Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens • Hacker News Board

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#561

Post by vkou » Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 3:47 AM UTC

afjl wrote: post #509

sjg007 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

State pension seems like the better way to go...

What about the risk that the government slashes your benefits?

Even if you expect to take a haircut on your pension, it's still a good idea to diversify your retirement investments, for the same reason that you should invest into both bonds, and stocks.

If you retire during a recession, your planned 20 years of 401K runway may not last you more than 12. Or you might end up living longer than 20 years. Or both.

With a guaranteed payments pension, you will continue receiving benefits as long as you live. This aspect of it wont matter to you if you fall over dead at 68, but will matter greatly if you end up living longer than planned.

Right now, less than 5% of my retirement savings are going towards a pension (Social security). I would be much happier if that number (And the expected returns from it) were closer to 25% - and that's with the expectation that SS payments will unexpectedly drop in the future. Having an investment instrument that will pay me until I die is great for diversifying my portfolio.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#562

Post by CydeWeys » Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 4:06 AM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #520

afjl wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the risk that the government slashes your benefits?

Even if they do you can also vote in someone next time to restore your benefits. I'd rather have an option on an indefinite benefit vs a fixed one.

Pension isn't infinite though, as you will die at some time, and the parameters on how long people can live are quite well known. For example, you should always take $2M up front at 70 instead of $50k per year indefinitely because you simply can't live long enough for the latter option to ever come out ahead.

* with the current state of medical science.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#563

Post by bumby » Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 4:11 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #560

bumby wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this standpoint is that procedural fixes are the least preferable way of managing a hazardous condition. Engineering the hazard away is almost always the better option with procedural mitigation’s being a last resort. If engineering fixes were available and unused its indicative of poor safety engineering practices

> The problem with this standpoint is that procedural fixes are the least preferable way of managing a hazardous condition. The way to make things safe is to address ALL points in the zipper that led to the accident. That includes the pilot error aspects.

I don’t disagree but there are clear hierarchical criteria on how these hazards should be addressed. The reason behind engineering mitigation being favored is because they make the less reliable procedural mitigations moot (I.e., they improve the overall reliability by removing one of the points of failure, in this case the pilot). Forgoing engineering mitigations in favor of procedural fixes goes against good engineering practice at best and is a cheap, lazy fix at worst.

I can understand if the AD was intended as a short term fix but I would question the rationale if it were considered a long term solution

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#564

Post by CydeWeys » Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 4:13 AM UTC

ilamont wrote: post #362

pizlonator wrote: post #215

So I read somewhere than Muilenburg was the only engineer in the Boeing C suite. There were no pilots in the C suite. And this was part of the problem. The new CEO has a degree in accounting. I bet he’ll do great.

Four out of 15 of Boeing's Executive Council have engineering degrees. https://www.boeing.com/company/bios/

Interestingly, only one has a degree in CS, and there's no other computer-aligned degree represented in the board. They have plenty of lawyers though.

I bring this up because software is incredibly important for flying these planes, and the 737 MAX disaster was caused in part by bad software (MCAS). They were outsourcing its development to $9/hr contractors, which if they treated software as more of the core competency that it actually is for them, they would never have done.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#565

Post by CydeWeys » Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 4:15 AM UTC

gomijacogeo wrote: post #537

yason wrote: post #459

The only credible way from here is to: - remove the hack that is MCAS for the purpose of being able to piggyback on the old 737 type certificate; - start the process of type-certifying 737-MAX as the individual design that it is without MCAS instead of trying to make it behave like the old 737 just to keep things on the cheap side; - and offer free type certification for existing 737 pilots to obtain their certificat…

Not quite. I don't think you all realize how stupendously expensive certifying a new type is. Boeing and the airlines wouldn't be prepared to absorb the extra costs just to have a slightly more efficient 737 at the other end of it. - MCAS needs to die. I doubt I could have written a subsystem that tries harder to kill you if I tried. Everything about that hack is grossly negligent and possibly criminal. - Both AoA se…

It needs three AoA sensors, like Airbus planes have. Two isn't enough for such a safety-critical system. When one malfunctions, you still need to know what the correct value is.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#566

Post by inferiorhuman » Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 4:20 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #560

bumby wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this standpoint is that procedural fixes are the least preferable way of managing a hazardous condition. Engineering the hazard away is almost always the better option with procedural mitigation’s being a last resort. If engineering fixes were available and unused its indicative of poor safety engineering practices

> The problem with this standpoint is that procedural fixes are the least preferable way of managing a hazardous condition. The way to make things safe is to address ALL points in the zipper that led to the accident. That includes the pilot error aspects.

The way to make things safe is to address ALL points in the zipper that led to the accident. That includes the pilot error aspects.

So how do you propose training against an unfinished product? Boeing still hasn't given the FAA a completed software package to evaluate. At the time of the 737 MAX crashes there were, what? two? 737 MAX simulators, and none of them emulated MCAS or even the forces required to crank the stabilizer manually.

One Lion Air flight got lucky because they had a third set of eyes that could spend time going through reams of documentation.

To even begin discussing pilot "error" is disingenuous when the pilots weren't informed or trained on new 737 MAX behavior. MCAS activation is not, and was not, a runaway stabilizer situation.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#567

Post by linuxftw » Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 4:21 AM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #385

linuxftw wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to be an engineer to understand safety. We're talking about world-leading aerospace engineering, not producing some SaaS product. You need someone that understand the technology involved better than anyone else in the industry.

> You have to be an engineer to understand safety. You're just restating the same thing without any actual arguments. Why do you need to be an engineer to understand safety? I don't know what magic training or experience do you think engineers get that nobody else does? And as I've already said, it looks to me that Boeing's chronic problems are leadership not technical . Get a leader in.

You have to be an engineer to understand safety. It should be abundantly clear what is meant by this. They're building aircraft. What do accountants know about building aircraft? Nothing, nothing at all. How can the buck stop with them? It can't. It has to stop somewhere lower, with an engineer, that understands safety. Unfortunately, a non-engineer won't know if their engineer underlings are A) Qualified or B) Competent.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#568

Post by heelix » Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 4:35 AM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #456

ddoolin wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fly Frontier very regularly by quality choice and not by price. The fares are great, but the only other people flying the routes are United (awful awful) and Southwest (great but also pricey). More generally, I am not impressed by any U.S. major, discounting Southwest if they are considered. United, AA, and Delta (least) are pretty abysmal in their quality. It's probably important to be specific when I say "quality…

I fly Delta a fair amount and (with status), Delta seems quite good to me. With even the lowest level of status, there are no bag fees for anything approaching typical luggage load. Their app is fine. Web ticketing seems good to me. Domestically, I can almost always buy an economy ticket and get upgraded to first. Even where I have to pay for it, the upgrades are reasonably priced. During irregular ops (weather typic…

I was Delta diamond for about a decade, so same deal...domestically, they really treated you nicely.

I flew Frontier the first time this Spring - was helping ferry an open cockpit biplane from Colorado to Illinois - and it was a stupid cheap one way fair. I really can't think of a single perk Frontier did not try and up charge a fee for. Boarding, luggage, carry on, seat assignment... I'm sure there were others. Funny enough, the guy I was ferrying with also picked the cheapest seats in the plane, so we ended up next to each other on the flight out. I was fully prepared too wear the kevlar helmet on the flight rather than pay the $60 carry on fee.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#569

Post by toast0 » Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 4:37 AM UTC

frostburg wrote: post #528

remarkEon wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Let's take a moment to consider the fact that apparently the MCAS uses input from only one of the two AoA sensors on a 737 MAX and swaps which one it takes the data from after each flight. I can't grasp how everyone involved could fail to realize that this statistically makes it less safe than only having one sensor. I don't know how much the systemic issues that clearly compromised the design of the plane extend to…

> I can't grasp how everyone involved could fail to realize that this statistically makes it less safe than only having one sensor.

This design is bad, but it makes sense as a update of the 737. The flight computer setup is each pilot gets a computer under their chair, each computer gets its own set of sensors and the computers take turns each flight. The flight computer is generally safe (i don't think it's been implicated in any crashes?), but that's because in case of issues in flight, the system usually will disengage and alert the pilot, or if the system takes poor actions, it will disengage when the pilot opposes it, or the pilot will disengage it.

Adding MCAS to the flight computer makes sense, the flight computer needs to be aware of it. It's understandable, but negligent, to add a new feature to the computer without considering the original design. The problem comes in when MCAS was not disclosed to pilots, doesn't disengage on errors, doesn't disengage when pilot input opposes it (partially by design), and can't be disabled except by disabling electric trim, which is more or less needed to recover from the error condition MCAS puts the plane into.

I think this is fixable, but the public information on the current fix doesn't include being able to turn MCAS off, so it doesn't seem like they've really done enough.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#570

Post by inferiorhuman » Tue, Dec 24, 2019, 4:49 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #538

WalterBright wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A significant share of the blame for the crashes accrues to the pilots who did not remember/follow emergency procedures for runaway trim. There was also the LA problem of putting an airplane back into service despite the critical malfunction on the earlier flight. To reiterate, the procedure is: 1. restore trim to normal with the electric thumb switches 2. throw the stab trim cutoff switches

I know, sounds too simple to be true. But it is: Boeing Emergency Airworthiness Directive "Initially, higher control forces may be needed to overcome any stabilizer nose down trim already applied. Electric stabilizer trim can be used to neutralize control column pitch forces before moving the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches to CUTOUT. Manual stabilizer trim can be used before and after the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches are mov…

I know, sounds too simple to be true. But it is

No, it's not.

So here's some context. Boeing installed known not-to-spec structural components on the NG. Boeing installed known to fail prematurely slat tracks on the NG and 737 MAX. Boeing installed (probably known) not-to-spec pickle forks in the NG and 737 MAX. Boeing falsified repair documentation for an Air Canada 787. Oh, and of course, Boeing hid any mention of MCAS. Point being Boeing doesn't have a lot of credibility left.

With that in mind:

Manual stabilizer trim can be used before and after the STAB TRIM CUTOUT switches are moved to CUTOUT.

As the Ethiopian crew found out: it can't. The larger instruments of the NG required the hand cranks to shrink while the stabilizer itself grew. With the resulting lower mechanical advantage and increase in force required to move the stab itself the wheels became unusable. Sure, the Ethiopian crew went over the "maximum" speed but they were still under the max diving speed (Vd). That means the cranks were supposed to work.

It works because the first incident of MCAS failure (Lion Air) was safely dealt with by doing just this.

It worked because the first crew got lucky and had a third set of eyes that was free to dig through everything in search of a best guess.