Boeing

[vogue65]

It is unfortunate that we can't seem to have a civilized conversation on a technical subject.   Has everything become politically charged and adversarial? 

Nevertheless, the 737 Max is a case study in many aspects of engineering, technology and business practices.  The AF is always interested in lessons learned and I'm sure there will be a few lessons to be learned from this situation.

[Cheeks]

It is unfortunate that we can't seem to have a civilized conversation on a technical subject.   Has everything become politically charged and adversarial? 

Nevertheless, the 737 Max is a case study in many aspects of engineering, technology and business practices.  The AF is always interested in lessons learned and I'm sure there will be a few lessons to be learned from this situation.

Yes, lessons can be learned.  Hopefully the media will cover it properly so we can all decide. 

[tower912]

And...... one post in, there it is. 

[Jockey]

And...... one post in, there it is.

The usual fool.

I wonder how many people he has driven away from this site.

[PBRme]

The usual fool.

I wonder how many people he has driven away from this site.

Pot meet Kettle

[Hards Alumni]

Pot meet Kettle

That's pretty laughable.

[Benny B]

It is unfortunate that we can't seem to have a civilized conversation on a technical subject.   Has everything become politically charged and adversarial? 

If you are honestly asking the question and want an honest answer, you should be less politically charged and divisive yourself.

[dgies9156]

Back when I was in grad school, we had a case study on the ethics of the engineers surrounding the DC-10. As you technies know, the DC-10 had a new cargo door design that had been problematic. Ultimately, a DC-10 crashed in Paris killing 346 persons. The cause was an improperly latched cargo door.

At the time, McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed were engaged in a "to-the-death" battle for widebody trijet superiority between the DC-10 and the Tri-Star. Engineers allegedly rushed the design process to get the DC-10 to market ahead of the Tri-Star. The debate we had was whether the rush to market and potential profitability issues caused engineers to to make a less than thoroughly robust DC-10 cargo door.

Fast forward about 45 years. Did the rush to get the Max in the market lead to short-cuts in the design and certification process. While engineers think in terms of process -- if "A" then "B" and therefore the plane should fly without a hitch -- the human factors and lack of training/education into the MCAS system may have been an ethical if not legal failure on the part of Boeing. How much of a rush to design and build and get into market with a perceived commonality with earlier 737 models led to the accident.

Like the DC-10, which I flew on far more than I could measure, I think the Max is a safe airplane.  But it's only a safe airplane if you know how to fly it and that's the ethical dilemma.

[Jockey]

Back when I was in grad school, we had a case study on the ethics of the engineers surrounding the DC-10. As you technies know, the DC-10 had a new cargo door design that had been problematic. Ultimately, a DC-10 crashed in Paris killing 346 persons. The cause was an improperly latched cargo door.

At the time, McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed were engaged in a "to-the-death" battle for widebody trijet superiority between the DC-10 and the Tri-Star. Engineers allegedly rushed the design process to get the DC-10 to market ahead of the Tri-Star. The debate we had was whether the rush to market and potential profitability issues caused engineers to to make a less than thoroughly robust DC-10 cargo door.

Fast forward about 45 years. Did the rush to get the Max in the market lead to short-cuts in the design and certification process. While engineers think in terms of process -- if "A" then "B" and therefore the plane should fly without a hitch -- the human factors and lack of training/education into the MCAS system may have been an ethical if not legal failure on the part of Boeing. How much of a rush to design and build and get into market with a perceived commonality with earlier 737 models led to the accident.

Like the DC-10, which I flew on far more than I could measure, I think the Max is a safe airplane.  But it's only a safe airplane if you know how to fly it and that's the ethical dilemma.

Best post yet on this debate.

[jsglow]

So I haven't been around scoop much.  Not much interested in rehashing college basketball.  More interested in Knebel's elbow.  But I do come back to see that my 737 thread had to get locked down because of some a-clowns that invade this community with their continuous BS.  We can't have nice things anymore.  Makes me sad.  Thanks for relaunching vogue.

[vogue65]

Back when I was in grad school, we had a case study on the ethics of the engineers surrounding the DC-10. As you technies know, the DC-10 had a new cargo door design that had been problematic. Ultimately, a DC-10 crashed in Paris killing 346 persons. The cause was an improperly latched cargo door.

At the time, McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed were engaged in a "to-the-death" battle for widebody trijet superiority between the DC-10 and the Tri-Star. Engineers allegedly rushed the design process to get the DC-10 to market ahead of the Tri-Star. The debate we had was whether the rush to market and potential profitability issues caused engineers to to make a less than thoroughly robust DC-10 cargo door.

Fast forward about 45 years. Did the rush to get the Max in the market lead to short-cuts in the design and certification process. While engineers think in terms of process -- if "A" then "B" and therefore the plane should fly without a hitch -- the human factors and lack of training/education into the MCAS system may have been an ethical if not legal failure on the part of Boeing. How much of a rush to design and build and get into market with a perceived commonality with earlier 737 models led to the accident.

Like the DC-10, which I flew on far more than I could measure, I think the Max is a safe airplane.  But it's only a safe airplane if you know how to fly it and that's the ethical dilemma.

The DC -10 is an interesting case, wasn't the first blame directed at the grounds crew who failed to properly secure the hatch?

I don't understand the mistrust of journalists trying to give us the story.  Good reporting today on 200 pilots flying simulators at Renton and successfully handling the A.I. glitch.

Also, there is much information out there about the engines, reversers, and weight considerations.

One business decision led to another and another, that might be the heart of the ethical dilemma.

[Benny B]

Back when I was in grad school, we had a case study on the ethics of the engineers surrounding the DC-10. As you technies know, the DC-10 had a new cargo door design that had been problematic. Ultimately, a DC-10 crashed in Paris killing 346 persons. The cause was an improperly latched cargo door.

At the time, McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed were engaged in a "to-the-death" battle for widebody trijet superiority between the DC-10 and the Tri-Star. Engineers allegedly rushed the design process to get the DC-10 to market ahead of the Tri-Star. The debate we had was whether the rush to market and potential profitability issues caused engineers to to make a less than thoroughly robust DC-10 cargo door.

Fast forward about 45 years. Did the rush to get the Max in the market lead to short-cuts in the design and certification process. While engineers think in terms of process -- if "A" then "B" and therefore the plane should fly without a hitch -- the human factors and lack of training/education into the MCAS system may have been an ethical if not legal failure on the part of Boeing. How much of a rush to design and build and get into market with a perceived commonality with earlier 737 models led to the accident.

Like the DC-10, which I flew on far more than I could measure, I think the Max is a safe airplane.  But it's only a safe airplane if you know how to fly it and that's the ethical dilemma.

The difference I see between the Max 8 and DC-10 cases is twofold:

1) The engineering and physics behind the DC-10 issue were tangible.  The MCAS system, unfortunately, is not.  IOW, both the design flaw and mechanism failure - along with the solution - on the DC-10 can easily be explained to a 5th grader... i.e. an average person doesn't need an understanding of IT or aerodynamics to feel safe provided they have a conceptual understanding of "Grog say stronger rod no bend like wimpy rod compromising latch mechanism... ergo, Grog keep people safe."

So try explaining the actual operation of MACS - i.e. how the software code works to prevent a stall, how it's triggered, how it could falsely engage, etc. - to anyone on the street (other than a software or systems engineer) let alone the modification to the software that intends to solve the problem.  Chances are, your average person is either a) lost by the time you start explaining how a pilot simply can't call his/her son for help when the screen turns blue or b) simply going to dismiss anything you say knowing that the robots in the cargo hold who really fly the plane are just going to do whatever the damn hell they want anyway.

2) MACS is designed to itself be a fail-safe without its own fail-safe.  In other words, its purpose is to monitor for human error and correct those mistakes, but if the software makes its own mistake, it relies on human monitoring and intervention to correct itself. 

Think of someone in the hospital (pilot) who's hooked up to a heart monitor (AoA sensor)... if the monitor flatlines, the doctors/nurses (i.e. the MACS) automatically proceed to d-fib.  However, if the monitor falsely flatlines, only the patient immediately knows whether his/her heart is still beating, and if he/she's distracted by something else (anesthesia, perhaps), they may end up with a couple thousand volts unnecessarily.

And looping back to #1, if you don't know who (or what) the plane is in the above analogy, think of how difficult it's going to be getting the general public to understand - and more importantly, buy into - the solution.

Full disclosure: I own stock and out-of-money call options in BA.

[Plaque Lives Matter!]

Coming from an industry that has faced highly intensified (and rightful) clamp downs on individual company oversight in the past decade, wouldn't surprise me if there was some new regulations coming. Granted I am comparing medical to aviation but people seem to get peeved when deaths occur.

[Dr. Blackheart]

So I haven't been around scoop much.  Not much interested in rehashing college basketball.  More interested in Knebel's elbow.  But I do come back to see that my 737 thread had to get locked down because of some a-clowns that invade this community with their continuous BS.  We can't have nice things anymore.  Makes me sad.  Thanks for relaunching vogue.

+1 Well said.

It's time to move on to a National League Central Pissing Thread

[Cheeks]

And...... one post in, there it is.

There was nothing wrong with my post.  Let the media report the facts in a fair fashion, I don’t know why in today’s day and age this is even controversial statement.  I am hopeful they will, as I stated.  There could be valued lessons learned, and in my opinion the more objective the reporting, the more likely those lessons will take hold.

[TAMU, Knower of Ball]

Is it bad that I don't typically read threads on the Superbar until they get locked?  Sure there are a few topics I enjoy or are passionate about that I'll post in, but  my favorites are the locked threads. I get to sit back, eat some popcorn, and just enjoy without the risk of letting myself get drawn into the muck.

God bless scoop. It is a wonderful and terrible place.

[vogue65]

There was nothing wrong with my post.  Let the media report the facts in a fair fashion, I don’t know why in today’s day and age this is even controversial statement.  I am hopeful they will, as I stated.  There could be valued lessons learned, and in my opinion the more objective the reporting, the more likely those lessons will take hold.

Yes, and let Boeing be forthcoming and trasparent.
Let them not hide under the trade secret ruse.

Ebrare may be acquired by Boeing, Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas years ago, Lockheed, Martin, Grumman, and Republic are no more.  Raython runs Beechcraft and Sikorsky, there is a lot "flying under the radar".  GE makes engines for the 737 MAX 8 in partnership with the French and Boeing is our major aerospace defense contractor.  Boeing is the definition of globialization, this not a political statement.

Therefore, a lot is riding on this whole issue,  it goes far beyond some computer software.

Journalism is very difficult as reporters who are not experts in some area try and ferret out  the revevlant facts and then explain them in laymans language.  When journalists report on a subject that is one of my specialties they usually get it 80 to 90 % right, I don't fault them and I don't attribute nefarious motives.

Since Scoop has eliminated the political it has become much more civilized. When we argued politics I regret that I would get down and throw mud with the best of you guys.

[NorthernDancerColt]

It is unfortunate that we can't seem to have a civilized conversation on a technical subject.   Has everything become politically charged and adversarial? 

Nevertheless, the 737 Max is a case study in many aspects of engineering, technology and business practices.  The AF is always interested in lessons learned and I'm sure there will be a few lessons to be learned from this situation.

So much has been going on in my life lately that I haven’t really made a concerted effort to read up on the intricacies of the Lion Air and Ethiopia crashes and subsequent grounding of the 737 Max. From the snippets I’ve seen, is my rudimentary understanding accurate??...that basically the aircraft was designed with engines that are almost too powerful for the aerodynamic characteristics of the aircraft. This theoretically can cause the aircraft to nose-pitch upward at times, leading to dangerous stall characteristics...and Boeing was aware of this peculiarity so it installed onboard state of the art computer anti-stall software....which often compounds the problem because it is tasked to gather sometimes faulty info from sensors, which can in turn cause incorrect adjustments from pilots basing their countermeasures on these faulty readings. Or, the pilots have not been properly trained in the latest software version of the anti-stall measures. So, a 737 Max can be either A)in a normal flight nose attitude...in which case the sensor either reads correctly, thus employing no software-based automatic correction or B) in a normal nose attitude, but now the sensor reads incorrectly and employs the automatic software correction and now the pilot has to consult his training on how to overcome the faulty “correction” which may have put the aircraft into a dive....or C) actually in a stall characteristic with the correction software employed and the nose dropped or raised accordingly.

Am I understanding this stuff correctly? At risk of being called a Luddite or somehow aligned with Trump’s words immediately following the FAA grounding....

Are we better not having layer upon layer of complex systems whereby pilots, in a sometimes extremely limited timeframe window, have to be troubleshooting gurus and swift expert software disablers to disengage a “fix” gone wrong? Isn’t manual operation of controls in either VFR or IFR by real human pilots operating relatively simple instruments the way to go? Was Boeing’s installation of the anti-stall computer program proof of a bad design attribute of engine power relative to fuselage design?

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

There was nothing wrong with my post.  Let the media report the facts in a fair fashion, I don’t know why in today’s day and age this is even controversial statement.  I am hopeful they will, as I stated.  There could be valued lessons learned, and in my opinion the more objective the reporting, the more likely those lessons will take hold.

Stop being so passive aggresssive. That is exact same place you took the previous thread before it was locked down. You know what you are doing.

[D'Lo Brown]

Was Boeing’s installation of the anti-stall computer program proof of a bad design attribute of engine power relative to fuselage design?

My understanding was that the MCAS system was intended to make the flight characteristics automatically behave more like the prior 737 models. The issue was that the plane did not behave like the others on its own; due to the changes intended for better efficiency it just flew different.

Any answer to "was the design of the plane bad" is totally subjective at this point. It seems pretty unlikely to me but it's a step too far from where things stand. The intent of an antistall system is entirely reasonable, and good. The problem arises when the system misfires and there isn't enough time to identify/correct (such as during takeoff).

I know I'm way oversimplifying, the issue is multifactorial, like any issue these days. As perfectly described in an earlier post.

[dgies9156]

Brother Benny B:

You are right about software and trying to explain/understand it. I agree it is complex and very few people in a group will ever understand it. But, that's part of the problem.

The pilots who fly the Max may not be able to understand the software but they have to understand the engineering logic of, "If "A" then "B". If the nose pitches up out of the blue, then you cut the autopilot and fly the plane manually and re-engage the autopilot at flight level. U.S. pilots apparently have understood that.

Boeing was in a to-the-death battle with Airbus over twin-engine, single aisle superiority in the world. To acknowledge that the plane had been heavily re-designed and did not have commonality with other "versions" of the 737 family would mean more training, more certification and probably more pilots, since a pilot  probably could not operate both a 737-700/900 series and the Max.

Simply put, this is not the difference between a 757-200 and a 757-300. Or a 727-100 and a 727-222 from earlier years.

In a rush to get the Max certified and in worldwide airline fleets, did Boeing underplay the differences between the Max and the 700 to 900 series of the 737 family? Most likely they did. Was this done with malice or greed? Probably not malice but certainly with the notion of maximizing shareholder return.

People of good character can and do disagree over these issues. And I doubt the engineers and scientists who certified the Max realistically believed they would have had the problems Lion Air and Ethiopian Air had. But the realistic question should be what drove the "rush to certification," and whether the process was short-cutted to maximize profitability.

We shall see. And, I hope but I doubt this will be done in the interest of aviation safety and not in the interest of some politician's political future.

[vogue65]

As I see it the problem was not that the plane had a complete redesign.  The problem is that it didn't.  They changed the engines which changed everything, they did not redesign the wings, or allow for a new center of gravity.  They added 17 inches to the front wheel reach, great.  They made do, they made a business decision.

For a pilot there is one big deal and that is altitude.  So on climb out we have extra thrust, not much altitude and the computer taking over and pushing the nose down.  Great.

On a slightly political note, sorry, the Aerospace Industries Association is more powerful than the NRA.  The American public would be suprised how powerful they are.   They will be working behind the scene full time to fix this problem. 

[NorthernDancerColt]

As I see it the problem was not that the plane had a complete redesign.  The problem is that it didn't.  They changed the engines which changed everything, they did not redesign the wings, or allow for a new center of gravity.  They added 17 inches to the front wheel reach, great.  They made do, they made a business decision.

For a pilot there is one big deal and that is altitude.  So on climb out we have extra thrust, not much altitude and the computer taking over and pushing the nose down.  Great.

On a slightly political note, sorry, the Aerospace Industries Association is more powerful than the NRA.  The American public would be suprised how powerful they are.   They will be working behind the scene full time to fix this problem.

Thanks. This really clarifies it for me. It calls to mind the cost-benefit analysis that can be so troubling. I was still a naive youngster when I learned about cost-benefit in both a business law class and products liability class. If the costs of making a change to an unsafe product outweigh the costs of absorbing lawsuits and remuneration of victims, corporations will let people die via a defective product. Of course, if too many people die, the government will take action and ground your airplane.

  There are some cool videos on YouTube of jetliners and extreme vertical take-offs....some mandated by local noise ordinances and some just with pilots apparently having fun with no passengers aboard. When I see how extreme the nose is pitched upward, it makes me wonder why these planes didn’t stall and if the 737Max’s counter-stall software is even necessary given the extreme vertical takeoff prowess of other designs.

[D'Lo Brown]

Thanks. This really clarifies it for me. It calls to mind the cost-benefit analysis that can be so troubling. I was still a naive youngster when I learned about cost-benefit in both a business law class and products liability class. If the costs of making a change to an unsafe product outweigh the costs of absorbing lawsuits and remuneration of victims, corporations will let people die via a defective product. Of course, if too many people die, the government will take action and ground your airplane.

  There are some cool videos on YouTube of jetliners and extreme vertical take-offs....some mandated by local noise ordinances and some just with pilots apparently having fun with no passengers aboard. When I see how extreme the nose is pitched upward, it makes me wonder why these planes didn’t stall and if the 737Max’s counter-stall software is even necessary given the extreme vertical takeoff prowess of other designs.

Then you will really love flying in an electric airplane 10-20 years from now. They will take extreme vertical takeoff to an entirely new level.

(and not due to the noise concerns, since they are extremely quiet)

[MU82]

The crew of a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 Max declared an emergency shortly after takeoff and returned to Orlando's main airport on Tuesday after reporting an engine problem, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

The FAA grounded this type of aircraft earlier this month following two fatal crashes of the popular model.

Airlines aren't allowed to fly passengers under the FAA's order. The Southwest plane, which was not carrying passengers, was bound for Victorville, Calif., where the carrier is storing the aircraft in a facility in the western Mojave Desert.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/26/southwest-boeing-737-max-reportedly-made-an-emergency-landing-at-orlando-international-airport.html