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Boeing Officially Stops Making 737 Max Airplanes (cnn.com) 229

Boeing confirmed that it has stopped building 737 Max airplanes in Renton, Washington, as it waits to get permission for the plane to fly again following two deadly crashes that killed 346 people. CNN reports: Boeing will not furlough or lay off workers because of the shutdown, but pain will ripple through its supply chain and could hurt America's economic growth. Boeing would not release a headcount for people who had been working on the plane. The company said the employees will be reassigned to other duties during the shutdown, and there are a number of reasons for that.

The 737 Max has been grounded since March following two fatal crashes that killed all 346 people on board. Although Boeing couldn't deliver the 737 Max planes to customers, the company continued to build the jets, albeit at a slightly reduced pace of 42 a month. It now has about 400 completed jets parked in Washington and Texas, waiting to be delivered to airlines around the world. The company hoped that the plane would fly again before the end of 2019. But in December Stephen Dickson, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, announced approval would not come until some time in 2020. Shutdown plans were announced a week later.

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Boeing Officially Stops Making 737 Max Airplanes

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  • by meist3r ( 1061628 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @07:06PM (#59642692)
    Two great new choices for the concerned traveller. Inquire now!
  • by sexconker ( 1179573 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @07:06PM (#59642694)

    Convert them all into private jets for the CXOs and other higher up assholes at Boeing.

    • by lgw ( 121541 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @07:25PM (#59642746) Journal

      My favorite quote about the 737 Max, from a Boeing pilot: "this airplane was designed by clowns, who were in turn managed by monkeys".

      • My favorite quote about the 737 Max, from a Boeing pilot: "this airplane was designed by clowns, who were in turn managed by monkeys".

        Cosplay engineers doesn't scare me at all, but managed by monkeys is potentially problematic.

      • Through a test program years ago in a partnership between Raytheon and the Bronx Zoo, I was assigned to a program that had a howler monkey as the PM. It yelled a lot, not unlike the boss from a buddy copy movie, but it had a much greater grasp of risk/reward than any other program manager I've worked for before or since. One major complaint - all program lunches served nothing but bananas and orange sections.
    • That's a horribly insensitive thing to say.

      What about the innocent flight crew?
    • Won't work. Even the Mexican President is desperately trying to sell his Boeing and is refusing to fly in it. He rather flies economy class in another plane!
    • Re:Convert Them (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Mspangler ( 770054 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @11:43PM (#59643314)

      Convert them into drones, if they can get the computer to fly them long enough to get the out over the Pacific. Then the Air Force and Navy can use them for target practice.

      More seriously, can they put the old engines back on them? Then they would have some market value.

      Otherwise, it's off to the recycling bin. If they fly (with the current engines) for three years without further accident I might trust them again, but who are you going to get to fly in them for the next three years? It won't be me.

      • It has nothing to do with the engines. It's the flight control system software. Which can be fixed relatively easily, but the big worry now is not this particular mistake itself, but HOW that mistake could have been allowed to happen and what other mistakes could be lurking in there that haven't caused crashes yet. It was just such a shockingly egregious error that it boggles the mind how it could have made it through certification, casting doubt on the entire certification process that was used to certify

      • Re:Convert Them (Score:5, Insightful)

        by cmseagle ( 1195671 ) on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @04:09AM (#59643626)

        who are you going to get to fly in them for the next three years?

        Everyone, so long as the ticket on the 737 MAX is slightly cheaper than the alternative.

  • Parked in the desert forever?

    • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      Need a really big lawn ornament?
    • by CaptainDork ( 3678879 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @07:21PM (#59642734)

      Parked in the desert forever?

      I swim in these waters and I can tell you that parked aircraft develop more problems than those in service.

      Lubricants lose their flavour on the bed post overnight and electronics corrodes due to lack of climate control. Other demons surface as well. Pilots and crew of healthy birds report even minor inconveniences (like an uncomfortable seat, wherein I adjusted lumps to fit their butt crack) and maintenance is ongoing.

      Bringing a dead, mothballed plane up to snuff is an expensive, and time-consuming bitch.

      • by Chris Katko ( 2923353 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @10:32PM (#59643206)

        Fun fact: It's a HUGE business to restore old helicopters (and I imagine planes). It'll cost like, half the price of a new helicopter to restore a 60s era helicopter. But half the price of a new helicopter, is still half the price.

        I got to tour one of the plants they do the work in. They tear them completely apart, sandblast them down to the bare metal, fix any cracks and dents, repaint, etc. Likewise they remove and tear apart the turbine engines down to nothing and back. Who would have thought in 1960 "someone is going to be rebuilding this 60 years later for active service." They sell them to news stations, police, fire, EMS, etc.

        I mean, people rebuild '53 Chevys right... but those Chevy's aren't flying thousands of feet in the air, and they typically aren't putting thousands of hours on those motors. Imagine being able to certify to someone, this old plane/helicopter is going to be reliable enough _to fly_. I'm sure it all resolves down to a checklist of proper tests, but it's still impressive to think about.

    • by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @07:30PM (#59642760)
      The planes parked in the desert have generally exceeded their service life. Aluminum is not like steel under cyclical load. It has a fatigue limit [wikipedia.org]. Steel gets weaker during initial load cycling, but then levels off at a certain minimum strength. Aluminum does not behave like this - it continues to get weaker the more load cycles you put on it. So aircraft designers (and spacecraft designers, e.g. Space Shuttle) assign a service life to the airframe, which (hopefully) guarantees it will be retired before the aluminum's strength gets so low that the structures will suffer fatigue failure. Aloha 243 [wikipedia.org] and Japan Airlines 123 [wikipedia.org] are examples of what can happen if you put too many load cycles on a structural element of the plane. (As were the original De Haviland Comets [wikipedia.org], although their failure was a combination of square windows and fatigue failure from pressurization cycles.)

      They're parked in the desert because although the airfames are past their service life, there may be non-structural parts on it which can be used as replacement parts on serviceable aircraft. The low humidity of the desert slows down corrosion.
      • by sabt-pestnu ( 967671 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @07:43PM (#59642808)

        I believe you missed a groove there...

        The planes Boeing has been making recently have been parked waiting for permission to fly / sell them. Both around Puget Sound and in the desert. News here. [seattletimes.com]

        These are not the scrapyards you are looking for.

        On the other hand, I'd vote ya up for informative re the load cycling and fatigue on aluminum.

        And point back to the previous poster re maintenance on mothballed planes. You'd think that if they were paying 2k/month to park them, they'd spring for an extra couple hundred for cabin conditioning, "maintenance fluids" to replace lubricants which can go bad while sitting, etc. But maybe that "extra couple of hundred" is ... a lowball figure.

    • There is nothing inherently wrong with the aircraft.

      The pilots just need to be trained on how to fly them.

      The accidents were caused by trying to replace a hundred hours of training with some software and a $5 sensor.

      • by _merlin ( 160982 )

        $5? AoA sensors typically cost hundreds of dollars [dynonavionics.com] (yes, that one works on a different principle to the one on the 737 MAX, but I couldn't get a price on the kind uses in the 737 MAX with a quick search).

        • I couldn't get a price on the kind uses in the 737 MAX with a quick search

          Given that about 20 years ago I saw a maintenance ticket on an instrument panel clock on a 757 that listed the replacement cost to the major airline I fly for as $5,000 (yes, a clock), I'm going to go out on a limb and say an AOA vane for a 737 is a bit more than a few hundred dollars. The display units on the instrument panel (very high-quality ~8 in x 8 in LCDs that display flight instrumentation, navigation, and engine data; on the 737 NG there are 6 of these, on the Max there are 4, but those 4 are much

          • Do you happen to know if thereâ(TM)s any reasonable justification for these high prices? You allude to one when you say the LCDs are very high quality, but Iâ(TM)m not sure what that means in practice, nor can I see how it would drive 100k+ of real costs.

            What does it *do* that an airplane requires, and that a $1k screen made by a laptop manufacturer cannot do? Similarly with the AoA sensor â" what does it do that an accelerometer in a phone doesnâ(TM)t?

            I have this sneaking suspicion that

            • by _merlin ( 160982 ) on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @04:04AM (#59643624) Homepage Journal

              An AoA sensor isn't an a accelerometer. It measures the angle of the incident airflow. It has to do this over a wide range of speeds, in rain, hail, condensation, and icing conditions. There are a few types. Combat aircraft often use flush pressure sensors for aerodynamics and to minimise radar cross section. Airliners tend to use a pivoting vane with an angular position sensor (this is what the 737 MAX uses), which are the most accurate at anything but very low airspeeds. Light aircraft often use cheaper pitot type sensors like the ones I linked, which aren't as accurate, and may not be suitable for use in icing conditions (note that the heat option doubled the price).

      • by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @08:30PM (#59642938)

        There is nothing inherently wrong with the aircraft.

        Been living under a rock? The airframe is inherently unstable in stall due to the insane engine placement, which is in turn due to the insanely inadequate landing gear, which is in turn due to Boeing's criminal negligence in refusing to improve the basic air frame, to save money and bring products out faster, in a desperate attempt to constrict the A320 Neo's market share.

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          That is not entirely true, it is a bit more complicated. The aircraft is stable in the entire operational envelope. It is less stable at high AoA in bank, but stable nonetheless. It just requires less force to displace it that previous versions of the 737. This would require retraining the pilots, possibly with a new rating, and this is what the MCAS was supposed to solve. The MCAS was there only to solve a business and regulation problem, but because it was badly designed it turned a technical non-issue i
          • by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @09:56PM (#59643144)

            It is less stable at high AoA in bank, but stable nonetheless.

            That is cynical revisionist bullshit from someone with skin in the game (you). The additional, unwanted lift caused by the awkward placement of the inconveniently large high bypass engines on a long lever arm well forward of the center of lift make the 737 Max dynamically unstable near stall, not at all unusual at takeoff with the plane near full load and perhaps non-ideal weather conditions. Go ahead, try to define that as not "operational envelope". We already know what you are.

            • The spirit of what you're saying is right, and the plane is awkward. Boeing messed up. The sad thing is that they could have still sold this kit-bash of a jet and it probably would have flown safely with properly trained pilots, but Boeing cut corners on top of cut corners, and now hundreds of people are dead.

              • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

                This does not even touch the problem Boeing and the FAA created, nobody trusts them any more. So what if the FAA allows them to fly, why would other countries trust that. How about Boeing lobbying to self regulate and self inspect, who will accept that. Boeing has done real damage to it's repuation and the FAA has allowed Boeing to do real damage to the FAAs reputation. Why believe either of them any more. Heads have to role at both organisations in order to rebuild their reputations but that stopped happen

      • by AC-x ( 735297 )

        There is nothing inherently wrong with the aircraft.

        There is one thing [seattletimes.com] - Boeing removed the ability to disable automatic trim controls without turning off the entire electronic trim system, and the mechanical backup is physically too hard to turn in many situations.

      • The pilots just need to be trained on how to fly them.

        Unfortunately, there is a shortage of 737 MAX simulators to train on:

        https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]

        Maybe b Boeing could convert some of those stockpiled 737 Maxen to simulators . . . ?

    • Something useful, like beer cans.

    • They're parked next to the diesel VW's. [I miss mine!]
  • by mveloso ( 325617 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @07:19PM (#59642724)

    The 737 SuperMax: only one-way flights, no escape.

    • You may be on to something. It only costs about $40/hour to fly on a long haul flight, a costs about $12/hour to keep a prisoner in super-max. Its not all that far off, and its pretty difficult to escape at 35,000'

  • and repurposes them as tunnel parts for his Boring Company.
    Jet propelled trains are the future of transportation.

  • Drop the other shoe. Time to do some honest work and design a modern airframe. Come on you can do it, you lazy slimey crooks.

    • They cant do that. It would ruin Southwest's business model

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      They do not have any good engineers left. Hence they are stuck with the old design and messy fixes to it.

    • It wasn't a question of laziness. Boeing never saw the fall of the hub-and-spoke model and the rise of the efficient single-aisle airplane coming. Neither did Airbus with the A380 (a plane designed to serve the hub-and-spoke model). Airbus just happened to have the right product (A320neo) and captured the market. Boeing didn't have time to design a new airplane, they would have lost all their customers if the took their time to make a new airframe. The 737 Max wasn't a bad idea. Insisting on no simulation t
  • pain will ripple through its supply chain and could hurt America's economic growth.

    "Damn you kids wanting us to pay for safe software and not CEO bailouts, now you went and hurt the economy."

  • I think Boeing and airlines are drastically underestimating the pushback they're going to get from the flying public when these things start flying again. It's been nearly a solid year of horrible headlines, each worse than the next. Boeing deserves to have the MAX never fly again and to take tens of billions in loses because of it.
    • by flyingfsck ( 986395 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @09:51PM (#59643134)
      If it is Boeing, we're not going. My wife plans all out trips with Airbus carriers.
    • Nobody stopped flying 737s, and very few people know about what the different models are.

      Media will be full of people whining loudly for a few days or weeks depending on what else is happening in the world, and airlines will sell exactly the same number of tickets as otherwise.

      • this is true..

        The airline industry has become all about price and load factors. Few folks will care what aircraft they are booked on any more than they do now. Those who do care, will only really care until the news cycle is over, say a couple of weeks... Assuming they don't crack another one up right away...

        Besides, the 737 has survived bad press before, although they didn't kill two plane loads in 6 months, they've crashed a few of them to manufacturing/engineering problems long before the MCAS system

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @07:40PM (#59642800)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • There is a marketer out there who will change the name and make his or her career. Hopefully the new planes don't crash
  • But is long overdue for replacement. That short landing gear is just really hurting it from the engine standpoint and lead directly to the 737 Max issues.
  • This will have a flow on effect to all of the airlines who intend to sell off their existing 737 to smaller carriers. They will not be able to escape their contractual obligations to those carriers where the ink is well and truly dry. Nor is this a good situation for Airbus who do not want to appear as a monopoly player.

    Consequently it would be unsurprising if carriers attempt to lease back the aircraft they have sold to the smaller carriers before the livery painted on them changes.

    The mind boggles at

    • The question is will *enough* passengers be comfortable flying in these aircraft?

      Given today's load factors and the short attention span of the flying public, I'm pretty sure this will be but a temporary blip in a long flying career of the 737 MAX when they finally scrap the last one in 50 or so years. Practically Nobody will care within 6 months of the 737 MAX being recertified, certainly not enough folks will care to kill the airlines load factors. The aircraft will still fly full.

  • by az-saguaro ( 1231754 ) on Tuesday January 21, 2020 @11:25PM (#59643296)

    I am no expert, just looking up articles to find the following information.

    Here is the timeline for Boeing jet passenger aircraft, main version numbers, date started in service:
    707 1958
    727 1964
    737 1968
    747 1970
    757 1982
    767 1981
    777 1994
    787 2011
    737MAX 2016

    Notable is that development costs for the 747 almost bankrupted the company, but once sales kicked in, it made Boeing king of the passenger airways. It was not until the latest new airframe, the 787, that there were any technical and safety glitches that substantially delayed certification and date of service.

    Thus, from the World War II era through the 1980's, Boeing grew, thrived, profited, excelled by being an innovation and engineering forward company. And, this was in the face of stiff competition. In the 60's and 70's, companies with passenger jet aircraft included Boeing, Convair, Douglas, deHavilland, Vickers, Dassault, Lockheed, McDonnell, Sud-Aviation. McDonnell-Douglas merged 1967. Airbus was the European merger in 1970. As of just a few years ago, large passenger aircraft were reduced to just 4 manufacturers - Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier, Embraer, and as of today, the smaller two have been mostly sucked up by Airbus and Boeing.

    With competition, there was engineering and innovation and a thriving industry with fairly regular technical development.

    Now, we have companies run by MBA's with none of the heart and soul of the founders, none of the wizardry of the engineers, and apparently none of the common sense of ordinary people. The 737-MAX was a kludge, a hedge against competition from its only meaningful competition, a half-baked idea to repurpose a 50 year old design in order to capture market share with minimum investment, so it seems. After 50 years and profound advances in materials, avionics, energy, and the economy, a fresh back-to-the-drawing-board new aircraft is needed, and the Boeing of the 1940's-50's-60's would have made that investment. Their short sighted (and in the minds of many people, criminal) ineptitude with the 737-MAX has not only not saved money, but will cost them dearly, in dollars and reputation. Unlike the 747 experience when they "bet the farm" on an innovative idea that ultimately paid off big, the MAX was a swindle. If there was still any meaningful competition in the commercial aircraft industry, perhaps they might have made a real new airplane.

    The Boeing-Airbus duopoly has wrung out competition and along with it, innovation, engineering priority, and safety and service considerations, all in favor or industry mergers and consolidation that wring the money and real value out of the companies for the MBA's and majority shareholders. This sadness is unfortunately pervasive in many industries. Who here thinks that these companies are anything like their glorious founding selves: IBM, GE, Xerox, AT&T, HP? Even hospitals and healthcare have succumbed. I suppose religion will be next.

    What is the likelihood that Boeing will humbly eat its own poo, scrap the MAX, and get back to designing an innovative safe and efficient new aircraft from scratch, they way they should have, starting about 20 years, ago according to their prior development timetable?

    • How short our memory is..

      There have been a number of Boeing aircraft that had engineering defects that cost lives. Even the 737 had some early on, lost like 3-4 aircraft before they figured out why.

      Overall, this 737 MAX thing only looks huge because it's happening now, Boeing and the MAX will survive. Once they get their certification back and get the aircraft flying, this whole episode will fade into the past like all the rest of the problems (assuming they don't crash another too soon).

      We've been dow

  • by The Cynical Critic ( 1294574 ) on Wednesday January 22, 2020 @09:16AM (#59644028)
    Considering everything the FAA and others investigating the 737 MAX's problems have found so far the requirement for re-certification should be a refit big enough to necessitate that the planes have to return to the factory. We're talking mistakes so big that the type never having it's type certificate re-issued and thus all planes having to be scrapped or made into museum pieces isn't even completely unreasonable.

    The original design of MCAS and the sensor array that it had when it was approved by the FAA was perfectly sane and reasonable, but after that Boeing decided to substantially reduce the redundancy of sensors and insisted that it was just a small change, thus not necessitating FAA approval. In other words the FAA was asleep at the wheel as Boeing broke cardinal rules of modern aircraft design with lethal consequences for 100s of people. As such a pulling of the leash like this and reversing the "self-certification" the industry has been pushing so hard for in the last couple of decades is absolutely necessary.

    Not just for Boeing, but also the FAA and it's credibility as air safety authorities around the world rely on it's judgement. If air safety authorities around the world lose their trust in the FAA it's not just bad for the US' image, Boeing will also suffer as it will have to get separate approval from one or more of these before it can start selling it's planes in their regions when previously it was just enough that the FAA approved their planes and everyone trusted the FAA's judgement. If this isn't resolved in a way that restores confidence in the FAA too, Boeing will probably have to push all of their future models trough FAA to be allowed to be sold and flown in the U.S and then their European equivalent to be sold and flown elsewhere, substantially increasing the time to market of any new models.

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