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

Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 290 posts

Re: Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard

#71

Post by cdolan »

londons_explore wrote: post #32
yyy888sss wrote: post #8

Maybe they should have bit the bullet and fully redesigned the 737. Presumably future engines will be bigger still, will they just tack them onto this old design as well? At the end of the day this is just a software fix.

> Maybe they should have bit the bullet and fully redesigned the 737. If I were the EU regulator, I would have forced them to... It's a great way to screw over Boeing (American) and boost sales for Airbus (EU), while having the fairly legit rationale that you no longer have confidence in the US regulator due to a long series of blunders, and you are not happy for a major new plane design to use a decades old type rat…

You must be a real gem to work with

Re: Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard

#72

Post by colejohnson66 »

bmitc wrote: post #65
hindsightbias wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a 20 year old question. A new single or small twin isle would cost $10-20B and take 8 years to develop and certify on the optimistic side. Given they're still bleeding on the 787, the 777X may be cancelled, KC-46 fiasco, Airbus competition, they have to go with what they have.

Why is that the consumer’s problem? It’s literally playing with people’s lives just because a company is bad at what they do.

Not at all excusing what’s happened, but if Boeing and Airbus disappear, who’ll create the new jumbo jets? You can’t just kill a company like that. You can fine the living daylights out of them, sure, but don’t kill them.

Re: Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard

#73

Post by outworlder »

yyy888sss wrote: post #8

Maybe they should have bit the bullet and fully redesigned the 737. Presumably future engines will be bigger still, will they just tack them onto this old design as well? At the end of the day this is just a software fix.

> Maybe they should have bit the bullet and fully redesigned the 737

That's EXACTLY what they didn't want to do.

Airbus was able to do the 320Neo without a redesign. They essentially slapped new engines on it and made tiny adjustments. Boom, fuel savings.

Boeing wanted to do the same. Their design didn't accommodate the bigger, more efficient engines they wanted. So they created a workaround.

Redesigning essentially means creating an entirely new aircraft, even if it looks similar. Requires a new type certification, which is a very lengthy process in itself. Requires pilot training for the new type rating. Possibly new simulators, and simulator time. Not all airlines even own simulators.

Airlines like Southwest use all 737s exactly because that makes pilots interchangeable(simplifies logistics and maintenance too, but mostly it's about pilots).

If I'm an airline and now you tell me my pilots need training, including expensive simulators, it's no longer the same aircraft(as in, not the same type rating). If it is not the same aircraft, that means I could choose any other aircraft. Such as these new Airbus models I've been hearing about...

See the problem? MCAS wasn't such a bad solution on paper, it's just that the implementation sucked. It should have required some minimal training (which is much better than a new type rating) but Boeing didn't even want that.

Re: Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard

#74

Post by HPsquared »

Analemma_ wrote: post #51
throwaway201103 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original 737 had some early issues also. Tail rudder problems that resulted in crashes is one that comes to mind. They were fixed and now nobody thinks twice about flying them and their long-term safety record is excellent.

The original 737 wasn't broken-by-design in the way the Max is. The Max _requires_ software kludges to paper over its deliberate mistakes; that's very different from just having a few bugs to work out in a fundamentally sound design.

This is a bit of an urban myth that keeps flying around. The plane is perfectly stable without MCAS, but would have had different handling characteristics than the previous version. The purpose of MCAS was to modify the handling to match the previous plane, so pilots' type ratings would carry over with minimal retraining. At its heart, it was a (poorly implemented) kludge in an attempt to sidestep a lot of paperwork.

Re: Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard

#75

Post by colejohnson66 »

woeirua wrote: post #25
fred_is_fred wrote: post #4

Given the recent news about delivery services (UPS, Fedex, Amazon) having constraints on capacity this would be a great time for them to invest in some planes. I assume Boeing is desperate to sell these. Or is there something about these planes that makes them unsuitable.

They'd have to be retrofitted to be capable of loading and unloading cargo similarly to typical air freighters. The standard passenger entry/exit portals are not big enough to move large pallets on the plane.

They aren’t even big enough for a “standard” 40x48 pallet, right?

Re: Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard

#76

Post by bmitc »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #72
bmitc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that the consumer’s problem? It’s literally playing with people’s lives just because a company is bad at what they do.

Not at all excusing what’s happened, but if Boeing and Airbus disappear, who’ll create the new jumbo jets? You can’t just kill a company like that. You can fine the living daylights out of them, sure, but don’t kill them.

Regarding Boeing, it’s my opinion that you don’t kill off the whole company but rather kill off all the regulation loopholes that allowed this 737 Max mess to begin with. If Boeing can’t get their plane fixed and certified, properly, then big deal. That’s their problem. If they fail because they can’t sell their “new” broken plane, they killed themselves off.

The even bigger problem is that our governments allow companies to get to these “too big to fail” states, and I myself am pretty tired of it. Every single time it is the consumer that pays, either literally or with their lives.

Re: Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard

#77

Post by outworlder »

Analemma_ wrote: post #51
throwaway201103 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original 737 had some early issues also. Tail rudder problems that resulted in crashes is one that comes to mind. They were fixed and now nobody thinks twice about flying them and their long-term safety record is excellent.

The original 737 wasn't broken-by-design in the way the Max is. The Max _requires_ software kludges to paper over its deliberate mistakes; that's very different from just having a few bugs to work out in a fundamentally sound design.

I'm not so sure I'd call it a 'kludge'.

The implementation is certainly not "elegant". It's like this random batch job that triggers when some conditions are satisfied and does its own thing without regard for anything else, sure. Not integrated with the auto-pilot, does not display anything in the panel.

We have plenty of aircraft (even though most are military) which are aerodynamically unstable, and require fly-by-wire software to even be flyable. We don't think those are kludges. That's not too far from what Boeing has to do.

It could have been either a fancier fly-by-wire software in the Airbus philosophy that wouldn't let pilots exceed parameters(retrofitting it might have been a challenge, and possibly even more dangerous). Or it could be this non-elegant solution that behaves like an old-school stick pusher. Both could have worked.

The problem is that they did this while trusting a single sensor. And not informed anyone.

Re: Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard

#78

Post by adamredwoods »

outworlder wrote: post #68
pcurve wrote: post #61

Chances are, these will be safe. Because one more crash even remotely related, would spell complete doom for Boeing. No recovering that one, ever.

The DC-10 recovered. It was grounded, returned to service, crashed again. Eventually, it became safe. And eventually the public forgot about the issues. The bigger problem is that you have a company that decided that a single sensor driving a safety-critical system was sufficient, even though they have two (and even that is not enough, such systems should have three). For a new system that was introduced and not expl…

I never knew, thanks for the information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_DC-10

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_191

Re: Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard

#79

Post by 0xy »

DevX101 wrote: post #7

I recently had the frivolous idea of creating a flight search engine for flights that DID NOT use the 737 Max. Any actual interest in this?

This seems utterly counter-productive, considering the Max is now the most scrutinized plane in history.

It's probably far safer now than other models.

Re: Boeing's upgraded 737 Max completes first flight with media onboard

#80

Post by canada_dry »

pcurve wrote: post #61

Chances are, these will be safe. Because one more crash even remotely related, would spell complete doom for Boeing. No recovering that one, ever.

I believe the FAA should have insisted that the MAX get several hundred hours in the air - e.g. flying for courier companies over Christmas peak - BEFORE recertifying it for public use.
Post reply on HN