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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”

#261

Post by foldr »

salawat wrote: post #238
foldr wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 the…

We're not talking about the aircraft's orientation, we're talking about the Angle of Attack. The AoA can increase even if the nose of the aircraft is dropping relative to the horizon.

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

#262

Post by RealityVoid »

anonfounder747 wrote: post #242

It would be presumptuous to think "this is the real Boeing" based on anecdotes from people who worked there. Even in big companies, where a lot of folks are twiddling thumbs, there are undoubtedly teams where real quality work gets done. These teams are somewhat insulated from the bureaucratic environment around them and attract true performers.

Do you think that the teams are insular or the people who know what they are doing are insular?

Because in my experience the people that do the heavy lifting are just randomly distributed and are bright spots in a otherwise gray landscape.

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

#263

Post by DuskStar »

FabHK wrote: post #183
cjbprime wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there's a pilot proverb about how having a second engine "helps you get to the crash site faster".

Or "the plane is certified such that the remaining engine has enough power to take you to the crash site". Indeed. As outlined above, you double the probability that a mechanical problem occurs. (For p small, 1-(1-p)^2 is around 2p). Now, if the pilots are very much on top of things (well trained and current), then they can control things and safely land at the nearest suitable airport. However, if they make a mistak…

Just want to point out that "shutting down the 'good' engine" isn't some isolated incident - that was a contributing factor to the British Midland Flight 92 crash [0] as well.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kegworth_air_disaster

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

#264

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

JudgeWapner wrote: post #232
HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> > it's avionics are old

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

I have some industry experience- there are still new planes that get large, ugly beige Honeywell units in them that're slow and clunky while there are much better avionics packages available. The Honeywell packages are generally pretty newly built, but are still really old. The Raspberry Pi Foundation still sells the original Raspberry Pi, even though they've gone through 3 different generations and like 6 iterations since. The original Raspberry Pi is old, no matter when it was manufactured. The Raspberry Pi 3B+ is new, and has more features and power. Sure, they have similar names and functionality, but there is a world of difference between the two.

Imagine that you've designed a product around the original Raspberry Pi. The projects needs include GPIO, internet connectivity, and video output. The expectations have been trimmed appropriately to fit within the hardware available. Custom PCB's have been made for the Pi to socket into, and there's a standardized system in place for testing the Pi.

Later on, you decide that you want to replace the old Pi with a new one. Compared to the current Pi, the old one has less GPIO, less processing power, a weaker GPU, lamer internet, and less IO- and, although you can just drop in the new Pi with an adapter cable, you're still missing out on all the pins, and your code isn't exploiting all the available resources.

This "not everything gets updated" cycle has serious compounding effects the longer you go. After a few decades of Raspberry Pi releases, your product is a little bit antique, and needs some serious updating to be able to compete in the now-mature product category that you were in. Not starting over and working from the ground up has serious knock-on effects in the future, (for instance, the 737's wings were way too low, which is not future-proof for bigger engines).

This isn't just about avionics, either. It's about every single part of the airplane.

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

#265

Post by cmurf »

PaulHoule wrote: post #149
mcguire wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the 737 obsolete?

The 737 predates the 747 and the Concorde, and both of those are out of passenger service. The circular cross-section, for one thing, makes it like the old American cars that were huge on the outside and small on the inside. The only way you'll really understand this is ride on an modern plane such as the E175 or A220 -- you'll get that you hate to fly not because you hate to fly but you hate to fly on a 737 and neve…

747 is out of domestic passenger service in the U.S. but it's definitely still used a ton for international passenger service including to/from the U.S.

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

#266

Post by JudgeWapner »

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #264
JudgeWapner wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> > it's avionics are old > They're brand new. Where do you think they get them for brand new planes ? I have some industry experience- there are still new planes that get large, ugly beige Honeywell units in them that're slow and clunky while there are much better avionics packages available. The Honeywell packages are generally pretty newly built, but are still really old . The Raspberry Pi Foundation still sells t…

I don't see how anything is wrong with "large, ugly beige" electronics. 737's fly everyday just fine. What benefits are they going to get from sleek, thin Jony Ive-inspired UX? Are they going to get to destinations faster? Are they going to have a smoother ride? What product requirements could possibly change that would necessitate upgrading the avionics?

All these high-tech upgrades have downsides. Fiber optic is very slow to be adopted in aviation because movement generally destroys it. those fancy HUD obscure the runway and lighting. AIRDRU's malfunction, sometimes spectacularly [1]. Sometimes they kill people when working exactly as designed [2]. I'm not surprised to see a fetish for the fastest, sleekest electronics on Hacker News, but I'm shocked to suddenly see such sharp criticism for the '37 on here (aside from the Max issue). It's one of the most reliable and safe aircraft ever, yet somehow it needs the latest glass cockpit technology.

[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/airlines/a26854898/p...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296

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

#267

Post by pravda »

pornel wrote: post #174
Pigo wrote: post #125

I contracted with a branch of Lockheed. While I couldn't/shouldn't talk about any of the technology involved, I can attest to the culture I witnessed. I always assumed it was horrible because of the government affiliation. But I think that mostly affected their focus, in that most of the branch was dedicated to wasting money so they could ask for more money. However, the culture itself was stagnate by design. Most of…

How come we end up with ineffective duopolies? Why isn't market competition finding a way around these failing companies?

It's all about the moats, to use Warren Buffett's term. Enormous moats around aircraft manufacture.

That's why I'm looking forward to the Chinese entry into aviation. It takes a government to bridge a moat.

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

#268

Post by marcosdumay »

geezerjay wrote: post #233
Rebelgecko wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Not yet.

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

#269

Post by magduf »

spacenick88 wrote: post #144
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…

SpaceX is landing rocket stages on a drone ship after having them drop from 7400 km/h at 100 km altitude. JPL has a city car sized rover craned from a hovering lander on Mars and DeepMind has a computer win against the acting Go champion. Pretty sure that rules out the "today's engineers are bad" hypotheses.

There absolutely are brilliant engineers out there.

The problem is, they're probably not working at Boeing.

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

#270

Post by magduf »

linuxftw wrote: post #117
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…

> 1. Use inputs from both AOA sensors, if they disagree by 5.5 degrees, disable MCAS This can only mean that MCAS is disabled even more frequently. This is a terrible idea. This is like RAID0. The failure mode will increase greatly in complexity. MCAS might cut in and out, the plane might behave erratically. What the need to do is add a damn switch for 'disable MCAS' and tell people how and when to use the damn thing…

No, they can't do that, because then they'd have to retrain the pilots, or maybe even have a different type rating, which would make them uncompetitive against the Airbus and Bombardier planes.

Remember, profits are more important than passengers' lives.

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