Aircraft becoming far too complex to fly...

Reverend

ICBM said:

Emp_Fab said:

There’s a lot of misunderstanding and incorrect assumptions in this thread.  The bottom line is that yes, it does appear that there is something wrong with Boeing’s MCAS system.  However - it is perfectly possible to disable it.  (Unless it transpires that the disablement system is also fatally flawed - which would be another issue altogether).

That's exactly the problem - they can't do that because by turning off MCAS, it would then mean that the Max has very different handling characteristics to the NG under some conditions, so wouldn't pass certification as the 'same' aircraft type and would require a different pilot type rating - that's what Boeing has been trying to avoid, for commercial reasons. Hence, although it is possible to turn off the electrically-powered trim, it's *not* possible to disable MCAS by itself. But you need electric trim to recover the aircraft quickly and effectively when you're in a nose-down situation close to the ground, because the manual trim wheel isn't powerful enough and may actually be too difficult to turn under high load conditions.

Catch-22.

Boeing have absolutely hoist themselves by their own petard, and if the Max is ever going to fly again in its current form it will probably have to be fully re-certified as a new aircraft type, which it always should have been in the first place. And even that's not a certainty since it contravenes a couple of basic stability regulations.

There's far too much in this thread to read it all really, but this has been gone round again and again - http://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1417545

There are a fair few "murica" posts there.

goldtop

Whistleblowers at Boeing called in to the FAA about 737 Max concerns: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/26/politics/faa-hotline-reports/index.html

FOD problems seem to be a recurring issue at Boeing at the moment.

JezWynd

While doing a search on news about the much anticipated 'software patch', found this interesting piece on Vox which has a neat summary of the situation and its backstory.
https://www.vox.com/2019/4/5/18296646/boeing-737-max-mcas-software-update

Nitefly

^^ Good read, that - thank for posting, @JezWynd ;

goldtop

Well, in somewhat WTFish news, British Airways (and others in the IAG group) have announced that they are buying 200 of these 737s. No need to wait for the fix to be done and approved!

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/18/business/boeing-737-max-sale/index.html

Axe_meister

Bet they are going cheap.

SouthpawMark

goldtop said:

Well, in somewhat WTFish news, British Airways (and others in the IAG group) have announced that they are buying 200 of these 737s. No need to wait for the fix to be done and approved!

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/18/business/boeing-737-max-sale/index.html

I’m glad my OCD will come in handy. I always check the plane type and age before booking, and I have zero intention of ever flying in a Boeing 737 MaxNosedive. 

darthed1981

ICBM said:

Both of these are very dangerous positive-feedback characteristics which are in contravention of basic civil aircraft design principles and safety regulations. If so then the Max is done for, since it's simply unsafe.

TBH - I've been thinking that for a while, I don't think the design will fly again without extensive modifications that essentially render it a different model.

That this would happen in the modern age is unbelievable, there is some jail time to be done by someone somewhere.

stickyfiddle

There's trouble with the engines on 787s as well, apparently. Not of the 737-Max level of fuck up, but I wouldn't want to be a Boeing shareholder right now. 

VimFuego

stickyfiddle said:

There's trouble with the engines on 787s as well, apparently. Not of the 737-Max level of fuck up, but I wouldn't want to be a Boeing shareholder right now. 

here's a thought, are boeing too big (and iconic) to fail?

darthed1981

VimFuego said:

stickyfiddle said:

There's trouble with the engines on 787s as well, apparently. Not of the 737-Max level of fuck up, but I wouldn't want to be a Boeing shareholder right now. 

here's a thought, are boeing too big (and iconic) to fail?

too important to the US government, they make a LOT of military aircraft for them.  Boeing won't fail.

The 737-MAX is dead though I think, and like I said, someone needs to do some jail time.

JezWynd

goldtop said:

Well, in somewhat WTFish news, British Airways (and others in the IAG group) have announced that they are buying 200 of these 737s. No need to wait for the fix to be done and approved!

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/18/business/boeing-737-max-sale/index.html

It would be interesting to know what kind of discount they were offered to switch from Airbus. Wouldn’t be surprised if Boeing essentially gave the planes away, just for the news value of making sales.

darthed1981

JezWynd said:

goldtop said:

Well, in somewhat WTFish news, British Airways (and others in the IAG group) have announced that they are buying 200 of these 737s. No need to wait for the fix to be done and approved!

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/18/business/boeing-737-max-sale/index.html

It would be interesting to know what kind of discount they were offered to switch from Airbus. Wouldn’t be surprised if Boeing essentially gave the planes away, just for the news value of making sales.

Well they were going to put them on music magpie, but it said "we aren't that keen on that deathtrap airliner right now, do you have anything else to sell?"

Axe_meister

stickyfiddle said:

There's trouble with the engines on 787s as well, apparently. Not of the 737-Max level of fuck up, but I wouldn't want to be a Boeing shareholder right now. 

The engines work but a component wears out quicker than anticipated

stickyfiddle

Axe_meister said:

stickyfiddle said:

There's trouble with the engines on 787s as well, apparently. Not of the 737-Max level of fuck up, but I wouldn't want to be a Boeing shareholder right now. 

The engines work but a component wears out quicker than anticipated

Whatever it is BA is quietly cancelling flights left right & centre...

Axe_meister

When I was studying Aero Eng (26 years ago) regulations meant that any computerised systems had to be written by three seperate teams in 3 seperate programming languages on three different architectures and always had to vote on the result.
However when the flight systems of the 777 was being created they used a single team, probably the worst of the Triad to merge into one.

JezWynd

More bad news for Boeing. Can it ever be right to artificially create stability via software?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/26/business/boeing-737-max-faa-test.html

SouthpawMark

I watched a documentary about the Vulcan bomber on Amazon Prime last night. Apparently it had one button you needed to press to start all four engines, and get ready for flight, and you could be airborne within 2 minutes. It was designed in the late 40s. If they could make something so complex so simple to fly back then, why can’t they do as much now? It seems to me that modern planes are built deliberately complex in order for some people to justify their existence. 

sixstringsupplies

It might have already been posted in this thread but this 60 minute Australia documentary is a good view (it’s actually 43 minutes)

https://youtu.be/aO7_indbfME

I have followed this very closely, as when I booked my holiday with TUI the flights were on 737 max planes so I kept hoping it would remain grounded. Thankfully that remained so.

more problems surfaced today but heartbreaking(ly) for the families involved, this plane will probably be the safest in the skies if and when it returns to service.

m_c

The latest news does not look good.

Looks like the FCC is getting overloaded under certain conditions, leading to the manual trim buttons being slow to respond, with speculation being that the auto-trim gets priority until the FCC catches up and disables it, aka if MCAS wants to trim the nose down, it'll continue trimming down until the FCC responds to stop it and hand priority to the manual trim. Which would explain why in the two crashes, pilots thought the trim buttons weren't working, and the apparent short blips while trying to regain control.