Hey Boeing, get your shit together

"El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!" (lightningzone)
11/07/2018 at 12:34 • Filed to: None

You’re talking about fucking supersonics and personal taxi drones, yet you’re not sure if your 50 year old design 737 is safe!

DISCUSSION (21)

HFV has no HFV. But somehow has 2 motorcycles > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!
11/07/2018 at 12:48

most things deigned 50 years ago arent considered safe anymore.

promoted by the color red > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!
11/07/2018 at 12:53

The airframe is safe, it’s the avionics going into the plane that are questionable. That stuff is a lot newer and more advanced.

E90M3 > HFV has no HFV. But somehow has 2 motorcycles
11/07/2018 at 12:54

True:

Kinja'd!!!

thejustache > promoted by the color red
11/07/2018 at 13:02

I actually flew in a MAX-8 twice last month. It was a great looking plane and a smooth flight, but while “this plane is less than a month old” might have been reassuring to some people to me as a software developer I was just thinking “ok, so what bugs have they not uncovered yet ?”.

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > thejustache
11/07/2018 at 13:28

This time was an angle of attack sensor. Next time will be something else . The thing is that I think Boeing made a mistake when they preferred to reheat yesterday’s dish than to miniaturize the 787 for the single ais le.

Ash78, voting early and often > thejustache
11/07/2018 at 13:29

Same...when all the news stories were like “Brand new plane just crashed!” it took me a while to realize they were implying that new = better. In aviation it’s often the exact opposite, at least to a point.

Ash78, voting early and often > HFV has no HFV. But somehow has 2 motorcycles
11/07/2018 at 13:29

In aeronautics, that’s called a “good track record.” Sounds like they mucked it up by adding too many computers. Just like with cars...

HammerheadFistpunch > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!
11/07/2018 at 14:22

Because this kind of thing could NEVER happen at, say, Airbus

https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=171411

user314 > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!
11/07/2018 at 14:24

Why do you think revising the 787 would be any safer?

Right now this crash seems to be a result of avionics rather than anything intrinsic to the 737. If that is the case, the cause could be anything from a QA failure at the subcontractor to bad wiring, which could affect any manufacturer or type.

Jayhawk Jake > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!
11/07/2018 at 14:27

I disagree that it would be ‘safer’ to miniaturize the 787 than update the 737. ‘Miniaturizing’ the 787 means creating a brand new airplane, while the 737 has a very long and proven history of safety.

Sensors sending inaccurate information should not in and of themselves bring down an aircraft. Though it certainly doesn’t change the tragedy, there’s little reason (at least from my perspective) to place the blame solely upon the manufacturer. Well trained pilots should be more than capable of keeping everyone safe when such a failure occurs.

Jayhawk Jake > user314
11/07/2018 at 14:29

It could also be ruled as pilot error, because Boeing has procedures written for what to do if the instruments provide inaccurate data, and it’s still an airplane that’s capable of being hand flown, with backup instrumentation that should provide sufficient data to the pilots on a separate system than the one with the fault.

user314 > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!
11/07/2018 at 15:09

The 737 NG, which encompasses models -600 through -900, has 16 million hours between accidents , trailing only the Airbus 340, Boeing 777 and 747. There are also almost a thousand more NGs in service than the 747, 777 and 340 combined , which adds a bit of perspective to that rating.

gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!
11/07/2018 at 20:02

The problem is the same when Boeing was designing the Max. a carbon fiber fusela ge was studied and it was estimated Boeing wo uld be using something like 10- 20% of the worldwide output of carbon fiber.

Another risk is that it would jack up the price to be uncompetative.

Dusty Ventures > Jayhawk Jake
11/07/2018 at 21:11

I half caught a discussion about this on the radio earlier, and it sounded like they were saying it wasn't just the sensor reading faulty, but the system then trying to automatically compensate for the bad information being provided by the sensor.

wafflesnfalafel > Dusty Ventures
11/07/2018 at 22:34

yeah - it assumed the sensor info was correct and was taking action to correct the fake stall by nosing down...or at least that’s the current theory

Jayhawk Jake > Dusty Ventures
11/08/2018 at 08:09

I don’t doubt it, but the response should have been to disengage autopilot and regain control.

I don’t know what exactly happened in that c ockpit, and I can’t say with 100% certainty that the fault is ultimately with the pilots or the aircraft. In my experience, however, it seems unlikely that the blame can solely be placed on the aircraft itself. And taking this singular incident as a reason to question the entire 737 MAX family’s safety would be excessive.

Jayhawk Jake > Ash78, voting early and often
11/08/2018 at 08:11

It has not been ‘mucked up’. Airline safety has been increasing every year for the last 20 years and is at its lowest incident rate in history thanks largely to the addition of technology to existing airframes.

But things do go wrong, and unfortunately in this case an aircraft was lost. I am curious to see ultimately to what extent the investigation places blame on the aircraft or on the pilots

Jayhawk Jake > promoted by the color red
11/08/2018 at 08:14

Avionics are held to just as high if not higher standards for safety and reliability as airframes.

Ash78, voting early and often > Jayhawk Jake
11/08/2018 at 09:32

Safety improvements — no argument here! My point was that the “mucking” could be simply adding new systems or processes that are unfamiliar to the crews. That’s ultimately pilot error, but it’s not that unusual — like when Airbuses first started rolling out the fly-by-wire sidesticks and it took some learning curve to become proficient (including a few accidents). I’m all for stick shakers and things like that, but there definitely comes some point where the intrusion of nannies removes the pilots a wee bit more from simply flying the airplane and situational awareness.

My main comment was a response to the mass media’s concept that newer = better in aircraft, which isn’t always true. I don’t mean that in the “Make Aircraft Great Again!” nostalgic sense, just that with cars we have FAR more data points on where to improve, plus a lower-cost and faster replacement cycle. In aviation, sometimes you just don’t need to fix what isn’t broken...like the 737 and all of its incremental improvements over the years. Never mind the fact that the standards for safety and systems redundancy in commercial aircraft is far, far higher than in cars because of the outcome if a failure occurs.

Jayhawk Jake > Ash78, voting early and often
11/08/2018 at 09:55

There’s a wider discussion that’s been ongoing for some time regarding pilot training and whether or not pilots are actually ‘flying’ enough, but I certainly don’t think stripping away automated flight systems and putting passengers at greater risk is the answer. Not saying that’s what you’re suggesting, just observing that ultimately that’s where the “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” type of argument will lead with aviation.

Ash78, voting early and often > Jayhawk Jake
11/08/2018 at 10:00

Either way, I think it’s safe to say that most of what Boeing has done (with the 73, at least) has been slow, incremental improvement, nothing too drastically different from the previous generations. Sort of like a VW Golf, I suppose :D