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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

#181

I forgot why there are no parachutes on planes ? weight ? I'd pay a premium to have my own emergency wingsuit..

Assuming you were able to open the door and open a parachute at that speed, you'd most likely be sucked into the tail of the aircraft.

unless the pressures are equal

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

#183

I forgot why there are no parachutes on planes ? weight ? I'd pay a premium to have my own emergency wingsuit..

weight and

size and

the fact most people don't know how to put one on properly or use one and

there's usually not enough time to prepare in an emergency and

it would be utter chaos inside the plane if everyone tried to put on their parachute and escape the plane.

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

#184
post #119
post #72

I imagine that Boeing engineers are decent people who want to be able to look at themselves in the mirror and be able to sleep at night. So I find it hard to believe in an active conspiracy, but the propensity for groupthink and self-delusion seems extraordinarily high.

If you've spent your career at a company, who can fire you for not parroting the company line, in a field as small as aviation, chances are you'll not get hired elsewhere, and you'll do as your indirectly expected to.

I doubt that would have gotten past their unions (for either the engineers or the engineering technicians).

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

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. Not to play psychic, but I'm assuming the original poster chose to share this as a friendly reminder that as a general rule, Boeing does not have a track record of placing human lives above their continued corporate profitability. "If Boeing knew about a problem with the MCAS, they'd have told the FAA and corrected it" is not a hypothesis in-line with their past behavior, should anyone be holding that hypoth…

I don't understand this. Each of these scandals is a mortal danger to Boeing. One of them might someday finally put it out of business. Whereas if they reacted to each case by being committed to finding the problem whatever it is, they could greatly reduce their liability by reducing the ultimate number of fatalities due to any one problem.

> Each of these scandals is a mortal danger to Boeing. One of them might someday finally put it out of business.

I don't think this is true, and I think that their cost/benefit analysis clearly agrees with me. Military and other large contractors go out of business when they run out of friends. For them to run out of friends, they would either have to have people fear for their jobs if they choose Boeing, or a competitor who offers more for friendship.

There will never be enough pressure from the public to not pick Boeing that people would be risking their jobs by choosing them. In addition, the US government is willing to sweeten any friendships they need sweetened. Boeing is a company of the size that taxpayers actively shill for them overseas, and that business for them is included in treaties and foreign aid.

I can't even imagine a situation bad enough that Boeing would even need to change its name.

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

#186
post #179

Somewhat related: https://nsc.nasa.gov/resources/case-studies This one is interesting: In March 2010, a 29-year-old shift nurse left her job in Atlanta, Georgia and headed to her boyfriend’s house. She was driving her 2005 Chevy Cobalt on a two-lane road as she approached a half-mile downhill straightaway. As the road leveled after the straightaway, she approached an area where some rainwater had accumulated. Shortly…

While this tragedy might sound like a typical crash scenario, it was particularly puzzling to the victim’s parents. Why? According to Atlanta magazine, she always wore her seat belt and never had a speeding ticket. So how did she suddenly lose control of her car on that fateful evening? Sadly, this unsettling question remained unanswered until several years later—after many more drivers suffered similar fates.

I don't understand why this paragraph was written this way. Driving highway speeds and hitting a puddle of water seems like a reasonable cause to lose control of a car and result in the crash. I don't understand why this would be puzzling. On the other hand, the lack of airbag deployment would be puzzling.

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

#187
post #42
post #13

> Instead, Boeing tried to claim that flight 427 crashed because a pilot had a seizure and depressed the rudder. NTSB investigators dismissed this as ridiculous. > Boeing had no choice but to carry out the changes, but the company never stopped trying to deflect blame. While the investigation was ongoing, it adopted a philosophy of trying to avoid paying out damages to families of crews because this could be legally…

That would require more evidence than it sounds like there is. And that's assuming that you subscribe to the motivations put forward in this article. I generally follow Hanlon's razor - "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence". I have a hard time believing that a cover-up in Boeing was orchestrated over several years by a group of people all who didn't care about loss of life.…

Don't slit your wrists with Hanlon's razor.

As a rule, it has high performance, but as a policy, it's trivial to exploit. Children figure out how to play dumb before they figure out how to articulate complete sentences. If you let conmen do it, they'll bleed us all dry.

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

#188
post #179

Somewhat related: https://nsc.nasa.gov/resources/case-studies This one is interesting: In March 2010, a 29-year-old shift nurse left her job in Atlanta, Georgia and headed to her boyfriend’s house. She was driving her 2005 Chevy Cobalt on a two-lane road as she approached a half-mile downhill straightaway. As the road leveled after the straightaway, she approached an area where some rainwater had accumulated. Shortly…

While this tragedy might sound like a typical crash scenario, it was particularly puzzling to the victim’s parents. Why? According to Atlanta magazine, she always wore her seat belt and never had a speeding ticket. So how did she suddenly lose control of her car on that fateful evening? Sadly, this unsettling question remained unanswered until several years later—after many more drivers suffered similar fates. I don'…

The case study is worth reading even if that one paragraph isn’t the best introduction to the issue. It goes off on occasional tangents in order to relate the issue back to NASA and repeats itself here and there, so maybe it just needed an editor.

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

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. Not to play psychic, but I'm assuming the original poster chose to share this as a friendly reminder that as a general rule, Boeing does not have a track record of placing human lives above their continued corporate profitability. "If Boeing knew about a problem with the MCAS, they'd have told the FAA and corrected it" is not a hypothesis in-line with their past behavior, should anyone be holding that hypoth…

Are there any corporations that do have a demonstrable track record of placing human lives above profitability?

Depending on how you turn your head and squint, Amazon is doing the right thing today [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19391696].

... though I wouldn't say that this one-off rises to the claim of "demonstrable track record." They have some explaining to do about the working conditions of their warehouses.

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

#190
Boeing rudder issues in the 1990s? How about the 2010s? A KC-135R(Boeing 707 variant) in 2013 crashed of the same issues as the article.[1] The KC-135R is essentially a modified 707 retooled with 737 engines and a beefed up vertical stabilizer to account for the increased power of the engines. This modification of the KC-135R occurred in the 90s and has been plagued with rudder problems ever since. The accident in 2013 was attributed to pilot error, because there are procedures to turn off the PCU if the rudder goes haywire... but why not just fix the problem outright?

[1]https://www.amc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/786708/w...

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