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American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

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Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#91
post #61

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.…

The MD-11 that was so crashy that airlines eventually sold their airframes to freight companies because cargo can’t refuse to get on one?

I don't think the flight safety record of the MD-11 bears that out[0] - most crashes of significance were either cargo flights (which are much more prone to dynamical issues than passenger flights) or flights in conditions that exceeded design specs (landing in typhoons). It sounds like most airlines sold it because it missed range/fuel burn targets, not because of safety issues.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_MD-11#Accide...

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#92
post #80
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pitot tubes had iced-over and it wasn't the first time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Pitot_tu... But that's not what made me nervous about Airbus. Rather, that's when I learned that Airbuses are flown by side-sticks that aren't mechanically linked while Boeings are flown by yokes which are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Side-sti... The idea that two pilots can provide…

Pitot tubes icing over is common on all planes not just Airbus planes. It's more or less expected and planned for.

I’m not a pilot. I’ve just read the Wikipedia page on this crash and the final report. I don’t know what is common or expected and planned for but I take your characterization to mean that you think that it’s not a significant problem.

There’s three pitot tubes. There were ADs issued over them icing over. Airbus replaced them multiple times with tubes from different vendors.

In the final report, the first major issue is “Temporary inconsistency between the measured speeds, likely as a result of the obstruction of the pitot tubes by ice crystals, caused autopilot disconnection and reconfiguration to alternate law.”

Icing over of pitot tubes seems more significant to me than I think you’re making it out to be.

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#93

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 anyt…

Sadly, regulatory capture seems to be the end game of capitalism.

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#94
post #88
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't get me wrong. If I'm going to trust anyone to learn from their mistakes, passenger aviation are the ones.

I'm just saying that when it comes to complex systems, it's not evident that someone who said "I've looked at it and it checks out", the thing fails, and then the same someone said, "Okay, now I've really looked at it and it checks out again" that it's now safe. There's more nuance to it than that.

Whether or not that nuance has been taken in consideration by the FAA this time I really am not in a position to say.

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#95
post #88
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A caveat here is that the modern FAA is very different than the FAA of even 20 years ago. In response to decades of stagnant funding, 'the beast' is fundamentally unable to fill the same regulatory role it was intended to do - to all of our detriment [0].

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/how-the-faa-al...

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#96
post #17

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..…

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.

It is methodologically unsound. The airframe is unstable. The fixes are software and training, human factors engineering, and hence don't address the underlying problem which is one of physics. I am sure that the measures taken will reduce the rate of crashes, but doubt that they will eliminate them, as you can't exclude effects without first excluding causes.

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#97
post #52
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For years after AF447 I was nervous flying airbus. In reality, it's extremely unlikely that you'll die flying. (I'd be nervous flying a Max too, but it's not rational.)

The difference with AF447 was that the aircraft at no point was defective, it was purely confusion on part of the flight crew and the issue with two pilots "in control" which the Captain absolutely should have dealt with.

[deleted]

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#98
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Was thinking similarly. I don't think there's any guarantee you'll get the particular plane model that is scheduled. Maintenance or other factors may mean model X is unavailable, and they substitute model Y instead. You've contracted to get from point A to point B via plane, that's typically it.

Re: American Airlines Is Quietly Bringing Back the 737Max

#99
post #78
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…

If your interest is understanding what happened and how it could have been prevented, you would do far better to read the accident reports, in their entirety, carefully. A half dozen cherry-picked and context-free lines from a store of thousands of emails and other documentation are useful for getting clicks and stoking reader emotions to drive social media reposts but are typically less dispositive in failure analysis.

If I went trolling through all the emails about any multi-billion project, you don't think I could pull out a few to support whatever narrative I wanted to push? Especially if it was a nice juicy one that I could count on much of my audience to really want to be true?

Do you honestly think that there was anyone at Boeing that thought, "well, this aircraft is definitely unsafe and is going to kill a bunch of people, which will likely destroy this company and greatly damage the entire industry I've spent my whole career on, and that I and everyone I care for will regularly board and fly in, but hell, my stock options are due, so what the fuck, I think I'll organize a conspiracy to commit mass murder"? These were human and systemic failures that, like most human failures, were perhaps not innocent but understandable. Of course, there were warnings. There always are. The problem is that the real warnings are easy to pick out of the noise after the fact. Before the fact, they're mixed in with an awful lot of other concerns and warnings and complaints that will turn out to have been about nothing.

The main difference with this particular incident of corporate malfeasance and systemic failure is that the we have a process that will identify and publish what happened, why it happened, and what can be done to correct it. Now, that certainly doesn't generate a nice simple narrative with cartoonish villains that even the most vapid readers will cherish, but it does generate an incredibly safe commercial aircraft industry.

Lashing out at Boeing and its customers isn't cost free. Removing Airbus' competition won't make its aircraft safer. Destroying the major commercial carriers won't encourage small carriers to expand into the new hulls and training and maintenance standards that safe travel requires. Making air travel more expensive and balkanizing the industry into a maze of low-cost carriers will make it less safe, less tenable, and do enough damage to the world economy that inequality and unavailability will cost far more lives and livelihoods than even the most gratuitously simplistic narrative about Boeing could begin to compass.

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