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

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

#631

Post by sdh9 »

tavavex wrote: post #445
roody15 wrote: post #419

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 p…

The best part is that Boeing had EICAS, the engine indicating and crew alerting system, in the early 80s with the introduction of the 757/767.

In the mid-90s, when they updated the 737 to the Next Generation, they opted to stay with the six-pack recall light system that every 737 pilot hates. Same in the Max. Too expensive to change and would likely require a new type rating.

The A320 was such a technological leap forward in commercial aviation. Boeing wasn’t able to match it until the introduction of the 777, almost a decade later.

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

#632

Post by WalterBright »

rustymonday wrote: post #609
WalterBright wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the LA crash, the crew restored normal trim 25 times, and never thought to turn off the trim. Turning off the trim is a "memory item", meaning the pilots should not need to consult a checklist for it. The switch is right there on the center console within easy reach. The FAA sent around an Emergency Airworthiness Directive reiterating the two step process before the EA crash: Boeing Emergency Airworthiness Directi…

Maybe I'd buy that if the exact same thing didn't happen 5 months later with Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302. Most of the blame has to be on Boeing.

The EA crew did not follow the 2 step procedure in the Emergency Airworthiness Directive given to all MAX crews before the EA crash.

Also, before the LA crash, the MCAS failure happened on the previous flight of the same aircraft, and the crew just turned off the stab trim, and continued the flight normally and landed safely. That crew was unaware of MCAS, but they followed standard runaway trim emergency procedure.

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

#633

Post by xvector »

coddingtonbear wrote: post #531
xfitm3 wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alaskan Airlines is notorious for taking maintenance shortcuts, this is likely not an inherent problem with the airframe but rather this operators SOP. Alaskan Airline flight 261 is one example. > The subsequent investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that inadequate maintenance led to excessive wear and eventual failure of a critical flight control system during flight. Source: ht…

Although I can sympathize with the story, this particular aircraft had been in their hands just a couple months. Its first commercial flight was just a couple weeks back. Maintenance isn't the issue here, clearly.

> Maintenance isn't the issue here, clearly.

It is. Maintenance was aware of the pressurization warnings on this plane. They did nothing.

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

#634

Post by kegoakwpfk »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #616
mulmen wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds like a great way to create an airplane company that no competent people will want to run. Is it your assertion that Boeing is currently operated by competent people? They're getting crushed by SpaceX at rockets. How much more of this incompetence will it take before someone does the same to them with airliners? Relying on being "too big to fail" isn't a viable long term strategy. It only lowers the barrier t…

Is it your assertion that Boeing is currently operated by competent people? Is it your assertion that they can't get any worse? Because this sounds like a good way to get worse. You know, they could be killing more than 0.5 people per ten billion passenger miles, right...?

You wouldn’t build a website with a single point of failure, yet the argument here is it’s okay to engineer things badly because of the success rate of requests is high.

For air travel impacting human lives.

I think it speaks to current generation of leaders avoiding thought, consideration, foresight, insight, and just using any statistic that can justify a decision.

It’s a decline and one that also explains the excitement that LLMs/AI might be able to help us think less, know less, and perhaps be even less responsible for our work products.

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

#635

Post by tizzy »

methodical wrote: post #527

Boeing may think they fly above it all (get it?) but I can assure you despite my largely unwavering confidence in the air travel industry, I will not travel on a Boeing aircraft in the near future. I will see to it that I fly Airbus or not at all, which I'm perfectly fine with should it spare my life. This type of large-scale and continued negligence can only be defined as a company that thinks they're too big to fai…

How do you enforce that rule? It’s not always easy to pick your flight and aircraft like that (without a lot of money). I’ve got a flight with a national carrier and it’s on a 777; a tried and trusted aircraft and airline so that’s decent reassurance.

I think the big thing out of this is that 737s specifically are just outright scary to see on your flight. You should try to avoid any new (2014 onwards?) Boeing aircraft.

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

#636

Post by xvector »

mission_failed wrote: post #387
zitterbewegung wrote: post #34

This is sort of ironic because they asked to bypass some safety checks on the 737 max 7 recently. Note this is a different model. EDIT: The bypass is about the deicer. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boein...

It's not a safety check bypass. Boeing wants to make pilots responsible for turning off the deicer within 5 min of ice disappearing to prevent the flawed engines breaking apart in flight.

[flagged]

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

#637

Post by xcv123 »

Dah00n wrote: post #545
richardwhiuk wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately, Boeings work on the 737 MAX was independently checked by non-US aviation authorities who aren't subject to US Congress provisions.

"All good boss. Let's certify this!"

https://www.easa.europa.eu/en/newsroom-and-events/press-rele...

"Following extensive analysis by EASA, we have determined that the 737 MAX can safely return to service. This assessment was carried out in full independence of Boeing or the Federal Aviation Administration and without any economic or political pressure – we asked difficult questions until we got answers and pushed for solutions which satisfied our exacting safety requirements. We carried out our own flight tests and simulator sessions and did not rely on others to do this for us."

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

#638

Post by qaq »

g9yuayon wrote: post #402
throw0101d wrote: post #29

Good book describing the cultural change from engineering-focus to business-focus of Boeing: * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55994102-flying-blind * https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/646497/flying-blind...

A friend of mine works in Boeing as a data scientist. His team has 10 people. Two of them can write code for analytics and models. The other 8 "manage projects", whatever that means. They spend their days creating processes, managing tickets, enforcing specific formats of tickets and stories and what not. Yet, none of the eight knew how to write product specs nor could be bothered with basic things like understanding…

They have "people skills"

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

#639

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

methodical wrote: post #527

Boeing may think they fly above it all (get it?) but I can assure you despite my largely unwavering confidence in the air travel industry, I will not travel on a Boeing aircraft in the near future. I will see to it that I fly Airbus or not at all, which I'm perfectly fine with should it spare my life. This type of large-scale and continued negligence can only be defined as a company that thinks they're too big to fai…

Objectively, even a 737 MAX is probably safer than driving.

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

#640

Post by vc8f6vVV »

cedilla wrote: post #593
vc8f6vVV wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does change odds. So when considering defensive driving the rule "flying is safer" may not hold.

Flying is safer by several orders of magnitude. Especially in the US.

Let's do some math, shall we?

> In 2007, the National Transportation Safety Board estimated a total of nearly 24 million flight hours. Of these 24 million hours, 6.84 of every 100,000 flight hours yielded an airplane crash, and 1.19 of every 100,000 yielded a fatal crash. https://www.psbr.law/aviation_accident_statistics.html

So we have 330M people in the US, of which let's say 100M are driving regularly. How regularly? Let's assume 2 hours a day for 52x5 = 260 working days in a year. So given that we have 43K traffic fatalities per year let's compute fatalities per hour of driving. 100M * 2 * 260 / 43K = 1.2M So we have 1 fatality per 1.2M hours of driving. At the same time we have roughly 1 fatality per 100K hours of flying. Oops!

Of course one should consider that:

(a) it's 2007 data, it's probably lower now (10 times lower?),

(b) we definitely cover longer distances per hour of flying (by the way not that much, 60 mph vs 600 mph is within 10x difference),

(c) it's probably all flying, including private, but I'm not considering just public buses either.

Add defensive driving though, and it's not that obvious which is safer.

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