91–100 of 138 posts
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> ...a serious problem Well the plane literally overriding the pilots physical commands of the controls and crashing into the ground killing ~300 people, IMHO is a “serious problem” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM
I didn't look at your link, but if you're talking about the 737MAX, the OP isn't talking about that, he's talking about the 787. AFAIK, the "teething issues" the 787 had were about some batteries catching fire.
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My understanding is that the 737 does not use Fly by wire [1] and if I remember correctly it's because they wanted to piggyback on the original 737 certification. I could be wrong. 1: https://www.quora.com/Does-the-737-MAX-family-use-fly-by-wir...
Yeah, the regulatory incentives seem to be a substantial factor here.
Market forces drove Boeing to rush out a more fuel efficient 737. Even absent regulatory incentives, market forces drive them to want to deliver a 737-dimensioned plane, because a huge selling point for the NG and MAX is that they're still compatible with decades' old infrastructure at rarely-upgraded regional airports.
Bolting large enough engines to deliver the market-desired fuel efficiency on the market-desired airframe dimensions of the MAX necessarily required mounting them so far forward that the entire airframe is fundamentally prone to pulling into a stall, and correcting that is why MCAS exists.
Certification costs are far from the only reason Boeing has never sat down and designed a successor for 737, even though they've done so for numerous other planes -- half the problem with the 737 is that its engineering achilles heel (the incredibly low ground clearance) is simultaneously a key feature to a large portion of the customer base. Correcting it means all of those customers finally upgrading their ground infrastructure, which leads to Airbus suddenly being a viable competitor for those routes.
> What's more, over the course of his 55 years in the profession, he [lawyer Marc Moller] [has] learned that every plane crash can be traced back to a single, simple cause. I don't know, that strikes me as nonsense. It's precisely the interplay of many factors that lead to an accident - and if any one of them had been different, the outcome might have been different. See Reason's "swiss cheese" model of accidents - a…
> that strikes me as nonsense It is nonsense. It takes multiple failures to bring down an airliner, and the NTSB accident reports recommend fixing all of them. It's why airliners are so safe today. The 737MAX issue is no different.
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This idea that there's one guy or set of people to be found whose fault it is that you have a systemic problem is so uniquely American. In this case you're proposing to punish the smallest cog in the machine, some middle-manager or executive at Boeing. It would be just as logical to throw every single American in prison for around 45 minutes (~1 person dead in 737 MAX crashes for every million Americans, 80 years (le…
The simple answer is to make the entire C-suite criminally liable - collectively and individually. Because the usual argument is that the C-suite and especially the CEO are personally responsible for the successes of a company. So it's not unreasonable to hold them personally responsible for the failures too - especially when those failures amount to suspected criminal negligence. This is not the same as assuming gui…
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Yes. Truly terrible. And, possibly the pilots could turn the wheel if both collaborated on it - but then, who pulls back the control column to keep the elevator up? Terrible terrible situation.
And how long can you hold it at max effort? Should MAX-8 training include a physical fitness component?
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Forgive me a great deal of cynicism here. I suspect that a more accurate statement is "he learned that it works well for him to argue that every plane crash can be traced back to a single, simple cause." We don't ask lawyers to do surgery. We don't ask them to design bridges. And we don't ask them to do root cause analysis. We leave all of those things to those who actually know what they're doing in those areas.
We don't ask lawyers to do surgery No, but when they're in a court debating about e.g. doctor's negligence, we do expect them to have a rudimentary understanding of what's going on.
The great thing is, if you pay enough, you'll find an expert being willing to argue anything you want.
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Any reason you think that this crashes would not have ever happened in US? Before the first crash the pilots did not even known abut MCAS existence so I am not sure why you think that US pilots are extraordinary, I assume that not all MAX pilots are ex fighter pilots with super skills and whatever you imagine that makes ALL US pilots superior to the rest of the world.
In all seriousness, i believe the reason why many think the crashes would not have happened in the US is because Southwest and others all ordered the planes with redundant sensors (in the area where it pertains to these crashes) whereas many overseas airlines did not.
Also Southwest certainly did not have all of the indicators at first, because they added some: https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/southwest-airlines... (note that pretty much nobody used that kind of indicator before, so I don't say that to put blame on Southwest)
It was also my understanding that some alarms including the AoA disagree were optional and for a fee even though probably activated by only needing to switch a bit somewhere in the software. So if Southwest had AoA disagree from the beginning (I don't know), well that's cool, but my interpretation is more like: that's not cool that some other airlines did not have it because of the dubious commercial practices of Boeing.
> What's more, over the course of his 55 years in the profession, he [lawyer Marc Moller] [has] learned that every plane crash can be traced back to a single, simple cause. I don't know, that strikes me as nonsense. It's precisely the interplay of many factors that lead to an accident - and if any one of them had been different, the outcome might have been different. See Reason's "swiss cheese" model of accidents - a…
Forgive me a great deal of cynicism here. I suspect that a more accurate statement is "he learned that it works well for him to argue that every plane crash can be traced back to a single, simple cause." We don't ask lawyers to do surgery. We don't ask them to design bridges. And we don't ask them to do root cause analysis. We leave all of those things to those who actually know what they're doing in those areas.
Scientific facts aren't the same animal as legal facts. And I'll add not the same as political and engineering facts either. Root cause analysis facts are social and engineering facts.
> What's more, over the course of his 55 years in the profession, he [lawyer Marc Moller] [has] learned that every plane crash can be traced back to a single, simple cause. I don't know, that strikes me as nonsense. It's precisely the interplay of many factors that lead to an accident - and if any one of them had been different, the outcome might have been different. See Reason's "swiss cheese" model of accidents - a…
Forgive me a great deal of cynicism here. I suspect that a more accurate statement is "he learned that it works well for him to argue that every plane crash can be traced back to a single, simple cause." We don't ask lawyers to do surgery. We don't ask them to design bridges. And we don't ask them to do root cause analysis. We leave all of those things to those who actually know what they're doing in those areas.
That's silly, but if I were playing that game, I'd say the single, simple cause was a failure of Boeing and the CIA to keep abreast of A320new development.
Boeing were caught flat-footed by the launch of he A320neo and, facing a loss of potentially thousands of sales, were forced to quickly develop and release a modified 737 rather than create a new plane altogether.
Corporate espionage would have prevented all this.
This is probably the best piece I've read about this: "How the Boeing 737 Max Disaster Looks to a Software Developer" https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-boeing-...
“Ehhh, we’ll patch it in the next release…”? /badum-tish
(Actually a really deep and insightful read. Tx.)