Live data from Hacker News

FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

cnbc.com

441–450 of 884 posts

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a good idea? I always feel like the best time to fly a plane or airliner is after they've had some incident that leads them to being under a microscope. That is, all the MAX 9s have been grounded, and I'm guessing they'll all be thoroughly inspected for this issue before they fly again. So if your concern is that you'll hit a repeat of this same issue , that seems like the wrong concern.

There's also the engine-nacelles-melting issue.

When I searched for the engine nacelles issue, that appears to only apply to an earlier version (737 NG) of the 737, not the MAX.

Which kinda proves my point - someone saying "I don't want to fly on a 737 MAX" may just get put on another plane that has different issues. I guess if you've completely lost faith in Boeing you can decide not to fly any of their planes, but that's going to make flying at all very difficult. And if you decide to drive instead you'd just be taking a more dangerous mode of transportation.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#443
post #96

At what point does Boeing just scrap the 9s? Completely, for good? It’s all starting to feel like the galaxy note, where you pass a tipping point of no return with public perception.

Because some guy at the factory forgot to lock the door? Isn't that a little melodramatic?

That attempt to spin this would be far worse for the company: if “some guy” forgot a step, it would mean that Boeing’s process is horribly broken because the worker needed a better confirmation check for that step, and the independent safety checks which are supposed to happen either didn’t or were not setup correctly. It’s not like changing the toner in the office printer, this industry is all about multiple independent safety measures because the alternatives are horrific.

For machines which hundreds of lives depend on, the correct response to that excuse would be to shut the factory down and replace the management who faked the safety process. I doubt they’ll use it for that reason.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#444
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single explosive decompression event, comprising the spontaneous loss of an assembly the size of an entire exit door, two months off the factory floor? I should certainly hope they’d take a gander at the others before I’d sit next to one. Especially with the memory of the last time they chose to keep flying 737 MAXes instead of fixing the defect in the rest of the fleet, at the cost of 157 lives, not even 5 years a…

Let's also consider just how much worse this situation could have been. The door panel blew out next to the one seat that happened to be unoccupied, and it happened at 16,000 ft instead of 26,000 ft.

Not a big difference if everyone was with fastened seat belt.

There is a real story of another 737 of Aloha Airlines flight 243 where part of the fuselage blown away together with unlucky flight attendant at 24000 feet: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/falling-to-pieces-the-ne...

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#445

Interesting timeline. Following the two fatal crashes involving the MCAS system and the 737 Max … The FAA gave Boeing until Dec of 2022 to implement a fix. The fix was to reconfigure the 737 Max with 2 sensors (instead of one) and include an manual shutoff Guess what happened? Boeing didn’t fix anything.. instead they cried to congress that the fix is too expensive and they cannot get it done. So what happens is cong…

That is pretty concerning. The way how Boeing can get its way simply by threatening to can the entire MAX program (which they'd never actually do) shows that there's a very deep level of integration between the US government and its biggest companies, especially one like Boeing that's often seen as kind of a minor point of national pride.

Not only that, but the article mentions that the 737 MAXs got an exemption on providing a modern crew alerting system. Of course, all of that is done so they could certify these aircraft as being basically the same as the first 737 from the 60s. Meanwhile, A320s have been flying with ECAMs (a centralized system for viewing the plane's status and alerts) since the 1980s.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#446
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's not like driving is especially safe. It's just that traffic deaths are so routine that they're not generally widely reported, while pretty much every major issue with an airplane gets national attention. In the US, traffic deaths amount to the equivalent of a fully loaded 747 lost with all hands every couple days.

Because the chance of you dying when something goes wrong in an aircraft at high altitude is significantly higher (almost 100%) than you dying in a car crash. There's still a chance of you getting ambulance on road accidents but you're plummeting to your death on major aircraft malfunction.

[dead]

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#447
post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's more economically viable to run a plane building company whose planes accidentally falls out of the sky? Business school may say if your product never fails perhaps you are overspending on it and some known small failure rate is acceptable to control costs to have better profits. Boeing leadership may have took that logic and applied it to airplanes.

Is that argument wrong? If it isn't, then you've successfully identified capitalism as the problem. I'm all for anti-capitalism, but I don't think it's reasonable to expect that to start with Boeing. This is not a problem of "pointy haired MBA's", we can either fix this within the current regime by imposing heavy fines on this sort of reckless behavior, or we can tear down the current regime and replace it with commu…

It is wrong because people will not want to fly on this plane, and carriers will be less likely to buy this model. This hurts Boeing's bottom line.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but they're not systemic design flaws. Hum, yes, instead Boeing seems to have systemic manufacturing flaws. Do we have a reason to believe those are contained into the Max line?

Isn’t the manufacturing process and quality assurance part of the design in “products” like these? It is in car manufacturing so i assume it should, I don’t believe is sort of an “artisan” production line.

The procedures are part of the design certification. And while some vary from one design to another, many of them do not.

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#449

Interesting timeline. Following the two fatal crashes involving the MCAS system and the 737 Max … The FAA gave Boeing until Dec of 2022 to implement a fix. The fix was to reconfigure the 737 Max with 2 sensors (instead of one) and include an manual shutoff Guess what happened? Boeing didn’t fix anything.. instead they cried to congress that the fix is too expensive and they cannot get it done. So what happens is cong…

Yeah, I heard Boeing even has it's own Presidential candidate...

Re: FAA orders grounding of more than 170 Boeing 737 Max 9s

#450

How does Embraer compare to Boeing/Airbus? Why don't they take Boeing's position in the market?

Embraer was a smaller manufacturer, much smaller than Boeing. The had some success, but it was tough for them to compete with Boeing, especially because Boeing bullied them through regulators. They outmanoeuvred Boeing by letting Airbus buy them for 1 dollar. Now Embraer planes are rebranded as Airbus 200 series

This is a good opportunity for BOOM aerospace too
Post reply on HN