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Boeing withdraws bid for safety exemption for Boeing 737 MAX 7

reuters.com

161–170 of 173 posts

Re: Boeing withdraws bid for safety exemption for Boeing 737 MAX 7

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was pressure from airlines to not have to retrain pilots, because that costs them money and whatnot. And in almost all cases when it comes to Boeing, the 737, and further issues, these airlines are also involved.

At this stage of the game, I seriously have to ask: is retaining the type rating actually a money-saver for the carriers? I mean, airlines obtain new types all the time and pilots get trained to fly them. If it were so onerous, selling new aircraft would be practically impossible. (Yes, I know many Airbus share a type classification.) It feels like there's an historical truth that's now no longer the case, especially…

The problem isn't in retraining a pilot to fly the new plane. The problem is that this pilot is now no longer interchangeable with legacy 737 pilots, and cannot fly a legacy 737.

This means that if you have a hardware issue, you can't swap the plane without also swapping the flight crew.

Re: Boeing withdraws bid for safety exemption for Boeing 737 MAX 7

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DeHavilland Comet was the first practical civil jet airliner ever produced. It literally invented the systems that were onboard. The 737 is a 60 year old design with a stellar safety record up to this point. It's not comparable at all. The only reason those planes fell apart is rotten management.

You're off your rocker. Comet's square windows were fundamentally unsound. 737 NG contains Ducommun garbage structural components deemed "airworthy", going back between 1996 and 2004. 737 Classic != NG != MAX. No amount of MCAS or engineering exceptions will make it so, or make it safe.

It was an antenna opening in the roof, not one of the - by the way perfectly fine - windows that blew.

Re: Boeing withdraws bid for safety exemption for Boeing 737 MAX 7

#163
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A PalmOS cell phone - the Treo - was featured in the original iPhone keynote. I had two, the first (600) was OK. The second (650) was abject garbage - it would crash just sitting waiting for calls.

I know about the Treo, but I never got one. If i remember the first reviews correctly, it was a cell phone bolted onto palmos but totally separate somehow. It didn't 'smell good'. I've had quite a few non phone PalmOS devices though. I think I'm still keeping a non functional Sony Clie [1] in my nostalgia stash. And maybe a Zire Z22, but I may have thrown that away. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_CLI%C3%89_NR…

Ohh I remember now. They thought it would be a good idea to take space with a physical keyboard instead of making it more touchable. That's why I never got one. I liked grafitti.

Re: Boeing withdraws bid for safety exemption for Boeing 737 MAX 7

#164
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A PalmOS cell phone - the Treo - was featured in the original iPhone keynote. I had two, the first (600) was OK. The second (650) was abject garbage - it would crash just sitting waiting for calls.

I know about the Treo, but I never got one. If i remember the first reviews correctly, it was a cell phone bolted onto palmos but totally separate somehow. It didn't 'smell good'. I've had quite a few non phone PalmOS devices though. I think I'm still keeping a non functional Sony Clie [1] in my nostalgia stash. And maybe a Zire Z22, but I may have thrown that away. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_CLI%C3%89_NR…

It was quite well integrated all told from the 600 onwards, though I never tried the first version. The phone and SMS appeared as apps and worked in a very similar manner to what one would expect having used an iPhone.

Re: Boeing withdraws bid for safety exemption for Boeing 737 MAX 7

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this stage of the game, I seriously have to ask: is retaining the type rating actually a money-saver for the carriers? I mean, airlines obtain new types all the time and pilots get trained to fly them. If it were so onerous, selling new aircraft would be practically impossible. (Yes, I know many Airbus share a type classification.) It feels like there's an historical truth that's now no longer the case, especially…

Yes. Generally speaking, you want your pilots as proficient as possible on a single type. They will need many hundreds of hours on the new type before they are considered seasoned. A lot of disasters in the last 30 years have been amplified by pilots with low hours on the type they were flying. It takes a lot of training to memorize checklists, switches, levers, time to get muscle memory for various emergency situati…

That's what everyone says, but I don't think the numbers are there. And, to be frank, most of the accidents you infer, are with non-US pilots, who's culture & training just doesn't match up with what the States has (hey, we invented the airplane).

[disclaimer: former chief dispatcher for a large regional US airline]

Re: Boeing withdraws bid for safety exemption for Boeing 737 MAX 7

#166
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's far from just the FAA in the US gov the enabled and encouraged Boeing's monopolistic behaviour. And not just in airplanes. I have a feeling they'd be much more concerned about not messing up and protecting their reputation if they weren't the only domestic player in town.

Maybe time for airlines to start buying from Airbus if Boeing can't meet expectations of safety and quality. Cancelled orders should have the necessary affect on stock price to scare leadership in the right direction.

they won't cancel many orders. Airbus has a huge backlog

Re: Boeing withdraws bid for safety exemption for Boeing 737 MAX 7

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and had no way to disable/counteract the software. Both pilots pulling up on their yokes couldn't override the system?

Another armchair pilot here, also recommending Mentour Pilot's channel, but hopefully I can summarize it well enough. In this case no, because the way the MCAS system operated was to actuate the stabilizer trim which changes the angle of the entire huge tail plane (the horizontal part of the tail). For the most part the yoke controls the elevator (a smaller flap on the trailing edge of the tail plane), so the pitch c…

MCAS uses trim rather than elevator? That seems insane, though I suppose trim has more authority than elevator...but yeah...in the time it takes for the pilot to notice the trim has moved itself to some insane level, they've been nose down for so long that they couldn't possibly recover.

Re: Boeing withdraws bid for safety exemption for Boeing 737 MAX 7

#168
post #35

The trouble is, Boeing hasn't built a new single-aisle transport since the 757, which first flew in 1982. There was supposed to be a 797 by now, but it keeps slipping into the far future. So they're still cranking out 737 variants, a 1960s design. This is pathetic. Boeing could end up losing out to the COMAC C919, which, although years late, is finally flying a few routes.

Didn't Boing already lose to Airbus ?

They’ve definitely lost market share, but even if you would prefer to buy Airbus they now have a backlog of ~9,000 aircraft to deliver.

For reference in 2022 they shipped 661 aircraft and 735 in 2023.

I’m assuming they are increasing manufacturing capacity but that doesn’t change the fact that their backlog extends into the next decade.

Re: Boeing withdraws bid for safety exemption for Boeing 737 MAX 7

#169
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the plane that needs recertification. All the pilots will need to get a type-rating on the new plane type as well, before they are allowed to fly it.

And this is why focusing exclusively on Boeing in the 737 MAX controversy is, IMO, quite short-sighted. It's not just Boeing's greed. Pretty much the entire industry has been happy to look the other way and enable their nonsense for years, since it meant they wouldn't need to invest extra in training their pilots.

Maybe the discussion should be about how much changes regulation should allow being done to a plane, before it must become a new type.

The 737 Max is like double the size of the original 737 - roughly twice the passenger seats, more than twice the weight, roughly 1.5 times the length... How much larger can a plane get, while still keeping the same certification?

Re: Boeing withdraws bid for safety exemption for Boeing 737 MAX 7

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this stage of the game, I seriously have to ask: is retaining the type rating actually a money-saver for the carriers? I mean, airlines obtain new types all the time and pilots get trained to fly them. If it were so onerous, selling new aircraft would be practically impossible. (Yes, I know many Airbus share a type classification.) It feels like there's an historical truth that's now no longer the case, especially…

The problem isn't in retraining a pilot to fly the new plane. The problem is that this pilot is now no longer interchangeable with legacy 737 pilots, and cannot fly a legacy 737. This means that if you have a hardware issue, you can't swap the plane without also swapping the flight crew.

There is a thing called equipment change. We use it all the time. At airline scale a captain (and crew) is worth an airplane. (And, come to think about it, it's a 1:1 relationship, so that follows Noether's Lemma, I think).

Don't overvalue the airship in the equation. (And I've done this job. I know what levers we can pull and how often it comes up.) Show me your data.

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