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More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

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Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#81

Post by bookofjoe »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #6
rossdavidh wrote: post #3

I do get the impression that the current Boeing CEO is attempting to turn the culture around, to a more "admit the problem and fix it" kind of attitude. The problem is that, if you are doing this after many years of "deny the problem and ship it", the number of apparent problems is actually going to go up for a while. I wonder if Boeing's customers and shareholders will have enough patience for him to complete the tr…

Boeing needs to dump the CEO and install someone from an engineering lineage if they want to build their reputation back. An engineering company run by a longtime manager with a background in accounting is in large part how Boeing got here. Fire the guy and get someone with a technical background in there.

Interesting. Last night I watched the excellent 2018 biopic "First Man" (starring Ryan Gosling) about Neil Armstrong and was struck by NASA's selection criteria for Gemini and Apollo astronauts: they required pilots with an engineering background.

Frank Borman, chosen for Gemini and Apollo missions, "earned a Master of Science degree at Caltech in 1957, and then became an assistant professor of thermodynamics and fluid mechanics at West Point." [Wikipedia]

"After retiring from NASA and the Air Force in 1970, Borman became senior vice president for operations at Eastern Air Lines. He became chief executive officer of Eastern in 1975, and chairman of the board in 1976. Under his leadership, Eastern went through the four most profitable years in its history...." [Wikipedia]

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#82

Post by TylerE »

randmeerkat wrote: post #77
TylerE wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building airplanes it a bit like running a restaurant... it's a business no sane person would willingly go in to.

> Building airplanes it a bit like running a restaurant... it's a business no sane person would willingly go in to. Other people with a similar perspective about rockets tried to convince Musk that as well. Thankfully he didn’t listen. You’re never going to realize gains that surpass the return on the S&P if you don’t take risks in business.

Musk is an interesting standards bearer for sanity.

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#84

Post by kergonath »

tines wrote: post #31
balderdash wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think this a technical problem - it’s a matter of changing culture.

Exactly - management culture and engineering culture are opposite ends of a spectrum.

Being an engineer does not make someone a good person, though. Engineers are perfectly able to cut corners. Putting an engineer in the CEO seat won’t solve anything if there is no culture of responsibility. The problems continued under Dennis Muilenburg, which AFAICT has 2 degrees in engineering and none in business management.

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#85

Post by marcosdumay »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #57
defenestration wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For distance traveled flying is safer than any other form of transportation (maybe except trains?). I wonder however, what the stats are for time spent. How much safer is time spent flying, compared to other forms of transportation? Is it about equal, a bit safer or an order of magnitude safer?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety By hours, flying is substantially safer than car or foot, on par with trains. By quantity of trips, substantially less safe than walking.

That's on average. The Max is historically about 30 times more dangerous than the average, putting it on the same ballpark as cars.

But of course, all the historical problems have been fixed...

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#86

Post by Rantenki »

TylerE wrote: post #27
smugglerFlynn wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say 15 year old Toyota arrives on your Uber, instead of a shiny new one - would you cancel and wait for another car? Keep in mind that riding in both cars is statistically vastly more dangerous than flying any modern Boeing, including 737, by a huge margin. Unless flying is the only mode of transportation you ever use, avoiding Boeing will not make your life safer, it will at most make you calmer.

That's not the choice though. It's choosing one new car that doesn't have a bunch of safety recalls over one that does.

New car reliability measured in warranty returns per vehicle is much WORSE over the last few years than 15 years ago. Turning your nose up at the 15 year old Toyota is probably making a choice to be _less_safe, since at least the old Toyota's recalls are known, and likely fixed. The new vehicle doesn't have enough time on the roads for all the dangerous defects to be identified and recalled yet.

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#89

Post by AnimalMuppet »

TylerE wrote: post #53
stouset wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is irrational. Since November 2001, there has been one death aboard a major airline operating in the U.S.[1]. That was a Southwest flight where an entire engine self-destructed. It was an issue with the CFM engine, Not with anything Boeing did. You might choose to include one more. An Asiana flight tumbled end over end after arriving short at SFO. Everyone survived the crash, but a passenger was killed when an eme…

Your own link doesn't back that up. A Delta Connections commuter flight killed 49 in Lexington, KY in 2013.

"Delta Connection" isn't a "major" airline. It's a regional airline that Delta relabels. It's different airlines in different parts of the country. (And it's not just Delta. United does this too, and I'm fairly sure American does.)

So, the word "major" means that the GP was at least technically correct. (You can argue that it doesn't matter, because if Delta relabeled it, they should own the results...)

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#90

Post by Closi »

iudqnolq wrote: post #54
stouset wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is irrational. Since November 2001, there has been one death aboard a major airline operating in the U.S.[1]. That was a Southwest flight where an entire engine self-destructed. It was an issue with the CFM engine, Not with anything Boeing did. You might choose to include one more. An Asiana flight tumbled end over end after arriving short at SFO. Everyone survived the crash, but a passenger was killed when an eme…

346 people died in two similar crashes of two Boeing 747 Max planes. Boing and the FAA initially cast the blame on supposedly lower standards at the Indonesian and Ethiopian airlines operating the planes, but this was completely unsupported and incorrect speculation. Poor processes at Boeing and the FAA were in fact responsible. Unfortunately the incorrect narrative has persisted.

Agree!

By the time there were c380 Max's built, two of them had already fallen out of the sky (despite operating for only a year). That's c0.5% of the fleet falling out of the sky every 12 months!

Still not too risky on an individual flight, but if you were a pilot across a 40 year flying career those odds start to stack up across your cohort!

Plus it's a bizzare safety stance to try and sell "So what their planes fall out the sky much more than our competitors... It's still safer than driving!"

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