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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

#281

Post by throwanem »

linuxftw wrote: post #268
bluntfang wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What sort of mindset must one have to assume that once a person becomes a "manager" or "executive" they are suddenly immoral or evil? Such an odd worldview. Becoming an executive at a publicly traded company is a joyous and public acceptance of capitalism. Capitalism is objectively bad, given the state of the world.

Capitalism is nothing more than the free exchange among willing parties and cannot be objectively bad. If Boeing can put out faulty products that kill people will no recourse, that's not capitalism, that's the government allowing these criminals to continue operating unchecked.

It's a poor definition of capitalism that equally well describes barter and gift economy.

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

#282

Post by throwanem »

navigatesol wrote: post #259
chrisbolt wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that they disagree is what is notable. The FAA lost credibility by being the last to ground the MAX. You side with the one that has a history of not being wrong.

> You side with the one that has a history of not being wrong. A question for the arm-chair analysts in this thread: which one has a better history of not being wrong, excluding this data point?

I don't know the history, but considering the incentives, I'd look first to EASA for Boeing, and first to FAA for Airbus.

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

#283

Post by Rooster61 »

83 wrote: post #266
moftz wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think you mean angle of descent. Angle of attack is the angle of airflow with respect to the wing.

Not to mention the AoA data was suspect, at least from one of the sensors. That's what caused the chain of errors leading to the MCAS nosediving the plane.

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

#284

Post by metabagel »

333c wrote: post #26
ngcc_hk wrote: post #9

Not 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?

Kayak shows you the aircraft type.

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

#285

Post by ahartmetz »

tomp wrote: post #269
BorRagnarok wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> There are enough businesses that happily create planes without putting profit before people. Are there? Besides Boeing and Airbus, which other company makes safe (or not, in case of Boeing) passenger planes? AFAIK it's a duopoly.

Embraer and Bombardier, possibly Sukhoi and Comac. But they don't make large, long range ones.

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

#286

Post by salawat »

navigatesol wrote: post #256
BorRagnarok wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FAA and Boeing (and Airbus as well) are all going to learn a lot from this process which will make air travel safer in the future Yeah, right. Until they start cutting corners again for economic reasons. There's absolutely no change in any of those organizations driven by this incident or by an increase in standards or by safety, there are no new regulations, it's all a dog and pony show driven by money and saving…

> There's absolutely no change in any of those organizations driven by this incident or by an increase in standards or by safety, there are no new regulations How fast do you think this stuff can happen? > And that's a great argument for just letting the next horrible accident happen in a few years. The next horrible accident is going to happen in a few years, sorry to tell you. > Accidents will stay a calculated ris…

>I'm going to assume you're no engineer.

I'm pretty sure what you're trying to get across is that Engineering is the business of enabling the taking of calculated risks, but you're doing it in a needlessly inflammatory way.

And the poster you're responding to isn't necessarily wrong either. Just because engineering allows us to identify, analyze, and calculate the impact of risks does not free us of an obligation to always favor the most conservative approach in living up to the obligation to comport ourselves in a manner consistent with serving the Public interest.

Remember the Iron Ring in all things.

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

#287

Post by LMYahooTFY »

hwestiii wrote: post #234

This all points up the glaring conflicts of interest in the corporate business environment. Most of us think that Boeing is the business of building airplanes, but as a publicly traded company, its real business is making money for its shareholders, and aerospace is just a vehicle toward that end. The Boeing CEO's steadfast refusal to take responsibility for these two crashes are nothing more than CYA designed to lim…

This is only the beginning of a question.

It's not obvious how the responsibility for those deaths should be allocated.

What's the tolerance threshold for airline fatalities?

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

#288

Post by salawat »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #125
halter73 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC, the cockpit voice recording included a comment from one of the co-pilots about how pulling back on the yoke couldn't cause a stall. The assumption was that the Airbus's fly-by-wire system would prevent it and ensure the aircraft still climbed as long as the pilot held back on the stick. The co-pilot apparently didn't realize that the sensor issue that disabled the autopilot also disabled the stall prevention. A…

Exactly - the computer had switched contexts, but the pilot hadn't. And expecting pilots to switch their mental map of expected behaviour when the computer does (and did so with, from the accounts I read, very minimal indication that it had done so) during a high stress situation, is asking for trouble.

This is my number one objection to over-reliance on automation.

Every piece of software is a mechanism. In order to truly be able to safely use something without outside aid, one must have a complete mental map of the mechanics of the system in question. Abstraction helps; but not when you start getting into high-risk contexts.

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

#289

Post by skykooler »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #174
bjourne wrote: post #133

Since this thread is already full of armchair airplane engineers opinions about the root cause, I'll add mine too: Never ever write new software under the condition that it must work EXACTLY as old software. It can't be done and you'll always miss something. Case in point: Wine. They've been at it for years and the emulation layer is still far from perfect. It works 99% of the time which is good enough for games, but…

Wine is not a good example. They don't have access to the source code of the original system, and they haven't had the resources to cover the entire footprint of the Windows APIs.

That's a good point. It'd be like comparing Boeing building a new plane to, say, Tupolev trying to build an identical copy without any blueprints.

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

#290

Post by rtkwe »

pas wrote: post #273
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…

The problem was that because it was an unknown component its failure mode was not known, which created/exacerbated the panic. There is a simple procedure, which is already part of the standard memory checklists. What to do in case of runaway trim. The pilots must/should be able to notice the trim wheels spinning, they then can disable trim motors and fall back to manually cranking them. The problem is, panic makes a…

Well also the fact that the stabilizer can get trimmed far enough that the aerodynamic load on the rear stabilizer exceeds the pilots ability to move it manually. In that case the only real solution early in take off would be to re-enable the trim system so you could use the trim motors. The other solution to that situation is to nose down to release some of the pressure on the stabilizer so they can be manually cranked again, this isn't really an option early in the flight though because you don't have the altitude to slowly undo the erroneous trim while diving.
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