
EASA demands additional changes for the 737 Max - salex89
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-05/europe-sets-out-demands-for-boeing-before-max-can-fly-again
======
burlesona
Is there a point at which it makes more sense for Boeing to cancel the MAX and
start over with a new airframe?

Personally I don’t love the idea of flying on one of these at this point, no
matter how many tweaks they make. I’m sure many others will feel the same.

At what point is a new airframe the better PR move for all involved?

~~~
Waterluvian
I haven't done the napkin math but I'm going to guess scrapping 500 jets would
bankrupt the company (or at least trigger a too big to fail bailout).

~~~
robmiller
Convert them to cargo. Amazon could probably scoop them up for pennies on the
dollar for a new Prime Air fleet.

~~~
nordsieck
> Amazon could probably scoop them up for pennies on the dollar for a new
> Prime Air fleet.

If Boeing can't afford to scrap 500 jets, it probably can't afford to sell 500
jets at a 95% loss.

~~~
wayoutthere
I mean, Boeing’s market cap is ~$95B. If we’re in a fantasy land where Amazon
is going to buy that many planes they might as well just buy the whole damn
company.

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woogiewonka
This all feels like smokescreen for the real issue - engines being too large
for the airframe.

Am I the only one who sees this as a grand fuck up that only has one outcome?
And it's certainly not what they are trying to sell the public on.

~~~
sandworm101
The answer is to stop calling this a 737. Make it a new airframe subject to
new type certification. That frees boeing to adopt comprehensive flight
controls rather than this layered protections approach. It also means fully
training new crews, the avoidance of which was much of the 737-max selling
point.

~~~
mchristen
Changing the name of the plane will not fix the problems in the plane.

The worst part for Boeing is that now under additional scrutiny more problems
are being found, that begs the question what else is being missed?

~~~
sandworm101
Changing the name means a new type cert. It means new a wider scope of design.
It means new flight tests, from scratch. It is a very meaningful action.

~~~
msbarnett
Sure, “changing the name” fixes the problem if you also...change the rest of
the airframe.

It’s really not maintaining the type certification that’s the problem, it’s
the aerodynamics of the airframe. If they’d called it a 797 from the beginning
it _would still_ have needed the MCAS to get FAA approval because the insane
aerodynamics mean the stick forces don’t obey the regulations for constant
increase in forces approaching a stall. The MCAS isn’t there just so it can
pretend to be a 737.

So yeah changing the name is only a solution if by changing the name you mean
fundamentally changing every aspect of it.

~~~
sandworm101
>>> Sure, “changing the name” fixes the problem if you also...change the rest
of the airframe. It’s really not maintaining the type certification that’s the
problem, it’s the aerodynamics of the airframe.

I don't think you understand the regulatory regime. Changing the name,
creating it as a new airframe, means total top-to-bottom re-certification.
That means they can ditch all the legacy equipment and start the control
system from scratch. Most of the problems with the max atm are related to
systems layered atop that legacy equipment (autopilot, control surfaces etc)
that cannot be swapped out without changing the type/name.

~~~
msbarnett
Right but the type certification has nothing to do with why it’s designed the
way it is. You seem to think they started with “maintain type certification
uber alles” as their goal, when it was actually just a happy consequence of
their goal, which was “sell airlines an airframe the same size as current
737s, so they can keep using the same height gates and service vehicles as
their vast 737 fleets, but make it much more fuel efficient”

The fucking name isn’t the problem. Trying to work fuel efficiency into too
small a package and ending up with something with the stall characteristics of
a brick is the problem. Creating it as a “new airframe” fixes the problem only
by abandoning the problem they set out to solve, which again, wasn’t “keep the
name”.

If this had been the 797 from the getgo, but had tried to put those engines on
any airframe that stayed that low to the ground for gate compatibility, they
have still needed the MCAS because of the aerodynamics of the necessary engine
placement.

Remember that the 737 is such a big seller because it has huge usage on
_regional_ routes and in smaller countries. It lands at airports where they
still wheel up a set of stairs, or one of those double-decker deplaning buses.
The height is a _big deal_ for established infrastructure of customers. If it
weren’t, they could have redesigned the landing gear to get the necessary
engine clearance instead of fucking up the aerodynamics by moving the engines.

The height, and not the name, is the original sin from which every shitty
consequence flows.

~~~
burfog
They sure could make an MCAS-free 797 low to the ground with those engines.
There are lots of ways.

The popular way is with a T-tail and podded engines off the sides of the rear
of the body. Boeing has produced such an aircraft.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_717](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_717)

Another way is with a high-mounted wing. This is popular for military cargo
jets, such as the C-5 and C-17.

Putting engines above the wing is an option. Boeing did it for the YC-14,
Antonov did it for the An-72, VFW-Fokker did it for the 614, and Honda did it
for the Hondajet.

The landing gear could have be made to stick out extra long for the takeoff
and landing, but then partially retract for passenger boarding. During
passenger boarding, the aircraft could even sit on the engines.

------
testfoobar
The 737Max's design decisions seem to have been driven by their desire to
maintain their 737NG type-rating.

So even though it is aerodynamically a different aircraft (with the engines
further out), it mimics the 737NG with an effective emulator. For pilots
certified on the 737NG, apparently minimal retraining is required to fly the
737Max.

Using this analogy, the MCAS system was seemingly put in place to behind-the-
scenes manage a flight-envelope condition on the Max that would not happen on
the NG.

So what happens when the 737Max hardware has a failure? How is the failure
condition reported and managed by the flight crew? Are all failures on the
737Max passed through like they were 737NG failures? Does the flight crew
respond as if they were flying a 737NG or a 737Max?

Correctly mimicing a 737NG during proper flight and under failure conditions
seems like a tall order.

~~~
msbarnett
This is somewhat of a misunderstanding of the situation.

The 737Max was built to provide a more fuel efficient model compatible with
all of the 737-sized gates and etc stuff airlines owned. They did this by
slapping bigger engines on, but to make them fit they pushed them forward of
the wing (can’t make the plane taller or it doesn’t fit all the etc it’s
supposed to be compatible with).

Big, front positioned engines messed up the aerodynamics. Now, at speed, as a
plane got closer to (but not at) the stall angle, forces suddenly inverted,
and it became much easier to pitch up into a stall than push down away from
it. This violated FAA rules that say for a commercial plane to be certified,
at any point short of a stall it must always be harder to pull into it than
push out.

Boeing decided to add some software to automatically push the nose down when
you get to the force inversion point. This uses the stabilizers to add force
to the stick, so the pilot always has that extra force making it easier to
push out of a stall than pull into it, meeting the FAA requirement. This is
MCAS.

Thus MCAS is in no way a “737NG emulator”. You could call the plane a 797 and
you’d still need it to meet fundamental certification requirements about stick
forces. Ie) it’s not so much mimicking an older 737 as it is just pretending
to be a sanely designed commercial airframe at all.

The type certification stuff only enters into it when Boeing didn’t want to
tell people about MCAS because it might have caused them to think harder about
the need for more training, the lack of which was a selling point for them.

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salawat
As I've mentioned at in other parts of the thread, a very thorough design
review is at a minimum warranted.

As I've sat down and worked on reverse engineering, and reverse engineering
things as best I can from pieces of technical info strewn hither and yon, I'm
developing serious concerns over how far Boeing has actually gone in their
FMEA.

Given their complete omission or misclassification of the Angle of Attack
sensor, I can't really give them the benefit of a doubt that they actually
thought through the consequences of more severe, but less likely occurrences
like double flameout, or alternator failure. Both of which would represent
another critical threat to the MCAS software; which must be active in order
for the airframe to be asserted as airworthy.

I'm just not buying it.

~~~
cmurf
Well we have such quandaries with yaw dampeners too. But yaw dampeners are not
computer controlled. I think it's a substantial betrayal of FAR 25 if
computers are being allowed to paper over aerodynamic defects or non-
compliance with applicable FARs.

Using computers to aid safety, to reduce pilot workload, that's all fine. But
to use them to certify an airplane as having certain aerodynamic behaviors
when they do not really have those behaviors? Perverse.

And further, the software routine under discussion can in effect be
neutralized, easily, in-flight, by flipping two switches. Is it really
acceptable, by Boeing and the FAA, to render an airplane legally unairworthy
by flipping two switches? And even more damning, to me as a pilot, is they
apparently found it acceptable to require no training for the true behavior of
the airplane minus this augmentation that is easy to disable inflight and is
in fact recommended to be disabled as a memory checklist item for certain
kinds of emergencies?

Seriously what the fuck?

If true it is wrongdoing. It's wrong for Boeing to go down that road, it's
wrong for the FAA to permit it - until the FARs are changed. There should be
public hearings and all kinds of regulatory requirements for expected computer
and software standards, failure rates, redundancies, and other guarantees. We
have such guarantees in writing for the physical aerodynamics of the airplane!
There absolutely should be equivalents for computers and software if they are
somehow going to take up the slack for otherwise inadequate aircraft design.
You don't just get to silently wordsmith everything and say oh this computer
thingy here will satisfy the aerodynamic requirement.

Fucking hell. It makes me angry. And that's why I really hope there is a
misunderstanding, that really the airplane is certifiable as airworthy without
any computer augmentation, and that the problem is merely that the pilots were
kept out of the loop to avoid type rating required difference training. That's
bad enough. But I think it's worse to paper over aerodynamic short-comings,
waiving it off with computer augmentation when not a single allowance for that
is made in the FARs.

~~~
notinversed
It really seems beyond just negligent and greedy to me, it's almost like
Boeing was just running a malicious social experiment just to see what they
could get away with.

I understand the goals of the plane and how avoiding pilot retraining is more
important than any other priority in the world of aviation, but even then the
design is just so bad it's hard to even make sense of.

------
peteretep
> Both the FAA and EASA along with Canada and Brazil

That’s two interesting other countries, presumably chosen because the presence
of Bombardier and Embraer mean Canada and Brazil have some experience in
certifying planes? Notably missing are Russia and China who also make planes

~~~
duguxu
Russia and China have few influence in the global commercial jet market,
although they are much more competitive in military aircraft.

~~~
joyjoyjoy
Expect this to change.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRAIC_CR929](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRAIC_CR929)

~~~
duguxu
Maybe.

Notice at the same time, not only the manufacturer, but also the authority
CAAC, the China counterpart of FAA, is behaving more and more independently,
as the first regulatory agency to ground 737MAX.

~~~
ethbro
I feel like their being the first to ground a domestic Chinese model would be
more indicative of their independence.

~~~
duguxu
Totally. That would mean CAAC is even more independent than FAA.

~~~
lostlogin
The situation with the 737 MAX has shown the FAAs independence to be suspect.

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everybodyknows
Other coverage:

[http://newsinflight.com/2019/07/06/easa-has-outlined-five-
re...](http://newsinflight.com/2019/07/06/easa-has-outlined-five-requirements-
to-be-addressed-before-allowing-max-to-return-to-service/)

~~~
Gustomaximus
For requirement; 1. Will an average pilot have enough physical strength to
turn the manual trim wheel in the cockpit

Given half of pilots will be below average... that doesn't sound great.
Shouldn't it be all pilots have strength enough.

~~~
mochomocha
> _Given half of pilots will be below average_

Average is different than median.

~~~
gruez
True, although in this case it's an non-issue because most attributes for
humans follow a normal distribution.

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ape4
Seems like a problem with the EASA and FAA (too) that the issue was only found
now.

~~~
SiempreViernes
My understanding is that the certification work by FAA was simply trusted by
EASA, and it was just carried over.

The FAA in turn had been systematically delegating parts of the certification
back to the manufacturers themselves, and obviously have not provided enough
oversight.

After the crashes the EASA have obviously determined they need to redo the
verification work themselves.

~~~
djsumdog
Does the FAA trust other countries agencies when certifying aircraft? Does the
EASA do their own extensive testing and certification on Airbus planes, or
Canada for Bombardaria, along with the FAA? Or has the US turned into some
type of de-facto authority over all airplane certification (in they way the US
FCC has for space satellite launches and tracking?)

~~~
kejaed
There are generally agreements between the various countries’ aviation
certification authorities so that a system or aircraft is certified in the
country of its design/manufacture and it is accepted in other countries. The
harmonization of the rules between countries is always fun.

For example, I worked on a program where we certified the glass cockpit
upgrade for the US Navy trainer, T-6A to T-6B with Transport Canada, the
aircraft with the new avionics was certified by the FAA, and the whole system
was then accepted by the US Navy. Satisfying all 3 stakeholders at the same
time often proved difficult.

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cadence-
I know it’s not what we are supposed to be commenting here, but the photo in
that article is awesome!

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m3kw9
By this time I have a feeling this plane is never gonna fly again

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meddlepal
Part of me feels Boeing gets what they deserve but there's also some
possibility for nasty competitive foul play if Europeans really decide to turn
the screws on Boeing to help bolster Airbus.

~~~
simion314
>but there's also some possibility for nasty competitive foul play if
Europeans really decide to turn the screws on Boeing to help bolster Airbus.
reply

Then FAA would fight back and everyone loses, for now there is no reason to
doubt the issues raised so let's wait until say Europeans raise some bogus
reason and then accuse them. though so far FAA and Boeing are the ones with
less credibility (since were trying not to ground the MAX even with 2 planes
crashed)

~~~
pinkfoot
It will be even more fun if the CAAC decides the MAX needs full certification
as a new type. :)

