Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator
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Re: Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator
#2These should not fly for a decade. They're rewriting the avionics from scratch. This should require a years-long process of testing, external auditing, and approvals. I'd even go so far as to say in flight, we should require competitor review. That's right, no trade secrets. If you want your Hello World up in the air, you better let your competitor vet the source code.
This is an engineering boondoggle and an embarrassment for Boeing. Software does not need to be this complicated. Design a damned airframe that's airworthy without needing stabilization hacks.
Re: Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator
#3These should not fly for a decade. They're rewriting the avionics from scratch. This should require a years-long process of testing, external auditing, and approvals. I'd even go so far as to say in flight, we should require competitor review. That's right, no trade secrets. If you want your Hello World up in the air, you better let your competitor vet the source code. This is an engineering boondoggle and an embarra…
A decade is too long but I agree with your sentiment. The underlying problem with the 737 Max was commercial pressure leading to cutting corners and creating an unsafe plane (or plane with an unsafe core component) ... and now commercial pressure is again being applied on their R&D teams, which are probably scrambling because they know every day means millions in losses. That's not a great environment for quality and safety.
Boeing has to come out and say that the plane won't be back until at least 202x to take the pressure from their engineering and testing teams, so they can salvage this plane (and it may not be salvageable), instead of doing this month-to-month thing where they are hoping the FAA will sign-off on whatever latest change they put out.
Re: Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator
#4Considering that MCAS is an added ‘feature’ to avoid stall, you would think they could just remove it and be done. After all, it wasn’t part of the original 737.
Sadly, from my limited understanding, due to the engine location change on the airframe, the plane naturally pitches up... making it necessary.
One thing seems clear to the external observer, this is a 737 in name only.
Re: Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator
#5These should not fly for a decade. They're rewriting the avionics from scratch. This should require a years-long process of testing, external auditing, and approvals. I'd even go so far as to say in flight, we should require competitor review. That's right, no trade secrets. If you want your Hello World up in the air, you better let your competitor vet the source code. This is an engineering boondoggle and an embarra…
Agreed, the MAX was only designed to beat the competition to market with the least amount of re-certification and re-training. That gamble (with Boeing's reputation, the FAA reputation and most importantly, people's lives) did not pay off. They won't get away with rushing though certification of a complete rewrite of their flight software. The world is watching now. Time to cut losses and junk the MAX entirely.
Re: Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator
#6Considering that MCAS is an added ‘feature’ to avoid stall, you would think they could just remove it and be done. After all, it wasn’t part of the original 737. Sadly, from my limited understanding, due to the engine location change on the airframe, the plane naturally pitches up... making it necessary. One thing seems clear to the external observer, this is a 737 in name only.
It is my understanding it is only necessary to make the Max 'compatible' with the 737 so nobody needed to be retrained and recertified.
Re: Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator
#7If I understand correctly "fixing" MCAS would be quick but audit found out more problems and Boeing started basically a refactoring of their computer architecture (including hardware changes) which itself takes a lot of time and didn't pass new audit yet.
Re: Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator
#8If I understand correctly "fixing" MCAS would be quick but audit found out more problems and Boeing started basically a refactoring of their computer architecture (including hardware changes) which itself takes a lot of time and didn't pass new audit yet.
Didn't I read from another hacker news poster that the software engineering and design was outsourced? Anyone know?
Re: Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator
#9Considering that MCAS is an added ‘feature’ to avoid stall, you would think they could just remove it and be done. After all, it wasn’t part of the original 737. Sadly, from my limited understanding, due to the engine location change on the airframe, the plane naturally pitches up... making it necessary. One thing seems clear to the external observer, this is a 737 in name only.
It is my understanding it is only necessary to make the Max 'compatible' with the 737 so nobody needed to be retrained and recertified.
Yes, that was the gamble. But as others have pointed out, instead of actually ‘updating’ the plane Boeing changed it materially. Calling it a 737 was a stretch at best.
Re: Delays in Boeing Max Return Began with Near-Crash in Simulator
#10FWIW, the near-crash in the simulator was apparently not directly related to MCAS, but occurred when Boeing "simulated what would happen if gamma rays from space scrambled data in the plane’s flight-control computers."
> In one scenario, the plane aggressively dove in a way that mimicked what happened in the crashes on the grounded jetliner, the people said. While such a failure had never occurred in the 737’s history, it was at least theoretically possible.
> Because at least one of the pilots who flew the scenario in a simulator found it difficult to respond in time to maintain control of the plane, it needed to be fixed, according to two people familiar with the results.
However, the next sentence seems to belie the implication that this was just an edge case:
> The answer was to modernize what was a relatively antiquated design on the 737.
So, of all the things that caused Boeing/FAA to realize and the accept the 737 needed to modernize its decades-old design, it was a simulated edge case involving "gamma rays from space"? Hate to be overly cynical, but that sounds like the kind of CYA thing you'd say when you don't want to admit it you made a huge mistake by deferring modernization in the first place, of which the MCAS concept was a major and disastrous symptom.