SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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.