Boeing to Suspend 737 Max Production in January • Hacker News Board

Re: Boeing to Suspend 737 Max Production in January

#211

Post by apendleton » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 7:45 AM UTC

inferiorhuman wrote: post #198

djcapelis wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes yes yes. But even if everything plays out like you say I don’t think you can say there’s no foreseeable future in which this happens. Please engage with the actual plans and state the technical details you know rather than saying that China has no roadmap do a thing they have a roadmap to do. Also let’s be clear if the C919 actually works out they will be a serious competitor. The market for wide body aircraft is…

Also let’s be clear if the C919 actually works out they will be a serious competitor. The market for wide body aircraft is the one that captures all the imagination and attention but the narrow body sales are the bread and butter. That's a pretty large if. Head west a bit to Russia and see how they're doing in the international market. The Sukhoi SuperJet is, by most accounts, a great plane. Sukhoi managed to sell to…

> both nearly went bankrupt, and both were eventually acquired

Nitpick: in Bombardier's case at least, these were separate events. The acquisition wasn't to deal with bankruptcy (they got a Canadian government bailout for that), but rather to gain access to Airbus's US manufacturing facilities to avoid import tariffs on US deliveries, which became necessary following a Boeing anti-dumping complaint that would have made the C-Series prohibitively expensive to US carriers.

Re: Boeing to Suspend 737 Max Production in January

#212

Post by _ph_ » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 7:45 AM UTC

adrr wrote: post #85

kayfox wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why, were talking about a fatal error in one small system on a huge and complex aircraft which is 90% the same as the previous iteration of this aircraft. We can fix these things. We should not be approaching engineering problems with emotional reactions to crashes. The airline industry is so incredibly safe because each crash is analyzed, the problems identified and solved. If two crashes mean we should scrap it, do…

Someone did the stats around the max 8. 300 lives lost in 3 years of operation and 400 planes in the sky. It is actually quite dangerous to fly and much more dangerous than driving when you compare by travel time and not distance. In comparison, A320 Neo and 787 have no hull losses and there's more of those planes in the sky than the maxes. 787s have been flying for almost 10 years.

Both losses were caused by the same faulty system, MCAS. I don't understand how can one make predictions about the safety of the plane with a fixed MCAS from the MCAS related crashes.

Re: Boeing to Suspend 737 Max Production in January

#213

Post by ijidak » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 8:01 AM UTC

Flying already evokes an illogical visceral fear in most humans. (Listen to the screams, and white knuckled grasps, during strong turbulence.)

The 737 Max is likely dead, forever, for passenger traffic.

There's just too much for every stakeholder, but Boeing, to lose.

Most likely Boeing will need state help (like the auto company bailout) while it transitions to some new post-737-Max reality.

The 737 Max rise and fall will likely become a popular business school case study.

(I could be wrong, but I just don't see this plane ever being palatable for much of the flying public. The fear of flying is just to visceral, to simply act like none of this ever happened.)

Re: Boeing to Suspend 737 Max Production in January

#214

Post by nicksantamaria » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 8:06 AM UTC

ijidak wrote: post #213

Flying already evokes an illogical visceral fear in most humans. (Listen to the screams, and white knuckled grasps, during strong turbulence.) The 737 Max is likely dead, forever, for passenger traffic. There's just too much for every stakeholder, but Boeing, to lose. Most likely Boeing will need state help (like the auto company bailout) while it transitions to some new post-737-Max reality. The 737 Max rise and fal…

The screams during turbulence are one of my highlights when flying. Doesn't happen very often these days unfortunately... 20 years ago flying used to be like going on a theme park ride.

Re: Boeing to Suspend 737 Max Production in January

#215

Post by kayoone » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 8:07 AM UTC

ijidak wrote: post #213

Flying already evokes an illogical visceral fear in most humans. (Listen to the screams, and white knuckled grasps, during strong turbulence.) The 737 Max is likely dead, forever, for passenger traffic. There's just too much for every stakeholder, but Boeing, to lose. Most likely Boeing will need state help (like the auto company bailout) while it transitions to some new post-737-Max reality. The 737 Max rise and fal…

Well there are still a lot of 737 Max around, I don't think they will all be written off? Maybe if passengers continue to avoid the plane. But this is also not the first time in history something like this happened, usually people forgot after some time. Or is it the broader media coverage this time around?

Re: Boeing to Suspend 737 Max Production in January

#216

Post by honestoHeminway » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 8:15 AM UTC

marvin wrote: post #207

bilbo0s wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be what the poster meant by "well managed break up".

This always baffles me. It's still the free market even if regulators sometimes step in to ensure that incentives are aligned and outcomes don't become systemically catastrophic. In this case, it would be Boeing going bankrupt, and authorities stepping in to buy the assets to keep operations running if no other entity stepped in to do that. Then selling on the reformed company on the open market afterwards.

At what price though? This market is as distorted as agrar-markets. Prices only ever go down, before a intervention happens. (§ Forbidden by law to convert food into fuel etc.)..

Same happens to management, if you cant loose it all, but can extract huge bonuses at the same time. No free market anywhere, as far as the eye can see.

Re: Boeing to Suspend 737 Max Production in January

#217

Post by manbearpiggy » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 8:25 AM UTC

Can't they just rebrand the 737 max? Sort out their dodgy internal processes and add some new safety features. They've been repackaging old designs since the 60's anyway.

Either that or they go all in on a new medium-range aircraft, the market is already disrupted in Airbus' favour.

Re: Boeing to Suspend 737 Max Production in January

#218

Post by mrtksn » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 8:26 AM UTC

spookthesunset wrote: post #203

mrtksn wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously 737MAX and paragliders cannot be compared directly but paragliders don't come with an inherently dangerous design that is not disclosed to the pilots. Gliders do have failure modes but that is O.K. because pilots are trained to handle these. No surprises, therefore safer than 737 MAX with MCAS. Hundreds of people died, Boeing repeatedly tried to deny the existence of the problem, the responsibility and at t…

Doesn’t need to be whitewashed but doesn’t need a bunch of hyperbole painting every giant Corp as the most evil villain ever. Nobody anywhere can do any right on this website. Very tiring. Like, does anybody here understand the engineering and business trade offs in airplane design? I doubt it. Just a bunch of dunning Kruger affected people who think knowing to program equates to expertise in every other field.

>Nobody anywhere can do any right on this website. Very tiring.

You are being unreasonable here.

I see you have an emotional investment in this but let's not pretend that this is a witchhunt. HN is a very positive community that supports good work and attempts, but in this case, we are literally talking about a company that did very bad job by producing a craft unfit for use by humans that cost the lives of hundreds. How positive and supporting you are expecting me to be to the work of a giant corporation that cost so much and tried to defer blame? If anything, scrutiny is what would keep the repetition of this. This is not a mom and pop store that made a mistake and asking for forgiveness, it is a giant malfunctioning structure that created big trouble and is resisting to change.

Re: Boeing to Suspend 737 Max Production in January

#219

Post by honestoHeminway » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 8:27 AM UTC

oska wrote: post #161

TuringNYC wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> As emotionally-satisfying as it may be to see Boeing go under for its arrogance, it's neither helpful nor likely. (A well-managed break-up, on the other hand...) Not Likely is the key word here. They are large and have a strategic value to the US and hence Too Big To Fail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_big_to_fail I'd bet the US Government steps in to re-structure and backstop as required to save the company. T…

> There are numerous ways we've discovered to do so post 2008. All of them bad. Companies should fail and keeping bad companies alive via artificial means is bad. You get zombie companies and eventually a zombie economy (see Japan). (And "Too big to fail" is a phrase meant to identify a problematic ideology, not a bailout excuse). Boeing failing doesn't necessarily mean that the USA loses their technology and product…

You loose the technology over time due to - to big to flail. Meaning huge fonds, that buy up whole industry, establishing invisible monopolies, and preventing real competition, except with outliers who are not under theire control

Re: Boeing to Suspend 737 Max Production in January

#220

Post by duelingjello » Tue, Dec 17, 2019, 8:35 AM UTC

manbearpiggy wrote: post #217

Can't they just rebrand the 737 max? Sort out their dodgy internal processes and add some new safety features. They've been repackaging old designs since the 60's anyway. Either that or they go all in on a new medium-range aircraft, the market is already disrupted in Airbus' favour.

The MAX was a "bridge too far" for the 737 type. They need a clean-sheet design with big engines and fuel-efficient wings to compete with the A320neo, and the 737 can't be adapted to do that (wings too low to the ground) and it has a bad reputation. They're better off developing the Future Small Airplane (FSA), and call it a "797."