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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

#211

Post by darkpuma »

rkangel wrote: post #42
usaphp wrote: 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.…

> "Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence"

Clever people deliberately structure their malice to be plausibly explained away as incompetence.

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

#212

Post by cco »

stcredzero wrote: post #83
mannykannot wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not wish to diminish how serious any tampering with the evidence would have been, or of Boeing's more general attitude of dismissing signs that there was a problem with the equipment, but it is not entirely clear from the article that someone from Boeing removed the Colorado Springs PCU spring and end cap. The article says the item had apparently been in the possession of United Airlines and valve designer/manuf…

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…

In my experience end users are very often wrong, QA departments are rarely wrong. If pilots are saying I pressed the rudder and it didn't move healthy skepticism may be needed, I'd hazard less skepticism than for an average end user as the pilots are presumably highly skilled users of the product. But if after very thorough investigations a large group of pilot reports and the NTSB are telling you something is wrong then you should assume that something is wrong and do your best to prove it otherwise.

As you note emotions, and frankly legal liability, play huge roles in this realm. Worrying about legal liability might be harder to tame but in my experience it is easier to disabuse yourself of the notion that you can do no wrong.

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

#213

Post by jlv2 »

js2 wrote: 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…

The "hidden-hazards" link says "This is a NASA-Only site"

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

#214

Post by JackFr »

_s wrote: post #119
JackFr wrote: 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 am as cowardly and timid about my job as any other clock puncher, but I would not knowingly risk peoples lives.

I suppose the distinction I'm making is one between bona fide self-delusion and knowing cynicism.

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

#215

Post by deusum »

rubicon33 wrote: post #206

>It is widely suspected that Boeing knew about the problems with the PCU for decades but had done nothing, despite the hundreds of reported incidents. Because no one was collecting all the accounts of rudder deflections, it was likely that no one except Boeing realized how common they were. It was not until people started dying in crashes that enough scrutiny was placed on the 737 to uncover this history of ignoring…

For context, there's roughly 100,000 flights per day worldwide, now.

The incidents, though certainly deadly in some cases, sound like a very small percentage.

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

#216

Post by js2 »

jlv2 wrote: post #213
js2 wrote: 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…

The "hidden-hazards" link says "This is a NASA-Only site"

That is weird. They must be checking referrer. If you click the first link then scroll down it’s the third case study and you can follow the link from there. Sorry I hadn’t noticed.

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

#217

Post by itronitron »

ams6110 wrote: post #15

I had heard of the history of the "rudder hardover" problems with the 737 but have never heard that Boeing was actively subverting the investigation. Assuming it's true, I'd agree that it's appalling behavior, but this post alone doesn't convince me. A lot of complex systems can fail in unlikely ways and it doesn't imply malfeasance that the company was wrong about the cause. How many times have you investigated a we…

They are removing evidence and that implies malfeasance.

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

#218

Post by scolby33 »

jackschultz wrote: post #46

I know these comments are kind of frowned upon on threads talking about an issue like this, but very interesting use of imgur. Effectively a blog post focused on images, which is a very good way of thinking about posts I feel. People love images rather than only words. Has imgur been looking at this? Trying to push it as another big use for its platform?

Vepr157 [1] on Reddit has several similar Imgur albums on the design of submarines, such as "American Second Generation SSNs" [2] and "Soviet and Russian Submarine Propulsors" [3].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/user/Vepr157/

[2] https://imgur.com/a/9h3gD

[3] https://imgur.com/a/t6UjU

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

#219

Post by helper »

There's a really interesting book about the NTSB investigation into flight 427 called "The Mystery of Flight 427: Inside a Crash Investigation". If you like the story behind root cause analysis of engineering failures (and aren't squeamish about plane crashes) its a great read.

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

#220

Post by blattimwind »

mrguyorama wrote: post #117
ams6110 wrote: post #15

I had heard of the history of the "rudder hardover" problems with the 737 but have never heard that Boeing was actively subverting the investigation. Assuming it's true, I'd agree that it's appalling behavior, but this post alone doesn't convince me. A lot of complex systems can fail in unlikely ways and it doesn't imply malfeasance that the company was wrong about the cause. How many times have you investigated a we…

I have never hindered any investigative agency, internal or otherwise, attempting to discover flaws in systems I have built. Doing so would be morally abhorrent, and hopefully someday illegal

I also never filed the serial numbers off replacement parts that I then put into a rudder servo of a large airliner while forgetting to fill out the necessary paperwork.
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