Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 199 posts

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

#131

Post by salawat »

devit wrote: post #112
danso wrote: post #10

FWIW, the near-crash in the simulator was apparently not directly related to MCAS, but occurred when Boeing "simulated what would happen if gamma rays from space scrambled data in the plane’s flight-control computers." > In one scenario, the plane aggressively dove in a way that mimicked what happened in the crashes on the grounded jetliner, the people said. While such a failure had never occurred in the 737’s histor…

Is this an issue on non-MAX 737s as well? If not, and thus the affected computer system has been added in the MAX, why not design it properly with 3+ redundant copies of the system given that it was designed in the 2010s when both engineering theory and technological resources are plentiful?

It isn't an issue on non-MAX 737's. The flight computers on NG, and others don't have final say level control over the horizontal stabilizer, and there are several overrides the pilots have built in that allow the pilot to lockout trim commands from the Flight Computer, such as hauling back on the control yoke.

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

#132

Post by ethbro »

Rooster61 wrote: post #63
jackhack wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Software does not need to be this complicated. >>Design a damned airframe that's airworthy without needing stabilization hacks. In effect you are stating that you understand better than the hundreds of engineers involved with this project why these design trade-offs were made. Careful with that line of thinking. You're nearly guaranteed to be wrong. There are a host of reasons for the design in place: Efficiency, e…

> ...why these design trade-offs were made. While your line of reasoning is sound in most scenarios, in this case, the why is pretty obviously written on the wall. The overriding reason why this hacky-hack software solution was slapped into the airframe was to keep from having to reclass the plane following the addition of too-large engines. Your reasons listed played into the design decisions that became MCAS, but t…

I get the impression half of HN is pissed at Boeing because they understand terrible management-driven engineering decisions.

The other half just think we're "pissed off at Boeing" and makes claims like "well, they should have just built the plane right."

And so you get engineers taking umbrage (IMHO, rightly so) for the ridiculous simplification being made by the second half.

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

#133

Post by tus88 »

They say the MAX issues might delay the introduction of the 797, which I find rather strange. The 797 is the plane Boeing should have made instead of butchering the design of the 737...it's the right size and has the ground clearance necessary for the large efficient engines they jammed onto the 737...in other words it's perfect for mid-capacity long range point to point flights between secondary cities.

I say get the 797 out ASAP.

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

#134

Post by Rooster61 »

ethbro wrote: post #132
Rooster61 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...why these design trade-offs were made. While your line of reasoning is sound in most scenarios, in this case, the why is pretty obviously written on the wall. The overriding reason why this hacky-hack software solution was slapped into the airframe was to keep from having to reclass the plane following the addition of too-large engines. Your reasons listed played into the design decisions that became MCAS, but t…

I get the impression half of HN is pissed at Boeing because they understand terrible management-driven engineering decisions. The other half just think we're "pissed off at Boeing" and makes claims like "well, they should have just built the plane right." And so you get engineers taking umbrage (IMHO, rightly so) for the ridiculous simplification being made by the second half.

The lovely thing about HN is that that first half is probably indeed half of the people reading; whereas this same conversation on reddit might be 10% engineers, 90% echo chamber. That's at least my experience.

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

#135

Post by tus88 »

zaroth wrote: 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…

> bad software

The software was fine (or at least not to blame). Unstable aeronautic design and lack of redundant sensors was the real problem.

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

#136

Post by salawat »

macspoofing wrote: post #37
situational87 wrote: post #19

Are the simulators run by Boeing or the FAA? Are the test pilots employed by Boeing? What changes have been made to the regulatory framework to prevent Boeing from signing off on their own safety tests? What changes has the FAA made to bring more public transparency to the flight certification process? When is the sentencing date for Boeing executives? They are not getting a plea deal I hope? I'm not worried about th…

I'm not sure the FAA is at fault here. From a big-picture perspective, the industry has never been safer. Obviously, continuous improvement is a core part of quality, and the FAA can always learn and improve their processes, but you can't expect a regulator to shoulder the core responsibility of certifying a plane. The primary responsibility is always going to be on the manufacturer because no regulator will ever hav…

They absolutely can with the right amount of funding to maintain attractiveness.

The regulator should be adversarial; period. A well-meaning adversary, but adversarial never the less. Cutting manufacturers as much slack as has been is exactly what got us to the point we're at; a regulator that collected rubber stamped reports and only heard about things going wrong after tragedy has already struck.

It is better to have an active regulator able to intercede than to have the manufacturer coordinating everything internally, and asking for help when needed simply out of interest for removing the possibility to hide a problem discovery by never opening the floor to being questioned by the regulator.

If you tie the regulator's hands, then it isn't a regulator anymore. It's a postmortem service.

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

#137

Post by cmurf »

cmurf wrote: post #79
TomVDB wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Boeing will make that disagree alarm an optional extra?

Am optical extra that isn't actually properly functioning as intended in numerous delivered products? Almost as if it wasn't sanity tested in one production unit, let alone some random sample of units?

s/Am optical/An optional

https://www.aviationtoday.com/2019/05/06/boeing-angle-of-att...

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

#138

Post by TickleSteve »

MFLoon wrote: post #118
uxp100 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that true that CS students don't take an ethics course? I have a 10 year old SE degree and I took 3, only 1 of which was engineering specific. (I took a philosophy ethics course, which really isn't that relevant to issues like these anyway, but also a course that was specific to ethical issues in computing.) OTOH, I'm skeptical those courses change behavior, and in this particular case others in comments are sayin…

SE = structural engineering? That's cool, I'm glad your discipline is receiving some ethical training. I've never heard of any CS program including any sort of engineering or general ethics courses in their curricula.

My CS degree certainly did from University of Manchester.

Its also my understanding that most do.

BTW: SE typically means Software Engineering in this context.

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

#139

Post by salawat »

thisisnico wrote: post #8
Yizahi wrote: post #7

If I understand correctly "fixing" MCAS would be quick but audit found out more problems and Boeing started basically a refactoring of their computer architecture (including hardware changes) which itself takes a lot of time and didn't pass new audit yet.

Didn't I read from another hacker news poster that the software engineering and design was outsourced? Anyone know?

https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/boeing-outsourced-coding...

They didn't work on the Flight computer supposedly. Just the Flight displays.

There was a Bloomberg article with more detail.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-28/boeing-s-...

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

#140

Post by bobthepanda »

ethbro wrote: post #129
davidhyde wrote: post #5

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.

I'm not sure why this keeps getting repeated. Boeing certainly bears culpability for failing to execute, and whatever terrible lapses in certification were made to get there. But why were they doing a dumb thing in the first place? Because American Airlines asked-told them to. (Because they didn't want to have to pay to retrain pilots) Boeing deserves to have substantial portions of management jailed over this, but t…

Boeing could've said no.
Post reply on HN