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The past 10 months have not been good for Boeing for all sorts of reasons—capped off by the failure of the company's Starliner commercial crew vehicle to achieve the right orbit in its uncrewed premier in December. But the biggest of the company's problems remains the 737 Max, grounded since last spring after two crashes that killed 346 people between them. Combined, the crashes are the worst air disaster since September 11, 2001.
Both were at least partially caused by a sensor failure with no redundancy and a problem with MCAS (the new software controlling the handling of the aircraft) that the air crews had not been trained to overcome.
Boeing executives are now telling the company's 737 Max customers that the software fix required to make the airliner airworthy will not be approved in the near future, and that it will likely be June or July before the Federal Aviation Administration certifies the aircraft for flight again—meaning that the aircraft will have been grounded for at least 16 months.
The FAA, for its part, has not committed to any timeframe for re-certifying the aircraft. In an emailed statement, an FAA spokesperson said, "We continue to work with other safety regulators to review Boeing's work as the company conducts the required safety assessments and addresses all issues that arise during testing."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @08:59PM (7 children)
it's funny b/c it seems the FAA was just pushing them through their grade levels like a dumb jock in HS, partly b/c the FAA didn't have the expertise to actually check anything out, but now boeing has pissed them off, and they are probably having to hire contractors to check everything out and are not inclined to hurry at all anymore. I'm so sad for boeing. so sad.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @09:04PM (4 children)
Of course if they should happen to find some dirt on Bidden the time line could change.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday January 26 2020, @09:10PM
Kobe Bryant had spent some time on Epstein Island rubbing elbows (and other things) with the Clintons and their underaged White girls.
And look what happened to him. The very same FAA that signed off on the 737Max's airworthiness also certified Kobe's helicopter. Sounds to me like a conspiracy. Just because a nigga got a helicopter he wanna be flyin' in that bitch all the time, lettin' niggaz know 'doe. I mean, sheeit, nigga, just drive the Bentley the 10 goddamn miles to your daughter's ball practice. There ain't no traffic in Calabasas! Sheeeit!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday January 26 2020, @11:31PM
You will always live in the worst time line.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @03:58AM (1 child)
No, timeline doesn't change significantly at this point, though the fact that the stock market didn't crash in 2017/18-ish may make for an extra bumpy ride. Nothing good happens after this summer. WW3 still starts in 2021. Unless
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 27 2020, @05:57PM
... it doesn't happen, of course.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @05:21PM (1 child)
No, FAA very much has the internal manpower and expertise to check things out including safety engineers. Read your heart out [faa.gov]. So you're talking out your ass.
The deal was that they let Boeing keep the type certification the 737 already had even though the 737-Max has significantly different aerodynamic characteristics with the larger engines. They treated as a "we're just switching out a part" instead of "we're redesigning the aircraft"... which can be true, even for engine upgrades, when they don't alter the aerodynamics considerably. Instead, what we've learned is that the 737-Max should have been required to Type differently, but that would cost the airlines a bunch of money to develop different (even if very similar) training materials/procedures/etc. to reflect the differences of the aircraft as it is.
So the real question is who's the PHB who started thinking, "eh... close enough...." Both at Boeing and at the FAA. I'm more sad for the victims of the plane crashes since in one of the two crashes the pilots seemed to have had the time to work out which checklist they should have ran to fix the problem, and in the other the pilots might have been in the 'should have known what to do' category although it did happen very quickly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @07:45PM
so, like i said. the FAA was passing them through, and now they're not, b/c they're not besties anymore. no, i'm not reading a federal government website, you dumb whore.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @09:25PM (17 children)
A little regulation is good, too much is bad, partly because too many regulations means a higher chance of bad ones.
The FAA has a long tradition of "whatever you are already doing is fine, but anything new is almost impossible." This is true even if the old way is inferior, or even completely inappropriate. Desperate to avoid triggering the FAA's phobia of anything new, Boeing built an aircraft that was inherently unsafe, which breezed through regulatory approval not just in spite of its flaws, but in fact because of them. Boeing easily could have modified the aircraft to properly support the new engines, but it was easier to approve a bad airplane that was more like an old one, than a much better and safer airplane that would have been a little different.
While everyone at Boeing who knew this aircraft was dangerous is culpable, let's not overlook the fact that the reason they felt they had to do it was because the regulations all but required them to.
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Sunday January 26 2020, @11:01PM (15 children)
Bullshit. It's because Boeing was losing market share and the Congress allowed them to be cheap rather than safe.
A bit of history of how 737MAX got to be [theguardian.com]:
Delegating certification to regulated entities [brookings.edu]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: -1, Disagree) by khallow on Monday January 27 2020, @01:38AM (11 children)
Even when libertarians are right, they are wrong. Failure is always hamstrung by the naysayers.
Oh look, more consequences of overregulation. One national level competitor who is too big to fail. Clearly, the libertarians' fault for that one.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday January 27 2020, @08:30PM (10 children)
In this universe, libertarians are never right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @04:11AM (9 children)
They tend to be more left than right, but there's a bunch who are right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-libertarianism [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 28 2020, @04:34AM (8 children)
The stupidest kind, IMHO, aligning themselves along the idea of "the legislated right to be greedy" (aka "individualism" in polite-speak) with a mixture of "free market fairy" mysticism. Will lead in less than one generation to "the law of the jungle - the one who commands more power prevails" - the majority of useful idiots will not be among the victors.
Even the anarchists are more realistic in their utopic dreams: at least they promote voluntary, cooperative institutions; would there be more of like-minded, there is a (even so remote) chance for a stable society to resist for some time - but the equilibrium will be unstable.
Both of the above may have their place in a mostly-empty world, but will end in a world-burning pyre if attempted on (a slightly over-populated) Earth. Dream of them when the asteroid belt colonization is past the point of self-sufficiency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 28 2020, @05:35AM (7 children)
So what? You aren't covering yourself in glory with this straw man. Even if the "stupidest kind" were as idiotic as claimed, they aren't in charge. Your two minute hate doesn't change anything.
That caveat applies as well to whatever you think would be better.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 28 2020, @05:52AM (5 children)
Was a statement of my opinion on right-libertarianism.
Feel free to skip over and save yourself the time you waste making assumption about my motives.
remark classified as baseless and irrelevant anyway
And...???
I mean, besides bashing a strawman with my nickname stuck on it, is there more that you want to convey?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 28 2020, @06:47AM (4 children)
And my statement on how stupid a straw man it was was opinion too. But not so stupid.
Yes, I think you're giving libertarianism a raw deal. We've tried top down governance and we end up with stuff like Boeing, broken markets with too big to fail firms bailed out every time they get into trouble (or as now, merely want increase profits a bit).
Further, read your links next time. Next time, throw away the link that blames roughly 1% of the population for the actions of the rest.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 28 2020, @07:08AM (3 children)
You say it like the libertarianism cares that much about the raw deal that I get to it.
Or, are you actually afraid that others will start to share my opinion? (I don't know, like, maybe, the way you are afraid of Germany trying to get rid of fossils until 2050?)
Yes, when top-down governance failed, the right libertarianism is The Solution. Must be, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 28 2020, @12:12PM (2 children)
The pattern is already set. A bunch of idiots use the power of the state to screw things up and kill hundreds of people. The medical analogy is iatrogenesis [wikipedia.org] - causing disease and other harm through the treatments that were supposed to help.
The problem here is that just like the German example above, this will hurt millions of people or more. I get to deal with the blowback just like everyone else. It's interesting how so much is rationalized on imaginary harm while present day, real world harm gets glossed over. German energy policies result in more expensive electricity and increased net green house gases emissions for a scheme that's supposed to end German nuclear power and reduce global greenhouse gases by a trivial amount?
It's just thrashing. And it's grossly insulting that the people actually interested in fixing these sorts of problems are getting blamed for it.
Your reasoning not mine. But given your earlier "legislated right to be greedy" I guess this is what we can expect from you on the subject.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @02:23PM (1 child)
Which idiots and what people are killed?
Citation needed.
Uh, and who are those fabled people?
Aww, how sweet. You just happen to agree.
Look, there's no shame of being sarcasm impaired. The good soylentils will mark it especially for you, if you just admit it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 28 2020, @09:46PM
The 737 MAX accidents. First, the people passing laws on regulating passenger aircraft and the people doing the regulation created a too big to fail situation with a single US manufacturer of large passenger jets and enormous barriers of entry to anyone else wanting to enter that market. Second, the big to fail manufacturer was having trouble so Congress gave them a pass - as you remarked [soylentnews.org] upon earlier.
The regulators created a huge cost differential between the regulations on an upgrade of an existing plane versus anything new as noted [soylentnews.org] in the AC post you initially replied to - that includes pilot training requirements BTW.
Finally, we have to consider the bizarre engineering shortcuts: a safety system that was optional, and a sensor that was a single point of failure for a lethal crash when there were back up sensors on the plane. I think shortscreen [soylentnews.org] got that right in that the shortcuts were put in solely to get past regulatory requirements.
So to summarize, we have a regulatory agency that went for appearances over safety, and a too big to fail firm that got all kinds of breaks from the state (including protection from competitors) and still screwed up badly enough to kill hundreds of people.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 28 2020, @07:01AM
Reading over this crap again. The "right to be greedy" is actually deeper than mere legislation. It covers things like freedom of speech and the rights to a fair trial, which usually are constitutionally mandated in democracies. It covers all rights that enable us to act on our own rather than at the behest of others.
To defend others who say and do the wrong things using these freedoms, or who are massively unpopular (say because they're rich), takes a pretty strong moral character. I hope you one day can develop that character or at least learn to respect it in others.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @03:16AM (1 child)
It was a dark and stormy night...
Thanks Obama!
And you too, Jimmy Cartier! For all that nice de-regulation
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @05:25PM
More like thanks Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan. Carter may have done air but both parties fucked up.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday January 27 2020, @11:42AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Insightful) by shortscreen on Monday January 27 2020, @06:49AM
No engineer would have connected only one sensor when a backup sensor already exists on the aircraft. That bit could only have been part of management's plan to minimize changes to avoid triggering regulatory requirements.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @09:50PM (10 children)
I would have already had all the electronics ripped out and converted to cable and hydraulic flight controls. No more fly by wire.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @10:07PM (4 children)
Then it wouldn't comply with the requirements [cornell.edu]. See (a):
Essentially, the airframe of 737 Max is not compliant, unless electronically steered.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Monday January 27 2020, @02:37AM (2 children)
When I was researching for purchasing my next vehicle five years ago, after considering what was important to me, I ended up with an ancient ( by today's standards ) Ford E350 purely mechanical IDI diesel van.
I discovered Ford has a kinda sordid history on one of their designs... Not as bad as what Boeing released, but has given a lot of folks a lot of grief. It is a steering instability at freeway speed.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ford+death+wobble+E350 [duckduckgo.com]
That alone would have killed my interest had the E350 series had the same design flaw. Apparently the flaw is in the F series trucks, not the Vans.
To me, unstable designs are completely unacceptable. While I may enjoy the convenience of computer assist, it's simply foolhardy to have to be absolutely reliant on it. I MUST have final say!
Boeing's plane? The PILOT must have final say on the control of his craft. The plane must be inherently stable.
The only exception to this would be military craft, where this risk might have to be accepted for performance reasons.
Boeing has been making planes for a long time, but I get a very strong impression they have retired the original engineers and Craftsmen who built the earlier ones, when we we were learning how to make one, and the old codgers knew what to look out for.
As new business-centric leadership took over from the old engineering-centric model, more and more design revisions were the result of cut and paste, without understanding of the underlying aerodynamics. Same thing we have all seen in software development. What we are seeing is Boeing's version of the Blue Screen of Death.
If there is anything my career has taught me at the engineering level, the devil is in the detail. It may look like a champ, but one tiny thing does not work right, and the whole shebang is useless. No matter how good it looks.
It's got to be a good design...or you may as well save yourself all the trouble it's gonna cost you and toss it right now. And do it right.
Same thing my own Grandpa used to say..."If you can't find the time to do it right, then you will have to make the time to do it over.".
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 3, Funny) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday January 27 2020, @09:39AM (1 child)
And only acceptable because the pilot can always step outside when things go pear-shaped.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Monday January 27 2020, @06:01PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @02:21PM
No abnormal nose up when doing a stall.
On this plane, adding thrust is the nose up cause.
Not sure this rule covers that.
I think they need actual wires, lights, and switches to give the pilot manual status and trim control.
Then fix the s/w to make it unlikely to need it even with a sensor or computer failure.
Then train the pilots.
This is more work than just a s/w update.
Is Boeing's management still trying to just get away without hardware changes?
(Score: 2) by SpockLogic on Sunday January 26 2020, @10:22PM
A closer look at the past is warranted.
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=35735&page=1&cid=948956#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 4, Insightful) by pTamok on Sunday January 26 2020, @10:41PM (2 children)
Hmm, no weather radar, no FADECs [wikipedia.org], no navigation aids (See this article [scandinaviantraveler.com] for a short description of ground-breaking commercial air-navigation in the 1950s)
I don't think removing electronics from commercial aircraft would have desirable consequences.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @01:08AM (1 child)
Only for flight controls. You shouldn't have a computer fighting against a pilot in the control stick.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @04:05PM
Yes, because we need more people dying?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549 [wikipedia.org]
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/08/15/flock-birds-forces-russian-plane-emergency-landing-cornfield/ [telegraph.co.uk]
both cases were because computers help you steer the plane instead of stalling it. And this is what happens when pilots are given complete control of plane where input data is confusing the autopilot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447 [wikipedia.org]
And these are just one of many, many cases where computer aided avionics are saving lives. Pilots are very experienced at flying the plane but the engineers are very experienced at trying to keep the plane flying. You only have problems if some managers start to require impossible and override the safety standards that existed for decades, like requiring minimum mandatory 2 input to agree *before* assuming anything about the input value accuracy.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Monday January 27 2020, @03:32AM
I don't believe the 737 is fly by wire. In fact, the early ones, and maybe the current ones don't even have hydraulically boosted controls, except for the rudder yaw damper [tailstrike.com].
The MCAS is used to correct an aerodynamic faux pas that Boeing didn't want anybody to know about
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Monday January 27 2020, @12:46AM (1 child)
We have loads of data about what it takes to maintain aircraft that are turned around and flown on a regular basis. How much data do we have regarding proper maintenance when a plane is coming out of being mothballed for a year or two? When planes are flying, airlines have a strong incentive to keep them maintained, ready to fly, and safe to fly. When not flying? Not so much. Prediction: there will be issues bringing them back into service, and doubts that the entire fleet can be safely brought back into service economically. Even if the procedures are down cold, the public will have doubts. They won't make money for the airlines. They'll be written off.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @02:52AM
Quite a bit, actually. There's not much to it. Airplanes get mothballed all the time. Airlines go bankrupt, travel slows down because of a recession or terrorism, sometimes an airplane gets converted to a different interior configuration. This isn't even real mothballing, where they get sent to the desert so they don't rust, they're just parked. You can park your car for a year and it's ready to go with just a fresh tank of gas and a battery charge, same for an airplane. Airplanes get a full maintenance inspection every 100 flight hours or once a year, whichever comes first, and you can bet that such an inspection will be done for every one of them even if they technically haven't been out of service for a year. They will all have to be modified, anyway.
But you're right that the public might not want to fly on them.