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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

#161

Post by ethbro »

bobthepanda wrote: post #140
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…

Boeing could've said no.

In which case American would have bought exclusively new A320neo's.

Boeing was caught flat-footed and underinvested in a new product in 2011.

So while Boeing management could have said "No" to their largest (?) customer, that would have been a hard decision to make. And probably would have led to the board chopping C* heads for breach of fiduciary duty.

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

#162

Post by uxp100 »

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.

Yeah, as others said, by SE I meant software engineering. Lots of overlapping acronyms, I usually don't use them, but in this context I thought I'd get away with it.

I liked my ethics course in the philosophy department, but that's more about J.S. Mill, and Kant and the rest. Engineering ethics was a course any Eng. degree had to take, interesting, but hard to apply also. You go through case studies and look at them, but to have any productive class discussion they kinda have to be broken down to be at least somewhat clear and concise.

I don't feel like getting into here, but I feel like even this Boeing issue, which is pretty clear, is less clear than any case study in a textbook.

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

#163

Post by ethbro »

joe_the_user wrote: post #157
ethbro wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pi…

All true. But from where we are today, that seems like a better solution from a safety perspective.

And now, the FAA (or EASA) might just mandate that anyway.

I wouldn't be surprised if CAAC refuses to ever recertify the 737 MAX, especially if a trade deal isn't struck.

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

#164

Post by ethbro »

gdubs wrote: post #160
ethbro wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Possibly. But that version doesn't jive with public statements.

Previous to American's press release, Boeing's leadership was strictly avoiding mentioning an up-engined 737. And was fairly reliably mentioning a clean sheet redesign program.

I can't think of a reason for doing that, if they in fact had such a program.

It would make sense to be trumpeting it loudly to anyone and everyone.

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

#165

Post by bobthepanda »

ethbro wrote: post #161
bobthepanda wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing could've said no.

In which case American would have bought exclusively new A320neo's. Boeing was caught flat-footed and underinvested in a new product in 2011. So while Boeing management could have said "No" to their largest (?) customer, that would have been a hard decision to make. And probably would have led to the board chopping C* heads for breach of fiduciary duty.

It's not as if the current situation, in which Boeing is currently causing all their customers lots of financial pain each day the MAX is grounded, and the CEO of the commercial division has been fired, is any better.

The Airbus order backlog is almost a decade out as it is, so American just shoving it all into A320neos that would take longer to show up wouldn't exactly be realistic either.

Boeing should've just gone with a clean-sheet design.

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

#166

Post by AnssiH »

EricE wrote: post #151
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.

Here's a Seattle Times article from Aug 1st describing the redesign, citing "three sources":

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/newly...

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

#167

Post by AceyMan »

anticensor wrote: post #123
Xixi wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary to popular belief, quad engine planes are not inefficient [1], at least not in terms of fuel consumption (we are talking 1% to 2% difference). In terms of dispatch reliability however I think they are doing somewhat worse than twins, as they are more likely to have one engine out of service. And it not a small problem: a plane flying revenue passengers is an asset, but a plane not flying is a liability. At l…

One engine out situation is called for while planning the flight.

The need for all four engines being operable isn't changed by the viability of 3-engine flight. Once the plane lands its grounded for revenue service, and even three engine ferry flights are a huge affair to pull off.

So, de facto, each engine is strictly required, and having twice as many as a twin, quad jets are half as reliable as a twin, all other things being equal.

(me: licensed dispatcher who worked with the BAE-146 for a time. Incidentally, "BAe" stands for "Bring Another Engine" .)

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

#168

Post by Nicholas_Digger »

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

#169

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#170

Post by Nicholas_Digger »

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