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The Coming Boeing Bailout?

mattstoller.substack.com

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Re: The Coming Boeing Bailout?

#171

Post by chopin »

sokoloff wrote: post #37
philjohn wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't the crew save the airplane because there was a third person there to help manually trim as the force required was too much for two people alone, whilst also having to pull back on the yoke with massive force? That means it was dumb luck (a third person being there) and not due to following procedures if those procedures are nearly impossible to follow, or require superhuman strength.

No; the third crew member on prior Lion Air flight (043) is the one who diagnosed the issue as runaway trim and cued the flight crew to execute that checklist. I've read nothing to suggest that they participated physically in the response (despite having read quite a bit on the topic). The excessive force on the trim required in the Ethiopian Air case was a consequence of the crew leaving the engines at high power, t…

One should however mention that the failing sensor gave an "unreliable airspeed" warning. The checklist for that requires a designated power setting as well as a designated pitch for which the airspeed is known for the altitude. Afaik the pilots executed that checklist at least for the power setting part before moving to the stab trim runaway memory item. The failing AoA sensor triggered several checklists to work on.

From an armchair perspective a checklist for AoA sensor failure would have been required for the flight to end safely (maybe with "cutoff stab trim" on the list).

Re: The Coming Boeing Bailout?

#172

Post by CydeWeys »

bradleyjg wrote: post #126
CydeWeys wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Air supremacy is of paramount importance in modern warfare. Look at how thoroughly we were able to dominate the conventional land battles in Iraq and Afghanistan because of it. You can't have an effective national defense (or offense) these days without a good air force. And we're fortunate that ours is home-grown, not bought. Just go ask Iran what it's like having a non-home-grown air force; they have a bunch of F-1…

I note that you didn’t answer the question. It may (or may not) be reasonable to want a Big Swinging Dick military that goes around devastating third world nations, but it isn’t defense.

Air supremacy is necessary for defense as well, especially so.

Re: The Coming Boeing Bailout?

#173

Post by Zenbit_UX »

Maven911 wrote: post #163
bhouston wrote: post #9

Boeing 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…

And sad to say but it's one of the few large tech/engineering companies left in Montreal (they have operations worldwide but largest presence there) and with Bombardiers future in the air (no pun intended), it might leave even less to desire in Montreal's tech community

We have a pretty strong tech startup culture here in Montreal, and even without that there's always the gaming industry here.

Re: The Coming Boeing Bailout?

#174

Post by CydeWeys »

NikkiA wrote: post #127
kgermino wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worth noting that even though the 717 was first released in the late 90’s it isn’t a case of Boeing innovating since it’s just a rebadged MD-95 which was developed by McDonnell-Douglas

It's also worth noting that there were two 717s, the first was indeed part of the 720 & 707 family. (it was the 'commercial' designation of the C-135 when sold to france for use as a tanker)

It always strikes me as strange that the USAF is still regularly running such old planes as the C-135 (the most recent of which was produced over five decades ago). I guess they don't care about fuel efficiency like the airlines do? Maybe that's the real reason? I get that the mid-air refueling planes have a lot of specialized hardware on them, but most of them are just used for moving people and equipment around. Why not buy an off-the-shelf modern cargo airplane? You'll increase safety and fuel efficiency dramatically. A 767F is better than a C-135 in a multitude of ways, including better fuel efficiency, higher cargo capacity, shorter runways, etc.

Re: The Coming Boeing Bailout?

#175

Post by joyjoyjoy »

seibelj wrote: post #160
joyjoyjoy wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The US still has 19 of the world's top 20 universities" Nope. "and 40x of the top 50." Nope. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankin... But nice try.

The crux of GP’s comment stands despite quibbling on a few details. The US is the most powerful country on the planet and no one else is close.

"The US is the most powerful country on the planet and no one else is close."

Really? How do you measure this? Based on GDP Europe and China should be the same level. Based on PPP China may have surpased the US already. Military might? Questionable how effective carriers are against an able opponent. Paul Kennedy would argue, that increased military spending against an upcoming opponent might be a sign of weakness.

Re: The Coming Boeing Bailout?

#176

Post by mannykannot »

platz wrote: post #100
wsxcde wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This article repeats the claim that the MCAS software was faulty, but is there any evidence of coding-level errors? No, there isn't. The Verge (and IIRC other sources) have reported that the crashes were due to failures in the angle of attack (AoA) sensors. No program in the world is going to give you correct output with garbage input. Verge link: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/2/18518176/boeing-737-max-cr...

The software did way more dumb things than it needed to in the presence of these failure modes.

Those 'dumb' things were, in fact, the things that the domain experts specified it should do in response to the data that the software received.

Re: The Coming Boeing Bailout?

#177

Post by salawat »

>And it was bad software, written by to engineers paid $9/dollar an hour.

I really wish people wouldn't grab onto this; I've found no authoritative source linking those outsourced to to the coding of the MCAS, and several that explicitly state that was not the case.

While the rest of the article has absolutely valid points, let's not cloud the issue with cheap mudslinging.

Re: The Coming Boeing Bailout?

#178

Post by NikkiA »

CydeWeys wrote: post #174
NikkiA wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also worth noting that there were two 717s, the first was indeed part of the 720 & 707 family. (it was the 'commercial' designation of the C-135 when sold to france for use as a tanker)

It always strikes me as strange that the USAF is still regularly running such old planes as the C-135 (the most recent of which was produced over five decades ago). I guess they don't care about fuel efficiency like the airlines do? Maybe that's the real reason? I get that the mid-air refueling planes have a lot of specialized hardware on them, but most of them are just used for moving people and equipment around. Wh…

> Why not buy an off-the-shelf modern cargo airplane?

Because the procurement procedure would take 10-20 years, have to go through congress several times, and get pork barreled everywhere, and the 'modern freighter' would still likely be old as dirt once it's all done.

Look at the fuss over the KC-X/KC-30/KC-45/KC-46 for an example of how it would pan out. (The KC-X procurement started in 2002, settled on the KC-30 from airbus, modified to include pork barrelled 'Northrop Grumman' changes to be the KC-45, boeing objected to a non-US company winning the contract, and thus the KC-46 (a modified KC-767) was the only option left)

Re: The Coming Boeing Bailout?

#179

Post by magduf »

lisper wrote: post #117
kuu wrote: post #10

How 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.

Well, there are those cases where Google Maps routes people to the middle of the desert...

Re: The Coming Boeing Bailout?

#180

Post by magduf »

philjohn wrote: post #33
willyt wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m guessing that it’s considered a strategically important business to US defence? The US government would presumably be unwilling to allow all those teams of specialist engineers and technicians to be disbanded and all the facilities and assets to be sold off as would happen when a normal business fails.

Arguably those people would be able to form new, competing, companies with their know-how and a degree of investment. They would, naturally, have to start out small and grow from there - but Boeing was tiny once, as was McDonald Douglass, Lockheed etc. etc.

They don't need to start out small and grow. If Boeing goes under, there's going to be a huge worldwide demand for large passenger aircraft that cannot be satisfied by the one large manufacturer left (Airbus). Simultaneously, there's going to be a couple of huge factories, plus engineers and technicians and other employees, and the supply chain that used to feed Boeing, all up for grabs.

The simple solution is for either Airbus or a large Chinese company to buy up all the assets for dirt-cheap, or perhaps even a Japanese conglomerate, and get back to work building airplanes.

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