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FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

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Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#81

Post by jacquesgt »

th0ma5 wrote: post #51
rjvehn wrote: post #27

There 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. Fehr…

To be fair, ignoring user input could have potentially have saved Air France 447... I mean I actually can't think of an automated fool proof system that would've fixed 447, but incorrect input was a major factor.

AF 447 wasn’t all that different from this situation. One of the co-pilots was trying to pitch the nose down to recover from the stall. The other was panicking and trying to pitch up. The plane averaged their inputs, without giving feedback via the stick that this was happening. It wasn’t until very late in the flight that they figured out what was happening, and then it was too late to recover.

Obviously there was some significant pilot error in this case, but a big contributor mag have been that the pilot who was trying to correct the stall didn’t understand that the plane was ignoring his input because of the averaging.

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#83

Post by markbnj »

Xcelerate wrote: post #7

I made a post about three months ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19578201 ) that my main fear with the 737 Max was that they rushed the plane into production and more mistakes were made than with just the MCAS system. Unfortunately, that seems to be the case. I doubt Boeing will ever convince me that enough "patches" have been made to make the plane safe to fly on.

If after all of this the much more knowledgeable pilots are willing to get on the thing and fly it, I'd be comfortable getting in the back.

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#84

Post by jussij »

blackflame7000 wrote: post #32
jussij wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The original 737 had a terrible safety record at first because of a rudder hard-over flaw. It then went on to become the most used in history

Hence the reason I said time will tell.

But there are also many examples of aircraft with terrible early safety records that never recovered from their bad start.

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#85

Post by jacquesgt »

cyberferret wrote: post #75
th0ma5 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, ignoring user input could have potentially have saved Air France 447... I mean I actually can't think of an automated fool proof system that would've fixed 447, but incorrect input was a major factor.

Basic rudimentary 'stick and rudder' flying skills was a big factor in AF447's crash. All old school pilots know that when you aircraft is in a nose high stall condition, you never keep pulling back on the stick, but instead push it forwards to lower the nose and get the wings flying again. The fact that the co-pilot in question kept holding the stick to the back stops was the main reason that the aircraft wallowed i…

Part of the issue may have been that the plane had slowed down so much that the stall warning stopped (it disengages below a certain airspeed apparently). When he stopped pulling up, the plane sped up and the stall warning started again. Pull up again, plane slows down, stall warning stops.

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#86

Post by kahirsch »

When the Boeing CEO had his press conference in April, he said "we've confirmed that the MCAS system as originally designed did meet our design and safety analysis criteria and our certification criteria."[1] I yelled at the screen "you know that means the criteria are flawed, right? If the procedures didn't catch this mistake, that means there are other mistakes that weren't caught!"

A flabbergasted reporter then asks him if he means to say that MCAS was designed to push the nose down 21 times. The CEO then blamed the pilots for not following procedures!

He repeatedly avoids avoiding admitting that any mistakes were made. He was so intent on avoiding blame that he gave me no confidence that Boeing could learn from its mistakes. The longer he talked, the less confidence I had in Boeing as a company.

I have no idea why this guy still has his job.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOQmQpKHVWA&t=9m30s

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#87

Post by dahart »

gbrown wrote: post #69
jussij wrote: post #41

The FAA suffered a major loss of credibility in their handling of the first round of testing/accreditation of the MAX. The FAA can't afford another stuff up this second time around and as such I suspect they will be checking every aspect of the plane in very fine detail. That could spell more trouble for Boeing.

Asking because I legitimately don't know: was the FAA failure here more attributable to the agency, or the funding (and therefore manpower*expertise) available to it?

Many articles about the 737 Max crashes have been talking about how it’s largely a systemic failure of the process due to the US culture of deregulation. That would make this both attributable to the agency and to the funding in a way that is complex and hard to separate. As I understand it, the agency has been allowing airplane manufacturers to essentially do their own testing more and more over time, despite the obvious conflict of interest.

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#88

Post by Aeolun »

iClaudiusX wrote: post #78
rossdavidh wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the many problems of the Boeing 737Max situation, and there are several, for once I don't think the media reporting is one of the biggest. But, your basic point stands.

The root problem is the culture at Boeing and the FAA has shifted from safety first to profit first. The investigative reporting from The Seattle Times[0] indicates that safety engineers were pressured to avoid delays to rush out a competitor to the A320. Furthermore, their safety analysis was based on flawed assumptions to meet an artificial constraint of not requiring pilot simulator training in order to appease th…

> The root problem is the culture at Boeing and the FAA has shifted from safety first to profit first.

So the same problem that pervades society everywhere now? I’m not sure if that wasn’t the case before, but it feels to me that people previously wanted to make lots of money by building great products, and they’ve just left the ‘building great products’ part behind.

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#89

Post by vkou »

notatoad wrote: post #54
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #15

Earlier 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.…

My instinct is that you're probably correct, and most planes are probably riddled with similar problems and would look bad if they came under the same scrutiny as the 737 Max is currently under. For example, I remember after the 787 was launched there was a few stories in the press about the batteries catching fire mid-flight, but it turned out the designers and engineers had accounted for that possibility and it was…

> My instinct is that you're probably correct, and most planes are probably riddled with similar problems and would look bad if they came under the same scrutiny as the 737 Max is currently under.

The 737 MAX only looks bad because it's track record so far is that it's a death trap.

Re: FAA Finds New Risk on 737 Max, Orders Boeing to Make Changes

#90

Post by SkyMarshal »

markbnj wrote: post #83
Xcelerate wrote: post #7

I made a post about three months ago ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19578201 ) that my main fear with the 737 Max was that they rushed the plane into production and more mistakes were made than with just the MCAS system. Unfortunately, that seems to be the case. I doubt Boeing will ever convince me that enough "patches" have been made to make the plane safe to fly on.

If after all of this the much more knowledgeable pilots are willing to get on the thing and fly it, I'd be comfortable getting in the back.

Why bother given how it easy it is just to chose another itinerary with a different type of plane? It's not like there's only one itinerary/plane type per route or anything.
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