Boeing To Suspend Production of Their 737 Max Aircraft [Update] (msn.com) 188
An anonymous reader quotes the Wall Street Journal:
Boeing Co. is considering either suspending or cutting back production of the 737 MAX amid growing uncertainty over the troubled plane's return to service and could disclose a decision as soon as Monday, according to people familiar with the matter.
Boeing management increasingly sees pausing production as the most viable among difficult options as the plane maker's board began a meeting Sunday in Chicago, these people said. Support for halting production comes days after U.S. regulators warned the aerospace giant it had been setting unrealistic expectations for when the jet would be allowed to fly again, these people said.
Boeing has already "signaled to U.S. aviation officials last week that it anticipates a production-related announcement this week amounting to at least a significant rollback of MAX output," the Journal reports, citing a source "familiar with the matter."
Updated on Monday, 21:45 GMT: WSJ and other media outlets are now reporting that Boeing will suspend the production of 737 Max aircraft next month.
Boeing management increasingly sees pausing production as the most viable among difficult options as the plane maker's board began a meeting Sunday in Chicago, these people said. Support for halting production comes days after U.S. regulators warned the aerospace giant it had been setting unrealistic expectations for when the jet would be allowed to fly again, these people said.
Boeing has already "signaled to U.S. aviation officials last week that it anticipates a production-related announcement this week amounting to at least a significant rollback of MAX output," the Journal reports, citing a source "familiar with the matter."
Updated on Monday, 21:45 GMT: WSJ and other media outlets are now reporting that Boeing will suspend the production of 737 Max aircraft next month.
Boeing is also missing new contracts (Score:2)
Should Boeing CEO resign? (at last)
Of course, and all the McDD crew too. (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, of course he should, along with everyone else who was part of the dumpster fire that was McDonnell Douglas. Maybe then the old Boeing can re-emerge. As for the 787-Max, they should all go out to the break-up yard.
Re: Of course, and all the McDD crew too. (Score:2)
As for the 787-Max, they should all go out to the break-up yard.
Nah, that's overkill: replace the huge engines with smaller ones, swap out all the digitized avionics with analog... and sell them to schools; they'd make badass playground equipment.
Re:Of course, and all the McDD crew too. (Score:5, Insightful)
Fired or not, Boeing needs to split into a commercial aircraft company and a defense and space company. What killed Douglas Aircraft was its merger with McDonnell Aircraft. In both cases (McDonnell Douglas and Boeing), management was seduced by military and government business and let their commercial divisions decay.
Re:Of course, and all the McDD crew too. (Score:5, Insightful)
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737 Max. The entire 737 line should be binned, it went obsolete many years ago.
Re:Boeing is also missing new contracts (Score:5, Informative)
Boeing has net -84 orders for the current year (orders years run Jan-Dec), while Airbus stands at net 718 for the same period.
Boeing has absolutely collapsed this year.
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Boeing has net -84 orders for the current year (orders years run Jan-Dec), while Airbus stands at net 718 for the same period.
Boeing has absolutely collapsed this year.
Well, they decided to go all out for the unsupervised sub-contractor model for building their aircraft. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. Expect them to nevertheless stick to their guns on the validity of this business model with the same ferocity as those Republicans who still claim the Kansas experiment was a success.
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Are you saying that Kansas should be scrapped? That seems harsh. Also, what will replace it? A new Great Lake? At least it would be as flat.
Re:Boeing is also missing new contracts (Score:5, Informative)
Boeing has net -84 orders for the current year (orders years run Jan-Dec), while Airbus stands at net 718 for the same period.
Boeing has absolutely collapsed this year.
Well, they decided to go all out for the unsupervised sub-contractor model for building their aircraft. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. Expect them to nevertheless stick to their guns on the validity of this business model with the same ferocity as those Republicans who still claim the Kansas experiment was a success.
The Kansas experiment was a great success. It put more money in the pockets of those who already had it, caused more low income people in Kansas to move the fuck out, created more cheap real estate for the rich to purchase at fire sale prices.
In short the experiment did exactly what it was designed to do allow the rich to buy up more cheap land and keep the poor renting from the rich landlords in the ghettos of the cities. The same thing that made Donald Trump's family rich in the first place, government handouts that subsided his father to build tenement housing in the poorer districts of New York just after the second world war. So yes the Republican party agenda is working, the land is slowly but surely being held in the hands of fewer and fewer Americans and the real estate industry is making the rich richer as it always has by keeping the poor down where they belong in the shacks owned by the landlords.
Boeing got far too big for its own good and with the help of government subsidies made sure that all competition in North America was eliminated. Bombardier had a decent fuel efficient short haul jet in the works but Boeing with the help of governments in both the US and Canada made fucking sure that Bombardier couldn't start to compete in the short haul jet market. The Bombardier design was very good and could have easily have become a competitor with the 737 max.
Boeing got too fucking greedy for their own good and if they had not squeezed out the competition and then cheaped out and fucked up the design to save development money then they would not be in the pickle that they are in today. The assholes in government service that are responsible for screwing over the FAA and allowing Boeing to essentially self regulate should be put in prison along with the executives that are responsible for allowing a plane to fly that was known to have design safety issues! As things stand the employees at Boeing are going to be the only ones to suffer other than the families of those who lost loved ones because of these assholes in charge in government and in the executive offices at Boeing.
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Expect them to nevertheless stick to their guns on the validity of this business model with the same ferocity as those Republicans who still claim the Kansas experiment was a success.
Is that like the Philadelphia experiment, only they tried to make gays disappear?
No, it was more of a money for nothing scheme.
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Might want to educate yourself. The Kansas Experiment was an unmitigated disaster. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Tax cuts don't pay for themselves. Even if you think the Laffer Curve is a real thing, the theory plainly states that once you are on the right hand side of the curve, revenue decreases with decreasing tax rates.
The wealthy do not invest tax savings in new businesses, unless the economy is already booming and demand is higher than capacity. Otherwise, the wealthy just gamble in the derivatives
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You might want to engage your sarcasm detector.
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Yeah, it's impossible to tell sarcasm from reality these days. Too many idiots online. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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And the total A320 family orders overtook the total 737 family orders this year, despite the latter being available for 20 years longer. In two years Airbus will also overtake Boeing in the number of delieveries.
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Boeing has net -84 orders for the current year (orders years run Jan-Dec), while Airbus stands at net 718 for the same period.
Boeing has absolutely collapsed this year.
Partially collapsed perhaps, but not anywhere near fully. Boeing has their hands in a LOT of other business beyond the 737 family line and a lot of money flowing through their coffers. Yes, this hurts their short term profits and yes I expect the orders/production for the 737 Max 8 to drop for the next year, but I also expect them to pick up the pieces once they get the 737 MAX back in the air, and make no mistake, they will get it over the certification hurdles soon.
Right now they are suffering through
Re:Boeing is also missing new contracts (Score:4, Interesting)
Easy, they didn't do the clean sheet design before because they figured that a redesign of the 737 coupled with the pilot training requirements being very low would let them sell aircraft cheaper than Airbus, if they could just get the operating costs down.. Volia the 737 MAX was born because they shoved new more fuel efficient engines (for operating cost reductions). This isn't the first time they threw new engines under the 737, so why not do it again?
So they just put off the clean sheet design and stuck with the 737 airframe, and sold a pile of them to airlines who already flew the 737 as a cheaper alternative with nearly zero training costs for the flight crews, the flexibility of sharing one type certification and lower operational costs, all without any investment in ground equipment and maintenance parts stock. The clean sheet design is inevitable though. The 737's metal airframe demands that they eventually will have to scrap it and move up to modern composites.
You see, they really only put off something that they knew would be necessary. Eventually Airbus would catch them with a better enough aircraft to overcome the hysteresis in Boeing 737 operators and they'd start making inroads into the 737's market share. At that point, Boeing would simply have to go with a totally new design or conceded the short haul market. So, the troubles with the MAX have only served to move up the time table. If you've been paying attention, Airbus is starting to make inroads into the 737's market share, with major carriers starting to order 737 replacements from their product lines. Once the operators start down this path, it becomes imperative that Boeing rolls out a new, more efficient and cost effective aircraft for the market ASAP.
So does that make sense? Boeing put off the clean sheet design because they were making money on the 737 and thought they could just throw new engines on it again and keep riding the same metal airframe for awhile longer. Now, given the certification troubles and the obvious problem they will face getting the MAX back into the air and the PR nightmare that has damaged the 737 brand enough that sales are now lagging, the time table for a new single aisle short haul aircraft got moved up for Boeing. It only makes sense.
Re:Boeing is also missing new contracts (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly!
For me the biggest error made by the CEO was when just after the second crash he gave a press conference saying 'our planes are safe'.
So, this is the guy who got the preliminary report after having 2 brand new planes fall out of the sky - correction: wrestled control away from the pilot and subsequently bore themselves into the ground - and said "What is wrong with that? That seems perfectly ok"
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When I lived in Quebec, a bridge fell down (not the first one). The transportation minister gave a press conference in front of the rubble and proclaimed that of course the province's roads are safe, if they were not they would be closed by his ministry.
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Resigning's too good for him. Seppuku would be more appropriate considering the harm that was done, for which he shows no repentance.
It does not make sense to keep trying the MCAS (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole approach to "fixing" MCAS does not make any sense to me:
- They have a system (MCAS) that is only there to make the plane fly like the previous 737 versions, so that there is no pilot training needed and no new type certification.
- The "solution" they have for MCAS malfunctions (apart from fixing an obvious software bug and reliance on 1 sensor), is for pilots to disable it and fly the rest of the trip without MCAS.
- At which point, the plane DOES NOT behave like the old 737, so the pilots should have had training on this actually new type.
See the logic problem? If you propose that you have to disable MCAS at times, it means the plane does not fly like an old 737 at those times, so it defeats the whole purpose of having an MCAS - the FAA should not accept it as the same type.
Unless there is an issue with my logic that I cannot see, Boeing should have just bit the bullet and removed the MCAS entirely back when they saw it was a problem and start certification for a new type. Yes, it would be less appealing to the airlines if some training would be required for pilots due to the big engines being more forward and "up" make the plane nose up easier, but the plane would be safe without that system and it would still be a better match than an Airbus for carriers who already have 737s.
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The whole approach to "fixing" MCAS does not make any sense to me: - They have a system (MCAS) that is only there to make the plane fly like the previous 737 versions, so that there is no pilot training needed and no new type certification. - The "solution" they have for MCAS malfunctions (apart from fixing an obvious software bug and reliance on 1 sensor), is for pilots to disable it and fly the rest of the trip without MCAS. - At which point, the plane DOES NOT behave like the old 737, so the pilots should have had training on this actually new type.
See the logic problem? If you propose that you have to disable MCAS at times, it means the plane does not fly like an old 737 at those times, so it defeats the whole purpose of having an MCAS - the FAA should not accept it as the same type.
Unless there is an issue with my logic that I cannot see, Boeing should have just bit the bullet and removed the MCAS entirely back when they saw it was a problem and start certification for a new type. Yes, it would be less appealing to the airlines if some training would be required for pilots due to the big engines being more forward and "up" make the plane nose up easier, but the plane would be safe without that system and it would still be a better match than an Airbus for carriers who already have 737s.
The problem wasn't really the basic idea behind MACS so much as it was shoddy programming by an unqualified subcontractor. Boeing decided subcontract the development of the system to https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [slashdot.org]">$9 an hour engineers. That may be OK if you are developing a low end web-app but when you are developing flight control software for aircraft it is akin to buying canned meat from a pound/dollar store. If you get a massive case of diarrhea you have already forfeited your right to be both an
Re:It does not make sense to keep trying the MCAS (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with MCAS wasn't shoddy programming -- the two crashes were caused by MCAS doing what it was designed to, push the nose of the plane down if it detected a very high angle-of-attack (AoA) as a precursor to stalling. The problem was at the software design level, allowing the control of flight surfaces to be taken over by an autonomous system on the input of a single sensor, the AoA vane, which could and often does fail. In all other aircraft before the 737 MAX the AoA sensor input was only advisory, ot did not cause changes in flight control surfaces to happen without pilot input.
The MCAS software worked as designed, as you would expect -- it was reviewed, tested and passed by engineers back in Boeing before it was deployed for production. The design and implementation was at fault. Blaming foreign workers who weren't as smart as white folks isn't going to fly (so to speak).
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Developers should be able to identify and raise potential risk scenarios to project managers. It's not clear that the developers did so or even knew to do so. Any automated control system on an airliner should have more than one input so that potential errors in one input can be identified and raised to the cockpit crew for resolution.
Re:It does not make sense to keep trying the MCAS (Score:5, Interesting)
The developers did.
One got fired for it.
One wrote a letter to the CEO, and got told to shut up.
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The problem wasn't software at all. It was Boeing's engineering risk assessment system that failed to reclassify MCAS as a critical system after design changes were made to it.
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I'm not working on safety critical stuff but I have seen the attitude from many project managers to stick tot the deadline at all costs, as if the word 'deadline' was literal. That means when things start going wrong the project managers start to look very worried and start asking for shortcuts, find out who can work over the holidays, whether the customer can live with the bug, etc. They just don't like to accept that there are serious problems and we should spend more time on fixing them. Normally this
Re:It does not make sense to keep trying the MCAS (Score:4, Interesting)
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If that's true, and I have no reason to doubt you, I'm impressed. I admit I've always felt intimidated by mgt., and I've been threatened in many ways for "making trouble" when I tried to raise red flags. Those companies are all belly-up now.
Reading your other comments, I think a large problem, at least with places I've worked, is that idiots (who are often also thugs) get promoted to mgt., and if you consider that as true, you'll understand the problem.
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I've had the opposite happen to me (Score:2)
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This is just a stupid speculative comment. How are you even implying that "developers" did not "identify and raise potential risk scenarios" to project managers? Have you ever fucking WORKED in the software industry? If you're a "low end engineer", your manager has absolute no fucking interest in what you have to say. Shut up and go back to your desk, you fucking code monkey.
You call out someone for speculating, then follow with your own speculation.
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I have, actually. I've seen the arrogance you're talking about, and it's even worse in overseas shops. And one of the things that I do now is tell executives and managers who pay a lot of money to my company that they need to start listening to the low-end engineers, even when they're contracted overseas, because they actually have their fingers in the pudding and usually have a better clue of what's wrong than the people making blind promises. Doesn't always work, but when they do listen, I tend to see rap
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I postulate they were just doing "black-box" programming. Someone at a higher level should have understood the whole system and the implications of the various scenarios, such as false AoA data. Either they just didn't care, or they rushed it through and didn't reason it out, which is what the evidence points to.
And I thought there were some engineers who tried to raise red flags but were hushed? See, the problem is, if you only have partial knowledge of the system (you're just a black-box programmer), y
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That's okay as long as they remove the humans from the planes, and guarantee the things won't crash on people.
Methinks it's time to remove some of the humans from the top corporate levels. I'd love to see a large company board's reactions to my new AI: CEO and corporate board of directors. We'll tell them it's powered by quantum tensor processors. They'll be so dumbstruck they won't see it coming.
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You seriously don't know that. The reason I say that is because as I understand it the plane functions fine if airlines payed for the secondary AOA sensor, or perhaps it was special logic to actually use the sensor. I believe it actually disabled MCAS if the 2 AOA sensors disagreed with each other.
It's entirely possible that the developers asked "Hey, how trustworthy is this input?" and Boeing said: "Don't worry, we've got redundant sensors and will disable your stuff if we aren't sure the input is clean."
Re:It does not make sense to keep trying the MCAS (Score:4, Informative)
The problem with MCAS wasn't shoddy programming -- the two crashes were caused by MCAS doing what it was designed to, push the nose of the plane down if it detected a very high angle-of-attack (AoA) as a precursor to stalling. The problem was at the software design level, allowing the control of flight surfaces to be taken over by an autonomous system on the input of a single sensor, the AoA vane, which could and often does fail. In all other aircraft before the 737 MAX the AoA sensor input was only advisory, ot did not cause changes in flight control surfaces to happen without pilot input.
The MCAS software worked as designed, as you would expect -- it was reviewed, tested and passed by engineers back in Boeing before it was deployed for production. The design and implementation was at fault. Blaming foreign workers who weren't as smart as white folks isn't going to fly (so to speak).
I blame Boeing executives for handing the development to a whole stack of people who were obviously not qualified to do the job, your own post just goes to that point. As for:
worked as expected
That software flew planes into the ground, I don't think that's what the passengers or crew of those two planes expected. Whatever software testing Boeing did, it was obviously inadequate. After reading that Bloomberg article where, among other things, a Boeing engineer is quoted as having witnessed a Boeing executive tell a room full of Boeing engineers that: "Boeing didn’t need senior engineers because its products were mature". In other words Boeing PHBs seem to have thought they didn't needed to experienced and qualified engines doing extensive software testing on a 'mature product'.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-28/boeing-s-737-max-software-outsourced-to-9-an-hour-engineers [bloomberg.com]
Here's another couple of nuggets:
Still, for the 787, HCL gave Boeing a remarkable price – free, according to Sam Swaro, an associate vice president who pitched HCL’s services at a San Diego conference sponsored by Avionics International magazine in June. He said the company took no up-front payments on the 787 and only started collecting payments based on sales years later, an “innovative business model” he offered to extend to others in the industry.
Rockwell Collins, now a unit of United Technologies Corp., won the Max contract for cockpit displays, and it has relied in part on HCL engineers in India, Iowa and the Seattle area. A United Technologies spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment.
So, basically, Rockwell Collins turned around, outsourced the 737 MAX work to Hindustan Computers Limited, and nobody at Boeing seems to have done any serious supervision of the project (contractors and their supervision is a big factor in what made the 787 come in billions over budget and that aircraft was still buggy as hell) and everybody down the whole development chain from Boeing through Rockwell to HCL seem to have made limited efforts at best to test the 737 MAX software properly. On top of that, if HLC gave them the same deal they did with the 787, i.e. we'll do it for free and then get a percentage of the sales I can only imagine what kind of pressure those $9 per hour Indian engineers were under. The average salary at McDonalds in the US is $9.46, when you hand jobs like this to an engineering sweatshop that pays $9 an hour you get what you pay for. Those Indian engineers would be 46 cents an hour better off flipping burgers at McDonalds. Plus, if somebody hands you an assignment you don't have the domain knowledge to execute, whether that is the coding, algorithm design, physics involved, system function, the security/risk assessment or the software testing or any other step in the development process you shou
Re:It does not make sense to keep trying the MCAS (Score:5, Interesting)
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Greed will always cause corporate leadership to piss away whatever reputation for quality they may have as soon as they spot a chance to make a quick buck.
This is in large part because of the game of 'Executive Musical Chairs', they're all playing for the short-term gain because that's what their compensation is set by. They're betting that the chickens won't come home to roost until they've moved on to destroy some other company, but in this case the mismanagement was so egregiously bad that their time ra
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Newt Gingrich's moment of brilliance was when he realized that he didn't need to actually eliminate regulatory agencies like the FDA, FAA, EPA, etc. All he had to do was to make their enforcement budget a separate line item that they could squeeze out of existence. The FAA used to have actual engineers on staff who were competent to review and test stuff like this, but those positions have all been eliminated. They quite literally have no choice but to take manufacturer's word on it because of the Libert
Re:It does not make sense to keep trying the MCAS (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with MCAS wasn't shoddy programming -- the two crashes were caused by MCAS doing what it was designed to, push the nose of the plane down if it detected a very high angle-of-attack (AoA) as a precursor to stalling. The problem was at the software design level, allowing the control of flight surfaces to be taken over by an autonomous system on the input of a single sensor, the AoA vane, which could and often does fail. In all other aircraft before the 737 MAX the AoA sensor input was only advisory, ot did not cause changes in flight control surfaces to happen without pilot input.
You're not asking the pertinent question here, why was an anti-stall measure designed to push the aircrafts nose down if a high AoA was detected considered a necessity?
Such systems have never been required on previous 737 generations, nor are they required on the highly automated A320 family.
The answer is simple, it's because they made the aircraft dynamically unstable by placing the engines too far forward and too high which has directed the thrust directly under the wing's surface. This has the effect of allowing the aircraft to increase the aircrafts pitch without input from the pilots (read: on it's own). It's a hardware problem and you simply cant code around a bad hardware design, not even if you're the best coder in the world.
Of course Boeing is doing something even dumber than that now, they're trying to manage their way out of an engineering problem.
The MCAS software worked as designed, as you would expect -- it was reviewed, tested and passed by engineers back in Boeing before it was deployed for production. The design and implementation was at fault. Blaming foreign workers who weren't as smart as white folks isn't going to fly (so to speak).
Exactly,. the anti-stall part of MCAS didn't malfunction in either the LionAir or Ethiopian flights... it worked exactly as it intended... Of course it was acting on bad data (AoA sensors are not 100% reliable) and that is a design problem rather than a software one. This is really why Boeing need to fix the underlying issue with the engine placement rather than trying to fudge a solution with software.
Re:It does not make sense to keep trying the MCAS (Score:5, Insightful)
why was an anti-stall measure designed to push the aircrafts nose down if a high AoA was detected considered a necessity?
The airline customers (South West, Ryanair etc.) demanded it. The MAX airframe doesn't fly exactly like previous generations of the same plane because of the forward positioning of its bigger engine cowls if its nose is pointed steeply upwards. MCAS made the MAX design certifiable as a variant 737, making it respond at approach-to-stall like the previous generation of 737s as far as the pilots were concerned = no extra training required. A "new" plane would need expensive licencing and certification and the crews would require specialised training to fly it and the airlines didn't want that hence MCAS.
It was possible to design a much safer version of MCAS but doing so would have set off alarms in the FAA since it would require fitting extra AoA sensors (three is a good start if you want redundancy), providing clear cockpit alarm displays when they go wrong and training pilots to recognise AoA failures and allow them to override MCAS without necessarily losing the ability to trim the elevators using yoke thumb-switches. The airlines didn't want that hence the half-assed MCAS design which had command authority over control surfaces based on the input from a single fallible sensor.
As for the $9-an-hour coders deal, it's from a Bloomberg article, which, on a quick perusal doesn't mention MCAS. I may be wrong but the software that was outsourced was for the cockpit display systems, not anything regarding flight controls. There's been some reporting on the development of MCAS and most of the later work was done in-house by Boeing, especially the discovery during flight testing that the original MCAS parameters were too weak to stop a stall so they made its control efforts more aggressive, much greater elevator movements repeated more often than before. That's purely a Boeing USA effort, no $9-an-hour code monkeys involved.
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The answer is simple, it's because they made the aircraft dynamically unstable by placing the engines too far forward and too high which has directed the thrust directly under the wing's surface.
That's not true. The 737 MAX is NOT dynamically unstable in any part of its flight envelope. The plane is perfectly safe without MCAS. The reason why MCAS was added is to make the 737 MAX behave like its predecessors, which sped up the certification process and avoid the need for airlines to retrain their pilots (which is rather expensive).
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There was a B-2 crash [wikipedia.org] caused by the computer calculating an incorrect angle of attack from the air data sensors. In that case the computer calculated a negative angle of attack and induced a thirty-degree pitch up, causing the aircraft to stall and crash.
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The problem with MCAS wasn't shoddy programming -- the two crashes were caused by MCAS doing what it was designed to, push the nose of the plane down if it detected a very high angle-of-attack (AoA) as a precursor to stalling. The problem was at the software design level, allowing the control of flight surfaces to be taken over by an autonomous system on the input of a single sensor, the AoA vane, which could and often does fail. In all other aircraft before the 737 MAX the AoA sensor input was only advisory, ot did not cause changes in flight control surfaces to happen without pilot input.
The MCAS software worked as designed, as you would expect -- it was reviewed, tested and passed by engineers back in Boeing before it was deployed for production. The design and implementation was at fault. Blaming foreign workers who weren't as smart as white folks isn't going to fly (so to speak).
The design and implementation may have been fine. I think part of the problem here comes from the unit/system breakdown (I'm making some inferences from things I've read and work I've done). The MCAS is just one unit that was likely designed and implemented by a team that had less knowledge of how the unit fit into the system as a whole. So all they would have is the MCAS is giving a certain set of inputs, and should produce a certain set of outputs, and tests likely confirmed this. From what I've heard
Re:It does not make sense to keep trying the MCAS (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem wasn't really the basic idea behind MACS so much as it was shoddy programming by an unqualified subcontractor. Boeing decided subcontract the development of the system to https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [slashdot.org]">$9 an hour engineers. That may be OK if you are developing a low end web-app but when you are developing flight control software for aircraft it is akin to buying canned meat from a pound/dollar store. If you get a massive case of diarrhea you have already forfeited your right to be both angry and surprised by buying and eating the stuff in the first place. You get what you pay for, this is an entirely manager created disaster.
That is incorrect, read the sources more carefully. The $9 an hour outsourcing was for other systems, not the MCAS. The MCAS was buggy indeed - instead of maxing a 2.5 degree stabilizer, it would check every 10 seconds and ADD 2.5 degrees, so it would reach max stabilizer eventually - but it was actually designed in-house at Boeing. But that was only the start of the problems, the whole MCAS idea was a badly thought-out plan by the business people, engineers never wanted it.
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The problem wasn't really the basic idea behind MACS so much as it was shoddy programming by an unqualified subcontractor. Boeing decided subcontract the development of the system to https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [slashdot.org]">$9 an hour engineers.
Not even a $900/hour engineer could overcome the lack of sensor redundancy, or the paucity of information in the manual, or the change in manoeuvrability when it is (must be) switched off. The problem here is mostly, if not entirely, with the overpaid managers and their gangs of yes-men: coordinators, supervisors and project leaders.
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>$9 an hour engineers.
The price paid for engineers does not at all have any bearing on the result or quality of the code. That is almost always dependent on your own contractor management, oversight, and above all the practices you get the contractors to abide by. Boeing massively screwed that part up, but it didn't have anything to do with how much they paid, or how much the coder was earning.
it is akin to buying canned meat from a pound/dollar store
Ironically enough that is a good analogy that supports my comment. The reason you don't get food poisoning from buying canned meat at a d
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The problem wasn't really the basic idea behind MACS so much as it was shoddy programming by an unqualified subcontractor..
That was one of the problems. Turns out there were many. And one of them was the physical airframe made MCAS necessary in the first place. As well, a single sensor controlled whether the unstable airframe remained airborne or augered in because MCAS said that's what it needed to do. Or the engine nacelles suddenly generating lift at high angles of attack, which was because they wantd larger engines but didn't want a total re-design. Plus self certification. Plus neglecting to tell customers about MCAS.
Th
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The problem wasn't really the basic idea behind MACS so much as it was shoddy programming by an unqualified subcontractor
It's not just a software issue, there's also the problem that there are only 2 AOA vanes on the 737. That means there is no redundancy because in a faulty reading scenario it would be impossible to work out which vane was correct. And they "can't" just shut MCAS off because that would require re-certifying pilots to fly without it.
The A320neo, which also uses AOA data in its fly by wire system, has 3 AOA vanes.
No software in the world could fix the problem (Score:2)
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Wrong, wrong and wrong. The plane has different characteristics than a standard 737 but a trained pilot is perfectly capable of flying a 737MAX without the MCAS.
It would only take one at an absolute maximum two days in a simulator for a type certified 737NG pilot to get the necessary experience to handle the different flight characteristics of the 737MAX.
It would have been cheaper for Boeing to ditch the MCAS back in March, which would have lead to a quick path back to service with a different type certifi
Re:It does not make sense to keep trying the MCAS (Score:5, Informative)
Also wrong.
A 737Max without MCAS is not really unstable, but it's not stable enough to comply with FAR 25.173. More specifically, in high-AoA situations the aircraft tends to increase the angle of attack even more, even without increased stick force from the pilot.
It's certainly not disastrously unstable, and a competent pilot (who is aware of the issue) shouldn't have any problem with it. But it doesn't comply to the rules.
This issue is caused not by the thrust of the engines, as many people seem to think (the thrust of the engines do cause a pitch-up moment, just as on many other airliners, but that's not the problem here). Instead it's caused by lift generated by the big engine nacelles so far forward of the wings.
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Also wrong.
A 737Max without MCAS is not really unstable, but it's not stable enough to comply with FAR 25.173.
There are two piles of wreckage that would be to differ.
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As far as I am aware, there has not been a correct activation of MCAS yet in regular flights. In both crashes and the previous almost-crash, the planes never went into a state where MCAS would have been useful.
The crashes do not prove one way or another whether non-MCAS 737-Max is stable or unstable. As far as we know, non-MCAS 737-Max would have been perfectly fine in all 3 cases.
Re:It does not make sense to keep trying the MCAS (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It does not make sense to keep trying the MCAS (Score:4, Informative)
MCAS can be overridden by the pilots, but only by turning off the electric trim control completely. If you do that, you have to trim the plane manually with a wheel that is connected to the horizontal stabiliser by steel cables (the 737 is trimmed by moving the whole stabiliser). This is an intensely physical process which may actually be beyond human strength in some situations.
If the crews had eventually diagnosed the problem, they may simply have run out of time to trim the aircraft manually - especially in the second case which happened at lowish altitude.
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in high-AoA situations the aircraft tends to increase the angle of attack even more, even without increased stick force from the pilot
Or to put this in simple terms that everyone can understand, this is a plane that likes to crash. Loves to crash.
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Boeing and Airbus are under pressure from airlines to avoid new type ratings. This allows pilots to fly a broader range of aircraft under existing type ratings, of which airline pilots can usually have only two active ratings (IIRC). This makes the two companies try to keep the planes work and fly as closely as possible to others within the same line and gives an economic disincentive to push the boundaries too far with new models. Sometimes this is as simple as adjusting the aerodynamics a bit, and sometim
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The plane has different characteristics than a standard 737
Indeed. To be precise, the 737 Max airframe suffers from dynamic instability at high angle of attack. That's just not something you want to see in a passenger airframe. No, never. Not ever. Just don't ever design a plane like that. If you do, then junk it fast before it kills someone.
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That's not true at all. No commercial airliner is "inherently unstable." The MAX actually has slightly better normal flight envelope pitch characteristics than the NG. Think about it. They moved the engines up and forward. That's a more stable configuration.
The issue only occurs in particular high speed high angle of attack situations where the engine cowlings produce more lift than the previous ones. It's not even that different, but it is something one of the test pilots noted.
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Re: It does not make sense to keep trying the MCAS (Score:2)
It's still the same idea, if without MCAS the plane would not get certified, how is turning off MCAS be an acceptable solution?
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I saw somewhere that with MCAS turned off, the 737MAX's tendency to nose up into a stall when power is applied is itself a problem for getting certified as air worthy.
MCAS cannot actually be turned off. You have to turn off the entire electric trim system (including the manual thumb switch). MCAS continues to send trim commands, it's just that with the electric motors turned off, the commands have no effect. Meanwhile, with electric trim turned off, it can be difficult to impossible to physically turn the m
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Unless there is an issue with my logic that I cannot see...
A big one--perhaps the largest an issue could be: it costs money and would affect stock prices (CxO & BoD options and buy-backs).
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Boeing should have just bit the bullet and removed the MCAS entirely back when they saw it was a problem and start certification for a new type.
If they did that then it would be a new crappy type with landing gear way too small for the engines. They actually need to junk the entire 737 line and move into the 21st century.
Wait WHAT? (Score:2)
Am I the only one who assumed that Boeing would halt production while they ironed out the issues?
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Halting production has huge ramifications up and down the supply chain - some parts have a three year lead time, for example. Better to store completed aircraft for rework at a later date than stop production until you absolutely need to. Boeing has now run out of cheap storage space and needs to take the next step.
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Exactly this.. Boeing has buyers for these aircraft on contract so they keep building them. They also have a HUGE supply chain which was geared up for a specified production rate, they have to deal with both...
Now, they are rapidly running out of storage space and are awaiting the final re-certification of the aircraft. Once they have that, they will retrofit all the delivered aircraft as necessary to get them flying, then start working off the aircraft in storage to make their contracted deliveries as fas
Re:Wait WHAT? (Score:5, Interesting)
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They always thought they could fix this with some small upgrades like an extra indicator light, some software updates and a handful of new checklist items in their flight manual...
Why not just tell the pilots that they are "holding it wrong" . . . ?
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Why not just tell the pilots that they are "holding it wrong" . . . ?
Ironically that would be a perfectly acceptable solution, and the pilots will simply have to go and learn how to hold it right. The difference is unlike Apple customers, airlines actually care because they specifically bought the plane because they wanted the pilots to hold it in a certain way.
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They always thought they could fix this with some small upgrades like an extra indicator light, some software updates and a handful of new checklist items in their flight manual... Now, they finally start realizing they're not just selling smartphones, but devices that actually kill people when they misbehave.
I think you will be very surprised with how this issue gets fixed. Rumor has it that there won't be much more than a software and documentation change with a couple of hours worth of training, including simulator time, for pilots. They may actually redesign the manual trim wheel too, but given the huge mechanical impact; that would be pretty expensive. I'm not expecting much more than that. At least for the MCAS part of this.
BTW, there has been a couple of *other* issues that have surfaced with these ai
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I think you will be very surprised with how this issue gets fixed. Rumor has it that there won't be much more than a software and documentation change with a couple of hours worth of training, including simulator time, for pilots. They may actually redesign the manual trim wheel too, but given the huge mechanical impact; that would be pretty expensive.
Certainly Boeing tries to solve it like that. But the question is if it is enough to get the permission to let it fly again. First from FAA, and if it is not convincing they have to get it certified separately by other countries. The EASA already gave a warning about that, which is just another reason for the FAA to be strict.
Not smart (Score:2)
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Furloughing workers happens all the time in the US aviation industry - lay them off with a promise of an rehire offer if the line reopens.
Boeing can’t work on a replacement right now - the vast majority of workers affected by a shutdown will be assembly workers, while new product design is a whole different group of people. And those people are working on the 777X at the moment.
Boeing has had a New Midsized Airplane project in the back burner for about 15 years now, but it’s nowhere near the de
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I didn't make this terrifically clear but if they're slowing down production while demand for airplanes remains the same, they're obviously putting effort into a replacement instead. Anything they say to the contrary makes no sense and they'd have to literally fire people then hire them back later if they truly just "suspended" building them temporarily.
Demand hasn't remained the same, though. 737 Max orders were cancelled, or other airlines chose Airbus and the 32X over the 737 for new acquisitions. Boeing thought they could do a quick fix so continued production as normal (or maybe slightly reduced) and now they literally have fully completed and painted planes sitting in parking lots.
According to a September CNBC article, there are over 300 completed aircraft waiting to be delivered. These can't all be picked up in one day. It's not like buying a ca
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it needs to rely on sensors to fly it or else everyone on board dies
I realize shitting on Boeing is the current fad. And yes, it is for the most part deserved. But come on man, saying "the whole thing is shit, because it needs sensors to fly" is bullshit. Designing a life-critical system with no sensor redundancy is criminal, but that is a fixable problem.
It only took... (Score:4, Insightful)
They blamed it on "pilot inexperience" but really even experienced pilots told them it was a deathtrap.
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hundreds of deaths instead of listening to engineers that told them the stabilization system was essentially broken in the first place.
They blamed it on "pilot inexperience" but really even experienced pilots told them it was a deathtrap.
Yeah, it is too bad that no past incidents could have warned them of the danger of non redundant sensors providing input to computer systems controlling flight surfaces: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Not so friendly (Score:2)
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programmers making $9/hr
That's a lot! In India...
Old Skool Corporation (Score:2)
Stale news, and analysis (Score:3)
Excellent article on topic, https://www.moonofalabama.org/... [moonofalabama.org], from a veteran computer professional. He is foollowing this whole Boeing mess since its start, and lots of good information and insight on this topic is available on his site.
Good (Score:4, Interesting)
Scrap that hastily designed hunk of shit and fire the CEO along with the board.
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The board can fire the CEO, but who fires the board? That is why public voice, boycotting the product, and good government are valuable. In this case, good government also failed (FAA), but perhaps now with so much public scrutiny of the problem, certain board members would have the sense to resign.
FAA analysis predicted crashes. (Score:2)
"Yeah we knew they'd crash and kill everyone on board but we are supported by the manufacturers
Burn that shit! (Score:2)
Boeing May Suspend Production of Their 737 Max Aircraft
They should take each and everyone and give it to the Army for target practice. Disassemble them, torch them, melt that shit to slag. Then reuse what's left to make nails with which to crucify all the people in Boeing and the FAA responsible for this.
Over 400 people are death because these bastards cut corners. Markets don't fucking regulate themselves. Ever.
Cut costs, put lives in danger (Score:2)
But why? (Score:2)
They sell like hot cakes!
I wouldn't fly on it... (Score:2)
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May? What the hell do you mean "may"? How many more catastrophic failures do you need, Boeing?
It's not the catastrophic failures that are causing this, it's the 300+ completed plane backlog sitting in parking lots with no end to the grounding in sight. It'll take them months, if not a year or more, to get through that backlog once the grounding is lifted and the fixes are all applied (which is probably at least 6 months away from now, at least).