yup, those greedy plane manufacturers think having deathtraps flying is the best way to encourage consumer confidence and sell more planes!
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Airlines beginning to ground Boeing 737-Max following Ethiopian Airline crash [UP: Trump orders grounding of fleet in the US]
- Thread starter OtherWorldly
- Start date
yup, those greedy plane manufacturers think having deathtraps flying is the best way to encourage consumer confidence and sell more planes!
Well, that would be the logical conclusion given what happened at Boeing. As a Boeing shareholder, frankly I think people should go to prison. It is probably not going to happen, but Boeing leadership 100% deserves it for ignoring engineers and putting profits before lives. If Airbus did something similar, they would be raked over the coals just as much.
your logical conclusion is that airplane manufacturers are trying to put deathtraps in the sky?
okedoke then.
Perhaps it might have more to do with the obsession of placating the shareholder with ever increasing profits.
From what i was reading yesterday on various outlets, yes they want to have it back in the air eventually but they also said they'd take their time and not rush the process:
https://www.seattletimes.com/busine...-return-to-flight-but-timetable-is-uncertain/
Those must be brand new, looks like they're running out of space to store them.Meanwhile...
The final tally of costs involved (beyond the obviously much more tragic and higher to be appraised loss of human life) would be interesting to know.Meanwhile...
That grounding is going to last a little bit longer it seems:
Geez..
Geez..
A group of young engineers all trying to get promoted to a cushy senior position and meet a tight deadline.
Remember it was the crew's fault. They wouldn'T have been allowed to fly in the US!
I hope I didn't go to school with any of 'em, 's about all I can say about that shit.
Yes this is the thing. It truly seems like a bad plane design where they tried to fix it with a bit of duck tape (aka MCAS).
And now it looks like the software, itself designed to address a design fault and in need of a software update, may be prone to... further hardware faults. Flying death trap indeed.
Perhaps there is nothing wrong with the airframe in itself but the airframe engine combination seems to make the plane crash unless saved by an electronic solution that sometimes malfunction. Checks out as a shitty design.
The planes in the employee parking lots are probably new planes coming off the assembly line. Essentially, the planes are 99% complete and are just waiting for a solution to be designed and granted approval by the various regulators. Keeping the assembly line running is one of the few sensible decisions they made.
It's most likely that when an acceptable fix for the planes is found, Boeing will send teams to each airport where there are grounded planes and apply the design fix on site.
Ever heard of the saying of a death by a million little cuts? [1]
The reality is that no one person was like "let's make an unsafe plane!"
But things like regulatory capture where instead of FAA employees certifying the plane, it's actually outsourced to Boeing employees.
Or the fact that the reason why the MCAS system was put in place was because Boeing wanted a quicker time to market so they instead put a bigger engine on a smaller existing frame.
And had to add that system to compensate. [3]
And the reason why they wanted to get to market quicker is that Airbus had done something similar but their plane was higher off the ground so didn't require much modification to add bigger engines.
Don't also forget that instead of a new training programme, the changes were delivered via a presentation on an iPad [4]
Also before the first Lion Air crash Boeing did not even inform pilots of the existence of the MCAS system which was the cause of two plane crashes [5]
So sure. No one person was like "let's sell a death trap" but the organisational culture set by leadership clearly led to shortcuts being taken in the name of delivering quickly so that they can compete with Airbus's comparable plane.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normality
[2]https://www.apnews.com/7ac207a84525442caac8223a9e5b60fd
[3]http://www.b737.org.uk/737maxdiffs.htm
[4]https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/22/us/m...s-lion-air-ethiopian-airlines-intl/index.html
[5]https://www.seattletimes.com/busine...atic-systems-change-linked-to-lion-air-crash/
The whole point of the A320 Neo and the 737 Max is that they are more efficient, but as far as the pilot is concerned, they behave the same and require no new training. Airbus managed this, but Boeing did not.
AFAIK, the bigger engines and their high placement simply create more lift than in other 737 models. Because of that, the same certification that allows pilots to fly 737s would not be valid for a 737 Max. So what they did is, since the engines create more lift than normal and increase the angle of attack more than in a normal 737... Let's put an electronic system that nudges the nose of the plane down as required, without the pilot even noticing, so that it feels exactly like a normal 737 and we can get that certification!
And that's when the MCAS system was born.
So it's not that the flight characteristics are bad, it's simply that they are different, and that makes pilots require new training to fly them, which makes the plane more expensive for airlines unless you come up with the MCAS system.
Here is a great forum for all the nitty-gritty from people in the know.
So what you're saying is that if they ditched the MCAS, retrained the pilots and called it 737.5 everything would be fine? I got the impression that it didn't only behave differently without the MCAS but that it behaved badly under certain circumstances. But if that's wrong then the solution seems obvious.
It does behave worse, but it's still safe (or so we're lead to believe). This is why after the plane got certification, they actually quietly gave MCAS a LOT more control than it had when the FAA initially certified it because they noticed the plane was more prone to stall in certain conditions- not because they were concerned about certification.
I think initially it was able to trim 0.6 degrees every 10 seconds but they changed it to 2.5 degrees AFTER FAA certification. If it was just to replicate an old 737, why would they implement such a drastic change after certification? This plane was just so rushed to the market and anything negative about it has been shut down. Even faulty software blamed on pilot error. I honestly cannot understand why airlines would choose it over an A320neo after all that has come out about it.
Yeah. But then they'd have to consider it a new plane. The thing is that AFAIK, a pilot can only be licensed to fly one model of plane at a time, because they need to have a complete level of familiarity with the aircraft. That's why some airlines fly only one model of aircraft, all their pilots can fly all their aircraft and that makes operation easier.
For instance, Ryanair only flies Boeing 737 planes, and so the 737 Max disaster is a hit for them. Other low cost airlines that fly Airbus 320 now have an advantage because the 320 Neo was actually designed for big turbofans.
So I don't know what the way out for Boeing is, the MCAS system was very rushed, poorly designed, and unsafe, so perhaps a new, milder version that pilots were trained for could work.
After all, modern planes are fly by wire and have a degree of hand holding. For instance, modern fighter jets are aerodynamically unstable and require constant adjustment of controls surfaces by the computer to even fly straight and not disintegrate mid-air, and on top of that they prevent excessive maneuvers. So, things like this already exist.
Of course, the problem is that the 737 is a very old design that, AFAIK, doesn't have a fly by wire system like the A320 and other Boeing planes do, and the MCAS was a slapped on patch versus an integral part of the design.
But yeah, this is a case of company politics and corruption allowing huge oversights in safety.
At this point it more about negligence than oversight
Until this plane is taking out of commission for good, I will be checking my itinerary every time to see what plane I'm flying on. If it's a 737 Max I'm rebooking.
These latest revelations pretty much guarantee I'll never step foot on a 737 MAX regardless of how much they 'fix' it. The fact they have to rely so much on software to counter drastic aerodynamic changes compared to the old planes is proof that the design is fundamentally flawed.
It might hurt Boeing in the medium term, but they should just scrap the MAX and stick with the original 737 series designs. Even if they return to service, plenty of people will refuse to fly in them and airlines will refuse to buy them.
It might hurt Boeing in the medium term, but they should just scrap the MAX and stick with the original 737 series designs. Even if they return to service, plenty of people will refuse to fly in them and airlines will refuse to buy them.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/28/politics/boeing-investigation-expands-787-dreamliner/index.html
"Federal prosecutors have expanded their probe beyond the Boeing 737 Max aircraft to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, The Seattle Times reported Friday, citing two sources familiar with the investigation.
The Department of Justice subpoenaed Boeing for records pertaining to the Dreamliner's production in South Carolina amid claims of subpar work, the sources told the Times."
787 had subpar production too 🤣
Now what?
Woof I just flew on a 787.
This shit is getting scary
Jeez, Boeing is just ruining its own reputation with so much shady business going on in the past few years.
It always cracks me up that whenever an American company does something in a sub-par way, it's actually because they outsourced it to dumb, filthy, cheap Indians. How convenient.
That, however, sounds like racist and xenophobic protectionism. India has a huge software industry, with plenty capable and qualified engineers, and a blooming aerospace industry. The Boeing 737 Max doesn't crash because it has Indian software in it, it crashes because Boeing did a very poor design and the very American FAA botched the most basic safety testing procedures in the risk that Boeing's competitor would beat them at releasing a more fuel efficient competitor. There are advantages and disadvantages to outsourcing, outsourcing means you don't have direct oversight of what the subcontractor is doing, and you have to implement measures to make sure the outsourced elements of your product work correctly and up to specification. However, in the end, the MCAS system was approved by Boeing engineers, integrated by Boeing engineers, approved by the FAA, and we don't even know whether the MCAS itself was even outsourced.
It always cracks me up that whenever an American company does something in a sub-par way, it's actually because they outsourced it to dumb, filthy, cheap Indians. How convenient.
This kind of stuff always appear once an in-depth investigation of companies is done. Most of the times there is always faults or problems that are hidden away to protect your name brand (even more with super expensive items such as airplanes).
The indian part is pretty nasty as Elfotografoalocado says, India has pretty nice engineers, so it is better to just put the focus on them being junior engineers and not seniors, which is the problem, not that they studied in India (lack of personal experience!).
Well, to be fair, while the 737 Max is not a reputation luxury plane like the 787 is, it is the backbone of sales, and a huge portion of the revenue of many airlines. So I imagine this affects their revenue and reputation as much as the 787, considering this is much more grave and has already cost hundreds of lives.
Boeing should really have designed a new plane from scratch, or at least a new landing gear that lifted the plane up from the ground and didn't force them to have the engine's poorly placed. Of course I'm no aerospace engineer, so I have no clue whether that's possible or not.