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

191–200 of 290 posts

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

#191

Post by fastball »

voodootrucker wrote: post #150
WalterBright wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do these articles say so little about how Boeing fixed the problem? Because they are journalists and have no idea how airplanes work or how engineering is done.

I think Journalists would. Not sure what to call the people we have writing stories now.

I mostly have started calling them "creative writers that haven't managed to write their first novel yet and so are just biding their time and making ends meet by practicing their creative writing in the 'news'".

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

#192

Post by jacobush »

sagarm wrote: post #183
fgonzag wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that angered me the most was Boeing refusing to admit responsibility and fighting the authorities that were grounding the plane. They knew people were dying and were willing to let more people die without remorse. In my mind that was a criminal action.

That kind of sociopathic behavior is natural outcome of business culture that is solely about maximizing shareholder value. I'm not sure what can be done to fix it.

>I'm not sure what can be done to fix it.

Regulations which require engineers or their union representatives to sit on the corporate board of directors.

(Such as in the deplorable communist countries Germany, Austria, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, France and Denmark.)

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

#193

Post by redis_mlc »

aphextron wrote: post #10
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.

>I assume Boeing is desperate to sell these. Or is there something about these planes that makes them unsuitable. It's not like Boeing has a warehouse of 737-MAX's sitting around. They are ordered and delivered as they are finished.

> It's not like Boeing has a warehouse of 737-MAX's sitting around.

Actually there's a total of almost 800 grounded 737 MAX airplanes:

- Boeing has 400 undelivered and parked around their factory.

- customers owned almost 400 grounded planes.

The backstory is that Boeing contracted with Spirit Aaerosystems to make the fuselages, and Spirit continued making and delivering them long after the grounding.

> They are ordered and delivered as they are finished.

Sure, when there's a backorder of certified aircraft, not when your product is uncertified and nobody wants any.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/01/boeing-737-max-spirit-aerosy...

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

#194

Post by throwaway201103 »

zhte415 wrote: post #84
colejohnson66 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bombardier, Embraer, Ilyushin, Mitsubishi, Tupolev, BAE - have flown on all these and really liked Bombardier and Embraer, very quiet, generally pleasant, for a short haul I'd opt for these rather than a 737 or A320. An expectation of a product creates a product. And a product (can) create(s) demand with or without that expectation. Of course that won't happen as aerospace is such a strategic industry.

... Ilyushin ... Tupolev

Um let's be serious. Hard no on those.

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

#195

Post by mlindner »

medecau wrote: post #182

Some will want to avoid flying this aircraft model. Here are some variants > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX#Variants And here are some operators > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_737_operators

Please don't fearmonger.

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

#196

Post by mlindner »

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?

Please don't fearmonger. The 737 Max is not fundamentally less safe than any other 737... What made it less safe is the corporate culture that added this flaw and the flaw has been fixed. The fix was obvious at the time of the failure and that hasn't changed.

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

#197

Post by FeistyOtter »

frogblast wrote: post #175
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.

Covid’s timing was devastating for Boeing and the 737 Max. When the planes were grounded, Boeing kept producing them assuming the issue would be resolved quickly. As of January 2020, slightly before Covid, they had 400 planes built, but not delivered to customers (and so customers haven’t paid for them). Boeing was funding these aircraft with debt. All of a sudden, demand for air travel drops off a cliff. All those a…

Can an airline really refuse an aircraft without wasting some significant amount of money? I assume the airline or leasing company start paying from the moment they place an order all the way through construction, finished by a final payment at the moment of acceptance? When one orders a building company to build a house, you are given a payment schedule, I assume it is the same with airplanes.

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

#198

Post by mlindner »

topspin wrote: post #159
0xy wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It's probably far safer now than other models. All 737 have an obsolescent fuselage design. It could not be certified given modern regulation and relies on being grandfathered for new production. The consequence is the fuselage can shatter on crash landings or runway overruns whereas more modern designs will hold together and protect passengers. The relatively minor training, hardware and software revisions of 737…

> All 737 have an obsolescent fuselage design. It could not be certified given modern regulation and relies on being grandfathered for new production.

[citation needed] It was never said that it was an unsafe design.

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

#199

Post by gruturo »

__m wrote: post #165
outworlder wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, they have ejection seats.

Precisely. An inherently unstable airframe with no passengers and with crew able to eject is perfectly acceptable. An airliner, not so much.

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

#200

Post by mlindner »

Geminidog wrote: post #137
Dylan16807 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crashes wouldn't have happened with a better implementation of the same design.

Probably but now that the public is aware of a physical flaw covered up by a control mechanism the physical flaw needs to be fixed. I'm not even clear what that fix boeing used to cover up this problem. The article didn't specify, that is a red flag.

The locations of the engine did not cause the crash.
Post reply on HN