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Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

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Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#161

Post by usrusr »

jacquesm wrote: post #115
stcredzero wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing's more general attitude of dismissing signs that there was a problem with the equipment Having worked in software for decades, I've noted a particular sort of bias in myself and other developers. We tend to feel that our creations are like our children, and we are far too ready to blame the user. I've caught myself doing this. I've been caught out by QA doing this. I've caught fellow developers doing this, whe…

That's why dogfooding is so powerful. The best way to first hand experience the shortcomings of your product is to use it. This makes me wonder if anyone at Google is using G-Suite themselves.

The effect of dogfooding is limited though: when you know all the quirks you won't when notice that you constantly work around them.

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#162

Post by jmkd »

jacquesm wrote: post #115
stcredzero wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing's more general attitude of dismissing signs that there was a problem with the equipment Having worked in software for decades, I've noted a particular sort of bias in myself and other developers. We tend to feel that our creations are like our children, and we are far too ready to blame the user. I've caught myself doing this. I've been caught out by QA doing this. I've caught fellow developers doing this, whe…

That's why dogfooding is so powerful. The best way to first hand experience the shortcomings of your product is to use it. This makes me wonder if anyone at Google is using G-Suite themselves.

For most Googlers it's all they use...

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#164

Post by mbostleman »

jplayer01 wrote: post #150
mbostleman wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The implications of the story make a good movie script, but it's hard for me to imagine how this could play out practically across so many people and so many years. I mean whole careers started and ended in this saga. I was thinking a more likely explanation is that once the original issue that ultimately was found to be the cause was dismissed, and after more and more fatalities built up, the consequence of…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Cost-benefit_analys... These are companies driven by greed. If they're in any way culpable, they should suffer consequences. There's nothing else to it.

The root motivation may very well be greed - I'm not attempting to go that deep. And whether or not they should or shouldn't suffer consequences is also a different issue.

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#165

Post by rwc »

avar wrote: post #49

Aside from this specific issue, all of aviation works like this. E.g. the reason the 747 was decommissioned from passenger flight in the US when it was is because they flew it right up to the day that the FAA mandated that they couldn't fly it anymore. The reason was that they didn't have then-mandatory fuel tank inerting. For something like a decade there were a bunch of planes in the air carrying people that were k…

"E.g. the reason the 747 was decommissioned from passenger flight in the US when it was is because they flew it right up to the day that the FAA mandated that they couldn't fly it anymore."

I'm sorry, what? Do you have a source?

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#166

Post by rwc »

kenneth wrote: post #113
rootusrootus wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean a specific variant 747? Because 747s are still definitely flying passengers in the U.S. They are still making new ones.

747s are not flying any passengers in the US. They are flying passengers to the US. No US carrier still operates the queen of the skies, though that's mostly due to fuel efficiency. Some US carriers had the 747-400 until a couple years ago when United ditched their last one. I loved flying that bird! A few foreign carriers (Korean, Lufthansa) have the much newer 747-8i, which is a lovely plane but hasn't done well co…

But parent alleges that the 747 is outside of certification requirements, which is demonstrably false.

Re: Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

#170

Post by DuskStar »

marcosdumay wrote: post #125

Aviation has an well known acceptable risk level at around 10^-9 for each issue. That's the number that leads government intervention, pilot procedure designing, aircraft designing and everything else. It's expected to lead to a less than 10^-6 chance of accidents per flight. (Somebody calculated the B783 Max odds on 4*10^-6 yesterday, what is a crazy high level.) That number has been higher in the past, and is movin…

> Somebody calculated the B783 Max odds on 4*10^-6 yesterday, what is a crazy high level.

I think that may have been me (1/250000), but that was based on a couple of generous assumptions - two crashes across 4 flights/day on 350 planes for an average of 365 days. Unfortunately I think a more reasonable flights/day number is 3 or lower - a lot of Max 8s are on longer routes - and the flight day average is almost certainly lower than 365 (which assumes linear deliveries for the past two years, with no days for maintenance).

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