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American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

zdnet.com

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Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#81

Post by ravenstine »

srj wrote: post #24
x87678r wrote: post #21

What are people going to fly instead? The regular 737? Have you seen the list of how many 737 crashes there have been? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident... Or maybe A320 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...

You need to consider accidents as a rate over miles flown.

And also country of origin. If you look at that list, there are WAY more accidents in non-US and non-EU countries. The same is true of commercial air accidents in recent history:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...

If anything, this demonstrates that air travel is unreasonably safe given the number of flights and amount of miles traveled.

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#82

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

tboyd47 wrote: post #78
ajarmst wrote: post #75

What's the alternative? There was a flaw in the aircraft design, a dreadful one. Some fundamental structural issues and conflicts of interest at the FCC (that the NTSB has been complaining about for roughly its entire existence) were again highlighted. Boeing executives turned out to be as subject to lying to themselves when making difficult decisions as the rest of humanity. Other nation's certification processes tu…

Let me remind you of why we're all still talking about Boeing. Not once, but TWICE, software taking readings from faulty sensors caused the airplane to nosedive into the ground, killing every single person on board, with the pilots powerless to take over. It happened once, Boeing and the U.S. government reassured everyone that it wasn't going to happen again, then it happened again. When nations around the world bega…

>Not once, but TWICE, software taking readings from faulty sensors caused the airplane to nosedive into the ground, killing every single person on board, with the pilots powerless to take over.

I believe technically if they followed the runaway trim in memory checklist the system would have been disabled? This is how the pilot of the Lion Air flight the day before prevented disaster.

>At this point, I would consider it justice to see Boeing go bankrupt.

And what when this happens to Airbus, is that the end of air travel? As long as humans are involved, there will be issues. Airbus still averages pilot input, rather than providing feedback to each pilot, which has led to more than one accident (AF447 being one example, where one pilot tried to pull up out of a stall warning).

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#83

Post by donarb »

addicted wrote: post #51
tuna-piano wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you have said that before and after the first Lion Air 737 Max crash prior to the Ethopian crash? Certainly a lot of people have spent a lot of time looking into a lot of the plane's systems. But are there more fundamental issues that can't or haven't been addressed? Those same people spent a lot of time prior to certification looking into the plane...

I don’t know much about airplane design. But if you told me that a software was so buggy that it was pulled out of market and then years were spent fixing the bugs in it, I almost certainly would not trust the resultant software more than I would have trusted a complete rewrite. If aircraft manufacturing is anything like software development (and considering a lot of the issues in the Max are software related there’s…

Is your software safe from multiple simultaneous cosmic bit flips? The FAA required Boeing engineers to handle this situation when rewriting parts of the software even though flight computers are hardened against this sort of anomaly.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/newly...

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#84

Post by pirocks »

omginternets wrote: post #72
atharris wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aerospace controls engineer here - while the airframe might not be passively stable (as is common for civilian aircraft), dynamically unstable aircraft have been stabilized with control software since the 70s [0]. If you've flown on an MD-11, you've flown on an 'aerodynamically flawed' aircraft. Most real systems are dynamically unstable without some kind of controller (implying software) in the loop. [0] https://en.…

Those typically aren't approved for civilian air-transport though, are they?

The MD-11 is a passenger aircraft.

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#85

Post by gsnedders »

robjan wrote: post #68
x87678r wrote: post #21

What are people going to fly instead? The regular 737? Have you seen the list of how many 737 crashes there have been? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident... Or maybe A320 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...

See the hull loss per million. Using that metric you are 34 times more likely to experience a hull loss incident on a 737 MAX than a 320 http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm

If you looked at the crash rates of the A320 after two years of commercial service, it wouldn't have been so great either, with AF296 and IC605 having both occurred. (Though, to be fair, both were pilot error… but both 737 MAX crashes were initially reported as such too.)

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#86

Post by Aperocky »

addicted wrote: post #37
tuna-piano wrote: post #12

737Max is certainly tainted now. But will that last forever? And do non-HN-aviation-geek consumers really care enough to check the model of the plane they'll be flying on, let alone make a flight decision based on the model? Certainly another crash could be devastating to the model. But was the 737Max a poorly designed death trap rushed to production or a super safe airplane with a single fatal flaw? Time will tell..…

In my experience the non aviation geeks are also worried about 737 Max’s. That’s validated by the fact that the involved companies are referring to it as the 737-8 instead, which will not fool anyone who knows anything about aviation and is geared entirely towards ordinary people.

I do remember the flight app I used to use show me the aircraft make and model and even serial number. Hopefully they keep doing that.

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#87

Post by atharris »

phkahler wrote: post #58
atharris wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aerospace controls engineer here - while the airframe might not be passively stable (as is common for civilian aircraft), dynamically unstable aircraft have been stabilized with control software since the 70s [0]. If you've flown on an MD-11, you've flown on an 'aerodynamically flawed' aircraft. Most real systems are dynamically unstable without some kind of controller (implying software) in the loop. [0] https://en.…

Boeing has kind of a poor track record for software lately, from the Max to the SLS. Time will tell if this has resulted in real change.

Ah - I didn't say Boeing's ability to write and test that control software was particularly good (in fact, I think their current track record says exactly the opposite.) I just hate when non-domain experts make judgements about things being 'fundamentally flawed.'

Insufficiently tested and documented? Sure. Bad UI/UX? Most definitely. Irredeemable 'because of aerodynamics' according to some private pilot that flew a 737 once in sim? Absolutely not.

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#88

Post by jonas21 »

kqr wrote: post #36
phire wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certianlly not just a single flaw. They found and fixed multiple other flaws while checking though everything for re-certification. In my opinion, the 737Max is probably one of the safest planes right now, simply because of the amount of scrutiny it's been though.

Unless, of course, it was fixed and scrutinised by organisations which still have the same systemic flaws as the first time around. Until the sociotechnical systems that do the work change, they will keep overlooking problems and making similar mistakes, from a high-level perspective.

Do you mean the same regulatory organizations that have reduced the US airline fatality rate by 50x over the last 50 years to the point where it's now over 100x safer per mile to fly than to drive?

I mean the FAA certainly has some flaws, but it's important to keep things in perspective.

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#89

Post by LatteLazy »

bruceb wrote: post #64
LatteLazy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people actually look at what plane they're meant to get when they compare times, dates and prices for their booking? Let alone what plane is actually at the boarding gate 6 months later...

Before very few. I absolutely would now. I bet more than a few traders looking for an edge are trying to find someone who works at Kayak to tell them how many more clicks there are in “see full flight details” before purchasing a flight there are now.

Thats great. But then when you get to the gate and there is a 737Max sat there waiting for you, do you board? Or do you accept that you won't get a refund and now need to buy another flight and just hope there is one today for an affordable price with a seat not on a 737Max?

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#90

Post by bigmattystyles »

deeblering4 wrote: post #23

I’m at a point where I just opt for carriers with Airbus fleets. I do not trust modern day American corporations nor the oversight bodies. There are too many financial incentives to cut corners.

This is the natural conclusion to decades of corporate lobbying, revolving door political appointments with overt conflicts of interests and regulatory capture. Those with financial incentives get control or massive sway over oversight. In the short run, I'm sure it's to a corporation's advantage, other corporations follow suit because, hey CorpX is doing it. Before you know it, and often suddenly, no one trusts anything. Oversight and regulation sucks when the process feels onerous on you but they have a place in society.
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