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“I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

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Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#221

Post by AWildC182 »

starpilot wrote: post #203

In his other comments, he walks back on his remarks: > Also, in all fairness to my hated former employer, air travel is still by far the safest form of travel. Even with the shitshow at Boeing, Boeing planes manage to be incredibly safe. I'm really not sure how, but they are. > And it might be because I grew up around Boeing, but I'd still fly Boeing over Airbus, to be perfectly honest. Airbus makes good planes, but…

I have some experience with carbon composite construction. His statement about the 787 initial production is eerily similar to other stuff I've seen. I'm not saying it will end poorly, but let's just say we don't know nearly as much about how carbon fails/ages as we do about aluminum. Carbon is an amazing material, but I've seen a lot of cases where during initial production people realized they needed extra material here and there, and various process improvements to prevent delamination and eventual catastrophic failure. It may take a few more years, but I wouldn't be surprised if those initial aircraft find their service lives to be much shorter than promised. Unfortunately we may never be made aware, however.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#222

Post by Rebelgecko »

jeltz wrote: post #177
PaulHoule wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right -- but Boeing provoked Bombardier into "dumping" its aircraft by offering that 70% discount!

Do you have any links? Because if true that was a clever tactic, dump your own products to force the competitor to price dump too and then sue them for price dumping.

A slightly different event, but when Embraer accused Bombardier of being illegally subsidized by the Canadian government, Bombardier said "no u" and made the same accusations against Embraer. IIRC both companies ended up getting fined

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#223

Post by magduf »

ptidhomme wrote: post #5
spectramax wrote: post #2

Btw, the new "fix" for the MCAS has just been announced and discussed by a 40-year experienced pilot [1]. Turns out that while we shouldn't be doing armchair analysis and assuming the worst of the engineering, management and executive team; the software fix released appears to be rather elementary and MCAS should have been designed with these safety checks in the first place. Why it wasn't is a huge concern and we wo…

> I wonder how we, humans, collectively build extraordinary monuments while we individually rest on stilts My take is that we used to have brilliant engineers in the time where computational ressources were scarce (60s, 70 , 80s...), and they thought out their design thoroughly starting with a fucking paper and pencil. Aerospace indutries still rely on the designs from these times. But now engineering seems to be : l…

We still have many brilliant engineers. The problem is that the brilliant ones from that age have all retired or died, and the brilliant ones these days didn't go into aerospace engineering, they went into other fields. Even when I was in college 25 years ago, we were making fun of the Aerospace Engineering majors as being in a dead-end field where they could look forward to few jobs and lay-offs. It's only gotten worse since then, I'm sure.

The pay and career potential and job security is much better in computer science and engineering, so that's where all the brilliant engineers have been going for quite some time now.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#224

Post by jedberg »

Interesting. I was hanging out at a wedding with someone right around that time frame who was one of the lead engineers on the 787 rollout. He too had similar comments about safety. He told us that the 787 was failing it's FAA tests, but since the head of Boeing's relationship with the FAA was a former FAA tester, he "helped" the FAA rewrite the tests so that the 787 would pass.

I told him he may want to consider being a whistleblower, but his response was "well the AirBus didn't pass their FAA test either until they rewrote the tests".

I still look at the overall safety numbers and realize that flying is still safer than driving, but it sounds like it could be safer still.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#225

Post by JudgeWapner »

jeltz wrote: post #177
PaulHoule wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right -- but Boeing provoked Bombardier into "dumping" its aircraft by offering that 70% discount!

Do you have any links? Because if true that was a clever tactic, dump your own products to force the competitor to price dump too and then sue them for price dumping.

> then sue them for price dumping

you don't think Boeing has a few attorneys on staff providing legal review for its business decisions?

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#226

Post by JudgeWapner »

batbomb wrote: post #178
PaulHoule wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a new type rating is a fair punishment, I think, for Boeing and the airlines who have been stringing along this obsolete airliner for way too long. Note the 737 MAX was rushed out not just to fight the A320neo but also to counter this kind of jet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A220 which is cheaper to run than the 737 MAX but also has much better passenger comfort than the 737. I was in the similar http…

The E175 is even better than a 787 in 9 seat configuration. It’s a superior experience in economy, and I hope every 737 and CRJ is replaced by it.

I'm surprised because I incorrectly assumed passenger comfort was mainly correlated with the mass of the aircraft. I.e. small planes get blown around more.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#227

Post by orthecreedence »

pornel wrote: post #174
Pigo wrote: post #125

I contracted with a branch of Lockheed. While I couldn't/shouldn't talk about any of the technology involved, I can attest to the culture I witnessed. I always assumed it was horrible because of the government affiliation. But I think that mostly affected their focus, in that most of the branch was dedicated to wasting money so they could ask for more money. However, the culture itself was stagnate by design. Most of…

How come we end up with ineffective duopolies? Why isn't market competition finding a way around these failing companies?

I give this a lot of honest thought all the time.

My conclusion is this: it's easy to say "well, because the government is picking winners and losers." And it's true. But let's assume government will always be here (anarcho-capitalists are generally imbeciles) and it will generally rely on big industry.

So it's not necessarily a market failure. The businesses have a steady stream of income they can rely on because, well, the government probably isn't going to change any time soon. Also, these businesses are experts at forming relationships with the state. It's probably what they do best.

So if government will always be there, and will always spend into the market, what's the solution here?

Limit business size. A progressive tax on the size of any company once it reaches some number like 1000 people (1% at 1000 up to 90% at 1M+). Putting downward pressure on company size does a lot of things: it eliminates a lot of bureaucracy, it creates more businesses (and competition), and it limits the power any one business has (political or economic).

If the government decided "wow Boeing's planes suck nowadays" they can shift their contract and not worry about ~150K people losing their jobs which is a political dumpster fire.

More competition, more choice, more ability to change. I'm sure there would be downsides, but I have trouble thinking of downsides that outweigh the upsides.

Of course, I'm not a dictator, and passing any kind of tax law like this after the fact is going to be a no-go.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#228

Post by Rebelgecko »

gdy wrote: post #46
nostrademons wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I wonder what'll happen if the United States ever has to fight a war against an opponent whose industrial base is not 150 years behind it. Then again, I've heard Russian military equipment is in just as sorry a state. No idea what the Chinese military is like, but I'd imagine the real money is in selling to Americans rather than killing them. We're in this interesting place where it's entirely possible that…

"SpaceX has ballistic missiles with a CEP significantly smaller than a drone ship" It goes quite slowly compared to a real ICBM and relies on GPS that will be jammed in a real war.

F9 has multiple IMUs. Won't be accurate enough to fly a cruise missile through someone's window, but if you're sending a big enough bomb it doesn't matter if you're a few hundred meters off.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#229

Post by spookthesunset »

tomohawk wrote: post #91

Its interesting how an unknown source making unverifiable claims on a site which is basically a rumor mill gets so much attention.

this happens all the time on reddit and it definitely worries me a bit. People post what is, for all I know, complete fiction and people seemingly take it as fact. Point out that it could be made up and watch those downvotes fly...
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