At some point, we need to stop protecting incompetence. It just allows for more incompetence. Let the chips fall where the company bet on them. All of the companies. Or, let them get private insurance for such things. The public shouldn't be their insurance policy.
The Coming Boeing Bailout?
111–120 of 189 posts
Re: The Coming Boeing Bailout?
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
anything that is connected to the flight controls, is too important to sub out (unless you are subbing it out to someone better that you are). making an airplane is a huge endeavor that crosses across many domains. you have to have competency up and down the 'stack'. Boeing does. Maybe this will cause a re-look at outsourcing policies. (edit. yes, this software was not outsourced. but it may add another dimension oth…
It has been mentioned in the article that MCAS was never outsourced. Also it’s unfair to blame the software engineers who are building it to specification. It would be fantastical to assume that Boeing management( the same one ploughing through engineering with bean counting) would give a rats crap about a low level engineer raising a concern.
It has been mentioned in the article that MCAS was never outsourced.
Where did the article say that? To me it explicitly claims it was outsourced:
the McDonnell Douglas influenced Boeing new one tried to patch the problem with software. And it was bad software, written by to engineers paid $9/dollar an hour.
And I am not blaming the software engineers for building it to the specification. In contrary, I clearly stated, that just building it to specification isn't enough for such critical software. Such software needs to be developed in teams where enough team members are senior enough to properly raise concerns where appropriate.
Re: The Coming Boeing Bailout?
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
The MCAS is a good example, why certain software must not be outsourced. Implementing the software correctly to spec isn't enough, you need enough understanding of the application to question the spec itself.
Software engineers are not aerospace engineers. I doubt the software people would have understood the aerodynamic effects of the MCAS system by looking at the requirements.
That is the problem with having pure software engineers implementing such a software. They need to have some aerospace engineering knowledge too. Or at least work directly in one team with aerospace engineers.
I am working as a "software engineer" in the semiconductor industry. By education, I am a physicist. I am in my job for more than 10 years now, and beyond my university education, I have quite a grasp of electrical engineering. Furthermore, most of my colleagues are eletrical engineers. So in doubt, I can just walk over to their desk and discuss any question beyond pure software development issues. And some of the software developers here are just electrical engineers, which expanded their skill profile into software territory.
Doing business this way is quite more expensive than having software developed by a contractor, but it creates safeguards.
Re: The Coming Boeing Bailout?
#114Boeing and the US government recently killed the Canadian aviation industry by putting on 300% duties on our main manufacturer because of a government bailout it received. See: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/us-issues... As a result Bombardier, Canadian's only large aviation manufacturer, was sold to AirBus: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/bombardie... The cause was a Canadian p…
Even if pissing off the US wasn't a major issue, banning Boeing would give airbus a monopoly... So I guess to answer your question... Yes.
Re: The Coming Boeing Bailout?
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Both the 2nd generation E-Jets and the A220 beat the pants of the 737 with the caveat that they are smaller planes that carry fewer passengers. They also are smaller planes that have better comfort than the 737 in most respects; it is like the Japanese cars of the 1970s which were big on the inside and small on the outside compared to American cars of the time. You have to fly it to believe it. I could see these eati…
The crazy thing is that Boeing hasn't designed a new clean-sheet small jet since 1967, when the 737 came out. Prior to that they were iterating on a pretty rapid cadence, with the 707, 717, 720, and 727, and then they just got stuck in an absolute rut and have been increasingly paying the consequences as the 737 no longer stacks up favorably against the much newer clean-sheet designs put out by their competitors. To…
It's a strange one.
When the 737 was built, the aircraft industry thought that the supersonic transport (SST) was going to be the big thing. In particular, being so much faster, it could get more flights in per day and have a much lower cost per seat mile.
That didn't happen, and the 747 turned out to be the future instead. Through the 1970s and 1980s there was intense competition for widebody planes, but the 737 slowly gained in capability and gained market share.
The 777 was developed just as the Boeing-Airbus duopoly was settling into place; in some ways it is an answer to the A300 (make a huge 2-engine airliner and make it so reliable you can fly over sea), but a greatly improved answer. 777 found product-market fit, but Airbus blazed the way with the A330/340 which you could get with 2 or 4 engines respectively.
The 787 not so much. When it was originally conceived, fuel prices were low and Boeing wanted to make a "sonic cruiser" that traveled at just below the speed of sound but a little faster than current jets.
(Here is the business jet version of that)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulfstream_G650
Then fuel prices spiked and they made a plane for balls-to-the-walls fuel efficiency, then fuel prices dropped. So it wasn't really the airplane that airlines wanted.
The A380 is the canonical advantage of a good plane at the wrong time. It came in as a 747 competitor just as the 777 and 787 started to eat the 747's lunch.
Given that the lifespan of a plane can be so long I can't blame plane makers for being apprehensive that they're going to invest a lot of money in a clean sheet design that the market may or not be interested in by the time it is ready.
The A320 is similar to the 737 in terms of materials, but it has a fly-by-wire system that Airbus has perfected and proven -- it's flight-envelope protection capabilities is as far ahead of MCAS as Chess is to Checkers.
Airbus has made the A321XLR which is a scaled-up A320 to a much larger airplane than Boeing can deliver with the MAX-ed out 737 platform.
Re: The Coming Boeing Bailout?
#116How did Boeing make miracles in civilian aircraft? In short, the the civilian engineers were in charge. And it fell apart because the company, due to a merger, killed its engineering-first culture Uhm, this makes me think about the engineering-first of Google. I wonder if Google will end in the same path...
Makes me think of Apple. Are there any good hardware engineers still at Apple or have all the best ones left in disgust over the emphasis on all form and no function?
Re: The Coming Boeing Bailout?
#117How did Boeing make miracles in civilian aircraft? In short, the the civilian engineers were in charge. And it fell apart because the company, due to a merger, killed its engineering-first culture Uhm, this makes me think about the engineering-first of Google. I wonder if Google will end in the same path...
> I wonder if Google will end in the same path...
I think they already have. The big difference is that when Google screws up, people don't die in a sufficiently dramatic fashion to make the evening news.
Re: The Coming Boeing Bailout?
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> its low ground clearance is caused by the need to be able to fit a folding staircase inside the aircraft itself. Which incidentally is the major reason why it is the Ryanair main aircraft.
Are you sure? Does Ryanair actually use the integrated stairs, or do they use staircars? I thought they stopped making 737s with the integrated stairs some time ago? Is Ryanair using old planes?
I'm not 100% sure if my memory is playing tricks on me, but I believe Ryanair indeed uses the integrated stairs often. There do also seem to be plenty of images of Ryanair planes with the integrated stairs down or in use.
Re: The Coming Boeing Bailout?
#119Boeing and the US government recently killed the Canadian aviation industry by putting on 300% duties on our main manufacturer because of a government bailout it received. See: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/us-issues... As a result Bombardier, Canadian's only large aviation manufacturer, was sold to AirBus: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/bombardie... The cause was a Canadian p…
The duties were also overturned in the end, but not before Bombardier gifted 50.01% of the C-Series program to Airbus so it had a chance of survival. The net result was Airbus rebranded the program the A220, committed to building US-destination A220 jets within the US to avoid tariffs anyways and while they significantly weakened one [small] competitor (Bombardier and by extension Investissement Québec) they massivel…
>the C-Series planes are much better than similar Embarer aircraft, both longer range and more comfortable
Also quite more expensive and less fuel efficient. The comparison is more complex than that.
Re: The Coming Boeing Bailout?
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Software engineers are not aerospace engineers. I doubt the software people would have understood the aerodynamic effects of the MCAS system by looking at the requirements.
That is the problem with having pure software engineers implementing such a software. They need to have some aerospace engineering knowledge too. Or at least work directly in one team with aerospace engineers. I am working as a "software engineer" in the semiconductor industry. By education, I am a physicist. I am in my job for more than 10 years now, and beyond my university education, I have quite a grasp of electr…
That is true. But please keep in mind that the whole MCAS fiasco was precipitated by a dubious cost-cutting initiative related to an engine placed more in front than would be aerodynamically stable. The game was lost in the first quarter. The whole point is that civilian aircraft, unlike fighter jets, have to be aerodynamically stable without the need for such software, whether developed by holistic engineers, or compartmentalised subcontractors.