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Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

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Re: Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

#141

Post by dotancohen »

thinkloop wrote: post #111
s_dev wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flying -- even accounting for all the 737 Max crashes is still statistically by far the safest form of travel per unit of distance travelled -- the 737 Max is a blip just like 9/11.

Unit of distance is not the correct measure to use for safety because it skews heavily towards speed. The fastest means of transport will almost always look the safest. Consider if planes doubled their speed overnight (which they can, it's just a matter of gas/costs) and crashes remained the same - did they instantly become twice as safe? Definitely not, there is still the fixed risks of takeoff, landing, and being i…

Did I just read what I think I read?

Are you suggesting that people take a bus from New York to Los Angeles, because though the chance of being injured or killed is higher, it is worth it because the trip takes so much longer?

Re: Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

#142

Post by foldr »

cstross wrote: post #136
village-idiot wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s horrifying. I’ve also heard that the 787 was a boondoggle.

The 787 is weird (and possibly unsafe) for at least two significant reasons. Firstly, Boeing totally re-invented their approach to assembling planes. Previously they built most of the aireframe components and assembled them in their own plants. But the 787 was specced out during an ongoing Boeing/Airbus anti-trust dispute over government cross-subsidies that turned nasty (escalated to USA/EU level, mediated via the W…

>American Airlines flight 587

The accident investigation found that the vertical stabilizer was stressed beyond its certified load limits by the pilot's rudder movements.

I can see why people were inclined to blame composites at the time of the crash. But 18 years have passed now, and there was never another incident where an A300 had a structural failure of the vertical stabilizer.

There's a good comment here: https://forums.jetphotos.com/showthread.php?50480-Airbus-Com...

Re: Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

#143

Post by ThinkBeat »

xvf22 wrote: post #60
radcon wrote: post #40

Is anyone else extremely reluctant to fly on a Boeing plane after this? A lot of people say "It's no big deal, they just need to update the MCAS software" , but I see this entire situation as a sign of much deeper issues at Boeing, issues that can't be fixed with a simple software update and could affect every plane they make.

Boeing has a lot of work to do to restore their image and I will avoid the MAX where possible. They seem to have been on a mission to cut back on expenses without the necessary review and supervision which is worrying. I'd prefer they start caring a bit more about "the box" again. [0] [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-05-09/former-bo...

It can be hard to avoid since carriers reasonably often change what aircrafts they use after the tickets are sold.

Norwegian Air Shuttle has been in a lot of trouble over that when they sold tickets promising Dreamliner but instead leased in a much older airplane to fly that trip. (well they have done it multiple times on different trips)

Re: Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

#144

Post by ulfw »

alkonaut wrote: post #117
ulfw wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same "authorities" who told you before they were safe to fly? You have so much believe in authorities that even if proven they didn't do their job, you still trust in them with your life?

Yes, those authorities. Either I trust them and fly (ever) or I don't and you never fly. There is no middle ground here. If you fly on the A350 which is also new - you trust the FAA/EASA that they are safe to fly. If I don't trust FAA/EASA, I can never fly the new A350 either. In fact I can't fly on any plane, unless I adopt some strategy of only flying ones that have an established safety record (i.e. old planes). B…

Please show me how EASA has outsourced certification to the manufacturer (Airbus) itself like FAA has done with Boeing

Otherwise I have no idea how you could even remotely compare these two situations

Re: Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

#145

Post by icebraining »

thinkloop wrote: post #111
s_dev wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flying -- even accounting for all the 737 Max crashes is still statistically by far the safest form of travel per unit of distance travelled -- the 737 Max is a blip just like 9/11.

Unit of distance is not the correct measure to use for safety because it skews heavily towards speed. The fastest means of transport will almost always look the safest. Consider if planes doubled their speed overnight (which they can, it's just a matter of gas/costs) and crashes remained the same - did they instantly become twice as safe? Definitely not, there is still the fixed risks of takeoff, landing, and being i…

I disagree; I don't want to spend 10 hours traveling, I want to get from point A to point B. Unit of distance is what makes sense. Who cares if I have half the chance of dying per hour, if I have to spend ten times the hours subject to that risk?

I'm not sure why you think just doubling the speed would impact the crash/unit of distance ratio. If ten planes do a 600km trip and one crashes, that's 1 crash per 6000km regardless of the speed at which they're traveling.

You're right that fixed per-trip risks are diluted, but that's because plane trips are longer, not because they're faster. The right comparison, in my opinion, would be to draw the curves of death rate / trip length.

Re: Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

#146

Post by icebraining »

StreamBright wrote: post #88
s_dev wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flying -- even accounting for all the 737 Max crashes is still statistically by far the safest form of travel per unit of distance travelled -- the 737 Max is a blip just like 9/11.

Nobody is arguing about flying vs no flying. This thread about 737MAX safety.

The GP said "on a Boeing plane", not just on 737MAXs.

Re: Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

#147

Post by LamboJ »

thinkloop wrote: post #111
s_dev wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flying -- even accounting for all the 737 Max crashes is still statistically by far the safest form of travel per unit of distance travelled -- the 737 Max is a blip just like 9/11.

Unit of distance is not the correct measure to use for safety because it skews heavily towards speed. The fastest means of transport will almost always look the safest. Consider if planes doubled their speed overnight (which they can, it's just a matter of gas/costs) and crashes remained the same - did they instantly become twice as safe? Definitely not, there is still the fixed risks of takeoff, landing, and being i…

While you raise some good points about the "fixed risk costs" of flying not scaling by distance, deaths per hour isn't a much better metric. The use case for most people is to travel a specific distance. e.g. "I need to get from A to B" so should I fly or drive there. It's usually not, "I need to move around for an hour" should I take the bus or a plane.

Re: Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

#148

Post by piva00 »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #121
ddalex wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL what? It's at least 4 orders of magnitude more risky to fly 737 MAX compared to Airbus A320 (counting deaths per 100k takeoffs). 4 orders of magnitude are not irrational.

Terrible comparison. Number of takeoffs of 737 Max is much lower than other planes, so numbers will naturally be skewed

And that is exactly the issue, that within the very short period while the 737 MAX has been active it has had major incidents.

Naturally it'll be skewed but also naturally it tells something about its risk given the safety record of the aviation industry.

Re: Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

#149

Post by dotancohen »

SomeHacker44 wrote: post #129
hlandau wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hold on a minute. Though the 737 MAX issues were caused by the desire to keep the same type rating, making the 737 MAX have a new type rating at this point won't solve the issue . The 737 MAX needed to retain the unusual fuselage design of the 737 to retain the type rating, leading to the unusual positioning of the new, larger engines, leading to MCAS. Even if they gave the 737 MAX a new type rating at this point, th…

As simion314 said, a new type rating likely means it has to be certified from the ground up. It also means pilots need a full training regimen, a new type rating and will allow/require Boeing to fully train pilots in all of its systems and failure modes. All in all IF what others are saying that the plane is not inherently unsafe but does fly differently, this will mean pilots will at least be properly familiar and t…

A new type rating will mean that the plane gets the worst of two worlds. Instead of saving a type rating yet delivering a paritally-modern aircraft, Boeing is requiring a type rating yet delivering a paritally-legacy aircraft.

I'm not sure where the quirks bit comes in. Sure, all planes have their quirks but obviously taildraggers don't intentionally squat their props _closer_ to the pavement on landing. There's no danger of a prop strike on a jet-powered airliner, so reducing nose bounce with some elevator is not a problem. That's not a quirk.

Re: Europe says 737 Max won't fly until it completes it own design review

#150

Post by icebraining »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #127
adrr wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out 300 Boeing Max delivered since it was release in 2016, there has been 2 full hull losses with full loss of life. I bet if you do the numbers it is the most dangerous way of traveling. Tesla gets shit on for autopilot and it’s killed 4 people but has 100s of thousand of cars on the road with autopilot.

"Most dangerous way of traveling"" This is the kind of alarmist stuff that gets perpetuated on social media and reddit. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/boeing-737-max-8-compares-142... "Well-known and popular commercial aircraft have been involved in far more fatal accidents than the Boeing 737 Max 8. The 3,065 fatalities onboard the Tupolev Tu-154 are more than any of the 47 aircraft models Quartz analyzed. But comme…

Counting absolute numbers makes no sense, in the long run any plane model will kill an infinite number of people; what matters is the rate - that is, the slope in that first graph - and the MAX8 has the steepest. As they write, "Compared to the planes involved in accidents with the most fatalities since 1966, the 737 Max 8 has had more fatalities in its first years in service than any of the other."
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