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

reuters.com

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

#91

Post by bmitc »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #81
bmitc wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comp…

Something definitely needs to be done about it, but “too big to fail” is a very real thing. Regulation fixes, corporate culture fixes, something, but killing the companies that are “too big to fail” isn’t a good idea in most cases.

I’m not really sure what you’re addressing. Preventing too big to fail doesn’t mean preemptively killing off companies.

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

#92

Post by myrandomcomment »

jimbob45 wrote: post #6
ogre_codes wrote: post #2

In a weird way, having the Max grounded during 2020 turned out to be lucky timing on Boeing's part. The airlines slowdown due to COVID likely gave them some serious breathing room while they got their shit together. Now hopefully they actually did get their shit together.

I think I disagree. If they’d taken the time to scrap the 737 Max and move to a new design, they’d have had the time and the public would have eaten the new product up. Instead, they doubled down and are now going to try to have to sell a product that many will refuse to ever fly on, myself included.

Why? It's now one of the most tested planes in the sky from a review standpoint?

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

#93

Post by bostonvaulter2 »

pdonis wrote: post #63
lukehutch wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Planes can be switched out last-minute. I plan to check the plane type at the gate every time I fly for the next 10 years, and if it's a MAX, I'll reschedule my flight on the spot. They claim they solved the software problem, but they didn't solve the physics problems created by the engine position (which necessitated the software in the first place).

> they didn't solve the physics problems created by the engine position The engine position, in itself, isn't terribly unusual; the 757 and 767 both have engines in similar forward positions on the wings and have a similar pitch up moment due to the engines at high angles of attack. So do a number of Airbus models. Designing flight controls to deal with this issue is not new and has been well tested. The particular i…

Does the 737 MAX now require pilot retraining? Or did they make some other sort of adjustment?

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

#94

Post by colejohnson66 »

bmitc wrote: post #91
colejohnson66 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something definitely needs to be done about it, but “too big to fail” is a very real thing. Regulation fixes, corporate culture fixes, something, but killing the companies that are “too big to fail” isn’t a good idea in most cases.

I’m not really sure what you’re addressing. Preventing too big to fail doesn’t mean preemptively killing off companies.

I’m saying that, just like monopolies, there’s nothing inherently bad about being “too big to fail.” But when they do stuff wrong, we still punish them, but we don’t kill them. Break them up? Possibly.

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

#95

Post by myrandomcomment »

outworlder wrote: post #77
Analemma_ wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Have an up vote for logic!

Airbus had a crash because their fly by wire averaged the input from both yokes vs doing what Boeing does which is to allow both to feel that the other is pushing on the yoke and the pilots where not trained to understand that.

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

#96

Post by throwaway201103 »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #90
throwaway201103 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. This took a long time to work out with initial finger pointing between Boeing and the Pilot unions. "Testing revealed that under certain circumstances, the Power Control Unit (PCU)'s dual servo valve could jam and deflect the rudder in the opposite direction of the pilots' input. Thermal shock testing revealed that the uncommanded rudder movement could be replicated by injecting a cold PCU with hot hydraulic flu…

resulted in rudder movement opposite of the pilot's commands Did the rudder actually move in opposition to the commands, or was it stuck at some limit value? i.e. in that situation, if you command the rudder to go left, does it move even more in the wrong direction? Or is it simply frozen at whatever position it happened to get stuck in? Thanks for the info!

I'm not sure. I'm not a pilot and only have memory of this from prior reading. As I look at it now it reads more like it was uncommanded movement to the limit of travel and getting stuck there. I've also heard this problem referred to as the "rudder hard-over" problem. But there are also statements about rudder movement opposite of that commanded.

In theory the problem was recoverable but the pilots had about 10 seconds to realize what was going on and react appropriately. Sounds familiar to the 737-MAX uncommanded trim issues.

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

#97

Post by myrandomcomment »

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?

No, it is an irrational human fear. Hold one, humans are dumb so yes, it will be a money maker playing on that fear!

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

#98

Post by throwaway201103 »

HPsquared wrote: post #74
Analemma_ wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're mostly right, but it wasn't just to make it handle like the previous versions, it was to satisfy FAA certification rules on how it handled.

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

#99

Post by interestica »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #82
cdolan wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. Flight 427 to Pittsburgh. My wife’s father was on the flight. The tail’s controls inverted in freezing temperatures.

Wait, what? Anyone have any more info on this? It seems completely insane for flight control inputs to invert themselves, but only in certain temperatures. I'd love to see the incident report on that ... EDIT: Ah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAir_Flight_427 I'm so sorry that happened to your wife's father. The accident report is here: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/... Section 2.7.2 is…

The Mayday/Air Crash Investigation episode titled "Hidden Danger" has good info on this and covers several crashes iirc.

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

#100

Post by dodobirdlord »

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…

> 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

Trade agreements are written to anticipate this sort of thing.

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