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Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

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Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#131

Post by smadurange »

mrunkel wrote: post #93
brycesbeard wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was my experience as a contractor for the Navy, years ago. We’ve had radar systems that can detect planes after a reflection on another plane, but the software is dogshit. Someone once told me, it’s because generals and admirals can see hardware, and fell like they got value for their money. Software, not so much. Perhaps it’s something innate in humans. Remember how Beats headphones used to add weights to feel…

This reminds me of when I gave an tour of the software development company I was working for (we had about 250 employees at the time) and his reaction was "so many people, but you guys don't produce _anything_". He was right, we didn't ship anything physical. We just lined up electrons. :)

"We just lined up electeons" :)

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#132

Post by petilon »

na85 wrote: post #130
petilon wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so much doublespeak here. If it is less stable than required for airworthiness then it is not airworthy. Can we agree on that?

Sure, but that doesn't mean it's unstable.

If it is not stable enough then it is unstable. Where do you draw the bar on stability, if not airworthiness?

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#133

Post by allovernow »

__m wrote: post #101
allovernow wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming was a different game back then, when every kb counted. The bar was much higher. Niche PhDs chasing the cutting edge of technology. Now we have web dev.

What’s wrong with controlling spacecrafts with JavaScript?

You know, you're right. We could even connect it to the net via satellite for real time updates from a headless browser.

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#134

Post by na85 »

petilon wrote: post #132
na85 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that doesn't mean it's unstable.

If it is not stable enough then it is unstable. Where do you draw the bar on stability, if not airworthiness?

>If it is not stable enough then it is unstable.

Nope, sorry, that's not what stability and instability mean.

Stability means it will return to equilibrium if disturbed, but the issue with the MAX is that it requires a positive force gradient per the Part 25 Airworthiness Regulations, which the MAX does not exhibit in a specific part of the envelope.

Stability is not a binary condition. The MAX is longitudinally stable in every part of the flight envelope.

"Not airworthy" does not equate to "unstable". Those two terms are orthogonal.

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#135

Post by redis_mlc »

LatteLazy wrote: post #127
yardie wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing backed themselves into a corner they weren’t going to get out of without major restructuring. The 737 is an old airframe design. They’ve extended the design for decades with longer cabin and more powerful engines. But underneath it all is the 60s era design considerations. They needed a new regional airframe design a decade ago. Something to iterate on for the next 50 years. And that could be introduced while…

Broadly I agree, but the corner isn't just boeing: the faa and airlines banned pilots from knowing more than 2 (I think) air frames a while ago. That's anticompetitive and any progress. It's the reason Boeing is still selling 50 year old designs: no one will buy anything newer. What exactly to do about that, I'm not sure...

> the faa and airlines banned pilots from knowing more than 2 (I think) air frames a while ago.

The FAA does not limit how many type certificates that a pilot has. However, large airlines have policies that likely do limit their pilots to flying two airliner types.

Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot.

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#136

Post by bumby »

notreallymee wrote: post #32
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #5

I hate the "everything must be a profit center" MBA attitude. Boeing is a profitable company because they make machines that fly people from place to place safely and efficiently. Part of that is having training, support, service, replacement parts, sales, manufacturing, IT, R&D, and all the other things required to make things fly. It's easy to sit in a conference room and say "gee, IT hasn't made any money, instead…

Using a throwaway account. A few years ago I did some consulting work for British Airways. It was interesting in that as far as the planes themselves, and the operational risk of the planes was concerned, the company had their shit together. Decisions made from a safety first point of view. Engineers making the calls. Everything else no object. But ALL the software around the planes, from the ops to ALL of the b2c wa…

To echo what others have contributed, I see this as well in the aerospace industry. Project managers are often willing to accept software as a black box component but wouldn’t dare accept hardware without a high level of quality pedigree. I think some of it is the tangible nature of hardware but also because systems engineers on these large projects almost never come from a software background.

I often wonder if the cavalier attitude towards treating software as an engineered product is because the software industry is relatively young. I imagine a lot of the cowboy attitudes we see in software were also prevalent in, say, pressure vessel design 130 years ago before adoption of strict design standards became common practice. I’ve heard it said that software is very much in the cave drawing days by comparison.

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#137

Post by hcarvalhoalves »

jimkleiber wrote: post #125
hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because higher-ups are incentivized to show metrics improve and get their bonus, and so called new data-driven business culture has a bias to measure whats is easy to measure, but not necessarily what’s important. E.g. we cut 50% of the cost of training this year vs. we improved the training and pilots are more efficient.

Ah, I find that point fascinating, that this attitude trickles down into the incentive structures, and maybe just job evaluation in general. How to measure someone's impact on an org in a way that is not a number: hours inputted, dollars saved or gained, lines of code, leads gained/lost, followers gained/lost...do you know of any examples where you think they've done it in a way that takes the bigger picture into con…

I don’t. I believe it’s fundamentally hard to measure second and third order effects too. Maybe the best one can do is just ruthlessly focus on core values, otherwise is very easy to fall into local optima.
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