Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 365 posts

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#21

Post by notfromhere »

sandworm101 wrote: post #4
Areading314 wrote: post #3

Does anyone actually know or suspect what's wrong with these planes? Hardware issue? Software issue?

All three. It also has to do with pilot training. The general idea is that there is an auto-trim system meant to stop the plane from stalling. But when it gets bad data from a faulty sensor it tries to crash the aircraft (short version). Pilots, all pilots, are trained to recognize this and override the system, but this aircraft requires them to do some things slightly differently. Specifically, they have to shut dow…

It's a simple problem: don't dodge training requirements by falsely stating that there's no need to retrain pilots on this aircraft.

These crashes happened because Boeing tried to market the plane as not requiring retraining in order to boost sales to airlines.

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#22

Post by Xixi »

sheri wrote: post #17

Does anyone know if there is a material difference between the MAX-8 and the MAX-9? All the banning seems to be specifically for the MAX-8, but should they consider banning all MAX series aircraft? I realize the crashes themselves were MAX-8, but the difference between them seems not significant?

From what I could gather all Boeing 737 MAX have been banned by UK, France and Germany. This is not limited to just the MAX-8.

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#23

Post by dclowd9901 »

sheri wrote: post #17

Does anyone know if there is a material difference between the MAX-8 and the MAX-9? All the banning seems to be specifically for the MAX-8, but should they consider banning all MAX series aircraft? I realize the crashes themselves were MAX-8, but the difference between them seems not significant?

Given this only seems to be afflicting MAX8 craft in terms of material evidence, my guess is they won’t ground the whole series unless/until another MAX craft goes down.

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#24

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

DannyBee wrote: post #16
swarnie_ wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The speculation I've seen is around a change to the autopilot system which pilots ave been struggling with: > Following the Lion Air crash, US aviation authorities issued an emergency directive to carriers to update flight manuals with information on what to do when the aircraft’s anti-stall system is triggered by erroneous data from what’s called an “angle-of-attack” sensor. The flight system can react to that data…

Traditionally the fly-by-wire systems have at least 3 AoA sensors, which each "vote" on the output value. That way, if you have one faulty sensor, it gets outvoted. The MCAS system in the new 737-MAX's only have 2 AoA sensors, which means a single faulty sensor can cause bad things to happen.

I’d like to see the math on that cost savings now.

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#25

Post by linuxftw »

nck4222 wrote: post #8
Areading314 wrote: post #3

Does anyone actually know or suspect what's wrong with these planes? Hardware issue? Software issue?

The more I read about flight systems and protocols (and I am absolutely a layman when it comes to this), the more it seems like it's very rarely solely isolated to one component. The hardware, software, and human systems are so intertwined that it likely involves all 3, even if the route cause can be isolated to one. That being said, there hasn't been much specific information about the cause released yet, that I've…

Problem is, if they've added so much automation that trained pilots cannot determination the proper course of action 100% of the time, the system is at fault.

"You don't have to do anything, the plane will fly itself. Unless there's a catastrophic emergency. Then you better remember everything you haven't practiced from 18 months ago" seems like a failed implementation.

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#26

Post by dclowd9901 »

erokar wrote: post #11
alkonaut wrote: post #2

So this isn't just banning from airports , this is banning from their airspace ? That's then more or less a total grounding of them in Europe. As an example, Norwegian (who has 15 of them) said they weren't grounding them as late as this morning, but now they'll have no choice. They use them mainly for their medium flights between scandinavia and southern europe (Nice, Budapest, Tenerife etc). No way they can do that…

Indeed. Norwegian is doing this because the optics now force them to do so, not self-assessment of the risk. They, and the Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority, failed in that regard.

At least it’s not the country bound and determined to prop up the brand at all costs. If it was 2 A320s that went down, you can bet we’d be banning them instantly in the states.

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#27

Post by benj111 »

ElBarto wrote: post #15
alkonaut wrote: post #2

So this isn't just banning from airports , this is banning from their airspace ? That's then more or less a total grounding of them in Europe. As an example, Norwegian (who has 15 of them) said they weren't grounding them as late as this morning, but now they'll have no choice. They use them mainly for their medium flights between scandinavia and southern europe (Nice, Budapest, Tenerife etc). No way they can do that…

A potentially interesting tidbit from Norwegian's Wikipedia page: > Diversion to Shiraz, Iran December 2018 > A Norwegian Boeing 737 MAX suffered an unspecified technical failure over Iran in December 2018. The pilot made a precautionary landing at Shiraz Shahid Dastgheib International Airport without incident. Spare parts required to make the aircraft airworthy were not available in the world outside the United Stat…

That seems like a disincentive to buy American aircraft.

If you're a reasonably sized international airline, it seems like a reasonable possibility that you'd have to (or want to) land in a territory that the US in unfavourable toward. Why take the risk?

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#28

Post by gizmo385 »

paganel wrote: post #14
alkonaut wrote: post #2

So this isn't just banning from airports , this is banning from their airspace ? That's then more or less a total grounding of them in Europe. As an example, Norwegian (who has 15 of them) said they weren't grounding them as late as this morning, but now they'll have no choice. They use them mainly for their medium flights between scandinavia and southern europe (Nice, Budapest, Tenerife etc). No way they can do that…

It looks like Norwegian is already asking its 737 Max flights to return to their departing airports, at least according to this recent screenshot I found on reddit [1] [1] https://i.redd.it/6gtecemacpl21.png

Yikes. How would ya like to be a passenger on one of those planes: "We're returning to our departure airport because this airplane has been grounded."

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#29

Post by linuxftw »

DannyBee wrote: post #16
swarnie_ wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The speculation I've seen is around a change to the autopilot system which pilots ave been struggling with: > Following the Lion Air crash, US aviation authorities issued an emergency directive to carriers to update flight manuals with information on what to do when the aircraft’s anti-stall system is triggered by erroneous data from what’s called an “angle-of-attack” sensor. The flight system can react to that data…

Traditionally the fly-by-wire systems have at least 3 AoA sensors, which each "vote" on the output value. That way, if you have one faulty sensor, it gets outvoted. The MCAS system in the new 737-MAX's only have 2 AoA sensors, which means a single faulty sensor can cause bad things to happen.

> The MCAS system in the new 737-MAX's only have 2 AoA sensors

That's pretty damning if true.

Re: E.U.’s Biggest Economies Ban Boeing Max 8 Jets

#30

Post by bfirsh »

ElBarto wrote: post #15
alkonaut wrote: post #2

So this isn't just banning from airports , this is banning from their airspace ? That's then more or less a total grounding of them in Europe. As an example, Norwegian (who has 15 of them) said they weren't grounding them as late as this morning, but now they'll have no choice. They use them mainly for their medium flights between scandinavia and southern europe (Nice, Budapest, Tenerife etc). No way they can do that…

A potentially interesting tidbit from Norwegian's Wikipedia page: > Diversion to Shiraz, Iran December 2018 > A Norwegian Boeing 737 MAX suffered an unspecified technical failure over Iran in December 2018. The pilot made a precautionary landing at Shiraz Shahid Dastgheib International Airport without incident. Spare parts required to make the aircraft airworthy were not available in the world outside the United Stat…

A good podcast episode about that: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/06/692155923/epis...
Post reply on HN