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from the what-goes-up-must-come-down dept.
Boeing's upgraded 737 MAX completes first flight with media onboard:
DALLAS (Reuters) - Boeing Co's 737 MAX staged its first post-grounding flight with media on board on Wednesday, as carriers seek to demonstrate to passengers that the redesigned jet is safe after a 20-month safety ban.
[...] Wednesday's American Airlines 737 MAX flight was a 45-minute hop from Dallas, Texas, to Tulsa, Oklahoma. It comes weeks before the first commercial passenger flight on Dec. 29, and is part of a public relations effort to allay any concerns about the aircraft.
Boeing's best-selling jet was grounded in March 2019 after two crashes in five months killed a combined 346 people, marking the industry's worst safety crisis in decades and undermining U.S. aviation regulatory leadership.
Wednesday's flight marked the first time anyone besides regulators and industry personnel flew on the MAX since the grounding, which ignited investigations focusing on software that overwhelmed pilots.
The mood on Wednesday's flight, which included a Reuters reporter, was subdued. Some passengers mingled and chatted before landing, when applause broke out.
[...] Boeing is bracing for intense publicity from even routine glitches by manning a 24-hour "situation room" to monitor every MAX flight globally, and has briefed some industry commentators on details on the return to service, industry sources said.
"We are continuing to work closely with global regulators and our customers to safely return the fleet to commercial service," a Boeing spokesman said.
[...] In an example of how airlines have begun to soft-pedal references to the MAX brand, the safety cards on Wednesday's flight omitted the "MAX" name and just said "737."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday December 03 2020, @06:08PM (6 children)
1 successful flight is not the same thing as extensive testing. And 1 successful flight is not the same thing as fixing fundamental flaws in the plane's design that exist because the suits overruled the engineers in an effort to avoid FAA oversight.
And I also don't consider it a coincidence that they rushed to get this done before Inauguration Day.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday December 03 2020, @06:45PM (2 children)
Software developers consider jiggering one test to pass to be sufficient testing. No need to fix design flaws. Management is happy. So everyone is happy. Even if there is no upcoming coronation.
Young people won't believe you if you say you're older than Google. (born before 1998-09-03)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday December 03 2020, @06:56PM
The design flaws are out of the control of the software engineers. The only thing they can do is to implement the software according to the spec they've been given by the systems engineers. If the spec is crap and doesn't have proper redundancy in the sensor data, there's nothing the software engineers can do about that.
As usual, it all comes down to piss-poor management.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday December 03 2020, @07:07PM
* So long as you exclude the hundreds of people killed on these planes and their thousands of loved ones, plus the airline's insurance company, plus regulators who know what's up and are prevented from doing anything about it, from "everyone", of course.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2020, @07:50PM (2 children)
What is the implication you're making here?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday December 03 2020, @09:01PM (1 child)
That the Republican Party tends to be looser on regulations than the Democratic Party, and thus businesses trying to do something that's only kinda-sorta OK on the regulation front will try to get their thing approved under a Republican-controlled administration.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 03 2020, @09:48PM
Oh please! The Democratic party is corporatist too. They just have possibly a different set of corporations they favor, or even an overlapping set. It's all determined by whoever donates to the politician or does their dirty work for them. See all the Social Media / Big Tech company people who worked for/with Obama's gov, worked against Trump, and are lined up to work with Biden. Do you think Democrats are going to regulate Big Tech?