Boeing Whistle-Blower Says Proposed 737 Max Fixes Aren't Enough (bloomberg.com) 102
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: A whistle-blower at Boeing Co. is urging aviation regulators to add additional protections to the grounded 737 Max. Curtis Ewbank, who has previously raised concerns about the plane's design with congressional investigators, said in comments filed with the Federal Aviation Administration that a proposal to mandate fixes to the jet didn't address multiple hazards identified in the two fatal Max accidents and earlier incidents involving the 737. "Clearly more actions are required to revise FAA processes so that it accurately assesses airplane design and regulates in the public interest," Ewbank said in the comments, posted on the Regulations.gov website.
The FAA has proposed multiple changes to the plane following the crashes that killed 346 people before allowing it to carry passengers again. The system that was driving the jet's nose down in both accidents would no longer activate repeatedly and various steps were taken to minimize the chances it would malfunction. The agency is also proposing to require multiple other revisions to the plane, such as an improved flight-computer system to improve its redundancy. Ewbank said the FAA and Boeing should do more to prohibit faulty readings from the sensor implicated in both crashes and improve the plane's warning systems. In addition, the agency should do a broader review of how pilots react to emergencies and do a more thorough redesign of the flight-control system, he said.
The FAA has proposed multiple changes to the plane following the crashes that killed 346 people before allowing it to carry passengers again. The system that was driving the jet's nose down in both accidents would no longer activate repeatedly and various steps were taken to minimize the chances it would malfunction. The agency is also proposing to require multiple other revisions to the plane, such as an improved flight-computer system to improve its redundancy. Ewbank said the FAA and Boeing should do more to prohibit faulty readings from the sensor implicated in both crashes and improve the plane's warning systems. In addition, the agency should do a broader review of how pilots react to emergencies and do a more thorough redesign of the flight-control system, he said.
It should work in theory (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It should work in theory (Score:4, Informative)
You know this isn't the first time we're designing planes right? Also not the first time we're applying redundancy.
These are problems everyone in the industry has thought about. The upgrades will fix the problem caused by cheap and incredibly stupid design and in the process bring it in line with what is standard for redundancy control schemes.
Re:It should work in theory (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sure the planes will be perfectly safe, just keep track of what the new renamed 737-Max is called now:
Boeing 737-8
Boeing 737 -10
...
...and make sure it is not on your boarding pass.
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It is Ok for a computer to have control of the systems. When they work, they can do thing better than what a human can do, or at least on average better.
However you should have the ability for humans to take control in a split second. That is why I am not a big fan of the Self Driving car that doesn't have a steering wheel and brake pedals. As we as the drive may need to take control at a moment notice.
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It is a mistake to allow computers direct access to flight control surfaces.
Just take it out and retrain all the plots to anticipate and deal with the pitch up.
Right.. So Airbus with their fly by wire stuff is totally off the reservation? No more autopilots, auto throttles or pretty much any form of automation is allowed? I don't think so..
The problem isn't the pilots don't know how to deal with this, but that they are conditioned to not notice and it will take a lot of training to recognize that with increasing AOA's that the backpressure required to further increase the AOA goes DOWN.. That's not unheard of, but it's hard to recognize. So the FAA regulations
Re: Eliminate the System (Score:1)
Re: Eliminate the System (Score:4)
They're corporations; they will always cheap out by design. FAA are who dropped the ball.
As for the airlines accepting the workarounds: at almost every job I've had, non-technical business-types make technical decisions and order me to "make it work". The more I protested, the worse the working relationship got.
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Wasn't one of the main selling points from Boeing that they don't have to retrain pilots? US airlines included?
Wasn't the overall design concept of retrofitting an old airframe with all kinds of cruft (including MCAS) done to that same end?
Weren't Boeing employees saying 6+ years ago that they wouldn't fly on these planes [youtube.com], and some of them are going to drop out of the sky? (And these are manufacturing guys that didn't even mention MCAS.)
"Asian flight companies" don't operate in a vacuum. Everything in this
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Sully had some harsh words for the 737-Max: [npr.org]
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They had these model numbers from the beginning. The same way the 737-NG is called 737-700, 737-800, 737-900 and so on.
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the problem caused by cheap and incredibly stupid design
I don't think it's simply a matter of being 'cheap'. After all, they have plenty resources. It's likely more an issue of increased complexity. And since you can 'multiply' all complexities of the individual components as opposed to adding them, it's easy to see where that is going in a digital era.
I'm quite sure that all parts of the system work pretty much exactly as they were designed, but add the parts together and it's very easy to miss something. But for whatever bad press Boeing is getting, they most
Re:It should work in theory (Score:5, Insightful)
the problem caused by cheap and incredibly stupid design
I don't think it's simply a matter of being 'cheap'. After all, they have plenty resources. It's likely more an issue of increased complexity.
People don't cheap out only because they lack resources. Usually they do it just to make more profit. You don't have one bolt and two screws through an interior panel forcing you to use more tools because the automaker couldn't afford to use three bolts. It's because those two screws were cheaper. Who gives a fuck if they'll hold up as well as bolts? The interior warranty is only three years! Boeing cheaped out and only used one of two present AoA sensors for MCAS because it would save money. And people died.
I'm quite sure that all parts of the system work pretty much exactly as they were designed,
The MCAS system was designed like shit. You never, ever trust a single sensor without even any cross-checking of other sensors which could give you a clue as to whether the sensor is working correctly, let alone without cross-checking with the additional identical sensor that you could be using. That design was shit and the person who designed it was shit and the person who signed off on it was shit. Just fucking manslaughtering shit.
But for whatever bad press Boeing is getting, they most certainly are not stupid
No, they're evil.
and are very unlikely to be purposely malicious.
What do YOU call it when they skip standard best practice safety processes to save a few hundred bucks per plane? I call that malice. It's a deliberate willingness to risk others' lives for profit.
That it takes a whistle blower is food for thought, i'll admit that much.
That they have to be forced to do the right thing proves that they're deliberate fuckups.
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Why would they fuck up so badly to screw their own business? Even if they were the most psychopathic capitalists, they can do the napkin math and see that safety issues are bad for business. And seriously, i don't think they are all psychopaths.
Ever worked at a big company? Ever seen how slow things move there? Ever experienced that every man on the floor knows exactly what is wrong yet management has no clue? That's not an exception, it's the norm, and it's inherent to a large organization.
Now, i'm not try
Re:It should work in theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would they fuck up so badly to screw their own business?
Because the bean counters from McDonnell-Douglas are now running Boeing, and they thought they could get away with it without consequences, and double especially any consequences for themselves. They're probably right about that last part.
Ever worked at a big company? Ever seen how slow things move there? Ever experienced that every man on the floor knows exactly what is wrong yet management has no clue?
Sure, but I've also witnessed that management actively refuses to understand what is going on because their job depends upon it. It's not like nobody is telling them what the problems are.
Now, i'm not trying to talk right any failure they made. They fucked up, badly. The difference here is that i do not think there was any intentional malicious intent.
You can't call it murder because they didn't set out to specifically kill people. They only took actions that a reasonable person skilled in the art would know would be at risk of killing people. That's why they deserve a lesser but still homicide-related charge.
Re:It should work in theory (Score:5, Informative)
Because the bean counters from McDonnell-Douglas are now running Boeing, and they thought they could get away with it without consequences, and double especially any consequences for themselves. They're probably right about that last part.
Not just probably right, definitely right. Jim McNerney, CEO during the design and testing of both this program and the 787 production safety lapses [wsj.com], stepped down in 2015 with a $3.9 million-per-year pension. He earned $20 million-plus in each of his last couple of years as CEO. Those were the consequences he faced.
Extremely bad management at Boeing: Link to doc. (Score:2)
See my comment to a previous story about extremely bad management at Boeing [slashdot.org].
One of the links in that comment: You can download "Internal Boeing communications about the 737 Max". [nyt.com] (PDF file, 35 megabytes)
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Because the bean counters from McDonnell-Douglas are now running Boeing, and they thought they could get away with it without consequences, and double especially any consequences for themselves. They're probably right about that last part.
Boeing has never been the same since McDonnell-Douglas used Boeing's money to buy their way into controlling Boeing. The same senior management group who screwed up MDD have wound up taking Boeing to the edge of self-destruction.
From the USAF tanker debacle through to FOD in brand new 787s & KC-40s and the MCAS disaster in between, Boeing is no longer the engineering company that introduced the 777. The 787 roll out on July 8th 2007 when it was practically held together by tape & glue and the 787 ba
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They charged $80,000 extra to turn on a warning that there was something wrong with the angle of attack sensor they used for the MCAS system.
The plane has two angle of attack sensors. MCAS using only one of them could simply be attributed to gross negligence and utter stupidity.
Not including as standard an angle of attack disagree warning is intentionally doing something maliciously evil.
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They charged $80,000 extra to turn on a warning that there was something wrong with the angle of attack sensor they used for the MCAS system.
The plane has two angle of attack sensors. MCAS using only one of them could simply be attributed to gross negligence and utter stupidity.
Not including as standard an angle of attack disagree warning is intentionally doing something maliciously evil.
For a $100 Million aircraft adding $80,000 amounts to what? That's not even 1/10%. Chicken feed, which airline would say "nawh, keep the extra safety equipment, I'll keep the 80K to pay for the first flight's worth of fuel."
I guess airline profit margins are pretty thin, in fact, that's WHY they are buying the 737-MAX, to save a few dollars on fuel costs per passenger mile.
Oh and by the way, redundancy isn't easy. You cannot just look at both, you have to decide what you are going to do in the case they
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In this case the additional safety equipment is a light.
It doesn't cost thousands of dollars. It might cost hundreds with certification overhead.
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Why would they fuck up so badly to screw their own business?
Because seeing that in time is a far more complex task and requires even more experience than doing it right. They saved a penny here, a penny there and they shaved down the redundancy that makes safe air-travel possible in the first place. All in the name of short-term profits, the MBA-sickness at work. And at some point, they saved a few pennies too much and it ends up costing them billions.
The root cause is people that only see numbers and not the big picture and that have no understanding of complexity
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Why would they fuck up so badly to screw their own business?
That wasn't their aim - they did a CBA and calculated that the upside to their bottom line from cheaping out and 'streamlining' the design process, was larger than the potential downside of a failure. In their corporate mind, (because a corporation is a person, don'tcha know), their only failure was the CBA miscalculation they made.
Even if they were the most psychopathic capitalists, they can do the napkin math and see that safety issues are bad for business.
Oh - you mean like the auto industry capitalists who at various points during the last 50 years have made the same kind of gamble? BTW, in a lot of those user-killing 'safety iss
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Why would they fuck up so badly to screw their own business? Even if they were the most psychopathic capitalists, they can do the napkin math and see that safety issues are bad for business.
Human beings are phenomenally bad at judging the risk of unlikely events. This isn't taking a dig at Boeing, this is people in general, intelligent people across a wide range of industries and specialties.
Why would they fuck up so badly? Because they thought "what would possibly go wrong?" and then got the wrong answer. Or maybe they got the right answer and asked the follow up question: "but how likely is that to happen?" and got that answer wrong. We see this time and time again, whether we think those hi
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Because there is no such thing as a perfectly spherical market actor of uniform density operating in a frictionless market with only similar unicorns as participants.
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If you are pressured to meet your quarterly numbers to shareholders (a bunch of random people many do not give a rat ass about Engineering or the products you sell) every 3 months. All they care about is Q3 >= Q2*1.10 If Q1 Q4 then Sell in Q4, They will still make a profit, from the gains of Q1-Q3. But they sold their stock at Q4 so it is no longer their concern until it becomes profitable again.
The problem with the market today, is a pure disconnect between how well a company is doing and its stock pr
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Why would they fuck up so badly to screw their own business?
Because what is very rational and highly incentivized to an individual or some groups within the massive Boeing organization is not necessarily in the interests of the company as a whole. If an individual manager gets his group to achieve his assigned goals, he gets a big bonus in the coming quarter, but the costs of cutting corners to the company are theoretical and not realized until multiple quarters or even years later (at least in this case).
I do not actually believe anyone chose to allow this plane t
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Boeing offered airlines the choice of redundant sensors. Airlines made the choice to buy planes without such redundancy. You can -- and should -- fault Boeing for not making this a standard option, but to absolve carriers of blame as well lets them off the hook for similarly bad decisions.
Carriers rightfully assume even the minimal option is a save plane and that pilots with the specified training can operate it safely. That was very much not the case here and the blame is exclusively on Boeing, nobody else.
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Carriers rightfully assume even the minimal option is a save plane and that pilots with the specified training can operate it safely. That was very much not the case here and the blame is exclusively on Boeing, nobody else.
So, by your logic, the design was so obviously flawed anyone ought to have spotted it, yet carriers are absolved from any blame because they "rightfully assume" the plane is safe because Boeing says so.
Riiiiiiight.
I simply cannot understand why people are so willing to let carriers off the hook here. They knew damn well MCAS was a hack, but they were fine with it because it meant they could save tons by not having to recertify pilots. They're just as complicit as Boeing, yet everybody insists on utterly i
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"Boeing offered airlines the choice of redundant sensors. Airlines made the choice to buy planes without such redundancy."
My understanding is that all of the planes had redundant sensors, but MCAS only used one of them no matter how much money you spent.
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The MCAS system was designed like shit. You never, ever trust a single sensor without even any cross-checking of other sensors which could give you a clue as to whether the sensor is working correctly, let alone without cross-checking with the additional identical sensor that you could be using. That design was shit and the person who designed it was shit and the person who signed off on it was shit. Just fucking manslaughtering shit.
That's a gross generalization that would result in an overly complex system. Complex systems have complex problems. It's best to keep things as simple as they need to be, and no more complex.
The correct approach is to perform a FMEA. [wikipedia.org] The FMEA should result in the acknowledgement that a failure of the single sensor would result in a catastrophic failure. Actions need to be taken to prevent the catastrophic result. This is where the mistake was made. A blanket policy of redundancy in everything would
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Not really. Newer aircraft have at least triple redundant AOA sensors, but the 737 is ancient.
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My point is, there are cases where redundancy is warranted, and cases where it's not. It sounds like the AOA sensor is a good candidate for redundancy. However, if a sensor failure results in a 3% fuel economy reduction, for example, it likely doesn't need redundancy.
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Even in a car a single sensor is never blindly trusted. The crank angle sensor is cross checked with the cam angle sensor, the knock sensors, vehicle speed sensor... Why do you think it makes sense to do it in a plane carrying passengers? That's bananas.
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Equating a door switch to a critical sensor is typical AC dipshittery. ACs demonstrate why they're too scared to associate their name with their comments about 99% of the time. Congratulations, you're part of the majority.
Just more proof that Slashdot shouldn't allow anonymous comments.
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Even in a car a single sensor is never blindly trusted. The crank angle sensor is cross checked with the cam angle sensor, the knock sensors, vehicle speed sensor... Why do you think it makes sense to do it in a plane carrying passengers? That's bananas.
Cross checking automotive sensors is less common than you might think. It's mostly due to California legal requirements. Sensors out of range are quickly flagged. However, a sensor stuck within a plausible range is likely only checked for plausibility "once per trip". That means a sensor could fail, and not be detected for several hours.
For example, an intake manifold pressure sensor is continuously checked for plausibility, and circuit continuity. In a split second at startup, the sensor is compared
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Re:It should work in theory (Score:5, Informative)
By contrast, the 737 Max has much, much larger engine nascelles - see here [insider.com].
Not only were these new engines significantly larger - see how the entire nascelle is now forward of the leading edge of the wing on the Max - but they were significantly heavier. These two things served to significantly alter the aircraft's Centre of Mass.
Centre of Mass is important when the aircraft is in stable flight - as a designer, you balance the lift and drag around the fuselage so that, in level flight, there is no effort required on the controls to keep that stable, level flight. Literally, you could let go of the controls and the aircraft would just carry right along, perfectly trim and level (everything else being equal).
Then along comes the Max. Boeing went this route - making the decisions to fit these huge new engines - because they knew that their original design proposal for the Max would have used an older generation of engine that burned considerably more fuel. This would have meant that the Max would have been unable to compete against aircraft such as the Airbus A320NEO (New Engine Option), which, unlike the 737Max, was much more of a "ground up" design.
So Boeing needed to make a bunch of changes to fit the new engines to the Max. First, they had to alter the landing gear to be "telescopic" in nature, because there wasn't enough room in the wing compartments for the "longer-legged" landing gear to fit without it compressing first. All this because the outside diameter of the new engine nascelles was so much larger, they would literally have dug in to the tarmac without raised gear...
But this was relatively trivial. Note that the aircraft did not receive modifications to the tail-plane (used to trim nose pitch (angle) in flight), despite the centre of mass moving down and forward, which in turn meant that the centre of mass moved *away* from the centre of lift.
So to hide and cover up from this cluster#### of design decisions, Boeing fitted MCAS, the "Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System" - basically a type of fly-by-wire that allowed aircraft computers to over-ride pilot control inputs in certain flight conditions. Boeing did not tell pilots about MCAS - references to it were REMOVED from differences training and aircraft documentation.
Then, just to make things even worse, Boeing designed MCAS to be triggered from something called the "Angle of Attack" sensor, a small detector placed on the nose of the aircraft that can tell whether the aircraft is flying "straight and level" or if it is trying to pull the nose up too aggressively.
Here's where Boeing got stupid again. To cut costs, they fitted just a single AoA sensor. They made the second a cost-option extra, for airlines wanting an expanded cockpit instrumentation set. Guess what? Airlines didn't buy the option because they didn't understand what was missing.
Can you tell where this is going yet? Allow me to explain... If the AoA sensor failed, or became blocked or jammed with debris - like say a large fly or locust (Africa crash? - this is me guessing...) then the data it gave the flight computers would prompt MCAS to trigger. But even better, even when you thought that the issue had resolved and the aircraft you were in had stopped trying to push itself into a nose-dive... MCAS would go quiet for a brief period and then wake back up and start the whole process over again.
It was this weird
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Re: It should work in theory (Score:1)
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Your overall comment is correct, it was a series of bad design decisions based only on profit.
But you do have a couple of factual errors:
- All planes were fitted with TWO AoA sensors. On all planes MCAS was only connected to one. The paid option you are talking about was the "AoA disagree light", which originally was part of the standard package but some penny-pincher moved to optional. With that, the pilots would at least have an idea that one of the AoA sensors was faulty, but it would not help much for t
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Overall you're right, but there are a few things incorrect about your details:
Firstly, there's nothing inherently wrong with the changed dynamics of the plane. The key was that pilots would need to have been type certified and retrained to fly the plane due to its handling. MCAS was created to make the new plane act like the old one. It wasn't "covered up" nor removed from training. Fundamentally its existence negated the requirements for pilots to do training in the first place leading to no one knowing in
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Your summary is good in general, I would however just question one thing.
Did Boeing really try and be 'cheap' with the AOA sensor? I seriously don't think this was Boeing just being cheap.
More likely in my view.
AOA sensors are traditionally not as crucial to passenger aircraft. So Boeing probably kept the same regular options to customers as they always have with respect to AOA sensors. Customers just placed theirr orders as usual.
Most acknowledge Boeing added on MCAS so they could keep the flying character
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All 737s had 2 sensors. MCAS was linked to just one of them to cut costs (simpler system). The optional feature was a "sensor disagree light", which might have helped pilots possibly.
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Not only were these new engines significantly larger - see how the entire nascelle is now forward of the leading edge of the wing on the Max - but they were significantly heavier. These two things served to significantly alter the aircraft's Centre of Mass.
A heavier engine should add a nose-down moment. MCAS was implemented to cure the opposite, a nose-up moment.
To be precise: One that got stronger as angle of attack increases. This made the MAX by itself unstable in pitch: Once it pitches up, this movement accelerates right into a stall. Which will crash the airplane if this happens at low altitude. That's why the MCAS retrim should keep the nose of the airplane down. Which it does if the angle of attack vane works correctly.
What really caused the probl
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The allowable range of CoG on this aircraft is several feet long, and the allowable takeoff trim range is also quite large (to account for factors such as total weight, CoG, prevailing atmospheric conditions). Technically, the aircraft should
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Indeed. Like having people that do not understand the application domain write software for it is such an excellent idea. Right there I see several life-sentences for the "managers" that made that decision. The developers are blameless, development risks from selecting personnel is not their responsibility.
I'm not sure how you'd characterize this (Score:2)
People on the inside knew about the problems [nytimes.com] (archive.is link [archive.is]), and some of them felt at least a little bad about their role in the cover up:
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Oh no, you don't know what you are talking about. The MCAS is not an essential system. In fact, the 737-Max is as good as any airplane without an MCAS.
The 737 basic design is very low to the ground and cannot accommodate newer and more efficient larger-diameter turbofans. Airbus had used this strategy on the A320 to create the A320 Neo , which was incredibly successful. So Boeing panicked after American Airlines ordered 130 or so A320Neos, and decided to make the 737-Max with newer large diameter engines. T
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Basically, they chose to fake the old plane using software, due to greed. It failed horribly. No personal criminal liability for anybody that is responsible. That is the second problem.
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It was right out impossible for Boeing to make the landing gear taller. There simply is no room for longer main gear in the fuselage the way it is mounted right now. You can see that pretty well if you look at the bottom of the aircraft - the 737 main gear bays don't have doors. But even if there was room could that, the 737 doesn't have slides for its overwing exit because it sits so low - the passengers are supposed to slide over the extended flaps. Longer landing gear would require slides, requiring chan
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It was right out impossible for Boeing to make the landing gear taller.
They went and did just this for the MAX 10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] Though this was done for the purpose of improving margins during rotation, as it is quite long.
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it is not quite the same and can only be used during the rotation because the 737 has no overwing slides
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Like I said, the overwing slides would require modifications to the fuselage. This means losing all the grandfathering and this in turn means that the aircraft would not be certified - it is not built to the modern standards. Basically, it would be easier for Boeing to develop a narrowbody from scratch.
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Oh no, you don't know what you are talking about.
I wouldn't be so sure – your post shows that it is you who is clueless.
The MCAS is not an essential system.
Wrong for the MAX. In the versions before the MAX, it was indeed not flight critical. With the MAX things changed and MCAS became much more aggressive and flight critical as well.
See, as designed and without MCAS, the MAX was unstable in pitch at low speed and high power. The reason was the much increased amount and more forward location of the suction force on the engine intakes. In order to regain stability, the existing MCA
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Unfortunately, MCAS is essential. No amount of control input is sufficient to counteract the pitch-up caused by high thrust at low speed, and since modern jet engines take a few seconds to react to throttle, you cannot fix the pitch-up that way either. The only thing that works reliably is trimming, because trimming controls the entire horizontal stabilizer, not just the comparably small elevator at the end of it.
Incidentally, that is also why no amount of elevator input could save the plane when MCAS took
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You DO understand that they actually did option 3.. All of the above.
Yea, they went with the big fan - Why? Because it was more efficient and that's what this business is about, eking out the cheapest cost per passenger mile you can. That's why Boeing, Airbus and any other manufacturer is running headlong into carbon fiber and higher and higher bypass engines with hotter and hotter burners running at higher an higher pressure ratios. Efficiency is what this is all about.
But they ALSO modified the landin
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But that is just the issue here: They did cheap and incredibly stupid design, _despite_ "everyone in the industry" knowing that this can only lead to a catastrophe. So have they identifies every instance of cheap and incredibly stupid design and have they identified the people responsible for it and removed them? Because if not, they will have more, yet unidentified cheap and incredibly stupid design and they may even have cheap and incredibly stupid fixes. The FAA is worthless as a quality control gate at
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However it seems a lot of manufacturers are taking cues from Software Development methods. Which is part of the problem. They want to get the product out as fast as possible. Software we can get away with a lot of extra crap, because we just can apply a patch when we find a problem. For machines like Airplanes and Cars, there is only so much a software patch can do, and the cost of failure is much higher than say your Companies Accounting System.
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The first time they designed the Max wasn't the first time designing an airplane either.
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Southwest Airlines.
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Re: The Internet has been ruined. (Score:2)
Profit (Score:2)
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Critical Fields... are they really? (Score:5, Interesting)
Oddly enough, I just watched a Netflix Documentary about the Challenger space shuttle crash. It got me thinking on our perception of safety in critical systems.
What's interesting about the Challenger crash was the tremendous amount of good will and honesty that appeared to be throughout the process. The contractor was calling alarms. NASA had all the right people and processes.
Yet, at the end of the day, there were executive decisions made that should be familiar with anyone who has worked. Sales, politics, deadlines, schedules... and the result was a deadly.
I'm not here to say BAD EXECUTIVES, because I've been in those meetings and I don't envy it. Without NASA 'selling' the space shuttle program to the public and government, there is no space shuttle program. Without results and schedules, funding may go away and then you don't have a space shuttle program at all. At the end of the day, political selling is basically the same as actual selling.
The same is largely true for Boeing. They felt they had to deliver for whatever reason (Airbus competition...) and this is what they came up with.
It gels with my experience as well. In the early stages of my career, I worked in 'mission critical' areas. I designed mining safety equipment and later core network routers.
When I later moved onto more tech oriented and business oriented software... the weird things is I didn't see much of a difference in the actual resultant products. It all really depended on the project and people. Some were really well run. Others were not.
Just off the top of my head. You look at say two tech titans. Google and Amazon. Totally unregulated and yet, they're probably the most reliable systems I've ever seen as far as the user experience goes.
Even for things you might think of as needing higher security. Google's authentication is probably of a higher quality than the 'critical' systems like banks or healthcare software.
I'm just talking out loud here. I'm not saying regulation is useless. I'm just saying that people have this perception that these regulated critical systems industries are 'better' or 'safer' or 'more secure' when the end result may not hold water.
It's a weird problem to solve and I don't have the answer.
organizational psychology is what you describe (Score:3)
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I'm just talking out loud here. I'm not saying regulation is useless. I'm just saying that people have this perception that these regulated critical systems industries are 'better' or 'safer' or 'more secure' when the end result may not hold water.
From experience creating an FDA regulated product, at the end of the day, the FDA approval is highly dependent on a mountain of self-reporting. The heart of the matter is a diligent and honest assessment of risks and applying appropriate mitigation strategies. Inspectors cannot be expected to understand the issues in enough detail to challenge a very wrong assessment. They may catch some things. Maybe. But they are never ever going to catch everything.
Redundancy (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not like anyone is ever going to fly this thing again.
Why not? Once this aircraft has been recertified, it's going to be just about the safest plane in the sky. Not to mention that it will be more dangerous getting to the airport once than making multiple cross country multi-stop trips in this thing.
We knew this already last week, (Score:2)
when we was told it is now "safe" according to FAA.
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:2)
ResidentCur's Third Law (Score:1)
Oh, gosh, wowie, but the Free Market... (Score:2)
And government can't do anything right, only big business can do it right.
Y'know, I've got a bridge for sale.....
The only airplane that won't crash... (Score:2)
...is one that doesn't take off. Ban airplanes.
This is TRUMP'S FAA (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Hopefully, Europe's EASA will be brought into this.
They already are IN this, ankle deep - head first. They have already said that they reserve the right to refuse the FAA's judgment and keep the 737 MAX grounded in their airspace until THEY are satisfied with Boeing's fixes. The Canadians have done so as well.
This means that the FAA may let the 737 MAX fly again with passengers, but the rest of the world may not honor the normal "you certify, we certify" agreements on this one.
So your wish has already come. The FAA has lost it's prestige in the world.
A
Let's not forget about basic crew training (Score:1)
Whistle blower protection is not adequate (Score:2)