
Boeing Was ‘Go, Go, Go’ to Beat Airbus with the 737 Max - cmurf
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/business/boeing-737-max-crash.html
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rsynnott
> When upgrading the cockpit with a digital display, he said, his team wanted
> to redesign the layout of information to give pilots more data that were
> easier to read. But that might have required new pilot training. So instead,
> they simply recreated the decades-old gauges on the screen.

This was a particularly weird detail, I thought.

~~~
stefan_
That seems very sane? It's a more fuel-efficient 737; carriers and pilots want
and need redesigned cockpit and instruments as much as I need the latest take
of the Gmail design team on how a mail app should look and function.

~~~
mortenjorck
The process and rationale for redesigning a web app to drive engagement is not
really comparable to that of redesigning an aircraft instrument panel to
promote safety.

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ern
Something else that's worrying is this comment from a technician:

 _His internal assembly designs for the Max, he said, still include omissions
today, like not specifying which tools to use to install a certain wire, a
situation that could lead to a faulty connection. Normally such blueprints
include intricate instructions._

I hope that all these failures are investigated and addressed before the plane
is allowed to fly again.

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Invictus0
I can't really see any decision point where an engineer might have stood up
and said "this plane isn't safe," like Allan McDonald did with the Challenger.
The article tries to hang blame on the decision not to upgrade the cockpit
info displays, but there was nothing wrong with the old display systems. It's
still not clear if the plane is actually aerodynamically flawed or if the MCAS
was simply programmed poorly. Even the business decision was fine; from the
perspective of a non-technical executive, "add newer engines but change as
little else as possible" seems like a pretty reasonable directive and not
likely to cause safety issues. Engineers could have complained about the pace
of work but I think it was made clear to them that they were fighting for
their jobs: Boeing has had numerous 10,000+ workers layoffs in the past. With
everything we know now, I can't see any criminal charges being filed in
relation with this disaster.

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frostburg
Not having three AoA sensors seems either insane or criminally negligent.

~~~
arcticbull
Yep, there’s going to be a lot of hand wringing, finger pointing and hot air
expended over the next few years and this is basically it. Boeing had two
options:

(1) 3 sensors plus majority voter.

(2) A mandatory AoA disagree indication plus some training on how to react to
it.

They chose option (3): Neither. Frankly when I heard there were just two
sensors and no disagree indication, my first thought was well that’s just as
good as one sensor and hoping for the best, isn’t it? The “challenger moment”
would have been after the meeting they decided on this.

~~~
D_Alex
Option (4): input from other sensors (altitude, climb rate,
gyroscope/artificial horizon, pilot actions etc) for a sense check...?

~~~
arcticbull
My gut tells me aerospace errs on the side of simplicity and reproducibility.
It could work, though ideally system errors wouldn’t interfere with other
systems.

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ukenyatta
Boeing is in trouble, the world is no longer revolving around the US and
outside of the United States it’s very clear that Boeing is to blame.

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billfruit
Not a good year this for Boeing, there has been major crashes of the 707 and
767 in the last 2 months, apart from the 737 Max loss.(Though 707 crash was
due to lt landing in wrong airport by mistake, where the runway was not long
enough, so it crashed into a wall).

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Yetanfou
It is interesting and a bit disconcerting to see how a question like this one
for some quickly turns into the the same type of partisan quibble as an
_Android-vs-Apple_ or _Emacs-vs-vi_ or _Linux-vs-Windows_ question would. If
there were ways to map answers onto a globe I expect the 'pro-Boeing' answers
to mostly come from the north-American continent and the 'pro-Airbus' mostly
from the Eurasian and south-American continent with more diverse answers from
the other continents.

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tonyedgecombe
The planes crashed, there is nothing partisan about that.

~~~
Yetanfou
That is what makes it disconcerting to see the same clan-like attitude arise
in this discussion. It is one thing to 'defend your team' when talking about
mobile user interfaces, freedom of choice of where to get your applications
from or the relative virtues of different software development models. In this
case two crashes seem to be partly caused by design problems and as such it
seems to be an inappropriate response to try to 'defend the team'.

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jumelles
This seems to be getting worse and worse for Boeing, and they definitely
aren't acting like they understand the gravity of the situation. I guess
Boeing has been coasting along based on its position and reputation for a few
decades and this is the result.

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ackfoo
That's not really accurate. Boeing is under continuous attack by hatchet jobs
like this that insinuate they cut corners and are solely responsible for these
accidents.

First, we don't have final reports from the investigators yet, so it's awfully
early to point the finger.

Second, every major aviation accident is multi-factorial. It's never just one
failure that causes it.

If it does turn out to be the faulty AOA indicator causing the electric trim
to go nose-down, there are still a number of other obvious contributing
factors in addition to the faulty sensor.

The public is demanding low airfare prices because they are getting squeezed
by the increasing disparity of wealth worldwide. Wages are not rising as fast
as prices, and as the cost of doing business with China slowly rises due to
the trade war, prices start to creep up and the squeeze increases.

Airlines respond by flying pilots with lower time and lesser training, paying
them less, and working them harder.

Pilots spend less time in the simulator working on abnormal conditions, and
while they are undoubtedly great at monitoring normal flights and navigating
controlled airspace, they have less experience hand-flying approaches and
dealing with rare equipment failures and emergencies.

Every pilot should have adequate simulator time to be competent with every
emergency procedure for which there is a checklist, but that is not the
reality. The three seconds allotted by the FAA to diagnose critical systems
failures is simply not enough if you can't find and execute the correct
checklist in that time period.

In the old days, every single pilot from a Cessna 152 on up knew exactly what
a badly trimmed airplane felt like and how to fix it instantly. When you felt
that extra force on the controls, you would instinctively rotate the trim
wheel in the direction of the force that you were needing to apply.

Same for electric trim systems: if the force doesn't ease the way it should,
you have a runaway and you need to interrupt power to the electric trim
system.

But that is hand-flying, stick-and-rudder-type stuff. If you're not getting
the hand-flying time and the simulated failure time, you just don't develop
that instinct.

It's not entirely Boeing's fault that an aircrew can't recognize and counter a
runaway electric trim, no matter what the details in the flight manual. It's
only reasonable to assume that basic level of competency.

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sgwae
Has the same issue happened for airbus with half a thousand dead, and any of
their planes grounded world wide?

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selectodude
The A330 had some weird pitch down incidences due to a faulty ADIRS, and
obviously AF447 due to faulty pitot tubes and the completely idiotic issue
where the control sticks aren't synced and the inputs are averaged out before
being sent to the plane. There were some considerations given to grounding the
fleet, whether or not Airbus wanted to admit it at the time.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-plane-denial-
sb/ai...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-plane-denial-sb/airbus-
denies-planning-to-ground-a330-340-fleet-idUSTRE5597AC20090610)

~~~
cjbprime
A330 has fewer total fatalities over its 27 years of service (339 deaths) than
the MAX does in a year and a half (346 deaths).

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dstola
I wonder if Boeing and their engineers instinctively knew it was their fault
after the first crash, or at least had a feeling/intuition, and how many hoops
they had to jump through to cover it up only for it to come up again

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rootusrootus
Boeing is still going to clean Airbus' clock with the 737MAX. This isn't the
first time they've had something like this happen, soon enough people will
forget and this plane will most likely go on to become yet another wildly
successful 737 variant, safest in the world. Maybe they will downplay the MAX
name, though, and market it simply as 737-7, 737-8, and 737-9 going forward.

~~~
matt4077
In 2018, Airbus sold 560 3XXneo, while Boeing sold 720 737 max-X. The year
before, it was 925 (Airbus) vs 760 (Boeing).

Looking at the chart since 1980, the 737 and 320 lines have had eerily similar
sales records:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_between_Airbus_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_between_Airbus_and_Boeing#Airbus_A320_vs_Boeing_737)

So it's quite possible that Boeing will see limited impact from these crashes.
But no clocks are getting cleaned.

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muro
The one that really stands out for Boeing is the 777. I fly a lot and liked
Airbus for long flights more, but as airlines upgrade from A340 to the 777,
it's always for the better. I would still take the 380 if available, though.

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acroback
I see the same age my Startup all the time.

It is go go go all the time. Except, it is not a plane.

