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Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

reuters.com

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Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#431

Post by na85 »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #410
na85 wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the pitch-up behavior isn't actually the problem.

That's because the pitch-up behavior isn't actually the problem. The pitch-power coupling has been problematic on the 737 since Boeing went with GE engines. Thomsonfly almost got a classic to stall in Bournemouth ages ago and flyDubai managed to wreck an NG in Russia a couple years ago. It's possible, but unlikely, the 737 MAX is better behaved in this regard. If there weren't significant aerodynamic problems with th…

Are you suggesting that a 320 won't pitch up if you firewall the throttle at low indicated?

You have two massive sources of thrust below the centre of gravity. If you advance the throttle it will create a nose-up pitching moment.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#432

Post by na85 »

petilon wrote: post #392
na85 wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the pitch-up behavior isn't actually the problem.

[Boeing] engineers observed a tendency for the plane’s nose to pitch upward during a specific extreme maneuver. After other efforts to fix the problem failed, the solution they arrived at was a piece of software — the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) — that would move a powerful control surface at the tail to push the airplane’s nose down. Source: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-…

Sorry, but the Seattle Times is not a competent source when it comes to reporting aerodynamics.

Any standard-configuration airliner will pitch up when you throttle up at low speed.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#433

Post by LifeLiverTransp »

Johnny555 wrote: post #302
sudoaza wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have you seen anyone ever happy in a cubicle?

I'd be a lot happier in a cubicle than this big open seating area where I'm elbow-to-elbow with my coworkers.

I have "meetings" happen, right next to me, because hey, we are hip and we are hearding that software-cattle together with the advertisement and sales.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#434

Post by spease »

vntx wrote: post #395
IMTDb wrote: post #263

So in order to "restore confidence in the company" they put the finance guy in charge. I feel safer already.

So they put the type of guys who like to cut costs at the expense of everything else, including safety measures in charge? I feel safer too!

Is it reasonable to think they may have done this because they expect to declare bankruptcy and go through restructuring?

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#435

Post by robryan »

cattlemansgold wrote: post #232
jefe_ wrote: post #114

Boeing was still promising end of year FAA certification for 737 Max as recently as early December. Around that time, they had a spokesperson on CNBC who was asked directly how the outstanding steps (which indicated February at the earliest) aligned with their end of year statements and the position was essentially, 'we've been saying end of year and end of year could still happen.' When your brand is suffering a cri…

The Starliner mission was a test. You wouldn't have 100% confidence that a test would be executed flawlessly. The purpose of the test is to find flaws in the system, and that's exactly what they did.

That is fair. When a test fails you would also expect them to repeat the test before putting humans on, we will see if that happens.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#436

Post by adrianmonk »

jefe_ wrote: post #114

Boeing was still promising end of year FAA certification for 737 Max as recently as early December. Around that time, they had a spokesperson on CNBC who was asked directly how the outstanding steps (which indicated February at the earliest) aligned with their end of year statements and the position was essentially, 'we've been saying end of year and end of year could still happen.' When your brand is suffering a cri…

At this point, management probably cannot get good information about the state of projects.

When a company creates a culture of sweeping problems under the rug, and then tries to go back and change that, it creates an impossible situation for people at all levels of the hierarchy. Where management once told people it was OK to hide things from them, now they've changed the rules and are telling them, hey, show us all the things we told you we didn't want to know about.

First of all, when you're told this, you have no way of knowing if they really mean it. Are they saying, hey, actually show us the dirt so we can deal with it? Or are they saying, hey, show us the dirt WINK WINK, but we want the answer to be that nothing too bad happened because that's the easy way out? (In other words, you have to judge whether they've had a sincere change of heart or you're playing a new phase of the same game as before.)

But even if you really believe them, now you have a difficult calculation to make. Maybe you will reveal some dirt and they will say, wait a second, we meant for you to hide dirt, but not dirt that was that bad, and that's your fault, and you were supposed to know that. And now you're in trouble for telling the truth. Unless management offers you complete immunity (if that's even possible), you still have a reason to keep hiding stuff to protect yourself.

TLDR, if your organization made sure everybody's closets are full of skeletons, then you're going to have a hard time getting people to open those closet doors.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#437

Post by mlyle »

adrianmonk wrote: post #436
jefe_ wrote: post #114

Boeing was still promising end of year FAA certification for 737 Max as recently as early December. Around that time, they had a spokesperson on CNBC who was asked directly how the outstanding steps (which indicated February at the earliest) aligned with their end of year statements and the position was essentially, 'we've been saying end of year and end of year could still happen.' When your brand is suffering a cri…

At this point, management probably cannot get good information about the state of projects. When a company creates a culture of sweeping problems under the rug, and then tries to go back and change that, it creates an impossible situation for people at all levels of the hierarchy. Where management once told people it was OK to hide things from them, now they've changed the rules and are telling them, hey, show us all…

This is a brilliant bit of insight.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#438

Post by inferiorhuman »

na85 wrote: post #431
inferiorhuman wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because the pitch-up behavior isn't actually the problem. The pitch-power coupling has been problematic on the 737 since Boeing went with GE engines. Thomsonfly almost got a classic to stall in Bournemouth ages ago and flyDubai managed to wreck an NG in Russia a couple years ago. It's possible, but unlikely, the 737 MAX is better behaved in this regard. If there weren't significant aerodynamic problems with th…

Are you suggesting that a 320 won't pitch up if you firewall the throttle at low indicated? You have two massive sources of thrust below the centre of gravity. If you advance the throttle it will create a nose-up pitching moment.

Are you suggesting that a 320 won't pitch up if you firewall the throttle at low indicated?

Correct. An A320 won't pitch up as dramatically as a 737, mostly due to FBW magic.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#439

Post by pacificenigma »

lokedhs wrote: post #261
dredmorbius wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airlines consider passenger misery a benefit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21530964 Jules Dupuit, describing rail carriages, though the same logic applies: It is not because of the several thousand francs which they would have to spend to cover the third class wagons or to upholster the benches. ... [I]t would happily sacrifice this [expense] for the sake of its popularity. Its goal is to stop the traveler wh…

Or you can do what many other airlines do, which is to make business class so much better that even if econony is nice, business class is so much above that that it's worth the money. I tend to try to travel on Qatar, and their new business class cabins are amazing: https://www.qatarairways.com/en/onboard/qsuite.html It's also cheaper than the (worse) business class on many other airlines.

I've flown a lot of long-haul business and first class over the years (Qatar, Thai, Austrian, Scandinavian, Delta, United, Qantas) and Qatar is the only airline I've ever blacklisted for business class.

While the QSuites and the cabin crew are nice, you rarely get QSuites in reality. But you always get a stopover in Doha, and those stopovers generally include business lounges so busy you can rarely get a shower with a < 3 hour stopover, rarely get use of an airway for boarding (even at destination airports with numerous available, eg Stockholm), and you sit in the premium bus for 30+ minutes after "boarding" commenced waiting for other passengers (with dusty, fuel fume filled, unairconditioned Doha airport air).

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#440

Post by mlyle »

remarkEon wrote: post #318
Grimm665 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, space is hard and things go wrong. Just because we've done it hundreds of times doesn't mean we should expect perfection.

Yes it does? These are known engineering problems with known engineering solutions. The explanation from Boeing was that a timer was set incorrectly. This sounds like a trivial error to me (though I'm not a "rocket scientist" just a "kerbal scientist", I guess, but we've been using timers for a long time afaik to properly manage burns to orbit).

The procedures and how software systems handle changes to launch time are members of the set of hundreds of thousands of choices made during design and implementation that need to be validated. Yes, they feel like a "silly mistake" but ultimately most things that lead to failure will be in that category.
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