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Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator

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Re: Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, the MAX was only designed to beat the competition to market with the least amount of re-certification and re-training. That gamble (with Boeing's reputation, the FAA reputation and most importantly, people's lives) did not pay off. They won't get away with rushing though certification of a complete rewrite of their flight software. The world is watching now. Time to cut losses and junk the MAX entirely.

Slightly redesigning the wings and fitting 4 engines which are sized similarly to ones in 737-400, instead of 2 large engines might solve the problem.

Four engines are generally way more inefficient than two big ones. That's why they're being phased out. A340,B747,A380, BA146, etc.

Re: Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator

#42
post #12

The can of worms has been officially opened, and this may turn out to be a case study in how bad software and outsourcing your centers of excellence can bankrupt a company. If TFA is to believed, Boeing has embarked on a project to take what is currently a master-slave failover design and jury-rig it into a master-master real-time system. This is based on bad performance in the simulator—not because of MCAS—but while…

Hey mods, pls be attentive with the stats on voting patterns for this kinda thing

Not claiming intent on part of OP, but a perfect storm of ego-stroking and groupthink could be possible, and this is exactly what foreign misinformation campaigns (with anti-USA interests) would be negligent not to notice the potential of

EDIT: To those voting me down, this is how the world we built can work now, right? I'm not saying this is 100% what's happening this time. But let's stay on our toes, no?

Re: Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator

#43
Abstracting out of planes to software on general - this is what happens when your testing surface dramatically expands. You can have a product that has been working just fine, generally, but when you start adding tests for new situations, you can suddenly get a LOT more tests....with most of them failing.

TDD advocates (and I'm a fan) will be feeling smug, be that doesnt apply here - the issue is not the initial tests, but explicitly tests after the fact, on criteria that werent in the initial tests. Be it by oversight or deliberate choice, TDD is in the same boat here.

All of which underlines how hard complex software can be. Boeing made lots of mistakes, and many of us might recall happier examples from our past (new criteria, but a well-written suite passes it all with minimal effort), but such examples are selection bias - if we exclude the code we know is a mess, the remaining mix of did-well and did-poorly code looked GOOD before. (Here I'm generalizing from my experience and the war stories I've heard)

Which brings us back to the Waterfall vs Agile issue. We know that we generally stink at anticipating all the requirements. We also know that the better we do at anticipating those requirements the less likely we are to have a sudden spec change derail us (not because we can prevent the spec change, but because our code tends to work)

Anyone asserting that such problems are simple to resolve hasn't worked on enough such problems. We are learning, but this field is still in its infancy and we've not even finished understanding some of the earliest principles the pioneers in the industry laid out.

Re: Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator

#44
post #39
post #12

The can of worms has been officially opened, and this may turn out to be a case study in how bad software and outsourcing your centers of excellence can bankrupt a company. If TFA is to believed, Boeing has embarked on a project to take what is currently a master-slave failover design and jury-rig it into a master-master real-time system. This is based on bad performance in the simulator—not because of MCAS—but while…

A split brain in a plane is a bit of a nightmare. I'm not sure how they can work around it with just two computers.

Big "disagree" alarm for the pilots and let them decide to keep either computer or go direct. Airbus has the concept of flight control laws, surfaced and changeable by the wet backups.

http://www.airbusdriver.net/airbus_fltlaws.htm

Re: Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator

#45
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decade is too long but I agree with your sentiment. The underlying problem with the 737 Max was commercial pressure leading to cutting corners and creating an unsafe plane (or plane with an unsafe core component) ... and now commercial pressure is again being applied on their R&D teams, which are probably scrambling because they know every day means millions in losses. That's not a great environment for quality and…

Boeing makes up 8.8% of the Dow right now, the largest component. There is a lot of pressure from the finance community and the government to get this recertified to keep the stock market from going down.

That is incredibly misleading. The Dow is not representative of the entire stock market anymore. The S&P 500, which is only the 500 largest public companies by market cap, has a combined market capitalization of ~$25+ trillion. Boeing has a market cap of ~$200b, so that represent 0.8% of the total. If you include the top 3,000 public companies (i.e., the Russell 3000), the combined market capitalization is over $32 trillion. The idea that regulators at the FAA are going to let them fly a dangerous plane "because of the stock market" is absurd.

Re: Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator

#46
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decade is too long but I agree with your sentiment. The underlying problem with the 737 Max was commercial pressure leading to cutting corners and creating an unsafe plane (or plane with an unsafe core component) ... and now commercial pressure is again being applied on their R&D teams, which are probably scrambling because they know every day means millions in losses. That's not a great environment for quality and…

Boeing makes up 8.8% of the Dow right now, the largest component. There is a lot of pressure from the finance community and the government to get this recertified to keep the stock market from going down.

They may pressure FAA and maybe EASA into a certification but with other agencies (the Chinese) I think it would be more difficult.

Not to mention what happens if one of re-certified planes falls out of the air. People will refuse to board these planes.

Re: Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator

#47
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decade is too long but I agree with your sentiment. The underlying problem with the 737 Max was commercial pressure leading to cutting corners and creating an unsafe plane (or plane with an unsafe core component) ... and now commercial pressure is again being applied on their R&D teams, which are probably scrambling because they know every day means millions in losses. That's not a great environment for quality and…

Boeing makes up 8.8% of the Dow right now, the largest component. There is a lot of pressure from the finance community and the government to get this recertified to keep the stock market from going down.

The Dow is also extremely outdated

Re: Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator

#48
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decade is too long but I agree with your sentiment. The underlying problem with the 737 Max was commercial pressure leading to cutting corners and creating an unsafe plane (or plane with an unsafe core component) ... and now commercial pressure is again being applied on their R&D teams, which are probably scrambling because they know every day means millions in losses. That's not a great environment for quality and…

Boeing makes up 8.8% of the Dow right now, the largest component. There is a lot of pressure from the finance community and the government to get this recertified to keep the stock market from going down.

I had to comment, nobody in finance pays attention to the Dow. It's a meaningless index. Look into how it is constructed if you're curious as to why.

But to your point, it makes up 0.78% of the S&P500 which is not insignificant for sure.

Re: Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator

#49
post #31
post #12

The can of worms has been officially opened, and this may turn out to be a case study in how bad software and outsourcing your centers of excellence can bankrupt a company. If TFA is to believed, Boeing has embarked on a project to take what is currently a master-slave failover design and jury-rig it into a master-master real-time system. This is based on bad performance in the simulator—not because of MCAS—but while…

As a tangent, there have been times when HN is ahead of the curve in understanding where something is headed before the investing public. The benchmarks and excitement around AMDs offerings are a great example. When you see something that presents a paradigm shift, often the market will not have fully digested it. AMD is one of those cases, and I believe BA is as well. Their stock is essentially unchanged from where…

$100mm is the list price. Actual prices are decided by the market. I've read about $50mm for the 737-8, the baseline 737MAX model. That was of course before the MCAS disaster.

My layman understanding is that actual prices would be around 40% off list price for models that sell really well, with little competition (for instance A321). Much steeper discount above 60% for models that have a hard time selling (A330NEO) or for end of line to close a production gap (777-300ER is very cheap to buy while Boeing is working on the 777-9).

Re: Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, the MAX was only designed to beat the competition to market with the least amount of re-certification and re-training. That gamble (with Boeing's reputation, the FAA reputation and most importantly, people's lives) did not pay off. They won't get away with rushing though certification of a complete rewrite of their flight software. The world is watching now. Time to cut losses and junk the MAX entirely.

Slightly redesigning the wings and fitting 4 engines which are sized similarly to ones in 737-400, instead of 2 large engines might solve the problem.

>Slightly redesigning the wings

>fitting 4 engines

Changing the number of engines would most likely require a total redesign of the wing.

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