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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

#311

Post by salawat »

cmurf wrote: post #298
salawat wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the airframe is that the shape of the nacelles, and their forward position create extra lifting surface in front of the center of gravity at high AoA. What this results in, is a non-compliant stick force response curve at high AoA. This violates FAA regulations which state that the stick force required to bring a plane to a stall must consistently increase all the way to the stall. No sickening or de…

I appreciate the response but it does not help at all one bit, it's a rehash of everything I've already read. In all of these 737 MAX discussions I'm one of the first to have brought up FAR 25.173(c) (although that whole section is relevant). I do not see how software augmentation can be permitted to compensate for a deviation from FAR 26.173. That section is titled: Static longitudinal stability. Software augmentati…

>I do not see how software augmentation can be permitted to compensate for a deviation from FAR 26.173. That section is titled: Static longitudinal stability. Software augmentation cannot cause an airplane that lacks positive static stability to have positive static stability.

I absolutely 100% agree. At no point have I intended to imply that any software solution should justify exceptional certification of an unairworthy frame as airworthy; in case that isn't clear.

I've only tried to communicate the fact that the software can physically remedy the behavior enough to apparently bring it within the capability of a human to control (as has been demonstrated by the non-crashed flights, as Boeing will inevitably argue).

I absolutely, unequivocally reject any argument that the software fix is compliant with regulations as written, or should be accepted as an acceptable remedy in it's current form.

I've had my view somewhat shaped by D.P. Davies in regard to the application of "gadgets" for certification. I think that any such system must be essentially bulletproof, and avoided at all costs by engineering the problem out if possible; and if allowed must unquestionably get the point across to the pilot that they are in dangerous waters.

The 727 had it's Stick Pusher in the U.K. This seems to be a modern retreating of the same path, and to be honest, I'm siding more toward the conservative side you hold of not allowing MCAS to remedy these handling faults. It really would be an example of the slippery slope of normalization of deviance in action.

I really hope all pilots, aerodynamicsts, and engineers take notice, and speak up. I can sit in these threads and try to spread understanding to the nine winds; but I'm some dude on the Net, who has no professional affiliation to any of this, but a big fat keg of outrage because this is not Quality damnit.

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

#312

Post by freeopinion »

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.

That's also consumers accepting the risk and agreeing to pay for a flight. Here's a quick thought experiment in capitalism:

Two relatively new Boeing 737-MAX airplanes crash in relatively quick succession. A critical flaw in the aircraft is exposed to the public. Significant numbers of people refuse to fly in a 737-MAX.

Southwest made a substantial investment in 737-MAX airplanes, and cannot make their money back. They approach Boeing and Boeing gives them a 75% discount on a 737-MAX replacement. Or, Boeing shrugs their shoulders and says, "huh". Southwest cancels all future orders with Boeing and buys Airbus.

Or, Boeing waves their hands and says, "We fixed everything. The 737-MAX is perfectly safe now." The next week, Southwest relaunches their fleet and books 100% occupancy. They negotiate with Boeing about the $millions lost while the fleet was grounded and get back to business as usual. For the next 5 years, a 737-MAX crashes every year killing everyone aboard, but bookings stay high. All ticket prices go up $25 to fund the payouts to crash victims. Bookings stay high. Business continues as usual.

See all the very different directions capitalism can take you? I continually struggle to understand the mindset where all blame goes to the government and there is no individual responsibility for consumer choices. We've seen it over and over with Wells Fargo, GM, Facebook, and the list goes on.

Government can serve a meaningful purpose in the regulation of capitalism. But also, capitalism can and must serve a critical role in the regulation of capitalism.

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

#313

Post by pvg »

blackflame7000 wrote: post #310
pvg wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean. I am going by wikipedia here but most of the things you've said in this subthread seem to be inaccurate. It wasn't the original 737. It wasn't the NG. And most of the accidents you've listed were not caused by that particular rudder design problem (as far as I can tell, 3 were, maybe?). You keep adding new inaccurate things without the slightest acknowledgement you might have misremembered or misstated someth…

Well, Wikipedia is where I got those 7 accidents moron. It took me 5 minutes of research. ALL WERE ATTRIBUTED TO RUDDER PROBLEMS! Big deal NG vs Original, if we're being specific there are actually 10 versions of the 737. The point is still the same, they had a critical flaw and overcame it. Is that too complicated for you to understand or do you want to debate Airplane versions because you think that makes you smart…

The five minutes seem to have been inadequate because a bunch of these explicitly say they were not conclusively attributed to that specific problem.

Copa Airlines Flight 201

"but after an exhaustive and extensive inquiry, they concluded that the crash was caused by faulty attitude indicator instrument readings."

China Southern Airlines Flight 3943

"CAAC blame the pilots for improper response to an autothrottle malfunction. "

Silkair Flight 185

"The NTSB's report found that there was sufficient evidence to rule out mechanical failure (based on examinations of the suspected PCU/dual-servo unit recovered from the SilkAir crash), and that the probable cause of the accident was "intentional pilot action" by a pilot"

And so on.

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

#314

Post by AnimalMuppet »

rsynnott wrote: post #239
notatoad wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. 0.5% of all 737 MAXes which exist have killed everyone on board. No other mass market production airliner in recent history has that sort of record, AFAIK.

Wikipedia says 393 have been produced, so more like 0.25%.

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

#315

Post by lispm »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #225
lispm wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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.

A nuclear power plant always has an immediate shutdown in case of a strong earthquake:

'Japanese nuclear power plants are designed to withstand specified earthquake intensities evident in ground motion (Ss), in Gal units. The plants are fitted with seismic detectors. If these register ground motions of a set level (formerly 90% of S1, but at Fukushima only 135 Gal), systems will be activated to automatically bring the plant to an immediate safe shutdown.'

http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-...

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

The words 'likely to be political' is no category in nuclear safety.

Take this example from 2008:

http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/C/Tepco_counts_earthquake_...

'Tepco's announcement yesterday included a section dedicated to the effects of the magnitude 6.8 Niigata-Chuetsu-Oki earthquake, which violently shook the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant on 16 July 2007. All seven of the reactors remained safe during the event, which caused huge damage to the region and several deaths. However, checks to establish the units' safety to return to service are proving very lengthy, and could continue into the latter part of 2008.

The ongoing inspections at Kashiwazaki Kariwa are to cost ¥122 billion ($1.13 billion) in FY2007. In addition, ¥25 billion ($233 million) will go on civil engineering repairs while a geological survey of the site is to cost a total of ¥2 billion ($18 million).'

Just the inspections after a safe shutdown for that nuclear power plant did cost more than 1 billion USD...

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

#316

Post by cmiles74 »

navigatesol wrote: post #250
linuxftw wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. The real motivation is always making money for the executives and board-members. Bonuses are paid for revenue, not for not killing folks.

> You're right. The real motivation is always making money for the executives and board-members. 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. I guarantee no one at Boeing make the conscious effort to kill hundreds of people for a bonus. Mistakes happen. People of all standing are corrupt. We fix the issues…

In my opinion, one of the important qualities of an organized company is to spread and dilute responsibility. No individual manager or executive needs to be immoral or evil, they need only be short-sighted or a little greedy or willing to keep their head down and toe the company line.

Each person is only responsible for their own bad decisions. It's likely there is no one person who signed the memo that said "casualties totally okay, make more money!" Instead we'll find several people signing off on several bad decisions, each person myopic enough to be able to honestly claim they had no idea something this bad could happen.

It would be nice to see the buck stop at, say, the CEO, but I haven't seen that happen. In many cases the CEO will claim that they gave blanket performance goals and that the execution of those goals was too technical for them to actually understand, or that those technical details were hidden from them by people below them who were trying to hide things (rather than only deliver the type of information the CEO really wanted).

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

#317

Post by bjourne »

salawat wrote: post #292
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…

GNU Octave would like to disagree. In fact, divergence from MATLAB is considered a bug. Admittedly, the entire point there is a free and open source replication of MATLAB, and is only really necessitated by licensing.

No, the Octave faq reads: "There are still a number of differences between Octave and Matlab, however in general differences between the two are considered as bugs. Octave might consider that the bug is in Matlab and do nothing about it, but generally functionality is almost identical." Octave doesn't (for good reason!) re-implement bugs found in Matlab meaning it doesn't and never will work exactly like Matlab.

Boeing's engineers weren't tasked with making MCAS generally work like a 737. They were tasked with making MCAS work exactly like a 30+ year old aircraft model, complete with quirks and faults. An impossible task.

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

#318

Post by salawat »

bjourne wrote: post #317
salawat wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GNU Octave would like to disagree. In fact, divergence from MATLAB is considered a bug. Admittedly, the entire point there is a free and open source replication of MATLAB, and is only really necessitated by licensing.

No, the Octave faq reads: "There are still a number of differences between Octave and Matlab, however in general differences between the two are considered as bugs. Octave might consider that the bug is in Matlab and do nothing about it, but generally functionality is almost identical." Octave doesn't (for good reason!) re-implement bugs found in Matlab meaning it doesn't and never will work exactly like Matlab. Boei…

Alright, I think I see the point you're going for now. I think I misinterpreted what you were saying before.

You're saying they set out to make not-a-737 behave physically as a 737. Yes. I concur. I seem to have hyperfocusef on the replication part and not enough on the plane part.

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

#319

Post by opencl »

rsynnott wrote: post #239
notatoad wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. 0.5% of all 737 MAXes which exist have killed everyone on board. No other mass market production airliner in recent history has that sort of record, AFAIK.

The rate of fatal crashes is more than an order of magnitude higher than anything introduced in the past 30 years.

The Concorde is the only thing that's worse. The A310 is closer than anything else at 1.35 fatal crashes per million miles vs the 737 MAX's 3.08- and that one was also designed to share a common type rating with an existing design.

http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm

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

#320

Post by Rescis »

toss1 wrote: post #309
navigatesol wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're right. The real motivation is always making money for the executives and board-members. 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. I guarantee no one at Boeing make the conscious effort to kill hundreds of people for a bonus. Mistakes happen. People of all standing are corrupt. We fix the issues…

You have the cause and effect backwards. I have had the opportunity to observe a very wide variety of businesses in several industries and have noticed the same thing as multiple studies - a high degree of sociopathy among execs. My conjecture is that this is both because aggressive sociopathy will help people rise among the ranks, and also because the structure of business will tend to actively select for those trai…

Im curious about the study that shows the causation of lowered compassion with higher income?
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