Earlier quoted context omitted.
So 20 MAX-related issues out of ~850. How is that significant?
We'd need some meta analysis of the rate of issues for other plane types by release date to track the declining exponential curve of bugs to legacy. "all new systems have bugs. this may not be unusual"
Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw
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Re: Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw
#222To the uninitiated, it seems that problems in airline incidents used to revolve around mechanical failures, bad wiring, sensor malfunctions, toasted electronics causing smell of smoke and such. Plain and simple. Issue a fix in the design and apply to all planes of the same type, and you'll end up reducing the failure surface bit by bit.
I might be totally wrong about this because I don't track actual data. But if I've spotted the trend right it's scary because the problems are shifting into our space, i.e. software engineering. And being a software engineer, I know we're pretty much fucked at that point. We've only ever managed to write reliable and trustworthy software when we've split it into very tiny pieces that we can verify and kept the number of pieces small.
Maybe aviation computers used to be much simpler that they could be verified more throughoutly. Maybe airplanes used to have less features and they could keep the complexity sufficiently down and functionality orthogonal. Maybe there was enough human glue in between the systems so that there was a live sanity-check during flights and pilots could react properly if the computers didn't agree on something.
But now I sense a new category of error conditions that are eerily similar to what we've had in non-critical software for decades where assumptions are laid on top of other assumptions, and when they fail the whole stack comes crashing down. Only this time there might be a whole plane coming down instead of getting a curious SIGSEGV on the screen with a blinking cursor. It might start as an innocent "couldn't access flight plan because of wifi went down" but such interdependencies between certified and uncertified systems grow exponentially and this will snowball into the unmanageable very soon.
Re: Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if the 737-Max had just been given an entirely new model name like "738" That model name would’ve been worse. The 737-800 is very commonly abbreviated to 738 in the industry (739 being 737-900, 744 being the 747-400, etc).
That's just awful practice! It's got a name, use it! (Yes, that sorta stuff annoys me ;) e.g. people talking about v2.04 of $project, when they really mean v0.204 - sure, I get it, but at some point the searchability for issues on the internet is going to be screwed!)
Re: Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw
#224 "Premature optimization is the root of all evil" -- KnuthRe: Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw
#225For a car analogy, imagine Tesla creates a new model that under certain conditions tends to over-steer left. To prevent any accidents because of that, they have added a system that turns the steering wheel clockwise. To disable the system it is not enough to try to prevent by force the steering wheel from turning, but you have to press a button that disables electric steering assistance. Notice they have never briefe…
I feel like every time someone insists on making a car analogy, it just piles on more evidence that car analogies never work. At least you don't have to get a new endorsement on your license for every model of car.
In Germany, if you get your drivers license on an automatic car, then you are only allowed to drive automatic cars, and have to extend your license to drive manual cars.
Re: Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw
#226This is off topic. But I've been skeptical of the commercial aviation accident risk compared to cars. I'm not saying cars are safer. But using accident count per mileage seems a bit odd, especially when the most risky parts of flying are taking off and landing. A plane travelling 400 more miles doesn't incur much more risk. But a car travelling 400 more miles incur a much bigger risk (e.g. fatigue, car malfunctioning…
Re: Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw
#227The thing that worries me most is that, based on mere amateur observations in the media, the number of incidents involving user interfaces, repeated changes to procedures, and software fixes to "unexpected" corner-cases seems to have been in the increase. To the uninitiated, it seems that problems in airline incidents used to revolve around mechanical failures, bad wiring, sensor malfunctions, toasted electronics cau…
Re: Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow... I wonder how much of this could have been avoided if the 737-Max had just been given an entirely new model name like "738". I'd assume that when the 777's came out even pilots with experience on the 767 and other Boeing planes were still given ample training beforehand. The minor difference in the Max's model name disguises the seemingly large difference in their operation.
> if the 737-Max had just been given an entirely new model name like "738" That model name would’ve been worse. The 737-800 is very commonly abbreviated to 738 in the industry (739 being 737-900, 744 being the 747-400, etc).
Re: Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's just awful practice! It's got a name, use it! (Yes, that sorta stuff annoys me ;) e.g. people talking about v2.04 of $project, when they really mean v0.204 - sure, I get it, but at some point the searchability for issues on the internet is going to be screwed!)
It's not in this case. B738 is the official icao code for the aircraft, just like B38M is for the max.
Re: Boeing 737 Max pilots complained to feds for months about suspected safety flaw
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow... I wonder how much of this could have been avoided if the 737-Max had just been given an entirely new model name like "738". I'd assume that when the 777's came out even pilots with experience on the 767 and other Boeing planes were still given ample training beforehand. The minor difference in the Max's model name disguises the seemingly large difference in their operation.
Boeing fought extremely hard to avoid having this happen, since then any pilot wanting to fly the Max would have to first achieve a type rating certificate for the new type of plane, and the FAA would have to test and certify it instead of Boeing "self-certifying" that it was a type of 737. The determination to shoehorn what aerodynamically kind of is a new type of plane into the 737's type rating seems likely to be…
Not that 90 minutes on a tablet constitutes a reasonable level of training though.