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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

#311

Post by alkonaut »

ulfw wrote: post #144
alkonaut wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, those authorities. Either I trust them and fly (ever) or I don't and you never fly. There is no middle ground here. If you fly on the A350 which is also new - you trust the FAA/EASA that they are safe to fly. If I don't trust FAA/EASA, I can never fly the new A350 either. In fact I can't fly on any plane, unless I adopt some strategy of only flying ones that have an established safety record (i.e. old planes). B…

Please show me how EASA has outsourced certification to the manufacturer (Airbus) itself like FAA has done with Boeing Otherwise I have no idea how you could even remotely compare these two situations

I have no capability (nor much of an interest) in even beginning to judge these authorities. That's my point: I trust them blindly because if they turn out to roll dice when making regulation or approving aircraft - it's still better than me doing it.

Now, the situation is a bit special now that there are efffectively TWO competing authorities. It's not that there used to be just one, but that one used to be the authortitive one (or that they spoke with one voice). This complicates things. So OK - when there are conflicting information I might trust the cautious one. But for all practical purposes, these authorities are opaque to the average traveler. I must either trust them or stay on the ground.

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

#312

Post by gumby »

yodsanklai wrote: post #238
CaptainZapp wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel confident that Boeing would accept the cost of grounding the fleet the next time something serious-but-not-yet-crashing shows up. They wouldn't even ground the fleet if death and destruction occurs. Like they didn't do after the Lion Air crash. Even after the Ethiopian plane they tried hell and high water, including a call to the president, to not have the plane grounded. It's clear that to Boeing, their…

> It's clear that to Boeing, their numbers are more important than lives. Isn't it the case by design for any corporation?

Companies are run by people and their objectives are not and need not be entirely economic. I often hear people say "well companies are legally required to maximise return for their shareholders" but that is not at all the case.

Sure, some company management may be spurred to be good actors because they feel it will cause long term vale creation.

But then again you could just do the right thing because by and large people are not assholes.

That's why when I hear of exploitative predation by companies I get so mad: because it's ultimately exploitative predation by people. Even if the person on the phone to you / writing that code may not have enough context to understand the evil they might be doing, someone set the context that way, and in many cases it was deliberate.

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

#313

Post by slenk »

rootusrootus wrote: post #297
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...

We do?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19443925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17991905 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16808171

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

#314

Post by snuxoll »

magduf wrote: post #169
ubermonkey wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're absolutely right. The approach on the MAX is horrifying. But airplane tech moves kind of slowly, no? Non-MAX 737s can't really change, and so are as safe today as they were 6 month or 6 years ago. The MAX debacle makes me SUPER SUPER leery of any new airframe, though.

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…

It’s not just that pilots didn’t need new training, because they were still supposed to have some minimal training on the changes.

Pilots can only hold one type certification at a time, and have to retrain to switch between them. Southwest pretty much only flies 737’s and is heavily interested in the MAX because it means they don’t lose the ability for pilots to fly their other aircraft due to retaining the same type certification.

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

#315

Post by gsnedders »

notahacker wrote: post #102
raverbashing wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you've built your business around one specific type of jet it's costly to move to the competitors, which is why the "no type rating change" was so important for the max. Yes it is costly but you know what? It's BS Because the 737 line (nor the A320 nor any other line) is not going to last forever. (Especially wrt widebodies but that's another issue as I don't know if the A330Neo and the 777X have the same type a…

Just because they'll have to fly two types eventually doesn't mean they want to spend on making the switch now , especially not with an airframe that is an incremental improvement in fuel economy. (Not to mention that other OEM offerings suddenly look a lot more viable for operators wanting newer generation narrowbodies if they're forced to change type certificates regardless) Genuinely new types that might offer a s…

And Boeing's original plan was to do a clean-sheet redesign, but Airbus launched the A320neo which within six months had over 1k orders, and Boeing felt commercial pressure from its customers to launch something comparable (a re-engining, not a clean-sheet design) so its customers weren't being undercut by their competitors (who would then have lower fuel costs, etc.).

Airbus notably have recently been hiring for a clean-sheet A320 successor (though there's no firm commitment to that, yet), despite it being a 20 year newer design than the 737.

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

#316

Post by actuator »

rootusrootus wrote: post #269
anoncake wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope they don't. But Boeing not being trustworthy does not mean that Airbus isn't.

Just over a year ago Airbus paid a fine to Germany for bribery. So it appears they have their own corruption problems.

Wasn't that for sales though?

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

#317

Post by freehunter »

nocturnial wrote: post #279
peteretep wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They already have several contracts which states victims can't sue the company Contracts with whom? A member country EU court with a dead passenger could presumably make life very very uncomfortable for senior Boeing management.

I wrote victim and not dead passenger as you falsely implied. The contracts are with the surviving familing members. If you don't consider them as victims then give me another word for it. edit: If you downvote me at least give me a chance to defend why I chose the word victim. The reply gizmo is there.

The definition of victim implies the same as "dead passenger". The families of dead passengers would be stretching the definition, at the very least it's not the most obvious definition in this case

>a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action

"Victim's family" is how people would normally refer to them.

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

#318

Post by FabHK »

pfortuny wrote: post #284
yodsanklai wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's clear that to Boeing, their numbers are more important than lives. Isn't it the case by design for any corporation?

No: this is a meme which I do not know from where comes. The aim of a corporation is to do its business, not to make money. The first is before the second.

I can tell you where it comes from.

It is basically a result of agency theory (principal agent problem) in the typical setting of economic theory (no transaction costs, bla bla bla).

The question is what a corporation should do, which aims it should strive for. That's an extremely difficult question, in particular if there are many owners ("principals", shareholders) who have different utility functions (goals), who are furthermore distinct from the CEO and managers actually running the business ("agents"), who might have their own interests (enlarging their fiefdom, job security, what have you).

The theoretical solution is to say: maximise the net present value of the firm (which goes to the shareholders, after paying debt), and then they can decide what to do with it, and pursue their own goals. Now, this makes some sense in a no-transaction cost world - if shareholders care about workers and peace and the sick, they can use the shareholder value created, and put some of it in, dunno, charity and health insurances, and what have you.

Thus, goal should be shareholder value maximisation, and to get the agents on board, you "align their interests" by incentives, specifically by giving the CEO options.

(Note that shareholder value maximisation is not the same as profit maximisation, and definitely not the same as short-term profit maximisation - the value of the shares is theoretically the sum of discounted cashflows in all eternity).

The other argument, of course, is that shareholders care only about maximisation of the value of their share, and thus a firm which does not pursue shareholder value maximisation will lose shareholders and go out of business.

Both arguments are not all bad, but of course the real world is much more complicated. Shareholders might have more goals than maximising the value of their shares (not in Econ 101, of course). A company might be in a much better position to achieve some of those aims directly, rather than via the circuitous route of handing it to the shareholder and them pouring it back into the game.

At any rate, the notion of shareholder value maximisation is not some God-given absolute truth, but one proposed solution for specific problems within a specific theoretic framework, and it's not clear at all that it's always optimal, and should not be reflexively trotted out when talking about corporations, and not serve as a defense for corporations acting badly.

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

#319

Post by anoncake »

gumby wrote: post #312
yodsanklai wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's clear that to Boeing, their numbers are more important than lives. Isn't it the case by design for any corporation?

Companies are run by people and their objectives are not and need not be entirely economic. I often hear people say "well companies are legally required to maximise return for their shareholders" but that is not at all the case. Sure, some company management may be spurred to be good actors because they feel it will cause long term vale creation. But then again you could just do the right thing because by and large p…

> I often hear people say "well companies are legally required to maximise return for their shareholders" but that is not at all the case.

They are required to do what the shareholders want, which is usually maximizing returns.

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

#320

Post by FabHK »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #266
jjdjr0odo7 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially since this isn’t the first time Boeing’s malfeasance killed people. But the majority will merely sit and complain, making no real effort to act upon their anxieties.

> Especially since this isn’t the first time Boeing’s malfeasance killed people. What are you referring to here?

Might be referring to the rudder problem on the 737 in the 90s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_rudder_issues

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