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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

#221

Post by CaptainZapp »

sambe wrote: post #206
easytiger wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/18/british-air...

Yeah, this is pretty weird and a little scary. I wonder if they are using it as a negotiating tactic - get offered a super low price and then give that price to Airbus to match? Airbus have already enthusiastically said they will bid on this business.

My guess is that Boeing essentially gave the plane away in order to have one please, just one! success story at the Paris air show.

I can't imagine any airline making a deal at 50% list price with the current perception of that death trap with the public.

50% of list price, btw, is in the ballpark of usual discounts granted to end customers by Boeing and Airbus[1].

While I'm not privvy to any internals (obviously) my take is that IAG essentially gets the plane for free in exchange for a PR win for Boeing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_between_Airbus_and...

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

#223

Post by shaki-dora »

simion314 wrote: post #187
shaki-dora wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite the 737 Max fiasco, airplanes today are far safer than ever before. Since 1970, annual deaths have been cut by >80%, while air traffic has increased by a factor of 10. Cars have seen similar improvements. So have food hygiene, workplace safety, and most any measurable safety record I can think of.

You are using statistics wrong here, FAA process changed , Boeing entered a panic mode so their process changed too, applying statistics from the past where processes were different(FAA did its job and Boeing was no cutting corners) is incorrect. We need new statistics, and this are the stats for the recent Boeing plane where the MAX crashed 2 times, first crash was blamed on the pilots and no serious urgent investig…

No, I'm using statistics exactly as intended. Last year was much safer than any year in the 20th century, and so will this year be.

You have some ideas about how everything used to be better in the past, and you're trying to hold onto them in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

There isn't some sudden increase in the pressure to earn money that wasn't there in, say, 2008. And while the 737 Max process was obviously flawed, the argument above was that somehow there are fundamental problems across companies and industries, not just a single model. Quote from above:

> So the same problem that pervades society everywhere now? [I]t feels to me that people just left the ‘building great products’ part behind.

While evidence of a breakdown in Boeing's ability to design safe planes would indeed lag, there are many other critical processes where regressions would show rather quickly, such as maintenance, fuel quality, air traffic control, IT security, etc.

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

#224

Post by pas »

sjy wrote: post #157
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you work in a place where there is not enough funding for your job to do it safely and people may day, you need to walk away.

I think that attitude is part of the problem. If you're competent, it's usually much easier to find a new job than it is to take on entrenched cultural and funding problems that create risks. This further entrenches the problems by driving out dissenters, and if you work for a regulator, the 'creative destruction' of the free market can't fix it either.

While all true, by quitting you escalate the problem.

If upper layers "solve" it by hiring less competent people, then that is something on their conscience.

When the problem is at the top, just bearing with it at the bottom will not help at all. Even if you manage to save lives, you virtually sacrifice your own.

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

#225

Post by VBprogrammer »

lispm wrote: post #146
lkrubner wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fukushima? That doesn't belong on the list. There is some limit to any engineering decision. Complaining about MCAS is totally reasonable, but it would be unreasonable to argue "The Air Max is not safe because if I hit it with enough Stingray missiles it won't fly anymore." Like, yeah? No kidding? Fukushima was designed to survive the earthquake, and it did, it just wasn't designed to survive the earthquake and also…

> Fukushima was designed to survive the earthquake, and it did untrue It was designed to survive both a tsunami and an earthquake. Tsunamis often are caused by earthquakes. That Fukushima survived the Earthquake is a myth. The plants had an emergency shutdown and there was very little time for a damage assessment, which would have taken weeks or months. Whether the plant would ever have been restarted after the earth…

The plant lost electrical connection to the grid, of course it had an emergency shutdown. Otherwise they'd have had to have found some other method of dissipating megawatts of electricity.

The fact that other plants have not been restarted is at least as likely to be political as it is technical.

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

#226

Post by marksweston »

jacquesgt wrote: post #179
jussij wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't the flight control was averaging the pilot inputs. From this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Human_fa... In April 2012 in The Daily Telegraph, British journalist Nick Ross published a comparison of Airbus and Boeing flight controls; unlike the control yoke used on Boeing flight decks, the Airbus side stick controls give little visual feedback and no sensory or tactile feedback to the…

You may be right about the averaging. From rereading the accident report, the Pilot Flying took back control of the plane after the Pilot Not Flying engaged his controls and tried to pitch down. But, it’s the same basic idea. The PNF thought he’d gotten control of the plane, and didn’t understand why his input wasn’t having an effect. He didn’t get feedback from the stick telling him a different input was being honor…

It’s weird to me how persistent this story is.

From the reported control traces, there was no prolonged period of dual input. There were 3 or so brief moments of dual control input (1 - 2 seconds), during which a warning was sounded. The pilots never spoke out loud about it, but we can infer that they heard the dual input warning and were aware when it happened because the sequence of events was the same each time; inputs from both joysticks received -> aural dual input warning -> input from one joystick stops.

Something about the idea of two pilots inadvertently fighting each other for control of the aircraft has definitely caught peoples’ imagination. But it didn’t happen.

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

#227

Post by jussij »

foldr wrote: post #213
jussij wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was responding to the claim the flight control was averaging the two pilot inputs, because if that was the case then two pilots would have been flying the plane. Might point was I doubt that this was in fact happening and there was only ever one pilot in charge. > the Air France flight where the computer was receiving inputs from two pilots. The link and quotes I posted suggest that was not happening. The system wa…

>because it also failed to tell that other pilot he was being ignored. It didn't fail to tell him. That's what the dual input alarm is for.

I will have to take your word on this dual input alarm as I have not read or seen any details on this alarm.

Now if that alarm was raised then that suggests both pilots were in error as they both seemed to have ignore that alarm.

However that was never the reason for my original reply.

All I was replying to was idea that the flight control was doing some sort of averaging of the two pilot inputs.

That to me just seems illogical as it would asume two pilots trying to fly the same plane and that scenario will never end well.

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

#228

Post by moftz »

BorRagnarok wrote: post #189
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.

I still don't trust the FAA at all. They've been sourcing out their own work to Boeing since the 787 Dreamliner [0]. That's seven years ago. I don't think this will make them change their practices. The 787 fiasco certainly didn't. Personally I'd be happiest if the world just scrapped all the Max-es. Just scrap 'em, let Boeing go out of business, it's what they deserve now, they shouldn't exist anymore as a company.…

It's not footage but that angle of attack is absolutely nuts. I don't think my brain would have been able to process that kind of image out my window if I was a passenger on that plane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIunpQQpzs0

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

#229

Post by jussij »

mantap wrote: post #76
cjbprime wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason people are outraged is that "don't use a single sensor to decide that the plane should perform an uncontrollable nose-dive" isn't the outcome of new learning. That wasn't competent airworthiness seventy years ago. It's a lesson the industry thought it had already internalized. We shouldn't applaud mistakes of the distant part being repeated recklessly as some kind of improvement.

What seems to have happened is that the system was originally designed with more conservative parameters. Testing showed that these parameters were insufficient to prevent a stall so they "turned it up to 11", and didn't re-evaluate the original design.

> "turned it up to 11", and didn't re-evaluate the original design.

In other words they thru all engineers principals out the window.

Now there is no doubt this is exactly what happened.

But the bigger question is why did this happen and why was it allowed to happen?

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

#230

Post by jussij »

marksweston wrote: post #226
jacquesgt wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be right about the averaging. From rereading the accident report, the Pilot Flying took back control of the plane after the Pilot Not Flying engaged his controls and tried to pitch down. But, it’s the same basic idea. The PNF thought he’d gotten control of the plane, and didn’t understand why his input wasn’t having an effect. He didn’t get feedback from the stick telling him a different input was being honor…

It’s weird to me how persistent this story is. From the reported control traces, there was no prolonged period of dual input. There were 3 or so brief moments of dual control input (1 - 2 seconds), during which a warning was sounded. The pilots never spoke out loud about it, but we can infer that they heard the dual input warning and were aware when it happened because the sequence of events was the same each time; i…

100% correct.

The available evidence suggest this averaging thing never happened and certainly was not the cause of the crash.

What we have is situation of two pilots in close proximity to each other not communicating and the captain unfortunately caught in the toilet.

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