Corperate greed & the 737 max, read this - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: fourtytwo42
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2020, 08:27:29 pm
content: Just released, congressional ? reportMakes horrendous readingThis is what our once proud engineering profession has been reduced to by the bean countersAnybody want to fly one of these things has to be stir crazyhttps://transportation.house.gov/imo/media/doc/2020.09.15%20FINAL%20737%20MAX%20Report%20for%20Public%20Release.pdfBUT how many other bit's of crap are out there that our lives depend upon that have yet to be uncovered ?Our world seems on a downward trajectory............BIG attitude problem

author: Benta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2020, 10:01:28 pm
content: The 737 is actually an extremely reliable aircraft, but there's no getting around the fact that it's a +50 years old airframe, and that there are better designs around today.The 737-MAX story is a scandal of mismanagement, greed, kowtowing to "shareholder value" and a design attitude of "OK, it's old, let's just throw some software at it and it'll work."I always wondered why Boeing didn't modify the undercarriage structure, as this was the obvious problem to anyone looking at the plane. It was really sleek in the 70/80s, but with the larger turbofan engines there was little space under the wings.Oh, well.Condolences to the people who died.

author: SilverSolder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2020, 10:05:30 pm
content: Yeah, the 737-MAX story is not America's proudest moment, and does an injustice to all the good people that work in the industry. The loudmouths seem to always prevail, for whatever reason.

author: WattsThat
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 24, 2020, 10:34:28 pm
content: QuoteI have met people that thought those flat bottom sections on the turbofans were just styling/sheet metal changes!Another odd design feature was the DC-9 elevator. It confused many, thinking the aircraft had broken or cross-connected elevator cables.

author: pickle9000
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2020, 03:39:20 am
content: How much you wanna bet they change the name?I'd also say it will be safer now that people are paying attention. I think it has to be re-certified in Europe as well and it's not just a rubber stamp as is the norm.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2020, 03:48:16 am
content: The positive side about air disasters is that people are much less complacent for a period of time, and they almost always result in changes in the way things are done. Eventually after nothing bad has happened in a while people start to get complacent which is what happened with the MAX. It had been quite a while since there was a fatal crash caused by a design flaw.

author: pickle9000
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2020, 04:01:42 am
content: Quote from: james_s on September 25, 2020, 03:48:16 amAnd then there is PIA 8303. A people problem.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 25, 2020, 04:06:52 am
content: Quote from: Benta on September 24, 2020, 10:01:28 pmBecause it becomes a different type of plane where everything that comes together with actually using it and certifications will be different too. Consider it as backwards compatibility. So they decided to modify the old stuff yet again rather than making much larger investment into completely new design. And that software garbage is to make it feel as it was before for pilots, even though it's sort of as a dog with fifth leg.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2020, 05:27:07 am
content: Its not just corporate greed, which is expected, but do not deny that there is government's bodies on collusion and corruption, like a typical under developed/developing countries do, its a fact.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2020, 05:29:58 am
content: Quote from: pickle9000 on September 25, 2020, 03:39:20 amIt will be norm, trust me, all it needs just a single phone call from the POTUS to the European country that do the certification.

author: pickle9000
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2020, 05:50:28 am
content: Quote from: BravoV on September 25, 2020, 05:29:58 amThat is too funny, could you imagine what Trump would say.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 25, 2020, 05:57:51 am
content: Quote from: pickle9000 on September 25, 2020, 05:50:28 amThats easy .... "I will make your Airbus life harder, really-really hard ... so ... just do it as I ask, OR ELSE !!!"

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 03, 2020, 04:24:29 am
content: Quote from: fourtytwo42 on September 24, 2020, 08:27:29 pmNo doubt cost cutting (profit seeking) and coziness between the FAA and Boeing is an issue, but congressional reports should be taken with a ton of salt. They tend to be political.Two important points:(1) About congressional committee reportsIf you notice prominently displayed on the cover is the report was prepared by the "majority party staff" for the "majority party chairman". Most if not all serving in Congress are career politicians. Which ever party happens to be the majority tends to disregard opinions and conclusions of those in the "minority party" when it is in their political interest to do so.I am not accusing anyone of misrepresenting the truths here in this report. I am however pointing out readers need to keep in mind what are the political motives, if any.(2) FAA mission conflict which enabled coziness between regulator and regulatedThe FAA has a mission-conflict problem. In a nutshell, FAA was established to regulate and to promote aviation. Regulation increase cost, yet cost increase is often counter to promoting the industry. The wording was later changed from "promoting aviation" to "encourage aviation". But still, the mission conflict between "regulate aviation" and "encourage aviation" are apparently not compatible enough to be easily housed under one roof.The Los Angeles Times had a pretty good article about this issue:https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-faa-ntsb-boeing-737-crash-20190322-story.html

author: chickenHeadKnob
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 03, 2020, 11:06:26 am
content: The other important news out of Boeing in the last week is shutting down 787 production in Everett and moving it all to Charleston SC. Boeing built 787 in both plants but the South Carolina facility is non-unionized. It also produces significantly poorer quality aircraft, with more initial defects.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2020, 03:26:21 pm
content: Quote from: BravoV on September 25, 2020, 05:57:51 amI think "the call" was made just recently as I predicted.New on October 16 2020 ...->Boeing Max Judged Safe to Fly by Europe’s Aviation RegulatorAbout 2 months ago, news on Aug 12 2020 ...->Airbus expects EU to respond to U.S. tariffs in aircraft subsidy disputePS : And this comes to fundamental question, which is, should we trust EU flight safety certification ? As it has been justdowngraded... errr.. I mean equalized to US FAA level ?

author: duckduck
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2020, 06:12:58 pm
content: Off topic. I live in the Seattle area and Boeing employees have told me that they regularly have to rework parts from the South Carolina factory. The closing of the 787 line in Seattle is not good news for airlines or passengers. It's sad to see another formerly great business suffer the humiliations of being run by MBAs instead of engineers. I suppose it is the cycle of life.

author: SilverSolder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2020, 06:31:23 pm
content: Quote from: duckduck on October 16, 2020, 06:12:58 pmThe whole sad MAX story has "run by MBAs" written all over it too.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2020, 07:22:57 pm
content: Quote from: SilverSolder on October 16, 2020, 06:31:23 pmYep. But I guess that was to be expected when McDonnell Douglas’s management (which was famously bean-counter types) replaced Boeing’s engineering-driven management. I think Boeing’s stockholders who want long-term value (rather than pump-and-dump style quick returns) need to oust those fools.

author: ve7xen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 16, 2020, 07:39:06 pm
content: Quote from: Benta on September 24, 2020, 10:01:28 pmThe larger story here is that Boeing had planned a 737 successor airframe in the late 2000s, in parallel to Dreamliner development, but they were caught flatfooted with the economic crisis, rising fuel costs, and the arrival of A320neo when their project that would be a viable competitor was likely 10-15 years from commercial service. So they threw together 737MAX so they'd have a competitive offering and not be giving up the market segment to Airbus in the meantime, deferring the new airframe project.None of this is surprising or even problematic, on the face of it. Problem is, they let the business need to scramble and catch up override any engineering needs to actually do so in a safe and proper manner. The regulatory capture and lack of proper engineering safety culture is shocking. The report really is damning. Given the glaring lack of ethics and safety culture at Boeing evidenced in the report, and not only related to 737MAX, getting on one of their birds is definitely going to give me some pause, even if they are statistically no worse than any other.What gets me is how the regulations are structured not only to allow such modifications but to encourage them. I think this is something the regulators really need to look closely at. The way the type rating / certification system is structured incentivizes hacks and not good integrated design, discouraging safety improvements over time. There's of course a balance to be had between 'tried and true' and 'bleeding edge' but this incident shows some of the risks. Even if it's not clean-sheet, some improvements should be encouraged/required by the regulations. 737MAX really should have had at the very least fly-by-wire with envelope protection, which would have made MCAS an integrated part of the flight controls, with full redundancy, and these accidents wouldn't have occurred.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 17, 2020, 08:26:15 am
content: Quote from: chickenHeadKnob on October 03, 2020, 11:06:26 amYea, the union protection allows the workers to.. actually do their job. Without the union corporate can squeeze 'efficiency' out of the plant, meaning basically corporate can decide who to hassle/rush into passing shitty QC and shoddy work that 'they know is not important', wheras with a union, they get told to fuck off, so everything is done. So you noticed of course the numbers, two plants, one has 1/3rd of the staff, and it happens to be corporate. I wonder who has longer work hours, stricter with breaks, etc. (probobly the non union place). And being non union, they can shroud problems etc, because they are capable of exerting massive amounts of pressure on the work force.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 17, 2020, 08:33:14 am
content: Quote from: tooki on October 16, 2020, 07:22:57 pmI find it hillarious when I read the story of the A-10 warthog, the initial design was handled on a 'price per pound'. The airplane became wildly appealing/interesting AFTER this policy was dropped. I believe that initial development was handled by McD corporate. It might have been price per cubic meter, but you get the idea of how the project was managed from the start. It's described in some old encyclopedia I read once. Also, if I recall, the initial number was completely ridiculous, even for 1960's currency value. The project started completely choked out.I imagine the board room went somewhat like this:Hmm. This widget we are building.. it occupies space, and it has mass. How should we design it? Hmm.I think we should divide something by cost. I like cost. Hmm. Lets use weight. That's right, we are going to use weight.. and divide it by cost. Get to it.I wanna bet the sales pitch to the military was "look how cheap you are getting 10 tons for!"What is shows you is that business administrators cannot fathom the complexity of aircraft design, r&d, etc.. and will set completely ridiculous design guidelines. They want to be hot shit, because its an aircraft and they think that they should be filthy rich from it, since it flies and looks cool, and believe in unrealistic margins. Then they complain because they setup their business logistics in some inefficient and crazy way and claim its not profitable and impossible to do any better and bitch to the government then try to strong arm global travel and national economies.

author: nuclearcat
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 17, 2020, 11:41:19 am
content: Quote from: pickle9000 on September 25, 2020, 03:39:20 amThey did, it is already in report

author: Alti
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 17, 2020, 03:13:06 pm
content: I believe that the consequence of the story might be that some private enterprise replaces all government administrations dealing with aviation safety by introducing smple, open, verifyable, objective, regularly updated safety rating of a flight. In simplest concept, it is enough to do some elementary data analysis and calculate statistics regarding a proof of safe passengerkms rating for a specific flight. Just an easily comparable number 0-100.My proposition of scaling:0 : reserved for first flight with a test pilot on-board, stewardess shows you how to fasten your parachute.50 : world average death rate per passengerkmsfor today.100 : reserved for theoretical plane that transports all passenger trafic without single loss of life.Once some plane hits WTC or someone beaks neck while stepping off board, the counter goes down.PIA 8303and rating drop by 27 points.Human factor, geese, MCAS, surface to air missile, divine intervention, corporate greed - who cares?I suspect there won't be many passengers interested to pay for a flight with low rating. The manufacturers would have to hire airlines for passengerkms to test the plane and raise the rating first. Some would prefer to pay extra for sth closer to 50. Personally I do not need blue leds, cutting edge technology or untested avionics that even creators are afraid to fly.As for the victims, they were not passengers, they were guinea pigs, test flight rating 11.

author: SilverSolder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 17, 2020, 04:03:50 pm
content: Quote from: Alti on October 17, 2020, 03:13:06 pmThat, sadly, sums up the situation perfectly.

author: SparkyFX
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 17, 2020, 06:55:25 pm
content: Quote from: coppercone2 on October 17, 2020, 08:33:14 amWhat you described there is a way for clueless/very inexperienced people to stay in control of things. Or as they say: Never argue with idiots, they pull you down to their level and beat you with experience.Any group of people that work on a project kind of need some list of priorities to follow to not whir off, but handing out priorities that are outside of an individuals control or get them in conflict with a real-world priority is just a dumb way to hand down responsibility. In the ideal case those real-world priorities would be included and conflicts sorted out by management long before they even reach one's desk or should go upstream once they are discovered.I've seen both...

author: pwlps
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2020, 12:28:50 pm
content: I have read the report but couldn't get any answer to a basic question I was asking myself from the beginning: why MCAS was not designed to disengage on AOA disagree. I don't see any way such a basic security lock could interfere with the certification process especially as both the MCAS and AOA disagree alert were hidden anyway. This remains a mystery for me, I can hardly believe it's just a simple omission. I guess it was rather because the whole MCAS development process was covered with such a heavy veil of secrecy that nobody would know what others were doing about it.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2020, 04:25:16 pm
content: Quote from: pwlps on October 18, 2020, 12:28:50 pmI think we discussed this point on EEVBlog almost right from the start (don't remember the thread.)AFAIR, there were already strong pro and con arguments, already among just engineers on this forum. I was one to agree with your point, but certainly not everyone did.Seeing how there were a significant number of engineers seemingly *against* the idea of disengaging the MCAS in such an event, I'm also pretty sure this wasn't mere omission, and tend to think this was part of the spec. The whole "we don't really want people to know/notice about MCAS" was probably a big part of it, but there may have been other reasons. Maybe they were pretty sure (again as some people even on here seemed to be) that NOT disengaging it was the best approach in terms of the risks involved. Maybe, or most likely, they were also largely underestimating the potential consequences.Another maybe: IIRC, there was actually a way of disengaging the MCAS manually that would be similar to disengaging auto-trimming (correct me if I'm wrong), so maybe the people in charge of the specs thought that was good enough in case something went wrong, and again maybe they assumed this would actually be part of the pilots training - whereas Boeing's upper management decided to make this feature largely hidden and there was (AFAIK at least) absolutely no significant training or even basic information on how the MCAS worked and what to do in case there would be a failure.It's just maybe's and I'm just making hypotheses here from what I gathered. The fact the report doesn't answer any of this is concerning.

author: SilverSolder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 18, 2020, 04:50:48 pm
content: Quote from: pwlps on October 18, 2020, 12:28:50 pm"They" are not going to want to reveal to the world that all of the loss of life and money could have been very simply prevented if "they" hadn't been sleeping at the switch.

author: SparkyFX
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 20, 2020, 05:48:18 pm
content: Quote from: SiliconWizard on October 18, 2020, 04:25:16 pmTheir set goal was to not have to retrain the flight crews for a new model/an upgraded model and provide the same user interface although the new model requires an additional system to fly.That's the fundamental problem no one can work around. Runs down to the definition of what is a "new model" and what is an "upgraded model", i guess the FAA and other regulatory bodies like EASA did not cover themselves in honor with that one.Does anyone know how the feedback from pilots to manufacturer/aviation administration looks like? I wonder which priority reports of previous malfunctions had where and how they are supposed to be distributed, if at all. I reckon that any aviation administration tries to distinct between recommendation and prohibition and might not try to mess with "maybe", but having even a hint of information at the right time would have saved lives.

author: ve7xen
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 20, 2020, 06:45:20 pm
content: Quote from: pwlps on October 18, 2020, 12:28:50 pmQuote from: SiliconWizardThis is addressed directly on pages 107-108, and it's mentioned in context throughout the report, though there doesn't seem to be a clear answer other than that MCAS was considered a non-flight-critical system, with the same failure consequences as a trim system fault, and therefore didn't *require* redundancy, but it isn't clear why Boeing chose not to include a cross-check anyway. I assume that it simply goes back to the Speed Trim system Boeing decided to 'integrate' it with, which is a legacy system that also only used one AOA sensor. This would not be true redundancy, though, just a fail-safe. They didn't include a 3rd AOA sensor for obvious cost reasons, it wouldn't have made a lot of sense to add it for *just* MCAS and not integrate it with the other systems (not that that would stop them), and this likely also would have required some small amount of additional training which they were desperate to minimize.The report also mentions that Boeing's first foray with MCAS with the KC-46 did include an AOA crosscheck for MCAS, so either their engineers disagreed on the safest action in case of an MCAS fault, or there were different pressures on the MAX that lead to its exclusion.Might also have been intended, but if it was based on the AOA Disagree alert from the flight control computers, that was faulty too.Quote from: SiliconWizardNot just no formal training, Boeing had not even told the airlines or the pilots about MCAS *at all* until the Lion Air crash, and even after it, minimal information was provided.Boeing's fundamental assumption was that a fault with MCAS would be treated by crews as a runaway stabilizer, which had an associated checklist that would have had the crew engage the stabilizer trim cutout switches - effectively disabling electric trim entirely. However, the two crews did not identify it as such quickly, since MCAS repeatedly activates the stabilizer briefly rather than continuously (and also due to the other alarms in the cockpit due to the AOA disagree [stick shaker, stall horn, IAS unreliable etc]). It's fairly apparent that the pilot's training and expectations were that an electric trim failure would result in continuous activation. Because MCAS was activating repeatedly (also wasn't supposed to happen), the aircraft was allowed to get so out of trim that once they did cut out the electric stabilizer, the elevators alone didn't have enough pitch authority for level flight and the stabilizer was too  loaded to move with the manual trim.There were multiple ways the crews *could* have recovered at various points in the scenario, if they had understood the full picture of what was happening on their aircraft, but with limited information both crews ended up missing the path to recovery because they didn't have enough information to understand the failure. Simply enabling autopilot probably would have saved both crews, since this would deactivate MCAS - but crews are generally trained to fly manually when there are indications things are going sideways.

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 22, 2020, 12:37:46 am
content: There are many factors that resulted in the 737Max fiasco. First, the 320Neo was a treat, a very real threat, to the most popular AC Boeing made so they needed 'something quick' to address the Neo problem. Second, like all too many companies Boeing became too fixated on placating the investor/leisure class and opted for cost cutting at the expense of engineering a better/safer plane. Third, for the last five decades the US has unraveled most of the regulatory system that has both reduced the regulations AND cut the budget of the regulators so there are fewer of them. This third point resulted in the FAA, with too few people to do the job they were set out to do, outsourcing the regulation of 737Max to ... wait for it ... Boeing. That's right, self regulation.One of the problems with regulations is that they're called regulations and not laws -- we are governed by laws that limit what we can get away with and when we cross the line and get caught there's no escape by claiming the law was not specific enough -- you are prosecuted by the intent of the law. With regulations when a company runs afoul of the regulation an army of lawyers claim the regulations were 'too vague' and they often get off with little or no penalty and the result is a dramatic increase in the number of pages in the regulation as they attempt to prevent similar action in the future. So many regulations start out at only a few pages in length but with constant 'testing' by industry it isn't long before the regulations become hundreds of pages. Then industry cries about the regulations being so vast. If, instead, the regulations were prosecuted like the laws we live by then the intent would circumvent the vague nonsense and appropriate penalties would be applied.The five decade war on regulations waged by big business and the investor class was going to get us, eventually, to the point were Boeing would self regulate the disaster that was/is the 737Max. In the end the money Boeing may have saved by going the Max route will be overwhelmed by the losses resulting from the two crashes and the causes of them. The money they are pouring down the toilet over this could have financed a new, clean-sheet fly-by-wire replacement for the 737. When bean counters take over they make more money in the short/near term but all too often the savings are a subtotal and not the real bottom line. The bean counter approach Boeing has pursued in the last two decades made them and the investors a bunch of money until it cost them 10X that amount!Brian

author: Rick Law
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2020, 05:02:00 am
content: Quote from: raptor1956 on October 22, 2020, 12:37:46 amFirst, I must disagree with you regarding regulations being more problematic as compared to laws in terms of "too vague". They both have seen their defeats in court when challenged as "too vague". They share other similarities such as they both have the power of law (as regulations are applied under the the law which empowered the responsible agency), and they both share the problem of being controlled by lobbyist.With that disagreement out of the way...I do agree with you that Regulations in general are more problematic than Laws. A Law needs to be proposed and passed as a bill by the legislative bodies (upper house Senate, lower house Congress) and then must be signed by The President for it to become a new Law. (Unless the legislators have enough votes to override the President's veto). Whereas, regulations just need the involved Regulatory Agency to make up a new rule, do the public commentary period thing, adjust and repeat only if they see fit. Issue it and now we have something that can have the power of law if so worded.Here is the problem:As theregulatory agency alone is the controlling body, new regulation can pop up like weed in Spring time. Record shows during the 8 years Obama was in office, 20642 new regulations came into being. Whereas, laws requires multi-parties' agreement and faces more road blocks before it can transforms from a bill to a law. As we are experiencing now where Senate, Congress, and Presidency are not all occupied by the same party, hardly any bills "graduated" into laws.No doubt FAA is too cozy with the manufacturers in this case. I got into it in more details in an earlier post:Quote from: Rick Law on October 03, 2020, 04:24:29 am

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 23, 2020, 05:56:39 pm
content: I do - mostly - agree: regulations (at least in general) are completely non-democratic, and not just that: regulation bodies are often infiltrated with various lobbyists from powerful industries. So that's an additional problem.