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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

#291

Post by munk-a »

jacquesm wrote: post #257
ArcanianArcher wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Therein lies a problem that many people don't want to address

Many people don't want to address it because it isn't true. There are plenty of corporations that would not put lives on the line balanced against their bottom line. Yes, there are quite a few that do, it just does not extend to all of them, and I'd wager the larger the company the further insulated the management is and so the more likely for stuff like that to occur. But to categorically say this about any corporat…

These corporations are young and still have an autocratic leader that is forcing them to work against their natural value... as they age they will age like all the other corporations and come to value short term gain above everything else. This construct human beings have made has proven again and again that in the long term there is no outcome but degeneration to short term profit seeking that is what we currently deem "maximally efficient".

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

#292

Post by munk-a »

evanagon wrote: post #190
atonse wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you start putting Boeing executives in jail, there is literally ZERO incentive for them not to repeat all this. In fact, the CEO and senior executives have probably already received their massive bonuses for the MAX sales. It's not like they're going to be asked to return those bonuses now with all this fiasco.

There are financial incentives if their customers choose competing products because of safety concerns.

I don't even know how I'd do that - even if I tried to book a flight that specifically didn't use a boeing plane in the US domestic airlines will swap out planes for different ones all the time due to maintenance requirements.

Choosing to use a competing product as an end consumer would require an immense sacrifice (like refusing to board your flight if it happened to be a Boeing, which you might get a rebate for?). Only if a significant amount of end consumers protested would the actual plane consumers (the airlines themselves) take notice - or if public opinion shifted to the point where there was a significant externality attached to purchasing a Boeing plane, but that certainly isn't the case now and I'd bet that Boeing has found some way to compensate airlines for the cost of having their planes grounded.

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

#293

Post by munk-a »

polotics wrote: post #275
dstola wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont think people will all of a sudden start ditching cheap flights just to avoid the max or Boeing. Airline industry is extremely price sensitive from a consumer perspective, and for people to potentially sacrifice hundreds of dollars of savings would be a non sequitur. For example, if airline A flies MAX and has a ticket for 200 and another airline B has the same route for 400 on A320, most people I know would st…

Here is one data point for you: no matter the price of alternatives, I will not step on a 737. Ever.

If you purchase a plane ticket for a flight that appears to be carried by a bombardier model, would you refuse to board the plane at the gate if the bombardier plane ended up requiring maintenance and they swapped it out for a 737?

How many vacation days would you sacrifice out of your week in Cancun to stand by that belief?

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

#294

Post by linuxftw »

foldr wrote: post #281
linuxftw wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know there's nothing inherently unsafe about the handling characteristics, that's a Boeing talking point. You're not qualified to make that determination, and the regulators didn't bother to make it either. > The purpose of MCAS was just to prevent the need for pilots to recertify by masking the difference This is a Boeing talking-point as well. The real purpose of MCAS might be to make an otherwise wildly-…

I mean, sure, there might turn out to be safety issues that we don't yet know about. You could say that about any plane. >The real purpose of MCAS might be to make an otherwise wildly-unsafe plane flyable MCAS would never activate in a typical flight, so I don't think it can be that bad. There's a simple and plausible explanation for why MCAS was added (the desire to maintain the same type rating). That explanation d…

> MCAS would never activate in a typical flight, so I don't think it can be that bad.

Also untrue. There have been plenty of flights where MCAS has activated (either American or Southwest released some data about the number of MCAS activations they had without crash incident). We (the public) don't have any data regarding a flight where MCAS would-have activated but was disabled. In the cases where we know MCAS was disabled, those aiframes are now destroyed.

> There's a simple and plausible explanation for why MCAS was added (the desire to maintain the same type rating).

The benign name "Maneuvering Characteristic Augmentation System" is in itself a Boeing-talking point. What it it was called the "Thrust-Input Anti-Stall System?". It's completely a Boeing talking point that why MCAS was added, it might not actually reflect reality. We don't have any incentive to trust Boeing or the FAA in this case, in fact, we have just the opposite, they appear to have been deliberately misleading.

> I'll stick with that explanation absent evidence to the contrary.

We already have evidence Boeing withheld the amount of authority it gave MCAS counter to what they told the FAA. We already know the FAA didn't actually review the software implementation. We know Boeing and the FAA didn't initiate any meaningful investigation after the first Lion Air crash. WTF should we believe a single word they say? They're liars.

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

#296

Post by wahern »

munk-a wrote: post #287
atoav wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. IMO it highly depends whether a company’s goal is short or long term gain. If you have a hard time competing and every day is a fight anyways, why would you act in a way that is sustainable in the long term? If you listened to the NYT’s the Daily podcast where they interview a former Boeing quality manager/whistleblower this is clearly the picture that is painted here: Managment doesn’t give a shit i…

> IMO it highly depends whether a company’s goal is short or long term gain. It has been the case, recently, that a company that is traded publicly cannot have a long term goal - any such goal is held in place solely by the ephemeral existence of an autocratic executive and will dissipate once they are removed or retire, instead corporations seek constantly to maximize short term gain since incentive systems like sto…

Costco (NASDAQ:COST) has a policy of not hiring MBAs and generally only hiring internally. That means the managers are personally invested in the long-term viability of the company.

Such a conservative culture may one day be their downfall, but it won't hasten it as is so often the case of management culture elsewhere.

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

#297

Post by rootusrootus »

sealthedeal wrote: post #211

IMHO anytime an airline releases a statement that says "we have updated our software", its basically the same thing as saying, "Im sorry, but our plane was unstable because of buggy code, hopefully this patch will make sure our planes dont go down." That is scary, software developers make errors, and when your plane is going down because of software related issue, THAT IS A HUGE PROBLEM.

If we on HN are being consistent, we should appreciate an airline that offers frequent over-the-air software updates. We love it when Tesla does it...

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

#298

Post by rootusrootus »

princekolt wrote: post #126

Let's hope this debacle will finally convince Boeing it can't keep reusing the same airframe - with small adjustments - for half a century. Edit: Don't forget the 737 airframe was already a modified 727 airframe... Also, I wonder how this will affect the Boeing-Embraer partnership. It would certainly be cheaper to spec-up an E-Jet to have the capacity of a 737 than to design a new airframe from scratch.

The 737 was not a modified 727. They reused some pieces. In particular they chose the same fuselage cross-section. This is pretty normal and I prefer it over offering all-new designs.

Also, the E195 has less than half the capacity of the largest 737. That would be a hell of an extension.

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

#299

Post by FabHK »

radcon wrote: post #40

Is anyone else extremely reluctant to fly on a Boeing plane after this? A lot of people say "It's no big deal, they just need to update the MCAS software" , but I see this entire situation as a sign of much deeper issues at Boeing, issues that can't be fixed with a simple software update and could affect every plane they make.

> Is anyone else extremely reluctant to fly on a Boeing plane after this?

Well, 737 MAX and 787, for me. The 777 is rock solid, as far as I can tell - and it was designed before the significant changes at Boeing and FAA.

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

#300

Post by Causality1 »

retSava wrote: post #115
radcon wrote: post #40

Is anyone else extremely reluctant to fly on a Boeing plane after this? A lot of people say "It's no big deal, they just need to update the MCAS software" , but I see this entire situation as a sign of much deeper issues at Boeing, issues that can't be fixed with a simple software update and could affect every plane they make.

The MCAS will likely be fixed in a way that makes it reliable and dependable. Boeing wouldn't dare anything else since there are a lot of eyes on them and how they handle this now. What worries me is not the MCAS (now), but what else might be lurking under the surface that Boeing pretends is not a problem. I don't feel confident that Boeing would accept the cost of grounding the fleet the next time something serious-…

MCAS relied on a single AoA sensor for a plane that holds 300 people. Military cargo planes a tenth the capacity have three of them. Boeing's design philosophy is terrifying.
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