An issue recovering from uncommanded stabilizer trim which is not MCAS-related?
I’m going to assume there’s a real issue they are trying to report on, but Gell-Mann effect is strong with this one and some key information is missing.
FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes
21–30 of 354 posts
Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boeing's other current big commercial aircraft development program is the 777X. They are working through engine issues before first flight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777X
Boeing doesn’t make engines, GE does
Engine Alliance (GE and Pratt & Witney) and Rolls Royce are the 2 players.
Because engines are purchased separately from the aircraft, the buyers and engine manufacturers must be in a bind, since the buyer needs to pay for the engines for Boeing to fit them, whether the plane enters service or not.
Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes
#23I wonder if they're just now finding new things by simply running the software in a simulator, what more will they find, and what does this say to their continued assurances as to the safety of this plane?
On the flip side, all airplanes have flaws to some degree or else they would never crash. A deep audit of everything in the end should make things safer. And Boeing also has a solid safety record on their other models 777 and 767
Aircraft don't have to have flaws to crash, unless you count the human pilots, air traffic controllers, maintenance crews etc. as flaws.
You could have a perfect aircraft with no flaws, and a human could still manage to crash it. See the Germanwings flight for a good example.
Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes
#24This plane appears to be a (sorta) flying dumpster fire rushed to market against Airbus with tragic consequences. One design flaw after another is MAX failure.
The industry is pretty homogeneous and somewhat of a revolving door between the few OEMs. What are the odds that the code on this plane is orders of magnitude worse (in terms of code quality) than every other similar bit of code in the sky? Edit. I should have to say this but I'm not defending Boeing here. I'm saying it's not at al unforeseeable that the other planes, even ones by other manufacturers are just as bad.…
Upgrades to the 737 do have a particularly constrained design space, though (due to the oft-mentioned very low ground clearance).
Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
The industry is pretty homogeneous and somewhat of a revolving door between the few OEMs. What are the odds that the code on this plane is orders of magnitude worse (in terms of code quality) than every other similar bit of code in the sky? Edit. I should have to say this but I'm not defending Boeing here. I'm saying it's not at al unforeseeable that the other planes, even ones by other manufacturers are just as bad.…
Or conversely what are the odds that the others have similar undiscovered or undisclosed issues?
Fairly low, given that every other type in widespread service has been flying much longer than the MAX with a very good safety record
Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes
#26Not going to trust that model, like dc10 (?). May work not engineer. But as customer, only get 1 life. Not as software beta tester.
How can you practically avoid a model of plane, other than avoiding all airlines that operate them?
Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes
#27There are a myriad of issues that put the planes at risk, but I think that the fact that when the control system (MCAS) is engaged causes it to ignore feedback is the biggest issue of all.
"But with the MCAS activated, said Fehrm, those breakout switches wouldn’t work. MCAS assumes the yoke is already aggressively pulled back and won’t allow further pullback to counter its action, which is to hold the nose down.
Fehrm’s analysis is confirmed in the instructions Boeing sent to pilots last weekend. The bulletin sent to American Airlines pilots emphasizes that pulling back the control column will not stop the action.
Fehrm said that the Lion Air pilots would have trained on 737 simulators and would have learned over many years of experience that pulling back on the yoke stops any automatic tail maneuvers pushing the nose down." [0].
If you bought a new computer, how pissed off would you be if you lost data not because of a hard-drive failure, but because of a weird design decision of the 1 penny caps lock key? Imagine spending the time to setup a proper RAID system and losing everything because of a design decision in the keyboard.
I mean if the media keeps reporting about the small stuff that's wrong, it's going to make people go "well planes are complex and things happen" and almost ignore the seriousness of a design decision that ignores user input.
[0]: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/faa-e...
Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes
#28Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes
#29I wonder if they're just now finding new things by simply running the software in a simulator, what more will they find, and what does this say to their continued assurances as to the safety of this plane?
On the flip side, all airplanes have flaws to some degree or else they would never crash. A deep audit of everything in the end should make things safer. And Boeing also has a solid safety record on their other models 777 and 767
Boeing also has a solid safety record on their other models 777 and 767 and an incredibly poor safety record for their 737-MAX model.
The problem for Boeing is the history of flying has many examples of planes with poor safety records being rejected by the flying public.
Only time will tell if the 737-MAX joins that illustrious group, but the more the plane stays in the news for all the wrong reasons, the better are it's chances.
Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boeing's other current big commercial aircraft development program is the 777X. They are working through engine issues before first flight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777X
Boeing doesn’t make engines, GE does
Boeing doesn't make a lot of the components on their planes. The plane doesn't fly until Boeing is satisfied with how those components work.