mduell

Understatement of the thread.

Rumples

fly18725

BF263533

When I saw the stories I thought , more major news. Just a service bulletin. For a few years every 737 event may be a major news item. When the MAX makes it back into the air it will be under a microscope. All the wrongful death cases, the litigation discovery and trial testimony if the cases reach that point, will be seized upon by the news media. The 737 MAX and Boeing may be continuously wounded. 737 MAX operators will have to deal with any fallout.

worldclubber

At least the whole affair seems to move in the right direction now: After claiming that the MAX was safe in March, even in a call to the POTUS, and hinting that it is probably all just the fault of third-world pilots/airlines, Muilenberg now publicly apologises to the victims and their families, and admits that "we [=Boeing] clearly fell short".

ErgoTraveler

The new NG issue seems more than a "service bulletin". I am no expert on the FAA, but isn't an "Airworthiness Directive" a regulatory term that requires the aircraft to taken out of service and then confirmed or repaired before reintroduction to the fleet? Next question, how many NGs when tail numbers are identified are used by UA...

mduell

This is the normal process for an SB/AD, nothing more. The manufacturer publishes a service bulletin related to an issue or potential issue, and then the FAA issues an airworthiness directive mandating compliance and a timeline. No requirement to take the aircraft out of service, I'm not sure where you got that idea from. As detailed in the linked article, they have 10 days after the AD is issued to inspect the fleet, and repair any aircraft an issue is found on.

On average, the common airliner families (737, A320, etc) have an SB with an accompanying AD more than once a month. It's utterly routine and not particularly interesting.

ErgoTraveler

Thanks for the update. I got the "idea" from a news article I saw on this item that appeared to make the item more dire than your explanation.

uastarflyer

spin88

I did not see that anyone has posted this NYT deep dive piece https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/b...=pocket-newtab it really paints an ugly picture of Boeing's failures, especially repeatedly failing to do (what I take from context to be) DFMEA analysis with successive changes. If this number of folks are willing to talk on background to the NYT, discovery when everyone is put under oath in the death cases will be brutal.

J.Edward

Let me go a step further and admit I know very little about anything. Would also wager the fact I (poorly) grasp how little I know about how little I know is one of the deepest things I - or anyone - can know. Swallowing that jagged redpill helps keep your mind open.

^ Excellent post. The net effect IMHO is the discussion stealthily shifts from who has the best logical argument to who has the most convincing argument.

Another favorite in this thread is the STRAW MAN FALLACY → → → https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman

Here are a few examples:

Did the laws of physics change in the last 50 years?
In any other context, 50 years of safe operating experience would be a positive, not a negative.

Disappointing, low-quality, weak arguments based upon logical slight-of-hand.

When a system(s) supporting critical flight functions fail in-flight, all souls onboard are in peril. Consider the loss of hydraulics resulting in the control surface failure suffered by UA232. The a priori critical importance of the control surfaces was reflected by them being supported up by three independent hydraulic systems. When all three systems failed due to the no. 2 engine fan blade separation, the pilots lost the ability to effectively command the control surfaces of the DC10. Only by the grace of God and the 3 + 1* pilots (* interestingly enough Capt. Finch, a passenger on UA232, was a Training Check Airman for UA AND had practiced simulations of controlling aircraft after a total loss of hydraulics with just throttles) in the cockpit to help manage the situation appears to have been a material asset in both the case of UA232 and the penultimate flight of PK-LQP, the Lion Air 737.

So to the point of "all the time, every time" I'd agree nothing is 100% foolproof/failproof, and the costs to make it so are impractical, BUT one can use foresight and common sense to ID critical aspects relating to flight where the function requires a 100% uptime record even if one of the supporting sub-systems fails...i.e. the control surfaces MUST work ALL the time, EVERY time; to ensure this three independent and redundant hydraulic systems are in place meaning as long as one remains operational, the other two can fail, without a catastrophic loss of control.

Apologies for the lack of specificity.

jsloan

If you're going to quote me, at least attribute it to me.

There's no logical sleight of hand involved, and this is hardly a straw-man argument. The simple fact of the matter is, there is an undercurrent of "the 737 MAX is based upon an old design, which is therefore flawed" in some of these arguments, including yours. I'm not sure what specific type of fallacy that is, but it's certainly fallacious. One man's "old" is another man's "proven." Yes, technology has progressed a lot in the 50 years since the original 737 was certified, but the basic laws of aerodynamics are unchanged. A design that flew perfectly well 50 years ago will still fly perfectly well.

I see this quite a bit as a software engineer. People want to throw away "legacy" software -- meaning, something that's worked well for a long time, but isn't currently fashionable because it's no longer new. It's a bad bias in software, and it's a bad bias in aviation as well.

Correct. The horizontal stabilizer is one such system. The electronic control for it is not. because it can be adjusted manually, just as has been done for the past 50 years.

JimInOhio

Good points though I think most here will admit the MAX is not of the same design as that aircraft which flew perfectly well for 50 years, especially with regard to engine placement.

Let's remember the MCAS only is there (AFAIK) as a shoe-horned addition to compensate for engines not being in their ideal location. That's not to say it's a bad thing, only to say that an ideally-designed aircraft wouldn't need it.

I personally have no issue getting on a MAX when that day comes that I can. I also think anyone setting out to design an aircraft today wouldn't end up with something looking like the MAX. I think that's the issue which Boeing has to think about more fully when they launch projects.

VegasGambler

As a software engineer, I see this quite a bit too. If we want to continue with this analogy, the problem with legacy software is that as new features get added, if you don't update the design as well, you end up with a design that does not fit the current feature set. You don't redesign something because it's old; you redesign it because the requirements change and the old design does not support the new requirements.

Your choices are to do a fundamental redesign, or just to hack the new features on top, even though the system wasn't designed for them. Then suddenly you end up with engines that are too big, in the wrong place on the wing, and 2 plane crashes.

There is nothing wrong with the 737 design -- the plane works perfectly well to do what it was designed to do. However, now there are new requirements, and it is not a good design for those requirements.

I agree, the laws of aerodynamics have not changed in the past 50 years. If you had put engines that big in that place on the wing 50 years ago, it would have crashed then too.

Newman55

Ugh... There's still a lot of uncertain things about why these planes crashed, but one thing is for certain; they did not crash because of the engine placement.