an engine failure and 2) the statistics indicate (non-intuitively) that an engine-out in a twin is more likely to lead to fatalities. He said the insurance companies used to think twins were safer but they have adjusted their rates after looking at actual…

FWIW: 5 years ago or so I was on a plane that lost[0] an engine in rough weather shortly after take off.

The only reason I know is because the captain informed us about it and added that since it was technically an emergency landing we would be greeted by the fire department.

He then turned the plane around and landed as if nothing had happened.

The bloke across the corridor, an old pilot, complained about how there never happened anything remotely exiting on any of his flights ;-)

[0]: to be as accurate as possible I think what he said was they'd lost oil pressure on one engine and decided to shut it down voluntarily.

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

#232

Post by JudgeWapner »

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #154
mcguire wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the 737 obsolete?

It's really old, and the main problem is that it's avionics are old, and don't have the same level of electromechanical flexibility that new planes. Think of the difference between slapping IoT / real-time monitoring capabilities onto an old factory process versus building from the ground up with those capabilities kept in mind. Obsoletion happens when there is a better alternative available, and there are plenty of…

> It's really old

The design has been iterated and improved many times. The field of aviation is very conservative. What's old is generally what works. New designs are prohibitively expensive. The 787 won't be profitable for some time, even a decade after it was launched.

> it's avionics are old

They're brand new. Where do you think they get them for brand new planes ?

>versus building from the ground up with those capabilities kept in mind.

They have done that, just the other way around: the avionics are built from the ground up with the capabilities of the well-understood (at least before -Max) aircraft in mind.

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

#233

Post by geezerjay »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #222
jeltz wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any links? Because if true that was a clever tactic, dump your own products to force the competitor to price dump too and then sue them for price dumping.

A slightly different event, but when Embraer accused Bombardier of being illegally subsidized by the Canadian government, Bombardier said "no u" and made the same accusations against Embraer. IIRC both companies ended up getting fined

Wasn't Embraer bought by Boeing?

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

#234

Post by cafard »

avip wrote: post #82
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 $$$$ when a fresh out of college “average” engineer can write the “same piece of code” for $$

>We haven’t gotten stupider as a species in 30 years I'm honestly not sure that's true. On top of anecdotes (in my grandfather's generation, the norm was to fluently speak 3-4 languages), go ask any STEM prof. with 20+ mileage about the general math, science and logic literacy of students nowadays.

I think that professors judge their own generation by their peer group, and the current generation by their classes.

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

#235

Post by decoyworker »

starpilot wrote: post #207
dmonagha wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at a similar large aerospace contractor just in the past couple years. I can attest 100% to what you've said. They estimated they would need to replace 40% of their workforce within the next 10 years just to stay afloat. Recently at my old site they hired 1000 people. Within a year, 800 had quit. These are software engineers, mechanical engineers, etc. I watched people just play on their phones, keep their f…

This is kind of why SpaceX is so efficient. That kind of dead wood doesn't really exist there, plus their actual aerospace/mechanical engineers are cream of the crop from the best universities.

I think it's that as well as the fact that they are a private company and don't do as much "contracting" in a sense. They aren't handed a gigantic set of legaleze requirements from the customer (the government).

Unless they do- I don't work there but it seems like they build their product, make sure it can lift X mass to orbit well, and if anyone needs shit lifted into orbit they just goto SpaceX. Far less bloat.

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

#236

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

rajbot wrote: post #190
jcadam wrote: post #103

I worked at Boeing on a large satellite program back in this same time frame (2008-2011). I worked on the software simulator for the satellite that was used to test flight code and the ground system (i.e., give the ground control software simulated satellites to talk to, and to ring out procedures). Anyway, as the final configuration for this satellite was still being tweaked, I needed to get updated mass properties…

I’m surprised there wasn’t a push to standardize units after this incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

I'm all for Freedom Units... But honestly if you're doing aerospace you just use metric and that's all there is to it! Period.

This is true for almost all engineering. I use metric but it is annoying in PCB design because mils is the standard there and those are just Tiny Freedom Units.

I'd be in favor of switching to metric for USA, but I see no indication of that happening. But a company has a choice esp one the size of Boeing!

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

#237

Post by zanmat0 »

spookthesunset wrote: post #230
socrates1998 wrote: post #187

Wow, good to know. I won't be going anywhere near a 787.

Good thing the poster of the story is totally verified legit and not at all making things up for fun or profit.

All that sweet karma profit!

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

#238

Post by salawat »

foldr wrote: post #206
salawat wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes conceptually, no because of signage error. If you were in a position MCAS would have to kick in, you were at positive AoA, reduced thrust would impart a negative AoA moment.

> you were at positive AoA, reduced thrust would impart a negative AoA moment I don't think that is correct. I think you're still thinking of the angle of the plane with respect to the horizon, not the AoA. If reducing thrust reduced AoA, then you could recover from a stall by reducing thrust. In reality, the opposite is the case. The only way to recover from a stall by manipulating engine thrust is to increase it (t…

Okay, I get what your saying. I just wasn't reading right, and while what I've said may be theoretically correct, under most circumstances, the control surfaces are the primary contributors to the aircraft's orientation.

Fiddling with engines in an MCAS activation situation would just offset the flight envelope into a more dangerous zone, that could be even more difficult to recover from.

Took me a bit, but I got there.

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

#239

Post by ndmrcf »

whitepoplar wrote: post #215
ndmrcf wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly unrelated but I've built https://myplane.info/ to quickly check if my plane is still the same before the flight. AFAIK, in case of a plane change than the scheduled, we have right to get a full refund* with most of the airlines. I'm thinking about adding a notification feature on that. *Edit: Upon my findings, full refund case above is not available with all airlines, but rebooking option being offered inste…

Which airlines provide full refunds? Do they allow this for both changed aircraft types and N-numbers, or only the former?

Few articles quote American Airlines, I've found the related page: https://www.aa.com/i18n/Tariffs/AA1.html

If you search for 'category 16' and go to 4.C.III, equipment change is considered as 'not acceptable' for the passenger.

Source: https://onemileatatime.com/airline-schedule-change-airplane-...

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

#240

Post by treis »

arbitrage wrote: post #175
treis wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A busted AOA sensor is going to set off a whole bunch of alarms since it's used in air speed and stall calculations. It's not something that is going to be missed with or without MCAS.

Unreliable hardware fails unreliably. It's entirely possible to have all your checks in place, and still not be able to detect that the sensor is faulty. Independent comparable sensor input is invaluable and irreplaceable.

The plane might not be able to identify that the AoA sensor is wrong, but the pilots will surely know something is wrong. They will be getting stall warnings and airspeed warnings. Again, maybe they can't say it's the AoA sensor but they will definitely know something is wrong.
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