How much longer to fix the 737 Max

I doubt that there will be any delay in autonomy (now that little planes could, with a little programming, take off and fly to a destination sans pilot.) Even including the two MAX accidents, we are in the safest period of aviation in history.

Well, that depends. Is the standard being able to get it right or being able to never get it wrong?

More precisely, will the person writing the program for the flight controls know all the fault modes and be able to write an intelligent way of handling them?
 
This is what happens when businessmen write about aviation and get it totally wrong.
The general public and politicians have formed their opinions on Boeing and the MAX based on news reports by reporters who have little technical understanding of the subject matter on which they are reporting.
 
Analyzing the business problems, caused by business people, is what got Boeing into this mess. "Businessmen" analyzing the aftermath have good insight.
 
Well, that depends. Is the standard being able to get it right or being able to never get it wrong?

More precisely, will the person writing the program for the flight controls know all the fault modes and be able to write an intelligent way of handling them?
according to 25.1309....there needs to be a safety analysis on all safety critical systems.....this would be one and that should be done.
 
Analyzing the business problems, caused by business people, is what got Boeing into this mess. "Businessmen" analyzing the aftermath have good insight.
Yes. If they stick to business. But when they start opining about the stabilizer trim and the speed the crew was flying and they get it totally wrong, they have horrible insight.
 
To summarize: "human experience and judgement bad, government judgement and government-approved rules good." That about it?
.

Not sure that was the point of the article. It even said that for the FAAs part they also can’t stop these sorts of crashes caused by inexperienced pilots who only know how to fly when the automation is functional.
 
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Ok - to add to my pix from yesterday, another FB page in KC had more pix from the flights in and out of MCI a couple days ago.

What’s the deal with the main gear doors? It looks like they are missing. Is it just a camera angle?


Edit: no, the 737 doesn’t have gear doors. I never noticed that until now.
 
View attachment 82772 View attachment 82773

Ok - to add to my pix from yesterday, another FB page in KC had more pix from the flights in and out of MCI a couple days ago.

What’s the deal with the main gear doors? It looks like they are missing. Is it just a camera angle?
That's how 737 doors have always been, back to the -100.. another half baked design feature lol :rofl:
 
What’s the deal with the main gear doors? It looks like they are missing. Is it just a camera angle?
737's don't have main gear doors. Seriously.

Nauga,
from where cost is king
 
That's how 737 doors have always been, back to the -100.. another half baked design feature lol :rofl:

Yup, I guess short haul planes don't need no stinkin' gear doors.

Here's an old -200

Boeing_737-200_planform.jpg
 
You guys are fast. By the time I figured it out and edited my post you already answered it.

I’ve seen the -37 on the ground, from a window seat, and far overhead. I never saw one closely enough to notice the gear like this.
 
PS, the Citation X has exposed main gear as well..probably others too.
 
Yup, I guess short haul planes don't need no stinkin' gear doors.

Here's an old -200

Boeing_737-200_planform.jpg
What a machine! I always liked how the old 737 landing lights fold out from the bottom of the flap fairing. Some cool design choices..
 
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Ok - to add to my pix from yesterday, another FB page in KC had more pix from the flights in and out of MCI a couple days ago.

What’s the deal with the main gear doors? It looks like they are missing. Is it just a camera angle?

Not sure what you mean, the 737's don't have gear doors.
 
^I swear I saw one of those landing at Coronado here some years ago.
 
So what is the purpose of main gear doors and why can’t flush fitting wheels serve the same purpose?
 
Gear doors! If the stowed gear does not contribute to extensive drag why have them?
 
so is the Max being built under the same production certificate
Yes. But when you put any aircraft under such a "microscope" of global analysis I'm surprised more issues haven't been "discovered." In the real world this item would have been dealt with a OEM bulletin or worse case an AD. I wonder how an Airbus A320 NEO would fair under such detailed scrutiny?
 
Yes. But when you put any aircraft under such a "microscope" of global analysis I'm surprised more issues haven't been "discovered." In the real world this item would have been dealt with a OEM bulletin or worse case an AD. I wonder how an Airbus A320 NEO would fair under such detailed scrutiny?

This isn’t the real world?

The one where FAA let Boeing do whatever they wanted for so long they don’t know how to even start getting them back in compliance? :)
 
This isn’t the real world? The one where FAA let Boeing do whatever they wanted for so long ...
Well, in the real world, truth be told, it's not only Boeing. You better add Airbus, Textron, Lockheed, GE, Safran, Northrup, L3, United Technologies, and 100s of other national/international aviation companies to your list as they use the same FAA/Designee oversight system as Boeing. As to compliance, Boeing never stopped producing aircraft so they continue to be in compliance with the current oversight requirements just as all the other aviation manufacturers are. No conspiracy.;)
 
Well, in the real world, truth be told, it's not only Boeing. You better add Airbus, Textron, Lockheed, GE, Safran, Northrup, L3, United Technologies, and 100s of other national/international aviation companies to your list as they use the same FAA/Designee oversight system as Boeing. As to compliance, Boeing never stopped producing aircraft so they continue to be in compliance with the current oversight requirements just as all the other aviation manufacturers are. No conspiracy.;)

No conspiracy. Just corruption and hubris. Normal human behavior.
 
No conspiracy. Just corruption and hubris. Normal human behavior.
My, you are a bit cranky today.
The FAA doesn't let any company "do whatever they want". I've worked under Organization Designation Authorization for a large jet-engine manufacturer for several years. Nothing changed when we went to ODA from direct FAA supervision, except that the DERs became RCEs and got much pickier. The FAA supervision was never "direct" anyway; many certification tests were delegated to the company. What Boeing did was likely breaking the rules; going outside the bounds of their original compliance check list. Heck, they may have even modified the checklist; if so, then the FAA was in on it.
Whilst I've been accused of being cynical on the human condition, I don't see corruption and/or hubris very often.
 
My, you are a bit cranky today.
The FAA doesn't let any company "do whatever they want". I've worked under Organization Designation Authorization for a large jet-engine manufacturer for several years. Nothing changed when we went to ODA from direct FAA supervision, except that the DERs became RCEs and got much pickier. The FAA supervision was never "direct" anyway; many certification tests were delegated to the company. What Boeing did was likely breaking the rules; going outside the bounds of their original compliance check list. Heck, they may have even modified the checklist; if so, then the FAA was in on it.
Whilst I've been accused of being cynical on the human condition, I don't see corruption and/or hubris very often.

Interesting point. Still doesn’t really explain why the behavior wasn’t caught. To say Boeing was trying to hide it would head back toward that conspiracy word, and I don’t think so.

The emails were pretty full of hubris. Not much other way to describe those. Not directly related to this specific problem really, other than a hint at a broken culture, which I had seen elsewhere before and mass hubris was definitely involved.

Don’t know how the system works at Boeing but in another life I saw a different problem that’s pretty common...

Worker A and Regulator A work together “all the time”... majority of projects. Both get lazy. Something goes wrong.

Regulator B is called in and looks over both their work and is immediately appalled. Writes report for the bosses of both Worker A and Regulator A who both think their respective staff are good at what they do, but got way too chummy and lazy with each other.

Massive damage control dumpster fire trying to save both employees.

It’s one of the reasons I won’t allow a product team not to have members of other teams and even departments on their review boards. Still a risk they’ll all cover for each other across the larger company “team” but much lower. Management of both sides has to watch for it.

Can get really ugly when the big corporate rah-rah sessions are in full swing. Watched one company convince itself because everyone was participating and bought in to a formal quality assurance system that the end result from all departments was actually high quality.

They started believing their made up self-assessments they gave each other to meet the bonus numbers for the system. Ugly. Capital U, ugly.
 
The emails
Was a big turning point for me. Initially it was pretty easy to blame poor pilots or a poor pilot training culture.., I was one of them "can't a 'real pilot' just disconnect the elec trim and hand fly if it goes bonkers?" but as we learned more about this it's obvious that the MCAS system was a half thought out, bare bones piece of trash, with just about zero training to the crews on the MAX, and Boeing having, what honestly appears to be, zero regard for a safe well built product. Sure, corporations are designed to save costs and maximize profit, but surely having a plane sitting grounded with lawsuits, a reputation hit, etc., is not a cost free route to take

These emails and texts are the black and white inside of what the culture of the company currently is.. for anyone who hasn't read them, or still wants to defend a crappy system that killed 346 people, these are worth a read.. even if all the lingo and jargon is not understood, and we give allowance for conversations people thought were "off the record" or just employees venting to each other, there is clear evidence here of what the inside of the company actually is all about
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenthe...6e3fda752a935bc0df/optimized/full.pdf#page=84

I honestly don't know how, at this point, anyone can defend MCAS or Boeing.



upload_2020-2-16_15-51-29.png


upload_2020-2-16_15-52-37.png
 
I honestly don't know how, at this point, anyone can defend MCAS or Boeing.
I don't think it's a point of defending anything as much as it is to find out how the oversight system failed. And while you can cherry-pick certain tid-bits out of the narrative the entire oversight system is much bigger and more complex than a few emails imply or other items publicized in the media. The context where those items fit into the big picture is everything.

The MCAS option came early on (10 years ago or so) from wind tunnel testing, not flight testing. In it's original form the MCAS system was a robust and very limited system that passed the criteria of a FAA "minor failure" category or less. Unfortunately, as the control force feedback problem persisted and as more people became involved that original safety assessment remained in the paper trail. While there are a number of items being discussed as to how the final MCAS version vs the original MCAS version made it into production, it's my understanding the removal of the 2nd data feed to the MCAS early on and an increase in the MCAS activation move rate late in the game assisted in lining up the holes in the Swiss cheese the most. From what I've seen, I think when this review of the MCAS/FAA/Boeing is over and all the papers are out, the review of the MAX will be the largest CAA review of an aircraft in aviation history.
 
... it's my understanding the removal of the 2nd data feed to the MCAS early on and an increase in the MCAS activation move rate late in the game assisted in lining up the holes in the Swiss cheese the most.

By this do you mean the option to order only a single AoA vane on an aircraft where nearly everything on board that’s critical for flight has double redundancy or more?

This is what I read early on and was just floored that any engineer involved wouldn’t be screaming bloody murder, even if every marketing, sales, and whoever else in the company disagreed and wanted to sell a cheaper version to carriers dumb or desperate enough to buy it.

Was that article about a single vane being in charge of an airliner, incorrect?

Just seems incredibly stupid even IF the assumption was that the pilot could override it.

Similarly when the news came out that nobody calculated the forces needed in the cockpit to overcome the system... my engineer brain was thinking... WTF are all the engineers DOING over there, anyway?!

Just a whole lot of WTFs, really.

I can’t even deploy a web server without a backup system ready to go. LOL.

You’d think airliner engineers and backups would be lifelong bedfellows such that they’d lose their minds if anyone told them to use a single analog data input to anything.
 
By this do you mean the option to order only a single AoA vane on an aircraft where nearly everything on board that’s critical for flight has double redundancy or more?
There is no option to order only a single AoA vane. All 737s have two AoA vanes just like every other transport jet I've ever flown.

Each AoA vane feeds it's respective Flight Control Computer. The master FCC alternates based on which pilot is flying.
 
By this do you mean the option to order only a single AoA vane on an aircraft
No. The original MCAS version also had an accelerometer input, in addition to the AoA input, as the MCAS was only needed when the aircraft went into "ballistic" mode. The AoA option was for a 3rd AoA as all aircraft have 2 as stated above.
wanted to sell a cheaper version to carriers dumb or desperate enough to buy it.
FYI: the air carriers dictate the market not the other way around. The Airbus A320 NEO was serving that market and the MAX was Boeing's response. As to a "cheaper version," if that was the case then there would only be Airbus aircraft flying as everything built by Airbus is always cheaper dollar wise when compared to like aircraft. They make their money on the support side.
Was that article about a single vane being in charge of an airliner, incorrect?
Technically yes. However, if it were to say a single AoA vane could lead to a catastrophic failure risk then it would be closer to being correct.
Just seems incredibly stupid even IF the assumption was that the pilot could override it.
To pick up from the answer above and without getting into the complexity of risk analysis, the pilot's interaction to a system failure is one of the first items addressed in determining it's failure risk. There is actually FAA approve guidance on how the aircrew reacts right down to the length of time it takes to react. If I recall during the original risk assessment of the MCAS it was determined the aircrew would react with the 3 second limit, which along with the rest of the original assessment requirements, kept an MCAS failure below the catastrophic risk and the major risk categories. So there's more than a simple "assumption" if the crew can intervene, it's actually part of the certification guidance. Hence the ongoing regulatory review of cockpit data saturation levels and pilot training to see if the 3 second rule and other guidance is still valid.
when the news came out that nobody calculated the forces needed in the cockpit to overcome the system
Another cherry-picked item. The forces were calculated back when the manual trim system was certified years ago. There was zero requirement to recalculate for MCAS install. In the Ethiopia case, it's my understanding there are other issues involved outside the MCAS involvement.
I can’t even deploy a web server without a backup system ready to go. LOL.
And if you had to build a web server under an equal level of regulatory oversight it would be interesting to see if that backup would still be there or simply offered as an option especially if your customer picked the price point it would buy at.;)
 
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