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Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

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Re: Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

#221

Post by magduf »

village-idiot wrote: post #89
nocturnial wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how are they going to be held accountable? They already have several contracts which states victims can't sue the company. Maybe not everyone signed, but then it's about how much they can pay their lawyers.

First, recertification will not be cheap. Second, it will hurt sales. No airline wants to buy a plane they can’t fly, but they also don’t want to buy more old planes that use more fuel. My bet is that companies like Southwest will half all orders and see what happens. Finally, it’ll drive companies that straddle the Boeing airbus decide deeper into Airbus’ arms.

The problem with Southwest is that their entire fleet is 737s. So the 737MAX was a big thing for them: they could stick with that same crappy old airframe, but get better fuel economy, and not have to retrain pilots. They don't want to switch to Airbus because that means they can't standardize on a single model and manufacturer, and they'd have to retrain so many pilots too.

Re: Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

#222

Post by e40 »

joelrunyon wrote: post #212
ummonk wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't mind any of the planes that aren't 737-Max or 787. Definitely reluctant to fly 737-Max anytime soon even after it has been approved. As for the 787, while I have a little bit of hesitancy, I figure it's been around long enough that we at least know it is safer than driving a car, so probably okay to ride in it, although it might not be as safe as other planes.

What's wrong with 787s?

There was a Daily podcast (from the NYT) on the whistleblowers that said the NC plant that makes them had all kinds of quality issues that were covered up. Like managers retrieving parts from the "reject" pile and putting them into planes so they could keep the assembly line moving.

Re: Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

#223

Post by magduf »

hef19898 wrote: post #57
hu3 wrote: post #2

A slap in the face to the comments that were dismissing concerns as overreactions and stating that 737-MAX would return to operation shortly. Not in EU at least.

As far as I know this is one of the rare few, read I can't recall one, occasions in which EASA didn't accept FAA certification. Usually it is cross- certification between the two. Things are getting interesting and not necessarily in a good way as cooperation is reduced. That it makes sense in this special case is only further proof.

Yes, it necessarily IS a good thing for cooperation to be reduced: the FAA has proven that it cannot be trusted at all for airplane certification. The EU needs to stop trusting the US for anything at all, and start doing more for itself.

When the US elected Trump, that should have been the signal that the US could no longer be relied on. Of course, there were many signs and problems before (like when W. Bush was elected and started 2 wars), but Trump being elected should have been the obvious last straw.

Re: Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

#224

Post by rbanffy »

foldr wrote: post #142
cstross wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 787 is weird (and possibly unsafe) for at least two significant reasons. Firstly, Boeing totally re-invented their approach to assembling planes. Previously they built most of the aireframe components and assembled them in their own plants. But the 787 was specced out during an ongoing Boeing/Airbus anti-trust dispute over government cross-subsidies that turned nasty (escalated to USA/EU level, mediated via the W…

>American Airlines flight 587 The accident investigation found that the vertical stabilizer was stressed beyond its certified load limits by the pilot's rudder movements. I can see why people were inclined to blame composites at the time of the crash. But 18 years have passed now, and there was never another incident where an A300 had a structural failure of the vertical stabilizer. There's a good comment here: https…

> vertical stabilizer was stressed beyond its certified load limits by the pilot's rudder movements.

That's something you don't expect to be possible on an Airbus.

Re: Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

#225

Post by marvin »

computerex wrote: post #202
marvin wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dynamically unstable means that it will leave controlled flight if it does not receive control input, and that the departure from controlled flight will accelerate after it starts, therefore requiring constant computer-assisted control inputs. Pretty sure this is not the case, but it will have different and potentially dangerous behaviors for some speeds, angles of attack and thrust settings.

That's literally what happens to the 737 max airframe. Specifically, the angle of attack is prone to increasing at high angle of attacks.

Can you actually get a 737 MAX in controlled flight, into a state where its angle of attack will keep increasing faster and faster without changing the control inputs, until it stalls? That would be dynamic instability, albeit only during certain situations.

Re: Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

#226

Post by gsnedders »

raverbashing wrote: post #159
ulfw wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fix for the 787s Lithium battery problems wasn't a whole lot better. Remember those exploding left and right and the 787 fleet grounded? The fix wasn't to reengineer the large amount of electrical systems, lack of bleed air or use of different batteries. The fix was to put them in a stronger container with a hole in it so they can vent outside when they inevitably blow up again. That has worked well. So far. Kind…

I'm with Boeing in this fix. The problem is not with the "the large amount of electrical systems, lack of bleed air". This is how things evolved. The main issue IIRC was manufacturing defects in some batteries that caused internal short circuits. > The fix was to put them in a stronger container with a hole in it so they can vent outside And this is an acceptable fix (beyond better QA/manufacturing practices of the b…

Also, unless you can guarantee the failure rate of the battery to be low enough, those incidents made it clear the battery needed to be better contained—even if you also decrease the failure rate.

Re: Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

#227

Post by hef19898 »

PedroBatista wrote: post #193
hef19898 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know this is one of the rare few, read I can't recall one, occasions in which EASA didn't accept FAA certification. Usually it is cross- certification between the two. Things are getting interesting and not necessarily in a good way as cooperation is reduced. That it makes sense in this special case is only further proof.

After 346 people died and what we know now, it's obvious that the FAA is not a trusted partner.

Very true. And by being sloppy the FAA and Boeing are risking to throw the years of work that went into harmonizing aircraft certification away.

And they risked the lives of passengers and crew. Which, at least in my book, are cardinal sins in aerospace. A sector that brides itself with safety. This just cannot happen and yet it did. That now Boeing and others are trying to blame dead pilots is only making things worse.

Re: Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

#228

Post by gsnedders »

rbanffy wrote: post #224
foldr wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>American Airlines flight 587 The accident investigation found that the vertical stabilizer was stressed beyond its certified load limits by the pilot's rudder movements. I can see why people were inclined to blame composites at the time of the crash. But 18 years have passed now, and there was never another incident where an A300 had a structural failure of the vertical stabilizer. There's a good comment here: https…

> vertical stabilizer was stressed beyond its certified load limits by the pilot's rudder movements. That's something you don't expect to be possible on an Airbus.

Why not? The Airbus A300 has fully mechanical linkage, and none of the fly-by-wire systems introduced later.

Re: Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

#229

Post by bonzini »

volkk wrote: post #201
magduf wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The non-MAX 737s are still shitty planes to fly on. It's an ancient airframe: it's cramped, it's noisy, it just sucks. And it's a fuel hog too (which is why they made the MAX version). The competing aircraft are all much newer and nicer. The only reason anyone was buying the MAX was 1) because they had already bought into Boeing and the 737 and it's cheaper to just get a 737MAX which doesn't require any pilot retrain…

i've read that for pilots, the 737 is better and more manual (if the need arises to fix things or do overrides) compared to the airbus a320 which is a bit newer and has more electronics and sort of does a lot of things for you, but also obv more likely where things can go wrong

Airbus planes have had their own share of problems, including really basic sensor issues (Qantas 72 for example), but they have started doing fly by wire more than 30 years ago and by now they are solved.

Re: Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

#230

Post by magduf »

ulfw wrote: post #68
Aromasin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things are certainly looking bullish for Airbus in the aftermath of this.

I wish Boeing would rather FINALLY do the right thing, take their billion dollar earnings and putting it into R&D to build a new, modern 2020s design aircraft into the sky for the next decades rather than it's umpteenth warm-up of their 1960s design.

Boeing is an American corporation, so they're not going to do that. That kind of strategy doesn't yield maximum next-quarter profits.
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