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

151–160 of 199 posts

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

#151

Post by EricE »

akersten wrote: post #2

These should not fly for a decade. They're rewriting the avionics from scratch. This should require a years-long process of testing, external auditing, and approvals. I'd even go so far as to say in flight, we should require competitor review. That's right, no trade secrets. If you want your Hello World up in the air, you better let your competitor vet the source code. This is an engineering boondoggle and an embarra…

>They're rewriting the avionics from scratch.

So claims Bloomberg. Since there seems to be overwhelming consensus in this thread (that I also agree with) that it would be colossal stupid, I'd wait until we see confirmation from some other source. Bloomberg hasn't had the best record with facts or nuance in many stories recently.

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

#152

Post by EricE »

gdubs wrote: post #150

I’m a rational person who enjoys flying, and I just never want to fly on a Max.

Based on one story from Bloomberg? That might be a tad premature - they never did address concerns with their "reporting" on the China server spying issue.

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

#153

Post by SkyBelow »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #109
SkyBelow wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people actually agree? Yes, if you ask them, the social costs and gains of each answer being given means most will disagree. But is that actually what we value more when their isn't a social cost to being honest with the 'wrong' answer? Is that what our actions speak too? I think we live in a world that puts a value on the plane crash and sees a certain level of cost from plane crashes as acceptable in the p…

The thing is, if they don't actually get it right, and another plane crashes, the stock is going to take a massive hit. So even if all you care about is the stock price , you have to get the fix right.

While enough crashes will hurt the stock, I don't think this is enough of a counter to the existing pressure because it is possible to modify a business in a way that increases stock value, sell the stock, and then let others take the losses when the public perception hits the point people stop buying the product (in this case, stop using flights flown with Boeing airplanes).

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

#154

Post by joe_the_user »

drawkbox wrote: post #98
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…

Classic case of hitting the date but crunched out with technical debt and buggy software, a tell that management/finance/marketing is driving the decision over the engineer/designer/product people. People forget a project was late if it succeeds, they never forget a project on time that failed because it was rushed, buggy and not polished production. MBA/business and marketing need to go back to letting the product p…

People forget a project was late if it succeeds, they never forget a project on time that failed because it was rushed, buggy and not polished production.

The problem is the 737 Max was hustled quickly to market to beat airbus and especially to offer a "drop in replacement" to existing earlier generation 737. Boeing would have definitely lost market share if they hadn't gotten their plane out then.

Choosing technical debt involves economic logic for today's marketplace. I suspect the real problem is companies wind-up deluded by their choice - to hustle the 737 Max to market, Boeing had to pretend is wasn't a, uh, piece of crap. Or not a piece of crap but a terrible mix of high tech and low compromises. And this pretending had to go through the whole enterprise. The marching order couldn't be "we'll add few more stiches on this Frankstein and hope the guts don't spill out", they had to be "this will be one more product of Boeing excellence" and everyone either believes or acts like they do. and this situation, combined with the huge investment involved, makes cutting losses very hard.

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

#155

Post by throwanem »

foldr wrote: post #50
anticensor wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It certainly would. Most of the rest of the airframe, too, I suspect. These things aren't modular.

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

#156

Post by burfog »

nradov wrote: post #102
speeder wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it IS a 737, that is part of the problem. The 737 has a feature almost no other new plane have: you can order it with a internal staircase so people can leave the plane without a specialized airport terminal. This feature requires the plane to keep its current overall shape, otherwise the staircase thingy would not work. So to keep this feature, while putting a bigger engine on the plane, they had to move the e…

The 737 MAX 10 has taller (extending) landing gear. Not sure if the airstairs will still be an option. https://www.boeing.com/features/2018/08/737max10-landing-gea...

That landing gear only extends when the nose gear is off the ground. It's really just to prevent a tail strike. An alternate choice would be a little extra wheel up on the tail, as was done with the Concorde.

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

#157

Post by joe_the_user »

ethbro wrote: post #126
MFLoon wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused as to what Boeing is changing then - your description of 'dual-dual' systems sounds like what is happening with the master/slave failover system already in place. It sounds like what they're changing is to have the two systems cross-check each other in real time, rather than have the in-band delayed core be the sanity check for each system, which seems like a big difference because it means that there ar…

You're forgetting there's a third system: the pilot. If the majority of computer aids turn off, the plane doesn't simply drop out of the sky. It reverts back to a more complicated, but human-controllable, vehicle. From the article (and who knows how much Bloomberg understood) the active-active sounds more like recognizing, not recovering from, errors. Which isn't the worst idea. Pilots being, well, pilots.

I think the problem is that the 737 Max is the product of a long line of planes engineered to fly the original 737 but now flying very differently due to the massively increased engine size, which supposedly creates a much more unstable aircraft.

So you're asking the pilot to, in the midst of some other failure, to start flying a weird plane they ever flown before. You could solve that problem by training all your pilots in this BUT this solution is very expensive, so expensive the airlines might just demand their money back instead. And that wouldn't be a solution for Boeing.

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

#158

Post by ethbro »

gdubs wrote: post #147
ethbro wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is it that the airlines told them to? Or was Boeing trying to avoid retraining in order to undercut their competitors prices?

2006 - 2011, Boeing maintains the next 737 will be a clean-sheet redesign.

In December 2010, Airbus launches the A320neo, featuring new engines (LEAP included).

In July 2011, American Airlines releases a press release [1] containing the following:

"As part of the Boeing agreement, American will take delivery of 100 aircraft from Boeing’s current 737NG family starting in 2013, including three 737-800 options that had been exercised as of July 1, 2011. American also intends to order 100 of Boeing’s expected new evolution of the 737NG, with a new engine that would offer even more significant fuel-efficiency gains over today’s models. American is pleased to be the first airline to commit to Boeing’s new 737 family offering, which is expected to provide a new level of economic efficiency and operational performance, pending final confirmation of the program by Boeing. This airplane would be powered by CFM International’s LEAP-X engine." (emphasis added)

In August 2011, Boeing announces the 737 MAX program, featuring LEAP engines.

American Airlines literally ordered a plane that didn't exist. And then Boeing tried to build it.

There are structural failings (e.g. why Boeing wasn't better positioned by investing in a redesign in the 2006+ period), but American shares a fair amount of blame for this clusterfuck.

Boeing certainly could have said "No", in which case American likely would have bought additional planes from Airbus. So American had leverage, they used it to pressure Boeing into building what they wanted, Boeing failed at delivering that, and we're here today.

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/4515/000119312511191...

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX

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

#159

Post by gdubs »

EricE wrote: post #152
gdubs wrote: post #150

I’m a rational person who enjoys flying, and I just never want to fly on a Max.

Based on one story from Bloomberg? That might be a tad premature - they never did address concerns with their "reporting" on the China server spying issue.

It’s not one story — it’s a pattern of stories from numerous outlets for over a year now.

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

#160

Post by gdubs »

ethbro wrote: post #158
gdubs wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it that the airlines told them to? Or was Boeing trying to avoid retraining in order to undercut their competitors prices?

2006 - 2011, Boeing maintains the next 737 will be a clean-sheet redesign. In December 2010, Airbus launches the A320neo, featuring new engines (LEAP included). In July 2011, American Airlines releases a press release [1] containing the following: "As part of the Boeing agreement, American will take delivery of 100 aircraft from Boeing’s current 737NG family starting in 2013, including three 737-800 options that had…

I don’t see how that proves anything about American pressuring Boeing. An equally likely scenario is that Boeing promised a plane they were developing and attempted to secure a market for it before it was completed. That alone doesn’t sound unusual. The problem is that it appears they were overly aggressive in their estimates and tried to circumvent the process with a software update.
Post reply on HN