[HN Gopher] FAA overruled engineers, let Boeing Max keep flying
___________________________________________________________________
FAA overruled engineers, let Boeing Max keep flying
Author : FridayoLeary
Score : 215 points
Date : 2023-04-30 11:48 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| jvans wrote:
| The suits know the profit math and find the risks acceptable. The
| engineers know the mortality math and do not.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| Geez. It's fine! Important people don't fly commercial anyways.
| KyeRussell wrote:
| If people want to survive they can choose to not buy a MAX.
| It's the free market at work, people! /s
| observer987 wrote:
| I was fully expecting a grounding once I first heard the details
| of the second crash and saw how closely it resembled the first. I
| was shocked that it didn't happen before other international
| agencies did it. The FAA did itself no favor here.
| dboreham wrote:
| [flagged]
| myko wrote:
| I didn't recall the specifics here but it's worse than I
| assumed from your comment, trump blamed "foreign pilots" for
| the crashes:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/after-two-faulty-
| boe...
| mrtksn wrote:
| IIRC, the argument was that there exist a special manoeuvre
| which can make it possible to save the plane by slowing
| down the the plane airspeed so the pilots can manually turn
| the wheels controlling the trim. So some pilots were
| claiming that "no American pilot would let this happen", I
| guess due to their superior training.
|
| It wasn't just a distasteful position, but also the largest
| American 737 MAX operator opted in for the extra safety
| package which included a second angle of attack sensor and
| "sensors disagree" light which would have reduced the
| chances of this happening anyway[0].
|
| Making faulty planes then selling the extra features for
| detecting the faults and claiming that if you can't fly a
| faulty plane you are not a good pilot is psychopathic IMHO.
|
| [0] : https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/21/business/boeing-
| safety-fe...
| KyeRussell wrote:
| _Boeing looking lustfully at the B2B SaaS market_
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| My pilot neighbor, who is a captain at a major domestic us
| airline that flys maxes, also blamed foreign airlines
| pilots for lack of proper training.
| kelnos wrote:
| What proper training? Boeing deliberately decided not to
| document the new behavior, and the entire point of MCAS
| was to _avoid_ needing new pilot training.
|
| Sounds like your pilot neighbor is just a bigot.
| yenda wrote:
| What was the training? From what I read the plane was
| sold as being flown without the need for new training to
| counter the Airbus jet?
| YeBanKo wrote:
| Our club has few professional pilots and iirc their more
| or less shared opinion was that boeing fucked up, but the
| expectation was that pilots training should have
| prevented the crashes. Regardless of Airbus, Boeing
| expectation still is that pilots can fly with minimum
| automation, and if something is wrong / odd they know how
| to disable it all, take full control, gain altitude and
| figure things out.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Not only that but the flight test software written by the
| offshored 9$/h Indian contractors sure didn't help...
| tehjoker wrote:
| This is a very myopic view of how corruption works. Biden
| reduced COVID quarantines from 10 days to 5 days based on a
| request by Delta airlines. How many tens or hundreds of
| thousands of people did that kill? By contrast, the MAXX only
| killed a few hundred or maybe a thousand. Very easy to
| believe any administration would have done this. They are all
| in the pocket of the wealthy.
| mozman wrote:
| Probably zero.
| [deleted]
| gumby wrote:
| > top officials in the agency overruled them
|
| Unfortunately the article is unclear: was the overruling by
| appointees or civil servants? This distinction is crucial for any
| repair to the system.
|
| There is unfortunately a serious and destructive plan from one of
| the political parties to abandon the Pendleton act and return to
| the spoils system. If that happens we will see a lot more of this
| happening.
| [deleted]
| nunuvit wrote:
| It had to be the appointee. The analysis was squashed at a low
| level by a procedural technicality, and the issue was too
| significant for the agency head to be uninvolved.
| H8crilA wrote:
| At some point this becomes a national security concern - the Air
| Force would never accept Airbus-based tankers or AWACS platforms
| should Boeing go under. Then perhaps I'm exaggerating, a
| restructuring bankruptcy can sometimes do magic to rotting
| corporations.
| MilStdJunkie wrote:
| Boeing would split up before things got worrisome, BDS would be
| the bulk of the defense stuff, would likely get bought at some
| point depending on price, because BDS is doing . . eh, _less
| awful_ , let's say, than other Boeing divisions. So it wouldn't
| precisely be a bargain for, say, Raytheon or NG.
|
| BCA would, if things go on their current trajectory, get
| hoovered up by someone for cheap. Karma option would be
| Embraer.
|
| In the event of a split, the nine million dollar question is
| how they handle their debt. Boeing took on a gargantuan debt
| load (for their sector, anyway), and that was before the MAX
| problems even hit - before COVID too, obviously. How Lockheed
| juggled their debt in the L3 selloff was a big part of how
| Lockheed survived into the 1990s, and it'll also be the theme
| of a Boeing breakup.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _the Air Force would never accept Airbus-based tankers or
| AWACS platforms should Boeing go under._
|
| Really? Because the Airbus A330 MRTT originally won the KC-X
| competition (before Boeing filed a challenge):
|
| > _The USAF issued the KC-X request for proposal in January
| 2007,[2] then selected the Northrop Grumman /EADS team and
| their Airbus A330 MRTT-based tankers in February 2008.[3]_
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KC-X
| H8crilA wrote:
| Nothing proves my point better than the fact that Airbus won
| the competition but ultimately this happened:
|
| > _The Air Force selected Boeing 's KC-46 bid on 24 February
| 2011._
|
| PS. purchasers around the world seem to like Airbus' MRTT
| platforms a lot, they are probably better at the purely
| technical level.
| albertopv wrote:
| Then why US allies should buy US technology, but not the other
| way around? Allies only when it suits US?
| H8crilA wrote:
| There is the cynical answer, but there's also the fact that
| the US equipment is actually pretty damn good and can be
| delivered in large quantities, though it it usually more
| expensive. You also have to consider alliances, if you buy
| equipment from country X then that country will be able to
| provide spares/ammunition/trained personnel if shit hits the
| fan. And the US is not blocking allied countries from
| purchasing equipment elsewhere or from developing their own
| industries. In fact it is usually angry at countries like
| Germany for not pulling their weight in domestic production.
|
| Military sales are more politics than business. The French
| behave much like the US, they'll buy foreign kit only as a
| very last resort. It is a strategic decision that a country
| has to make based on manufacturing capabilities, ability to
| generate orders (domestic and foreign) and the planned
| purpose for their military forces.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Yes, obviously.
| fweimer wrote:
| For less than three days. Not sure why this is left out of the
| reporting.
| nottorp wrote:
| Iirc they had no choice because everyone except the US had
| already grounded them.
|
| Doesn't sound like they changed their minds based on new data
| to me.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Let's be honest, if the two crashes had happened to top-tier US
| or European airlines, there would have been a grounding after two
| similar crashes. But the crashes happened to third world
| Indonesian and African airlines, and the first, second, and third
| instinct was to blame pilot incompentency or poor training.
| fuzzybiscuit wrote:
| [flagged]
| glyphy177 wrote:
| [dead]
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Okay? Without knowing how often this happens and how often the
| engineers are wrong, we don't know if this is newsworthy or not.
|
| The "safe" recommendation is to ground all the planes of that
| model any time there is a suspected issue.
|
| That said, the FAA has a long history of not implementing safety
| recommendations. NASA had this issue with the space shuttle.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > That said, the FAA has a long history of not implementing
| safety recommendations
|
| The counterpoint is that their safety record speaks for itself.
| When was the last commercial airliner crash in the US? 2009?
| boringuser2 wrote:
| That's actually not true.
|
| The "safe" recommendation is to keep all planes in the sky
| regardless of suspected safety issues because alternative
| transportation is not safer than a dangerous airplane.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| Air transportation may be overall safe, but the 737 Max was a
| dangerous aircraft that resulted in hundreds of deaths. Youer
| position is extraordinarily peurile.
| boringuser2 wrote:
| Tu quoque.
|
| There's absolutely no way it was a more dangerous form of
| travel than driving.
|
| I am intimately familiar with both catastrophic failures of
| the 737 Max, which involved undertrained pilots from third
| world airlines.
| acover wrote:
| There are other planes.
| boringuser2 wrote:
| Yes, but can you reasonably suggest that air travel
| wouldn't be in any way disrupted by grounding planes in
| active rotation for an airline?
|
| This must be your position if you were to post this.
| kelnos wrote:
| If the alternative to flying is not taking the trip at all,
| then that's certainly safest. And I imagine that's the case
| for many trips, especially those where the flight is more
| than an hour and a half or so.
|
| (Consider that I can fly from SF to LA in an hour and a half,
| but it's a 6-hour drive. If my flight was canceled and I
| couldn't find an alternative flight, I just wouldn't go at
| all. Certainly there are some extreme situations where I
| might bite the bullet and drive, but that'd be rare.)
|
| Put another way: when we know something is unsafe, we
| shouldn't keep it going just because of the theoretical risk
| of alternatives. And yes, I know that the risk of driving
| isn't "theoretical", but we can't fully predict what humans
| will do absent their first choice of transportation.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| What else do you expect in an oligarchy.
| linuxftw wrote:
| [flagged]
| jpgvm wrote:
| Turned out China was right on this one - ground first, ask
| questions later.
|
| That approach has historically been the FAA strategy. Maybe they
| should stick to what works?
|
| Especially given the airframe was so new and they also knew it
| had really stretched what should be allowable under the same type
| rating the caution was definitely warranted.
|
| The better question still remains as to how it got to keep the
| type rating despite the huge changes in the flight handling
| characteristics without a software system that didn't need to be
| sold in a redundant configuration and additionally without any
| additional training being mandated for pilots in the case of that
| system malfunctioning.
|
| Sure Boeing failed here but they are a company, companies
| especially of that size are absent of morals and driven only by
| profit.
|
| The FAA is meant to be the backstop, the voice of reason that
| prevents rampant capitalism from accidentally destroying itself.
| Airline travel only is what it is because of perceived safety,
| it's best all the stakeholders start remembering that.
| ecommerceguy wrote:
| >>Especially given the airframe was so new
|
| Was it a new airframe though? Not too sure that statement is
| correct...
| kelnos wrote:
| The airframe was not new, but the overall design was new.
| GP's overall point still stands, regardless.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Money talks. The head of the FAA are chosen by the President and
| confirmed by the Senate. Usually the heads are people who use to
| work for the Airline Industry or Manufactures of Airlines. So,
| major conflict of interest here.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Would you prefer that the head of the FAA have no clue about
| the airline industry or airplanes in general? Where do you
| think that these people are to be found, if not those who used
| to work for that very industry?
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| >Would you prefer that the head of the FAA have no clue about
| the airline industry or airplanes in general?
|
| Not being an industry expert shouldn't necessarily be a
| disqualifier. For example we don't insist that the secretary
| of health should be a doctor, or that the defence ministry
| should be run by generals. The main qualities needed is being
| a good manager and able to listen to alternative views and
| being a good politician (yes, it's important to have good
| politicians). If anything being an outsider actually helps
| the organisation more because it avoids conflicts of interest
| like op and it keeps the head humble.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| > For example we don't insist that the secretary of health
| should be a doctor.
|
| I'll definitely want my country's Secretary of Health to be
| a doctor who understands public health and its related
| policies, not a politician whose primarily skill is being
| popular and getting elected.
|
| >The main qualities needed is being a good manager and able
| to listen to alternative views and being a good politician.
|
| A Health Secretary who's not a doctor would find it
| difficult to judge if they're being fed the right
| information by their advisers.
|
| Remember that Boeing's woes began when the company ceased
| to be run by the engineers and aviation experts, but
| instead by the arrogant MBA counters who likely pitched
| themselves as good managers. It turns out they mostly cared
| about management and printing cash, but lacked engineering
| expertise, leading to screwups like the 737 Max.
| ihatepython wrote:
| > I'll definitely want my country's Secretary of Health
| to be a doctor who understands public health and its
| related policies, not a politician whose primarily skill
| is being popular and getting elected.
|
| Why not? The head of the WHO is not a medical doctor,
| he's a doctor in the sense that he has a PhD.
|
| There is probably no organization more trusted than the
| WHO.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| >A Health Secretary who's not a doctor would find it
| difficult to judge if they're being fed the right
| information by their advisers.
|
| That's the point of being a good manager. Being able to
| forge personal relationships and to trust your
| underlings. Having experience in an industry isn't that
| helpful when dealing with policy that lies outside a
| heads direct field of expertise.
|
| Being a doctor doesn't automatically provide a greater
| insight into what would make policies more successful.
| Yes he might have first hand knowledge of conditions on
| the ground, but the longer he's been out of doctoring the
| less up to date he will be and he will just be stuck with
| old notions of what things were like years ago.
|
| Your point about boeing is irrelevant, because the
| managment these had motives beyond engineering
| excellence, i.e making money.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I'll definitely want my country's Secretary of Health
| to be a doctor who understands public health
|
| If by "doctor" you mean, as people usually do in general
| conversation, an MD (or DO), why? Public health is an
| _entirely different discipline from medicine_ , with its
| own series of professional degrees. As is public
| administration. As is public policy. Why would a top-
| level public administrator and public policy professional
| in the field of public health need to have a professional
| degree in _medicine_ more than one in public health,
| public administration, or public policy?
|
| OTOH, your Surgeon-General or equivalent should
| definitely be a medical doctor.
| tourgen wrote:
| [dead]
| gpm wrote:
| I agree with boeingUH60 on the health example
|
| > or that the defence ministry should be run by generals.
|
| This is a weird exception to the rule. It's a case where
| there is a strong argument to be made for sacrificing
| competence in exchange for minimizing the risk of a coup by
| bringing in an outsider without close relationships with
| the people below him.
|
| There is no other department where we have to worry in
| quite the same way that they might just choose to start
| ignoring the rule of law, courts, and congress, and that if
| they do there is nothing that could really be done about
| it.
|
| You don't have to look very far to find examples of
| militaries seizing power. Meanwhile I'm reasonably
| confident in saying that no aircraft regulation agency has
| _ever_ seized power in the history of the planet.
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| It boils down to trust. A head needs to win the trust of
| his political overlords as well as, in more limited
| circumstances the general public. That's why he needs to
| be good at politics. It's no point appointing a supremely
| qualified individual if he's poor at communications and
| relationships.
| ilyt wrote:
| Job interview ? Hiring based on skills ?
| palijer wrote:
| See this comment here. What sort of skills or experience do
| you think are missing from these individuals?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35764715
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| We need people ready to serve the country. Not play cozy with
| friends.
|
| Nominated to work in the govt ? Elected public official ?
| Great! Every penny beyond your average high income (best 5-10
| income avg?) is taxed at 99% for life.
|
| Working in the government should not be a way to enrich
| yourself and friends... or make a "career".
|
| Its called _public service_ for a reason. Its not private
| enterprise. Its not arbitrage. Its not patronage. Not to
| enrich yourself and your buddies.
| ericd wrote:
| They already have a hard enough time finding highly
| qualified, competent, motivated people to staff government
| agencies without adding super life-limiting conditions. We
| really don't need to make that problem worse. Government
| jobs don't pay well enough to get great employees.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Government employees already face a pretty substantial pay
| cut compared to the private sector. For people on an
| engineering track, you're looking at double-digit
| percentage paycuts, but for the upper echelons of
| management track, where the comparatives are being C-suite
| at a medium-sized company, it's starting to look like a 90%
| paycut. This means you have issues recruiting people to
| fill these roles.
|
| Adding on a permanent pecuniary pay element for life is
| most likely to result in people finding various wheezes to
| get around that pay cap (I suspect in the form of
| undeclared gifts, not unlike the recent revelations of a
| certain Supreme Court justice). And it would tend to
| _increase_ corruption, since now the incomes of these
| people are more heavily reliant on under-the-table payments
| from patrons who now need to be kept happy.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Under the table is good. The IRS will have something to
| say about it.
|
| The engineer example doesn't follow. Its also not a pay
| cut.
|
| Take for example 300k comp for your avg. eng 300k avg
| last 5 years avg comp. Goes to Gov. High cap is set at
| 300k. Gets a salary of 120k while with govt. He can leave
| govt, and go back to earn 300k. No problem.
|
| He can even earn the gap between 120 and 300 also during
| his govt job. So he can maintain his QoL
|
| This is really not a problem at all.
|
| It doesnt punish success before govt.
|
| It punishes sucess after govt. (Speaker fees anyone?)
|
| The problem currently is that govt attracts people that
| want to make a career (and profit) out of it. I posit,
| thats exactly the people you _dont_ want in govt.
| qwytw wrote:
| > I posit, thats exactly the people you dont want in
| govt.
|
| You want highly competent people in government. If
| generally they can make significantly (e.g. even 10x or
| more, I'm talking about upper management/CEP level
| position of course) in the private sector more often than
| not they will do that. The public sector will be left
| with the leftovers.
| alvah wrote:
| The revolving door is a problem, but your proposed
| solution is...let's be charitable and say it's something
| that would be proposed by an academic, rather than a
| realist.
| qwytw wrote:
| Great way to further disincentivize the most talented
| people from choosing a career in government.
|
| I'd any day pick somebody whose highly qualified,
| experienced and generally 'intelligent' but somewhat
| corrupt over someone who "chose" to serve the country
| because he couldn't get a job in the private sector or is
| strongly motivated by his ideological beliefs but has no
| clue what he's doing.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| It's not just the FAA. DoD, Treasury, FCC, ... well, pretty
| much the entire federal government.
| monksy wrote:
| So who is the head of the FAA at the time of this issue, and
| who confirmed them?
|
| Let's put the names out in the public.
| KevSlater wrote:
| > Usually the heads are people who use to work for the Airline
| Industry or Manufactures of Airlines
|
| Recently they wanted to hire a guy who knew nothing about
| aviation
| Anechoic wrote:
| _a guy who knew nothing about aviation_
|
| It's not that he knew nothing about aviation (he ran Denver
| International Airport), he didn't have first-hand experience
| as a pilot. But here's the thing - that's okay. FAA is a mess
| right now, and Phil Washington has experience cleaning up
| messy organizations. That works perfectly find for a Federal
| administrative position where you're generally only on the
| job for a few years and move on. You can argue that it's even
| fine in the long term - how much software or hardware
| engineering experience does Tim Cook have again?
|
| Sometimes the only way to escape regulatory capture is to
| hire an outsider, at least temporarily.
|
| Unfortunately the administration did Washington dirty by not
| properly preparing him for his confirmation hearing.
| nerdponx wrote:
| The problem is that airline industry people are actually also
| the most qualified (on paper) to run the FAA.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| They have a conflict of interest, which makes them
| unqualified for public service.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| [dead]
| ouid wrote:
| The problem is that regulatory capture is treason, and should
| be investigated and punished as such.
| coreyoconnor wrote:
| I appreciate the spirit. Not treason, but definitely anti-
| making-shit-better.
| santoshalper wrote:
| A betrayal of your duty, your country and your people,
| but not treason per se.
| umanwizard wrote:
| No, treason is aiding a foreign power that is at war with
| the US.
| tiedieconderoga wrote:
| Organized sedition, maybe, but "treason" is narrowly
| defined in the US constitution:
|
| >Treason against the United States, shall consist only in
| levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies,
| giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted
| of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the
| same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
|
| >The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of
| Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption
| of Blood1, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the
| Person attainted.
|
| 1: "Corruption of blood" is a legal term. This passage
| means that treason charges cannot be carried to future
| generations, they only apply to the person who committed
| the act.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| Regulatory capture is not a problem that can be solved by
| executing examples, because the captured officials usually
| don't even think of themselves as captured. The solution is
| to align incentives, for example by closing the revolving
| door
| rcme wrote:
| Are they? Wouldn't a career FAA employee be a better choice?
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| A career FAA employee would be like having an astronomer
| dictate how to land a shuttle on a moon.
|
| Career fed employees are always, lacking the real world
| knowledge to make sound decisions.
| themitigating wrote:
| What's real world knowledge?
| simfree wrote:
| Part of said "real world knowledge" is regulatory capture
| in this case, which a well compensated career civil
| servant wouldn't be so beholden to.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| It's knowledge you get by actually working in the field
| rather than reading about it in reports and white papers.
| It has value, it's not everything, but it is important.
| What actually needs to be in place are independent
| auditors who aren't linked to the industry and can't
| profit from it to review the decisions of these agencies
| and have full access to all data, including engineers who
| say "yo this is a bad idea". I have been that engineer a
| few times with mixed results, sometimes people listen,
| sometimes they don't. Never on the level of the
| FAA/Boeing fiasco but still it does happen all the time,
| everyday. That's why rules to prevent fraternizing
| between agencies like the FAA and Boeing are important.
| It's a lot harder to be tough on friend/colleague than it
| is someone who you don't know and are auditing.
| peyton wrote:
| No, the heads of federal agencies are usually external so
| they can be held accountable for fuckups independently of
| the agencies' cultures.
| rcme wrote:
| No, the heads of federal agencies are external because
| they're political appointees. High profile jobs go to
| donors and those who have supported the politician in
| charge of the appointment.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| *Some federal appointees. The head of FAA under Trump was
| Stephen Dickson, who was an F-15 fighter pilot in the
| U.S. Air Force, then a pilot for 27 years at Delta
| Airlines before becoming Vice President of flight
| operations [1].
|
| The current head under Biden is Billy Nolen, a former
| pilot who flew the Boeing 757 and 767 and worked as an
| airline executive for years before joining the FAA [2].
|
| By credentials, these two are definitely qualified.
|
| 1- https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-
| actions/pr...
|
| 2- https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/30600-safety-
| professional...
| rcme wrote:
| I think the original point being made was that having
| such extensive airline industry experience actually makes
| you unqualified to lead the FAA. For instance, Dickson,
| through his position at Delta, has likely developed
| strong ties to counterparts at Boeing. This made him
| unable to adequately address the safety issues of the 737
| MAX.
|
| My follow-up point was that experience in regulating
| airlines is more important than experience running an
| airline when it comes to leading the FAA. However, those
| who regulate airlines as a career are unlikely to be big
| political donors, so they're unlikely to be chosen to
| lead the FAA.
| V-eHGsd_ wrote:
| dickson also oversaw the illegal grounding of a pilot who
| was reporting safety issues at delta.
| https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-
| aerospace/delta...
| WheatMillington wrote:
| Having worked for airlines or manufacturers in the past doesn't
| itself present a conflict of interest. Not to say a conflict
| doesn't exist, but previous employment isn't itself a conflict.
| kqr wrote:
| Not as a strict logical consequence, no. However, it does
| sort of increase the probability that one has acquired
| insidership in social circles where people may frown if one
| temporarily kills off a profitable line of business.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| Don't forget the military work that Boeing does. There's more
| at stake with this relationship than just one aircraft
| platform.
| santoshalper wrote:
| Has any happy story ever begun with ignoring your engineers?
| alpos wrote:
| The underlying problems here run much deeper in that the root
| cause of the issues has more to do with the shenanigans Boeing
| and any other aircraft manufacturers end up having to do in order
| to avoid having to certify a whole new aircraft and especially to
| avoid needing to obtain a new type certification.
|
| Both cases are absurdly expensive and time consuming to the point
| that any new aircraft designs are basically experimental or dead
| on paper in terms of being able to sell the plane at a price
| people or even companies can actually pay.
|
| In this case, my understanding is that, the new engines are a bit
| bigger which necessitated a change in mounting position relative
| to the main body in order to maintain ground clearance on takeoff
| and landing, this should have meant larger landing gear sitting a
| bit higher and/or a slightly different wing shape and mounting
| position on the body.
|
| However, any of those kind of changes would have moved the Max8
| into a new type certificate which would then require all pilots
| flying it to certify on that type in addition to additional
| flight testing and manufacturing certifications. All of that
| would move the cost of the plane well above the point where the
| efficiency gains would make it worth buying and delay production
| to the point where there would no longer be a market for it. So
| there would simply be no Max8.
|
| And one could say, "well that's business, Airbus beat you to it,
| Boeing should lose then". And that would be fine as long as we're
| willing to accept a world where the US produces no commercial
| aircraft at all and airline ticket prices and accommodations
| continue to get even worse. Are we good with making travel by air
| something only the rich can afford?
|
| So Boeing went with extending the engines forward and slightly
| upward which necessitated more down force from the horizontal
| stabilizers to balance the increased weight forward of the center
| of lift and introduced a potential disruption of airflow over the
| wings in a high pitch up situation.
|
| Changing the size, shape, or position of the horizontal
| stabilizers or anything else that would address the airflow
| issues would also run into certification cost issues. Therefore
| Boeing settled on an active control solution which they
| integrated into the existing flight control software (poorly) and
| found creative ways to convince regulators that nothing much had
| changed in the software such that the whole design could be built
| at a price point and time to market that would actually make the
| project worth doing at all.
|
| This kind of creative engineering of what you can get past the
| regulators is the dark side of any over-regulated industry and
| continues even in the re-certification process for the Max8
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/18/22189609/faa-boeing-737-...
|
| The reasons for it are pretty straight forward and can be seen as
| bad actors being bad or simply the result you are bound to get
| when you regulate without accounting for the reality of how
| people and businesses work. You can't just say "safety is our top
| priority" and continue to add layers of regulation until it's
| impossible to do anything without manipulating or bypassing those
| regulations. Doing so will counter-productively NOT get you safer
| designs.
|
| What it will reliably get you is a shift in the focus of efforts
| from engineering the safest and most efficient aircraft possible
| to getting ever more creative about designing things you can get
| past the regulators. You don't want smart people dedicating large
| amounts of time, energy, and money to efforts to manipulate
| regulators.
|
| We the public would be much better served by an FAA that
| regulates with safety as the top priority AND an eye for making
| it possible and profitable to actually introduce new designs and
| new ways to manufacture things.
|
| Right now it is simply impossible to start a company with the
| goal of introducing a new aircraft or aircraft engine to the US
| market. It costs astronomical amounts to get to the point where
| you can sell your first plane and separately astronomical amounts
| to get to where you can sell your first engine. Even for single
| engine, fixed gear, small and light, GA planes.
|
| This is why almost no normal US citizen can afford to fly
| personally, even just occasionally for fun. It is also why GA
| planes still use leaded gasoline and burn around 10 gallons per
| hour. It is also why "new" aircraft are all actually >95% similar
| to existing designs (even if that makes them inefficient), always
| use existing decades old engines, and still cost hundreds of
| thousands to millions of dollars, making them priced out for all
| but the wealthiest potential customers.
|
| The only possible route for any innovation in flight has been
| Experimental airworthiness certificates. And you can sell a few
| planes that way; but once you have a known good and tested
| design, you are still stuck in the Experimental category
| indefinitely because you will never sell enough planes to afford
| a standard category certificate.
|
| Best of luck to the flying car startups but no pilot in the US
| expects them to have a snowball's chance in hell of making it to
| the point where they are profitably selling a genuinely new type
| of aircraft.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| > a new type certificate which would then require all pilots
| flying it to certify on that type in addition to additional
| flight testing and manufacturing certifications
|
| Boeing blamed the crashes on the lack of pilot training.
|
| > "The crew's inadequate actions ... played a role in the chain
| of events that led to the accident, in particular during the
| first phase of the flight, before the first MCAS activation,"
| the BEA wrote. Both agencies suggest that Ethiopian Airlines
| *failed to ensure its pilots were adequately trained* in the
| measures that Boeing recommended to counter an erroneous MCAS
| activation after the first MAX crash.
|
| https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/final...
| reisse wrote:
| > This is why almost no normal US citizen can afford to fly
| personally, even just occasionally for fun.
|
| In EU you can get to a lot of destinations for much less than
| 100EUR. And I bet EU regulations are not less stringent than
| US. Adding insult to injury, Airbus does fine smashing Boeing
| in the mid-range mid-size planes segment.
|
| Maybe the problem is not in the regulations, but in Boeing?
| Which tries to circumvent the regulations, instead of following
| them, or at least trying to appeal the regulations in a legal
| way?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > In EU you can get to a lot of destinations for much less
| than 100EUR.
|
| There's a lot of cheap destinations for domestic US flights,
| too. And the average length of a flight in the US is longer,
| obviously.
| reisse wrote:
| > And the average length of a flight in the US is longer,
| obviously.
|
| Not really. For US in 2018 it was ~700 miles
| (https://www.bts.dot.gov/newsroom/2018-traffic-data-us-
| airlin...), and for EU in 2020 it was ~1000 kilometers (htt
| ps://www.eurocontrol.int/sites/default/files/2021-04/euro..
| .).
|
| There are a lot of short flights (anything not coast-to-
| coast or north-to-south, basically) that skew the average.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Yeah for some reason five years ago it was significantly
| lower than today, it's gone up to around 850 miles now.
| Not that I can tell you precisely why, but that's what
| the stats say.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I think GP is saying almost no normal US citizen can afford
| to fly his or her own aircraft, not pay to be a passenger on
| a commercial airline.
|
| Even renting the smallest of single-engine aircraft as a
| student pilot is beyond the resources of what most people
| would spend (hundreds of dollars per hour) "for fun". Owning
| an aircraft is out of reach for all but the very wealthy.
|
| A small airplane is no more technically sophisticated than an
| automobile, yet costs orders of magnitude more.
| nickpeterson wrote:
| I'd like to believe that this was a case for engineers being
| overcautious and the FAA deeming the risk low enough that it
| wouldn't be worth the reputation damage, but honestly who knows
| at this point?
|
| I don't follow aviation or Boeing actively, but in the last few
| years I seem to recall the max grounded for literally killing
| people, the 787 having tons of manufacturing issues,and something
| about the NASA contracts having a lawsuit from SpaceX.
|
| Feels like we're seeing a company in crisis.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| This article miss so many details it is impossible to tell it is
| newsworthy or not.
|
| Is the report quoted in the article public?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-04-30 23:01 UTC)