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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: 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?