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Boeing's 737 Max troubles deepen, taking airlines, suppliers with it:
Boeing shares continued their slide Monday after explosive messages last week revealed a top pilot had concerns about a system on the 737 Max that was later implicated in two fatal crashes.
Several Wall Street analysts downgraded Boeing, fretting about the fallout from the crisis that has barred the manufacturer from delivering its best-selling planes that make up around 40% of its profit.
Boeing's stock was down 3.8% Monday afternoon, shaving more than 80 points off the Dow Jones Industrial Average, but had pared losses from earlier in the session
The messages made public Friday included an exchange from a top Boeing pilot to a colleague in 2016 that expressed his worries about an aggressive flight control system on the Max, whose performance he called "egregious." The pilot, who now works for Southwest, said in the exchange that he "unknowingly" lied to regulators. That same pilot months later told the FAA to remove the system, known as MCAS, from pilot procedures and training materials.
The FAA said Boeing knew about the messages for months and scolded Boeing in a letter for not releasing the documents earlier. Boeing defended its training materials for the 737 Max, which regulators deemed safe in 2017, and said it told regulators on "multiple occasions" about the broadened capabilities of the now-questioned system.
[...]Boeing's board is holding a regularly scheduled meeting in San Antonio that concludes Monday, a spokesman said. The board stripped CEO Dennis Muilenburg of his chairmanship on Oct. 11 to focus on getting the Max back into service.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday October 22 2019, @09:19AM (3 children)
https://www.airlive.net/breaking-thai-airways-boeing-777-300-suffered-an-uncontained-engine-failure-during-takeoff/
Looks like the 2017 honeymoon is over:
https://simplywall.st/stocks/us/capital-goods/nyse-ba/boeing
https://www.thestreet.com/quote/BA.html (needs various JS sources to display the chart)
Disclaimer: I'm a European who has benefitted from the existence of EADS/Airbus, and who sees Boeing's behaviour in the market to be anti-competitive, and also artificially buoyed by the US MIC. My schadenfreud lobe is highly tuned to all bad Boeing news and views.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @09:43AM (2 children)
Personally, I don't care about Boeing at all, but it doesn't mean they should crash and burn, literally. Many, many airlines use 777 and 787 for long haul and there aren't really any other replacements.
Furthermore, engine failures are not really Boeing's fault. They don't make these things.
source: http://www.flugzeuginfo.net/acdata_php/acdata_7773_en.php [flugzeuginfo.net]
So most likely, we may be looking at GE problem. Engines should not fail like this, but really, the test are like the HDD tests with millions of hours between failures :S
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Muad'Dave on Tuesday October 22 2019, @01:00PM
How apropos! I'm reading "Airframe" [amazon.com] right now. If you haven't read it, you should. It's very interesting and goes into the relationships and politics of airframe manufacturers and engine suppliers (and even the friction between Airbus and US companies).
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday October 22 2019, @10:19PM
Congratulations, you're either disinterested or uninterested.
However, as my disclaimer made quite clear, I am neither. I don't like the inevitable consequences of this:
https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s
https://qz.com/1572381/the-relationship-between-boeing-trump-and-the-federal-government/
because it leads to consequences like this:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/boeing-wins-11-billion-bonanza-from-gop-tax-overhaul
because a market that runs on bribes isn't free, and I'm all for the free market.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by eravnrekaree on Tuesday October 22 2019, @02:20PM (4 children)
I wonder if it would be possible for Boeing to build a scaled down 777 or 787 to replace the 737. It seems to take Boeing about 10 years from start to finish to design a new jet these days. Maybe just reusing technology and making a smaller version of the 787 would be faster?
Nevertheless, 737 Max has to be reapproved. Even a scaled down 787 would take years and Boeing does not have years. Its simply not possible to have this delayed, the ramifications would be too great, otherwise. Its not simply a cronyism issue. If Boeing went bankrupt, it could take a good part of the US economy with it and cause a recession. Suppliers and airlines would go bankrupt, Southwest especially. So its just a can't have it scenario. So Max will fly again. They will give some tissues and pat the victims from the last two incidents on the back but a the end of the day, Max is coming back.
Boeing is too big to fail. Anyway, I actually think Max can be made safe, but they badly screwed up the original implementation and Boeing has self inflicted its own wounds, because it clearly could have gotten Max right, and we wouldn't be talking about this. And it made matters worse for itself by acting in deceptive ways and even still to this day has a "you dont have a right to know this, just trust us" kind of attitude problem. Just read about their most recent comments on the Test Pilot messages scandal. They held the messages for months and right
now issue remarks that "we didnt realese it because we didnt know how to characterize it".
This oozes with the same old attitude coming from Boeing that, there is something bad here, but we don't want to tell you what it is, just put your blind faith in us because we are confident that by fortuitous chance the problem won't manifest, even though we know it would, but we are confident your guardian angels will keep you safe, so we will keep our fingers crossed and say some prayers for you,.
The problem with Boeing is the internal culture of the company. People blame the FAA, but it can't fix problems with corporate culture. Is the FAA supposed to design the whole plane? The culture in Boeing now is run by obsessive wall street greed. I heard Cramer say that Wall Street got burned by Boeing. Actually Boeing got burned by Wall Street, trying to placate Wall Streets demand.
The Quality and Performance based culture of Boeing build around Engineers and valueing Engineers and human assets is what made Boeing great. The Wall Street driven profit based attitude has brought it to ruin. While they might be able to get away with it in some industries, Jets are a little bit unique because of all of the precision engineering and narrow error margins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday October 22 2019, @05:33PM (2 children)
Scaling down the larger aircraft would most likely give similar problems as they encountered when they tried to upscale the 737. Which is one of the "why's" behind type acceptance. The real sin seems to have been allowing the 737-Max to share the 737 type rating when it had significant differences in both power and handling characteristics. And yes, the FAA seems to have allowed Boeing quite a bit of latitude in self-determining that it was the same type aircraft. No, the FAA didn't have to design the plane, but it was the FAA's responsibility to understand the engineering changes in terms of its type and agree or disagree that it was the same type of aircraft. The FAA does employe aerospace engineers, after all.
And yes, the internal culture of Boeing seems to have been wrong, as well.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday October 22 2019, @10:07PM (1 child)
However, Boeing desided to just gaffer tape on a bigger noise-maker, but Airbus did this:
https://www.aviatorjoe.net/go/compare/A350-1000/A340-600/
Less thrust goes goes faster and further!?!?!?
Lesson: Don't spec gaffer tape as the solution in aeronautics.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday October 23 2019, @02:49PM
Yeah but the big key on the 737 was that to mount those engines they had to set those bigger engines further ahead, which changed the aerodynamics, specifically which led to the issues at hand....
But for Airbus... yeah it seems weird. Then you see the Trent XWB's on the 350 are 16,640 lbs (33,280# for a pair) where the Trent 556's on the 340-600 are 10,660 pounds (42,640# for four) Better thrust out of the four engines but it chews through 26 liters of fuel per nmi (max fuel load / published range which is a stupid comparison because you don't get max range from full tanks but...) where the 350 burns 18.27 liters per nmi, and the 350 carries less overall fuel yet gets better range. So yeah, they sacrificed a little passenger load for a a lighter and more clean-burning aircraft.
But then again, the 340 and 350 don't share type rating (although the 330 and 350 do....)
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 22 2019, @05:35PM
People who lose family members should kill execs. They would quit fucking around real quick if every time a big corporation pulled this shit the whole top shelf got scrubbed clean.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Spamalope on Tuesday October 22 2019, @03:45PM
I watch a Vlog from an airline pilot with knowledge of the topic. He said the messages don't refer to MCAS, but do refer to a problems with the auto-trim system as the preliminary testing was underway. Apparently the information that should have been shared with the test pilots wasn't, especially about ongoing changes. The test pilot told the FAA there hadn't been changes, when in fact there had but the pilot hadn't been told even though he should have been. (thus the inadvertently)
So if true, this is a further indictment of the Boeing culture that's unrelated to MCAS but sounds like it is on the surface.