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

Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 637 posts

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#21

Post by PaulHoule »

The big question for Boeing is how they will transition to a post-737 world.

Until now, Boeing's business plan is that they will be building a starship for NASA in 2060, but you will still be stuck with a 737 on Southwest Airlines, a A320 on Jetblue, and never know that aviation could be better.

The 737 throws off a lot of cash, but the single-aisle monoculture makes flying miserable.

A 737 replacement will be expensive, take time to develop, and involve risk, but the end product could be the resurrection of the Boeing brand. Since there are so many 737-class airplanes flying, anyone who wants to see a better flying experience or is concerned about environmental impacts of aviation such as airport noise or carbon emissions would realize that a 737 replacement could have a greater impact than the widebody planes where competitive developments are happening.

You shouldn't have to fly international to benefit from 50 years of aviation improvements.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#22

Post by MaupitiBlue »

philshem wrote: post #9

November 2019 New Yorker piece about what went wrong at Boeing https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/18/the-case-again... tl;dr engineers vs. accountants

BS! Which of these was done by the accountants?

1. Drive MCAS with only one AOA sensor.

2. Don't tell MCAS to look for (or even think about) bad AOA data or AOA disagreements.

3. Don't actually bother to tell pilots that they don't have AOA disagree warning lights.

4. Don't bother to tell pilots that MCAS exists at all.

5. Don't test MCAS subsystem to see what it actually does with bad AOA data.

6. Give MCAS a ridiculous amount of control authority, operating cumulatively over repeated applications to exceed what the pilot can manually override.

7. Change how the trim stab switch has been wired since 1966 and not tell pilots.

It’s not the accounts or union stewards that should be facing criminal charges, it’s the engineers. At a minimum, any PEs should be yanked.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#25

Post by philshem »

pseudolus wrote: post #16

The story of the ouster to inevitably be followed by the story of the massive compensation package he'll receive.

They already rewarded him after the first crash, not to say they won’t again.

> On December 17th, less than two months after the Lion Air crash, Boeing’s board of directors approved a twenty-per-cent increase in the company dividend and a twenty-billion-dollar stock-repurchase program, allowing Muilenburg, who had replaced McNerney as C.E.O. in 2015, to carry out even larger buybacks than in previous years. The board also awarded Muilenburg a thirteen-million-dollar bonus.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/18/the-case-again...

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#26

Post by samcheng »

devit wrote: post #11

Why isn't it enough to retrofit all past and future models with enough hardware redundancy and create a properly written MCAS software? Wasn't the design sound, except for the lack of hardware sensor redundancy and naively written software? Why do they need to stop production and so on?

My understanding is that the design is fundamentally flawed; the engines are too large to fit under the wings with the existing landing gear, so they were moved forward, thereby upsetting the balance between the center of thrust of the engines and the center of lift of the wings, thereby requiring a brittle MCAS system to attempt to compensate.

The MCAS system itself is flawed in a number of ways, but the core problem (in my opinion) is the attempt to fit large engines under a too-small airplane, in the name of saving regulatory / training costs.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#27

Post by [deleted] »

MaupitiBlue wrote: post #22
philshem wrote: post #9

November 2019 New Yorker piece about what went wrong at Boeing https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/18/the-case-again... tl;dr engineers vs. accountants

BS! Which of these was done by the accountants? 1. Drive MCAS with only one AOA sensor. 2. Don't tell MCAS to look for (or even think about) bad AOA data or AOA disagreements. 3. Don't actually bother to tell pilots that they don't have AOA disagree warning lights. 4. Don't bother to tell pilots that MCAS exists at all. 5. Don't test MCAS subsystem to see what it actually does with bad AOA data. 6. Give MCAS a ridicu…

[deleted]

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#28

Post by CydeWeys »

Maybe the next CEO will actually try to fix things, seeing as how his job will likely depend on it. Fuck up like Muilenburg did and you're out too. It seems like the incentives may be correct now to focus on the right things rather than just cut costs as much as possible. Hopefully!

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#29

Post by happytoexplain »

brohee wrote: post #8
Waterluvian wrote: post #5

> Senior industry source called the wording of Boeing’s statement “brutal”. Anyone have a link to this statement?

I would guess it's the following: https://investors.boeing.com/investors/investor-news/press-r... "The Board of Directors decided that a change in leadership was necessary to restore confidence in the Company moving forward as it works to repair relationships with regulators, customers, and all other stakeholders. " is quite brutal indeed, more something I'd expect from commentary.

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, or if this is actually "brutal" in this context (a context I have no experience with)?
Post reply on HN