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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 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.