[HN Gopher] Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after in...
___________________________________________________________________
Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument
failure
Author : breadwinner
Score : 205 points
Date : 2024-03-12 16:01 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| wkat4242 wrote:
| This sounds more worrying now. When I heard it originally it
| sounded like a mountain wave. Those are extremely powerful
| natural downdrafts (or up!) and common in South New Zealand..
| They've crashed flights before:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOAC_Flight_911 though that was
| at mount Fuji in Japan.
|
| But if the plane did this by itself.. wow. The 787 is fly by
| wire. Worrying. And very bad timing for Boeing.
| nop_slide wrote:
| Not sure how I acquired the "common" knowledge that a plane has
| never crashed before due to turbulence alone, but this looks
| like an example of such a case!
| avemg wrote:
| I think maybe you've misunderstood what the common knowledge
| said. Turbulence hasn't ripped an airplane apart at altitude,
| so yea turbulence alone hasn't caused a crash. But anything
| near terrain is plenty risky (mountain waves, low-level wind
| shear). If the turbulence makes you drop a couple of hundred
| feet that's no big deal at 35,000 feet and no matter how
| bumpy it gets, the wings aren't going to break off. But if
| you're near the ground (or a mountain), well....
| nop_slide wrote:
| > Turbulence hasn't ripped an airplane apart at altitude,
| so yea turbulence alone hasn't caused a crash
|
| The linked wiki article literally says it ripped the plane
| apart
|
| > The aircraft then encountered strong turbulence, causing
| it to break up in flight and crash into a forest.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > Turbulence hasn't ripped an airplane apart at altitude
|
| It has, not only in this case but also here:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLM_CityHopper_Flight_431
|
| And there are many other examples.
|
| I guess it depends by what you mean by "at altitude"? Most
| of these accidents did happen below 10.000 feet yes. And
| the mountain wave phenomenon in New Zealand in particular
| reaches pretty high. Some glider pilots use it to get up
| really high, so high some of them got frostbitten.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItPnp4pJ_bg There at 19k
| feet.
|
| But yes at that altitude the phenomenon is probably not
| strong enough anymore to break up an airliner.
| bombcar wrote:
| I guess a tornado can be called turbulence.
| usrusr wrote:
| The good news is that very strong downdrafts, in absolute
| terms, simply can't happen close to the ground, because the
| air in question needs somewhere to go.
| BasilPH wrote:
| Fascinating article. Some interesting anecdotes:
|
| > The victims even included several survivors of the Canadian
| Pacific Air Lines Flight 402 crash. (Note: A plane that crashed
| the day prior, with only 8 out of 72 people on board surviving)
|
| > Several booked passengers cancelled their tickets at the last
| moment to see a ninja demonstration. These passengers, Albert
| R. Broccoli, Harry Saltzman, Ken Adam, Lewis Gilbert, and
| Freddie Young, were in Japan scouting locations for the fifth
| James Bond film, You Only Live Twice (1967).
|
| Coincidences like this are of course bound to happen with large
| enough numbers of people traveling, but I still find this
| interesting.
| joecasson wrote:
| A blip of zero controls - not ideal! Although hearsay from a
| passenger hardly sounds reliable.
|
| The thing I'm wondering is: are quality issues happening
| elsewhere? Or are we caught in an anti-Boeing hype cycle? I'm
| skeptical whenever the media really grabs hold of a narrative
| that's so one-sided.
| rco8786 wrote:
| Yea I have the same question. Objectively it appears that
| Boeing is having some really serious safety issues. Things that
| absolutely do not jive with what we've been taught our entire
| lives about how safe airline travel is. But I'm open to the
| idea that 5-10 "major" incidents a year is maybe within the
| normal range and we just don't ever hear about them.
| Aetheridon wrote:
| appears to be the newer manufactured aircraft (737 Max series
| and 787's) that are having these issues... the 777 has one of
| the best safety records for airliners out there for example
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| More plausible than hearsay from Boeing or LATAM
| joecasson wrote:
| Fair, but - for the sake of the argument - who's to say that
| Brian Jokat doesn't have a major short position on Boeing?
|
| I agree that both of the airlines have incentives to cover it
| up, but it's strange this is being "reported" as verified.
| kefirlife wrote:
| Given the stories reported about the safety culture at Boeing I
| expect there are other quality issues. The instances where
| those quality issues are so apparent that customers experience
| them, like the door blowout, are unlikely to be unique.
|
| John Oliver did a report on Boeing recently that is pretty
| damning.
| rob74 wrote:
| Even with zero controls, and even if one or more of the various
| computers decided spontaneously to restart, I would expect the
| plane to continue flying the way it did before the incident
| rather than going into an (apparently) uncommanded descent? I
| mean, we _had_ that with the 737 MAX, so I wouldn 't rule it
| out, but it sounds suspiciously like the pilot messed up and is
| trying to blame the airplane. However I'm no specialist, so
| it's probably best to wait until further details emerge...
| cm2187 wrote:
| Well, something of that sort happened with the A330 also:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Airbus had a problem like this on an A330 due to corrupted
| AOA data in the flight computers.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72
| sammy2255 wrote:
| Cosmic rays*
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| The cause of the corrupted data is not known but it did
| happen multiple times in a short period and only on an
| A330s.
|
| Once Airbus knew what the problem was, they were able to
| detect and mitigate it with a software update. They
| didn't fix the hardware.
| throwaway3563 wrote:
| The most that the ATSB was able to determine was that the
| data corruption was basically akin to a C++
| reinterpret_cast of "altitude" as "angle of attack",
| causing the 37,000ft or so altitude to sporadically be
| read as a 50 degree AoA.
|
| The issue was not definitively traced to cosmic rays or
| another root cause.
| rvba wrote:
| Thanks for the link, it made me move to the article about
| "Mayday Mayday Mayday" callsign, then listen to a recording
| of one and read about a ship that hit a bridge in Florida.
| They rebuild the bridge.
|
| Wikipedia is such a fascinating website
| thombat wrote:
| But what control input could a pilot make that abruptly
| produces significant negative gees for just a couple of
| seconds? Other than the bland references to "technical issue"
| it sounds like clear air turbulence. (Although one possible
| mistake could be that the weather radar did warn of it and
| the pilot didn't react?)
| histriosum wrote:
| Weather radar cannot see clear air turbulence. Essentially
| you are relying on forecasts and pilot reports.
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| An autopilot disconnect (caused by a failure of the flight
| control computer) in an out of trim condition can cause it.
| I'm not sure how a 787s trim system is built but on our,
| much older, plane with a mechanical trim system there's a
| motor that will slowly move the trim tabs to bring the
| autopilot inputs to 0.
|
| That is if the autopilot is producing a constant nose up
| control signal the auto-trim will move the elevator tabs
| towards nose up until the AP pitch signal is null.
|
| It's to prevent fun excursions like this should the
| autopilot become disconnected without the pilots hands on
| the controls.
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| " hearsay from a passenger hardly sounds reliable."
|
| Maybe, but also the alternative is that pilots may be pressued
| not to report these things due to career or crony capitalist
| concerns like pressure from their employer or are told this
| crash is 'normal'. Airlines and Boeing are not "nice guys" and
| are historically toxic and vindictive companies against the
| working class.
|
| So that leaves us whistleblowers of lower professional value
| than pilots. The same way Snowden was a lowly sysadmin
| contractor and not a high ranking NSA general or CISO or
| whatever. Or Reality Winner or Chelsea Manning had relatively
| low level positions.
|
| At a certain point, in a corrupt system, we have to accept the
| quality of whistleblower is never going to be that gold
| standard we want. Maybe this is fake, but its worth taking on
| face value considering what we know about Boeing culture and
| the capitalism dynamics and government corruption they've
| helped create that keeps them away from proper regulation and
| disclosure.
|
| Not to mention we still know next to nothing about Malaysia
| Airlines flight 370, which was a Boeing too. The narrative of
| "nothing to see here, its just a pilot suicide or freak swamp
| gas accident" is now a lot more questionable as we've seen
| Boeing quality decline lately.
|
| "Hey this isnt good enough" is wrong thinking here. In a system
| of corruption and secrecy its rare to have "good enough" but
| instead we have to deal with the cards we're dealt by witnesses
| and whistleblowers.
| honkycat wrote:
| Did you really not hear about one of their door plugs falling
| off mid air? Or how TWO of their passenger planes crashed into
| the ocean killing all passengers due to gross negligence in
| implementing their computer assisted control for their new
| plane?
|
| They are having HUGE quality issues for the exact reason you
| would expect: finance bros took over the company and they now
| blow tons of money on stock buybacks and not unnecessary things
| like QA.
|
| Businesses doing Big Things cannot just blow all of their money
| on stock buybacks and expect to do great things. It is all
| profits without prosperity. It used to be illegal for a reason.
|
| It is not just hype. They have screwed the pooch.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Boeing being safe was the default, what we're seeing is the
| disillusion of this default. What's the alternative for the
| news; "plane lands successfully and without issue". As with any
| complex system things when things go wrong they go wrong in a
| myriad of ways with a great deal of uncertainty and randomness
| - which in and of itself makes them interesting. The erosion of
| the culture of safety at Boeing is a slow gradual process that
| has occured over several decades. Incidents that make it to the
| public are a lagging indicator, which suggests that there is
| much more to come. Culture is easy to destroy and very very
| hard to fix, like how cutting down a forest is much faster and
| easier than growing one. And a culture that has destroyed
| itself is very unlikely able to fix itself. So we could very
| well be witnessing a terminal decline. Boeing will make a ton
| of money providing drones for the US military so there is no
| real incentive to force leadership to do any course corrections
| - instead they will just have to act surprised each time a new
| Boeing issue pops up.
| jajko wrote:
| These issues are killing people in hundreds. You are right
| that national security is more important, but world is not
| binary. Current execs could easily say rot in jail while
| company keeps churning whatever hardware military wants,
| nothing mutually exclusive there.
|
| Now what will happen with civilian avionics is another story,
| for me they lost my trust for good but I & my family choices
| are insignificant forces on the market.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I'm not suggesting national security is more important,
| just that Boeing's leadership won't learn any lessons from
| this as they'll keep getting bailed out with sweet MIC
| contracts. I would probably feel much safer if we didn't
| have a MIC that is constantly trying to play a nuclear game
| of chicken with political adversaries. 'Russia will not use
| nukes because Russia has not used nukes' - what kind of
| effed up logic is that. I feel very unsafe being governed
| by morons. I can easily avoid flying but dodging nukes is
| much more difficult.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I prefer the term "national insecurity". The use of
| "national security" usually makes more sense if you would
| add the in prefix.
| pxeboot wrote:
| If you are curious just how common minor incidents are,
| https://avherald.com does a good job of listing most of them.
| bbor wrote:
| This isn't a "hype cycle", Boeing has very publicly abandoned
| their engineering culture in favor of stock buybacks ever since
| the McDonnell-Douglas merger. It's not hidden at all, and we
| have countless whistleblower employees, undercover
| investigations, and the obvious fiscal facts (eg they planned
| to spend half as much on the MAX as they originally thought it
| would take).
|
| Plus this isn't exactly a huge industry, and I don't recall
| airbus having these problems. Probably because "spend the
| normal amount of money on engineering" is about the easiest
| decision a company could ever make - the most obvious, no-shit-
| Sherlock board room decision possible for building the long-
| term value of a company.
|
| IMO sometimes things are simple, and sometimes the rich and
| powerful are blinded by short-term greed.
| mym1990 wrote:
| How do you suppose a half a trillion dollar market is not a
| "huge industry"? I am definitely aware of the cultural issues
| at Boeing, but boiling it down to "sometimes things are
| simple" is just a lot of ignorance on your part.
| bbor wrote:
| I just meant that there are only two companies in the
| industry at all - the industry being "commercial passenger
| flight", or what they seem to call "airliners" (?):
| Still, in the large commercial aircraft market, there are
| just two major players: the U.S.-based Boeing (BA) and the
| Airbus Group (EADSY), formerly known as the European
| Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS).
|
| I totally understand your pushback against some kid on HN
| thinking he knows better than the Boeing board, but I stick
| by the simplicity comment. I know little about airplanes
| but I know a lot about engineering and common sense. My
| point is this: R&D is vital to the long term success of an
| aerospace company, and suddenly slashing R&D budgets while
| expecting a similar amount of output is an obvious cause of
| safety incidents.
| nradov wrote:
| That depends on how you define the market. Boeing and
| Airbus are the only two manufacturers of _large_ civil
| airliners on the worldwide market. But there is a second
| tier including Bombardier, Embraer, Comac, Mitsubishi,
| and UAC which either manufacture smaller (regional)
| airliners or have more limited sales options.
| somenameforme wrote:
| You can test this, to some degree, by using custom date ranges
| on most of any search engine. Just exclude from the past
| several days and search for whatever. So for instance, I assume
| most people know that amongst numerous other issues, a Boeing
| also had a wheel fall off and cause damage to vehicles and what
| no on the ground below. So I searched for 'wheel falls off
| airplane' [1] while excluding the past few months. And yeah,
| every time it happened, even on relatively small planes, it
| received lots of coverage.
|
| So it seems fairly safe to say that something has gone
| seriously wrong with Boeing, rather than there just being a big
| focus on them. I always thought the safest time to fly would be
| shortly after an airline had a major safety incident, because
| that's exactly when they're going to be checking everything ten
| times over. And I'm sure this is exactly what Boeing is still
| doing, yet they still can't seem to keep their planes in the
| air and in one piece.
|
| [1] -
| https://search.brave.com/search?q=wheel+falls+off+airplane&s...
| metalliqaz wrote:
| But for the planes that are in-service, any extra scrutiny in
| the wake of an incident would mostly fall on the airlines,
| not on Boeing.
| chmod775 wrote:
| There's databases that are going to make that a bit more
| precise.
|
| https://aviation-safety.net/database/
|
| https://avherald.com/ (has fulltext search)
|
| This query returns some results about dropped wheels:
|
| https://avherald.com/h?search_term=dropped+wheel&opt=7168&do.
| ..
| mym1990 wrote:
| I would lean towards an anti-Boeing hype cycle with some
| confluence of a series of unfortunate events. This is not to
| say that the QA issues aren't leading to something
| catastrophic, but on the whole I don't think people quite
| comprehend the number of flights that take off and land in a
| day, and how few fatalities and injuries result as of these
| trips relative to the passenger load.
| jajko wrote:
| Yet competition can and does better, much better re safety
| currently. Any issue of Airbus would get at least same press
| coverage, in US even more since media are usually not
| impartial.
|
| Are we already into some boeing whitewashing cycle too?
| mym1990 wrote:
| A lot of safety related improvements(at least in the US)
| are also due to the FAA and generally the open process of
| anonymously reporting issues on flights. Each crash has
| also been meticulously investigated and vast improvements
| were put in place. The reality is that the most dangerous
| times on a flight are take off and landing, which is also
| where human judgement and process plays a large part.
|
| As far as breaking out of a duopoly, I don't know the path
| for that, as the barrier to entry to building commercial
| planes is sky high, but I do think one more player would be
| a net benefit.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > As far as breaking out of a duopoly, I don't know the
| path for that
|
| I'm sure China does. Right now they're the only bloc of
| sufficient size, economy, and most importantly
| motivation, to pull it off.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_C919
|
| Do note that some systems in that aircraft are still
| manufactured by European and American companies or are
| jointly made.
| drstewart wrote:
| >Yet competition can and does better, much better re safety
| currently.
|
| Oh wow I had no idea. Can you compare hull losses /
| fatalities of the 787 to the A350?
| chmod775 wrote:
| The problem isn't that "accidents happen", the problem is
| that airplane safety culture isn't meeting people's
| expectations anymore. Two planes crashing _for the exact same
| preventable reason_ mere months apart just does not compute.
| A single crash would 've been quickly forgotten. But two
| crashes and a long chain of incidents all while the planes
| were allowed to stay in the air is going to change people's
| perceptions.
|
| The fuckups being directly attributable to inept leadership,
| bad policy, and a focus shift away from _building planes_
| does not help, especially since the same incompetent clowns
| are still in charge at Boeing. One of the first remedies
| should 've been getting rid of the businesses school types
| that have crept in and making sure decision making is again
| done by engineers. Instead, they blamed the 737 MAX's issues
| on engineers in the corporate ladder, such as then CEO Dennis
| Muilenburg, replacing them with lesser-qualified people. Even
| though the plane was developed during his predecessor's term,
| who definitely wasn't an engineer and brought most of the
| relevant organizational issues about! Now you can blame him
| for not substantially reversing the course set by his
| predecessor, but the answer definitely isn't to have Boeing
| be run by yet another non-engineer.
|
| Boeing's current leadership does not have the trust of the
| public or that of the engineers working under them. After all
| of this, they won't ever.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Totally agree, but the truth is that it is hard to say that
| the public has lost trust in Boeing when more people than
| ever are in the air. The peanut gallery is on to something,
| and Boeing is losing orders, but it doesn't seem to be
| enough to actually change anything.
| kelnos wrote:
| "Lost trust" is a complicated matter. I think I have list
| a great deal of trust in Boeing, and try to avoid 737 max
| and 787 planes when I fly, but if flights with those
| planesc are the only reasonable choices, I'll still go.
| The probability of injury or death is still fantastically
| low. Maybe my views on that will change over time. We'll
| see.
|
| The bottom line is that I have places to go, and if my
| risk tolerance was zero, that would be a very difficult
| way to live my life.
| dheera wrote:
| > it is hard to say that the public has lost trust in
| Boeing
|
| I've temporarily lost trust in them until they get their
| shit together. Airplanes are only safe because
| manufacturing and maintainence has been done diligently
| over the past couple decades and with sufficient
| attention to prevention of known hazards. As soon as that
| diligence disappears, airplanes can become unsafe, very
| quickly. If an accident could have been prevented by
| diligence, I lose trust.
|
| I've been flying but avoiding Boeing aircraft in the past
| few months, until we get to the bottom of this. Many of
| my friends are doing the same.
|
| I've also had multiple pilots explicitly announce that
| "this is not a 737 Max" or something to that effect.
| xcv123 wrote:
| > inept leadership
|
| Their leadership are worse than "inept" or "incompetent".
| Actively evil psychopaths running the show.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downfall:_The_Case_Against_Bo
| e...
| aniftythrifrty wrote:
| Carry that skepticism forward when reading anti-Israel
| headlines.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| In the sense that there's evidence of a problem with planes
| right now, and the question is if that problem was already
| there, whereas there's evidence of IDF war crimes right now,
| and the question is if they've always been doing them?
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| I think they meant in the sense of bad things happen to
| airplanes often enough that you could find what looks like
| a pattern for any given manufacturer if you looked for it,
| and bad things happen in armed conflict often enough that
| you could find what looks like a pattern for any given side
| in an armed conflict if you looked for it.
|
| Which isn't even to say that Israel and its armed forces
| are necessarily not behaving poorly in Gaza, rather that
| it's worth questioning whether we have enough evidence to
| conclude that they are behaving _unusually_ poorly in Gaza,
| or if for a number of reasons other than an excess of
| sympathy for Gazans we are experiencing an unbelievably
| high level of scrutiny and criticism of Israel 's actions
| in Gaza.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Suppose there's a dragon that comes out of its cave and
| eats a villager every seven years. A knight passes
| through the village, sees the dragon carry off someone's
| wife, and calls the villagers to arms: only for calm
| reason to prevail, as the village elder points out that
| the incidence of dragon attacks in that locale has not,
| when adjusted for the expanding population, and
| increasingly frequent human-dragon contacts, and the
| inherent unreliability of wooden house door-plugs, risen
| above historically expected levels.
| SomeoneFromCA wrote:
| proisreal, antiisarael, skepticism is always useful.
| jerf wrote:
| The problem with engineering defense in depth is that systems
| naturally evolve to "spend" that defense in depth. Constant,
| active vigilance is required to maintain a culture that honors
| and preserves defense in depth rather than exploiting it. It
| isn't that hard to believe that Boeing has failed to preserve
| that culture. A company like Boeing would be constantly
| fighting against multiple forces pushing them to exploit the
| defense in depth rather than maintain it. Some of them, like
| the Harvard MBA mindset, are very difficult for large companies
| to resist. Short term costs that result in long term benefits
| are a hard sell to almost anyone, but current American business
| culture is definitely not strong against that.
| philip1209 wrote:
| I'm skeptical of this account - Newton's First Law says that an
| object in motion stays in motion. Losing instruments for a second
| doesn't cause a change in momentum - that would have needed to be
| a stall, a change in trim, or an external weather event such as a
| downdraft. A stall would have been accompanied by a stall
| recovery procedure involving attitude + thrust changes, and
| nobody seems to be reporting that in the article.
|
| I'm no professional, but if I had to guess - the plane got hit by
| a hard gust, and the gust triggered a short in some electronics
| that caused the screens to go blank. (So, the opposite direction
| of causality).
| marvin wrote:
| If passengers were touching the ceiling, it would have required
| either a very powerful downdraft or control surface inputs
| leading to greater-than gravity acceleration downwards. Very
| interested to hear the investigation into this.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| >Newton's First Law says that an object in motion stays in
| motion.
|
| How is this relevant? There is turbulence and gravity, this
| isn't "empty" space.
|
| > Losing instruments for a second doesn't cause a change in
| momentum
|
| No, but modern jets need computer-aided control of flight
| control surfaces to keep the aircraft stable.
|
| If the account is accurate sounds like quite literally
| everything had a blip for a second, which would have prevented
| computer-intervention when encountering severe turbulence, or
| worse, flight control surfaces became "stuck."
| LaffertyDev wrote:
| Nitpicking. I agree with your broader point.
|
| > No, but modern jets need computer-aided control of flight
| control surfaces to keep the aircraft stable.
|
| Most aircraft outside of fighter jets are aerodynamically
| stable. Loss of powered flight would mean the airplane will
| glide (in nominal operation). Even the 737MAX7/9 aircraft are
| still stable (although that brings up defining exactly what
| we mean by aerodynamically stable... )
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| >Most aircraft outside of fighter jets are aerodynamically
| stable.
|
| Sure, but there is significant overlap between being stable
| and throwing around passengers, unfortunately.
|
| Dropping 500 feet is perfectly okay for the aircraft and it
| will largely continue to not simply fall out of the sky
| past that.
| alistairSH wrote:
| That's not what aerodynamically stables means. Anything
| external that would cause a 787 to drop 500 feet is
| probably going to do that with or without the flight
| computers working.
|
| In the case of military aircraft, they quite literally
| can't glide or maintain stable flight without the flight
| computer actively managing the control surfaces.
|
| A 787 is perfectly capable of flying in steady state
| should the computer glitch.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _modern jets need computer-aided control of flight control
| surfaces to keep the aircraft stable_
|
| Small nitpick, commercial jets are designed to be
| aerodynamically stable. If controls froze briefly, the plane
| would continue to be stable, flying as it was when the
| controls froze. You'd need to add in the turbulence or some
| external force for it to be a problem. That said, the 787 is
| 100% dependent on electronic controls, so anything more than
| brief loss of controls would lead to a crash.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| >You'd need to add in the turbulence or some external force
| for it to be a problem.
|
| Which is what I said :). The computer controlled flight
| control surfaces aren't just keeping the aircraft
| aerodynamically stable, they're keeping it comfortable/safe
| which is what "stable" means in this context (since it's a
| passenger jet).
|
| Dropping 500 feet is nothing for the aircraft. That's a
| different story for the passengers.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Yes, I wanted to draw the distinction between other types
| of aircraft, like some military jets, which compromise
| stability (either for performance or stealth), and need
| the computer controlled surfaces to fly straight. I take
| stable to mean, not unexpectedly changing speed and
| direction, not just smooth.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Murphy's law, "anything that can go wrong (eventually) will go
| wrong". Gusts triggering a short that blocks out fly-by-wire
| would be even more worrying than poor coding. You know landings
| generally have lots of gusts and would be a terrible time to
| locked out.
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| Better make sure nothing can gonwrobg then with robust
| systems
| jurassicfoxy wrote:
| > and the gust triggered a short in some electronics that
| caused the screens to go blank
|
| That is a hilariously complex first guess.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Reminds me of the time my brand new F-250 "crashed" and rebooted.
| Lost all functionality for almost a minute, completely dropped
| dead on the road. It rebooted and continued on. Happened one time
| in five years and ~50k miles.
| post_break wrote:
| Teslas were known for doing the same thing.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWWRx6ZuV80
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Not the same thing, He said the f-250 lost all functionality,
| including power. The video you posted is just the Tesla
| screen rebooting, while keeping all driving functionality.
| ghusbands wrote:
| That Tesla didn't "completely drop[] dead on the road" like
| the post you're replying to stated - it just had the non-
| driving controls go dark for a couple of minutes. Still
| terrible, and the Nissan Leaf also does it occasionally,
| though for less time.
| burgerrito wrote:
| This gives a whole new meaning to the sentence "My car
| crashed"
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Heh, yeah. Had a Subaru Forrester decide that something was
| wrong with the throttle or cruise control or something, and the
| appropriate response was to ignore the accelerator and just
| leave the engine at idle. On the freeway. In the middle of a
| road trip.
|
| Manual "reboot" fixed that one. But "have you tried turning it
| off and back on again" is not a good answer for an airliner...
| fotta wrote:
| I had a Chrysler Pacifica go into limp mode several times due
| to issues in a CAN bus connector sending bad ECM data. It was
| very intermittent so service couldn't do anything. Eventually
| someone in an owner's forum figured it out so I was able to
| swap out the $5 connector.
| queuebert wrote:
| On a related note, one of the whistleblowers was just found dead:
| https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/boeing-whistleblower...
| dang wrote:
| _Boeing whistleblower found dead in US_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39673589 (438 comments)
| engineer_22 wrote:
| "self inflicted gunshot wound"
| psunavy03 wrote:
| If the FBW system is getting spurious inputs, that's a Very Bad
| Thing. But I'm skeptical about CNN reporting from some rando non-
| aviator being accurate as to what exactly is going on. This is
| like asking some random person what their doctor or lawyer told
| them, and expecting them to get it all right.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| They're down ~27% YTD.
|
| Something tells me that there's going to be a "come to Jesus"
| meeting soon in the C-suite's future that results in the
| deployment of a golden parachute.
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| Can only hope to unfortunately find myself with one such
| meeting scheduled on my calendar!
| chasd00 wrote:
| hopefully the parachute is made by Boeing
| dh2022 wrote:
| maybe not made by Boeing, but certainly paid by it....
| robocat wrote:
| Engineers probably told to make a golden parachute for the
| execs.
|
| Engineers love a good challenge. Let's compare tensile
| strength of gold to silk (the original parachute material):
| * Ultimate tensile strength of Gold is 220 MPa * degummed
| natural silk fibers, with a tensile strength of 614 MPa
|
| So approximately just triple the gold thread versus silk
| thread. Expensive but doable. Gold may add to total weight
| (parachute + person) to keep floating causing velocity to
| increase versus silk. Attach warning label: IANA MECHENG.
| michaelcampbell wrote:
| There will be a scapegoat, and then big bonuses for everyone
| else for eliminating the bad seed, at the expense of the
| workers who won't get raises to pay for it all.
| dessimus wrote:
| Calhoun opens the third envelope...
| sio8ohPi wrote:
| "passenger says".
|
| I'm dubious and betting on clear-air turbulence, but we'll know
| in a few days.
| new23d wrote:
| This is the FlightRadar24 playback of the flight:
| https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/la800#34506b53
|
| At time ~02:27, a dip in the altitude can be seen in the flight
| data chart.
| _obviously wrote:
| Real time operating systems are expensive to develop for and
| require laborious system validation. That's why we decided to use
| a custom version of Android Jelly Bean running on the latest
| MediaTek quad core processors featuring Arm Mali gpus. Sensor
| communications are handled wirelessly with BlueTooth. Be sure to
| turn off all electronic devices before the flight. :)
| onetimeuse92304 wrote:
| All development was offshored to a lowest bidder. Thanks to
| this, all our critical flight control software is now developed
| by a single intern aided by Copilot (sic!) We are now looking
| for a way to optimize the intern away.
| SomeoneFromCA wrote:
| It would be nice, if someone could train stray cats. I have
| very smart in my neighborhood. And can be hired for cheap,
| basically a slice of sausage.
| doodlebugging wrote:
| Welcome to flight 69! Your pilot today will be Sophia [0] and
| her grope-pilot will be Mohammed [1]. Their Artificial
| Intelligence will guide us across the friendly skies to our
| destination.
|
| [0] https://www.techopedia.com/8-most-advanced-ai-powered-
| robots...
|
| [1] https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/saudi-
| humanoid...
| delfinom wrote:
| Yea I laugh at everyone try to shove AI into hardware and
| software design of physical products as if there's a market
| of engineers out there and not just hobbyists keeping things
| alive in the states.
|
| We've long since offshored the development of any physical
| products that isn't considered ITAR/defense world.
| onetimeuse92304 wrote:
| I think there is a great opportunity to use AI in design
| and development, as long as it is used correctly. Which is
| as tools to help engineers.
|
| At my previous workplace I wrote a documentation bot which
| helps people find documentation based on vague descriptions
| of what they are looking for (like when you know you saw
| something but you don't know where exactly or what the
| keyword is). Or by specifying what you want to accomplish.
|
| Mind, the bot would not _create_ answers to questions, it
| would just ingest existing documentation and point people
| to things that are relevant to their searches.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| That would imply that my entire career didn't exist!
|
| Hmmm, wonder what I've been hallucinating about for the
| last 30 years.
| pylua wrote:
| I can't wait until they replace pilots with remote workers in
| a low cost of living area.
| bombcar wrote:
| 90% of what a pilot does is sit there, so you can just have
| one pilot per ten planes, and have them remotely connect to
| the one that needs attention!
| ipython wrote:
| It's one of those situations where the latency, packet
| loss and jitter really does kill you!
| beembeem wrote:
| Giving me a heart attack reading this
| bfrog wrote:
| Probably some software written in C++ by one of those "I never
| write bugs" types followed by a hardware watchdog thankfully
| catching it and rebooting.
|
| Maybe its time to rethink software safety and verification there
| of? Safety in software is a bit of a joke. Document the behavior,
| its safe! Yeah no.
| callalex wrote:
| Where did you gain this insight into how the plane's software
| was built?
| bfrog wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9476139 but many other
| possible ad-hoc informative pieces of info are out there from
| googling around
| tptacek wrote:
| If you watch The Aviation Herald, this kind of reporting feels a
| little like trying to write news stories off VAERS data. Crazy
| shit is happening more or less all the time in planes; the idea
| isn't that nothing ever goes wrong, but that layered controls
| prevent injuries or hull losses.
|
| It's not that there necessarily isn't a thru-line to these
| stories. And I read "Flying Blind" like everyone else and share
| the popular opinion of Boeing's modern engineering culture. But
| there's basically no content in these stories. There are experts
| somewhere that can put events like this into context, but they're
| not cited and the story isn't written around that kind of
| analysis, so we're left to supply it ourselves. Human nature
| suggests that the blanks we'll fill in will be a disaster movie,
| because that's "fun" to think about.
|
| https://avherald.com/h?article=5138ccfe&opt=0
| notRobot wrote:
| This is worthy of reporting. 50+ people were injured, one is in
| severe condition.
| tptacek wrote:
| Flight control incidents that cause injuries are not hard to
| find on avherald.
|
| I guess I'm not saying it isn't worth reporting. Before the
| Boeing Narrative set in, these kinds of stories did get
| reported! But now they're tied into this long-running Boeing
| arc, and it's frustrating because there isn't enough in the
| story to know what's really going on.
| 627467 wrote:
| Maybe what most people are truly concerned is the Boeing
| Narrative?
|
| Increasingly more than just a narrative
| tptacek wrote:
| Do you know that or do you just feel it? If you know it,
| how do you know? Is that knowledge reflected in the
| reporting?
|
| If you camped avherald watching for incidents, and you
| had an inciting incident like the door plug (indisputably
| a major story!) to start from, could you create the same
| narrative for Bombardier? I think you could.
| 627467 wrote:
| Does it matter? At this stage it's just ridiculous that
| there's no more uproar towards Boeing or even direct
| intervention into it. Maybe because it's one of the 2
| disfuntional members of the duopoly at the foundation of
| global air transit with massive geopolitical consequences
| if major changes are suggested.
| tptacek wrote:
| It depends on whether you want to respond to stories like
| this with advocacy or understanding.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Definitely both. You never really want to stop
| understanding, but understanding in public interest cases
| serves to inform advocacy, and any story can cross the
| evidence threshold where advocacy becomes the primary
| concern. I think we're there with Boeing.
| bluepizza wrote:
| Did Bombardier have a scandal where cost cutting measures
| led to the crash of two aeroplanes and the loss of
| hundreds of lives?
| nsguy wrote:
| Does it sell more ads? Does it get more eyeballs? Do
| people click on the story? Does the writer get promoted?
| A bonus? Is this a conspiracy against Boeing? Is the
| owner of the newspaper short Boeing and long Airbus?
| (those last four questions are /s the first two maybe
| less so.)
|
| I used to laugh at those pushing "mainstream media" wild
| stories (e.g. from a certain portion of Americans) but
| Journalism isn't what it used to be, and maybe it was
| never what it used to be.
|
| I do think that focus on Boeing is somewhat warranted but
| it's a good question how do we get a real unbiased
| picture. Especially given that accidents are a low
| probability event and it's hard to determine what happens
| by chance, within reason, or is really reflecting
| something concerning that has to be addressed and how it
| should be addressed. Your average Journalist is lacking
| the training and tools to think about these things and
| they wouldn't even know who is the right expert and what
| is the right data to look at.
| avs733 wrote:
| Whether time proves that out - and whether 'more than a
| narrative' (meaning..safety culture) is actually related
| to this incident matter and are independent of it
| emerging as a narrative.
|
| A very similar thing happened post Air France 447's crash
| into the Atlantic ocean. The reporting on it began to
| include any incident involving any airbus plane for quite
| a while until it was determined the crew was primarily at
| fault. There was a narrative building simply because of
| our tendency in media to have extreme recency bias.
| 627467 wrote:
| Airbus has other types of disfuntions.
|
| It's ridiculous to consider the problems with Boeing
| started now:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX_groundings
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Boeing_787_Dreamline
| r_g...
| nsguy wrote:
| IIRC there were other Airbus incidents and concerns. It's
| been so long I don't recall the details but I remember
| being worried about flying Airbus.
| bombcar wrote:
| Airbus has had any number of incidents (here's one:
| https://safetyfirst.airbus.com/landing-with-nosewheels-
| at-90... ) - and for awhile their approach to autopilots
| was widely argued back and forth (Airbus wouldn't let you
| put the plane outside of the envelope, basically), and
| there's some disagreement on how competing sticks should
| be handled.
| kulahan wrote:
| Could you link a few with injuries anywhere near this size?
| I feel like that'd be national news, so it's surprising to
| hear it's happening often.
| BWStearns wrote:
| Not a control issue but there was a Hawaiian flight that
| had 36 injuries from turbulence. Edit to add: it would be
| unsurprising if turbulence was the cause here and the
| passenger quoted had their facts wrong.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/18/us/hawaiian-airlines-
| injuries...
| nsguy wrote:
| An airplane doesn't suddenly drop out of the sky because
| its controls stops responding. So I agree that on the
| face of it it's either turbulence or some sort of
| aggressive manoeuvre, either initiated by the pilots
| accidentally or somehow initiated by the airplanes
| control systems, not simply "stopped responding to
| controls".
| BWStearns wrote:
| Yeah, I just started typing out a scenario where
| instruments blipping might do it and it started getting
| implausible several clauses in.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| https://avherald.com/h?article=51212eb5
|
| https://avherald.com/h?article=515c54c7
|
| https://avherald.com/h?article=5153c289
|
| https://avherald.com/h?article=514dd2cc
|
| https://avherald.com/h?article=51474192
|
| https://avherald.com/h?article=50a9fa9f
|
| https://avherald.com/h?article=512e34e3
|
| Only three are "anywhere near", but you get the idea,
| that's just browsing the first page with the accident
| filter on.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| None of those are "flight control issues".
| diputsmonro wrote:
| Multiple whistleblowers have been raising concerns about
| Boeing safety and build quality issues for several years,
| so for you to say "so what, there have been issues on
| Boeing planes for several years" actually _reinforces_ the
| "Boeing narrative". If there are multiple people on the
| inside raising alarm bells, there probably is some
| substance there. Finally the problems are getting big
| enough that they can't just be swept under the rug anymore.
| ryanisnan wrote:
| I don't understand why people seem to be disregarding
| highly related facts and are ignoring the fundamental
| nature of _how_ or _why_ the facts are related.
| Correlation does not imply causation, but when the facts
| are of the same substance, additional concern is
| warranted.
| gopher_space wrote:
| It's hard to criticize a power structure your point of
| view depends on, so you get weird apologists for
| _industry in general_ that pop up in conversations like
| these.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The funniest thing is that Boeing is barely industry,
| with all the two-way regulatory ties and of course the
| monopoly, it's like a nationalized company that just
| happens to be nominally owned by investors. The only
| ideology that Boeing makes look bad is the Soviet system!
| :-)
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > it's like a nationalized company that just happens to
| be nominally owned by investors
|
| So like Embraer, Airbus, Bombardier and probably others?
| whatshisface wrote:
| Yes, that's right. The free market has no horses in this
| race, it's a comparison of the relative corruption of
| different governments and societies. Our military-
| industrial complex, of which Boeing is an important
| member, is one of the most corrupt institutions in the
| world.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| >The only ideology that Boeing makes look bad is the
| Soviet system!
|
| Boeing is 100% a product of the American system. All the
| acquisitions, mergers, lobbying and loss of engineering
| culture in favor of short-term profit seeking that got it
| to where it is today happened under capitalism. Nothing
| resembling Boeing ever existed on the USSR, its airplane
| manufacturers worked very differently, with different
| incentives and under different constraints.
| DinaCoder98 wrote:
| Seems sort of like the opposite--a lot of the regulation
| is done by people installed by lobbying, sort of like a
| privately owned and operated part of government.
|
| Of course it's terrible for everyone but shareholders
| there isn't really any domestic competition.
| whatshisface wrote:
| It's great for the entrenched leadership, but bad for the
| shareholders who would benefit more from a variety of
| investment opportunities in a diversified and growing
| market. I don't think all of these problems are good for
| the airline industry.
|
| The shareholders in a company have no reason to want the
| government to kill off the competition - they could just
| as easily invest in that competition. Shareholders care
| about the size of the whole market and corruption steals
| from them as much as it steals from anybody.
| drstewart wrote:
| >so for you to say "so what, there have been issues on
| Boeing planes for several years"
|
| He didn't say that. YOU inserted the "Boeing planes" bit.
| He just said planes.
| ajross wrote:
| > Flight control incidents that cause injuries are not hard
| to find on avherald.
|
| Exactly. But the takeaway here is that "notable" and
| "newsworthy" are slightly different ideas, and the latter
| is more subjective.
|
| This is absolutely the effect of the "Boeing Narrative". If
| the media is faced with data like this[2] in the face of a
| frame that says "Aviation is extremely safe and getting
| safer every year", they'll likely skip over the outliers.
| If they need to sell articles into a market that knows
| "Boeing Planes are Unsafe", they're going to have a much
| harder time with that notability analysis.
|
| And that's 100% on Boeing, not the media. At the end of the
| day if your business depends on people believing your
| products are good products[1], cutting corners on the
| reality undergirding that perception is a disaster. Boeing
| had almost a full century of goodwill they've now flushed.
|
| [1] Which is true for almost every business where the
| consumer sees the competition. Maybe not if you manufacture
| gaskets or capacitors, but airplanes and laptops for sure.
|
| [2] Editted to add: it also hands out an easy scapegoat. We
| really don't know if there was an instrument failure here
| or if it was pilot culpability. We just know what the pilot
| said. And we have to recognize that the pilot _might_ have
| lied knowing that Boeing made an easier target.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Especially given that the Bayesian numbers are that most
| incidents (especially long haul) will happen on Boeing
| frames purely because Boeing is everywhere.
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| > Flight control incidents that cause injuries are not hard
| to find on avherald.
|
| No they're not. Flight control issues happen, turbulence
| happens, flight control issues that cause injuries are
| quite rare.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| If you want to be a contrarian after a whistleblower is
| dead and 50 people were injured, maybe you should have some
| real data, stats or information instead of just saying _"
| it happens all the time"_.
| kelnos wrote:
| It feels irresponsible to me to report some random thing a
| layperson passenger said without verifying the information.
|
| The passenger could have misheard or be lying. Even if the
| pilot did say that, he may have just said that to save face,
| when it was pilot error all along. Hopefully the FDR data
| will be made public.
| epolanski wrote:
| Right now Boeing gets much more attention on anything that goes
| bad.
|
| Can't but say the company brought it on themselves.
|
| That being said that was a noteworthy incident regardless.
| tptacek wrote:
| Nothing I'm saying has anything to do with sympathy for
| Boeing.
| epolanski wrote:
| I don't see how I implied it.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Yeah after the MCAS incident showing a kind of malice and the
| door blowout showing incompetency, I'm perfectly happy to
| start treating Boeing as guilty until proven innocent on
| these incidents. They haven't really been behaving in a way
| that they're worthy of giving them the benefit of the doubt.
| Until they start to show that they're changing their behavior
| (which they clearly didn't do after the MCAS incident) then
| they really deserve the gut reactions to their own bad
| headlines. The public doesn't have to try to search for
| perfect judicial fairness once they've burned our trust,
| that's a standard that only makes sense to apply to the
| actual courts.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm fine if you want to distrust or dislike or sanction
| Boeing. But that's not a good epistemology; it's not
| bringing you closer to understanding what's happening. It's
| also deeply incurious (as a rhetorical strategy, not as a
| belief system).
| ckw wrote:
| You cannot understand a thing if it kills you first.
| lamontcg wrote:
| I think the people who are plugged into avherald.com and
| trying to prove how much they know about aviation are in
| a worse state, because they're missing the fact that
| through MCAS and the plug blowout that Boeing's culture
| really can't be trusted right now. You're very concerned
| about the fact that you've been studying dendrology and
| correcting people about the species and nature of the
| trees when the forest is just on fire. And I can connect
| this back to problems with our entire management class,
| which you can't reach when you're just looking at the
| technical details and frequency of aviation accidents.
| There's a way to be incurious about the overall
| sociological and political environment by overly focusing
| on detailed technical knowledge.
|
| And I'm acknowledging that they may be "innocent" in this
| case (in the sense that these kinds of things are
| expected across all of commercial aviation). I'm not
| arguing that I know they're guilty and being completely
| incurious. But my default hypothesis with Boeing has
| shifted to guilty until proven innocent, and in the
| absence of conclusive evidence to assume guilt. That
| isn't actually incurious, since I'm willing to listen to
| evidence. But the argument that "things like this happen
| all the time" isn't actually evidence, that's just a
| rationalization.
|
| And it is okay to stop giving people the benefit of the
| doubt when they've proved in the past that they don't
| deserve it. That's just healthy psychological defenses.
| You move them from the box where they get the benefit of
| the doubt, over to the box where they don't. To argue
| nobody should ever do that is to argue that everyone
| should constantly get manipulated and taken advantage of
| because this time Lucy isn't going to pull the ball away
| from Charlie Brown.
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| Sure, let's talk to more pilots of Boeing airplanes....which is
| what they are doing.
| dynisor wrote:
| 74gear[1] on YouTube is a 747 Captain. It's a great aviation
| channel in general if anyone is interested in that stuff. He
| had mentioned two things that really illustrated to me your
| point a while back:
|
| A) Stuff breaks on planes. All the time. They are complex
| machines, but they typically have so many redundancies that
| unless there is a completely catastrophic failure, they are
| still perfectly safe to fly. An example: a starter is out in
| one of the engines, but there are four starters for an engine.
| Once the issue is known, if they can't fix it where they are
| currently at, they will do an empty flight (well, crew only) to
| the next maintenance hub and get it fixed. Before a plane even
| gets off the ground they have a checklist and do their best to
| determine if the plane is airworthy and safe to fly or not. If
| they feel the plane is unsafe, they can refuse to fly it. It is
| important to them to make sure the plane is safe to fly
| because:
|
| B) They also don't want to die.
|
| That last bit really hit hard for me for some reason, it's
| hilarious but at the same time eye opening. I think that I just
| never really thought of it in that way before. Maybe it's just
| me.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/@74gear
| jsight wrote:
| Regarding that last part, you'd be surprised at how many
| people at the FAA/DOT also haven't come to this realization.
| bombcar wrote:
| The last part doesn't always work the way you'd like it to
| - most aviation disasters these days have very definite
| things the pilots could have done to save themselves and
| everyone, which they failed to do.
| mckn1ght wrote:
| They should be forced to read all the certification
| application material during test flights of the vehicles in
| question.
| satellite2 wrote:
| Yes but do the flight crew have the ability to tell if a
| plane is safe to fly?
|
| Without a deep understanding of the design of the plane they
| rely a lot on the metrics that the plane manufacturer display
| and on the manufacturers manuals to interpret them.
| vkou wrote:
| > Yes but do the flight crew have the ability to tell if a
| plane is safe to fly?
|
| Do you have the ability to tell if a street is safe to
| cross?
|
| Most of the time, yes.
|
| Sometimes, you can't tell for sure, but you cross anyways.
|
| Sometimes, you are dead wrong about your judgement. Shit
| happens. Nobody expects 100% certainty.
|
| The problem here may be that Boeing may be falling to meet
| the expectation of 99.????% certainty, and regressing down
| to 99.????% certainty, due to a broken corporate culture.
| burnte wrote:
| > Yes but do the flight crew have the ability to tell if a
| plane is safe to fly?
|
| Yes, it's literally part of the job of the pilots, by
| federal regulation. If the captain feels the flight isn't
| fit to fly, the captain can say it's a no go, period.
| breadwinner wrote:
| > _They are complex machines, but they typically have so many
| redundancies_
|
| But Boeing reduced redundancies, presumably to cut costs. The
| 737 MAX planes that crashed only had one AoA sensor. Where
| else did they cut costs? Where else did they reduce
| redundancies? The public trust has been lost. Boeing needs to
| design a new plane from scratch, this time let engineers
| design the plane without interference from accountants.
| schlauerfox wrote:
| This is VERY bad engineering practice, you throw away
| knowns for unknowns. A blue sky design isn't a fix.
| Especially if your corporate culture has the wrong
| leadership. First year engineers take engineering economics
| for a reason. Money is always an object.
| breadwinner wrote:
| Is there never a case where it is cheaper + better to
| start over? I think sometimes there is. The design of 737
| MAX was flawed from the get-go. They made the engines
| bigger because bigger engines run hotter and burn less
| fuel. Ordinarily this would require the fuselage to be
| raised as well, so that the bigger engine can fit under
| the wing. Instead they changed the position of the
| engine. Instead of being hung under the wing, as in
| earlier models, the engines have been moved forward and
| upward, potentially leading to an aerodynamic stall under
| certain circumstances. Instead of going back to the
| drawing board and getting the airframe hardware right,
| Boeing relied on something called the 'Maneuvering
| Characteristics Augmentation System,' or MCAS. [1]
|
| It's just poor design. If software fails, then any plane
| should be designed to have a neutral center of gravity in
| order to give the crew the greatest amount of time to
| recover from the loss.
|
| [1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/how-the-boeing-737-max-
| disaster-lo...
| Retric wrote:
| Never is a loaded word.
|
| It's almost impossible for a completely fresh design to
| be safer on day one. There's so many different ways to
| fuck up many of them are counterintuitive because nobody
| ever considers if someone could install this backwards
| until someone does. 20+ years of debugging written with
| people's lives tests just about everything in a way
| engineers never really think about
| breadwinner wrote:
| The difference here is that 737 MAX has a flaw (forward
| positioning of the engine) that cannot be fixed as a
| "bug".
| Retric wrote:
| You can definitely treat it as a design flaw and fix it
| without impacting most systems.
|
| Designers need to make radical changes before cockpit
| windows would need to be updated. That specific example
| may not seem like much but there's a lot of safety
| critical engineering that goes into such things and yet
| design flaws where still uncovered.
| breadwinner wrote:
| Sure you can bring over the "good parts" of the old
| plane, but if this design flaw is fixed then it is
| essentially a new plane. They will no longer be able to
| pretend it is the same as the old 737s (and that's what
| got them into trouble).
| burnte wrote:
| Yes. A place design that's 70 years old has had THOUSANDS
| of bugs fixed. I'd rather fly on a new 737 than an "all
| new 797 or A390".
|
| Side note: I know there isn't a 797 or A390 yet, that was
| the intent of the statement, a future unknown plane.
| Reason077 wrote:
| All-new aircraft designs are only certified to fly after
| many _years_ of rigorous analysis and testing. It was
| Boeing 's desire to avoid the full expensive
| certification process, by claiming that the MAX was just
| a minor update to an existing design, which led to two
| catastrophic crashes in the space of a few months.
|
| On the other hand, no 787 or A380 has _ever_ had a crash
| or incident that resulted in a passenger fatality or hull
| loss. This LATAM flight is probably the most serious
| incident that has ever happened on a 787 in almost 10
| years of service, with over 1100 aircraft active.
| cesarb wrote:
| > The 737 MAX planes that crashed only had one AoA sensor.
|
| IIRC, it had two, but each of the computers only used the
| sensor on its side; which was OK for the original (pre-MAX)
| design because of they way these sensors were originally
| used by it.
| Reason077 wrote:
| The 737 MAX, like all 737s, always had _two_ AoA sensors.
| The problem was that Boeing engineers wrote software for
| the 737 MAX which could make critical flight control inputs
| based on the data from one sensor only. And didn 't really
| tell pilots about it.
|
| The fix, amongst other mitigations, was to have the MCAS
| software cross-check inputs from both AoA sensors.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| >It's a great aviation channel in general if anyone is
| interested in that stuff.
|
| It's an aviation channel for people who aren't into aviation.
| Lot's of clickbait + obvious optimization of titles and
| topics to appeal to the masses. The Mr Beast of pilots.
| Arn_Thor wrote:
| Ok, so you don't like the titles. Do you have any problems
| with the actual content--the thing that matters?
| rpmisms wrote:
| Mentour Pilot is for people interested in aviation. He does
| breakdowns/analyses of plane incidents--not just crashes.
| He's also a certified trainer on at least one type.
| dynisor wrote:
| Hmm. I think that's interesting. I don't agree with you,
| but let's take your statement as fact.
|
| What's wrong with that?
|
| The content itself is generally him explaining from a
| pilot's point of view situations that have happened, like
| crashes or ATC issues, or responses to clickbait
| misinformation from other places on social media. His
| responses tend to be reasonable and enjoyable and for
| people who "aren't into aviation," maybe his videos will
| make them more interested. He has never made it about
| himself, the guy got promoted to Captain and didn't (and
| hasn't?) even mentioned it. Even his avatar and banner have
| him at 3 bars. It seems to me that he genuinely cares about
| aviation and informing people who aren't familiar with it.
| I feel like he brings a lot of value.
|
| If you're not into it's fine, but I think it's a bit
| unfortunate you feel the need to play gatekeeper.
| cs702 wrote:
| Thank you for the context.
|
| I will hold off on passing judgment for now, even though I too
| share the popular opinion of Boeing's current (lack of)
| engineering culture.
| weaksauce wrote:
| I think it's worth reporting on because this particular issue
| is known to everyone... you need to cycle the power on the
| planes every 3 days or else the reset themselves. it's crazy
| that a modern plane needs to have that happen but it does. the
| most likely situation is that the plane didn't get shutdown and
| happened to occur at a level flying situation and the pilots
| probably freaked out and overflew the plane which got it into
| upset territory. the plane was trimmed and would have been fine
| if the pilots(likely) didn't do what they did.
| thejazzman wrote:
| Unless you're a pilot I'm not sure why anyone would expect
| that to be common knowledge.
|
| And it's insane such a system would ever be authorized IMO.
| That sounds like a hack to fix a memory leak or similarly
| some bug they can't figure out
| inamberclad wrote:
| I'm working on an aircraft program right now. We have a
| requirement to power cycle the plane every N days. It's in
| the manuals.
| josephg wrote:
| Why?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Why?_
|
| Radiation-induced bit flips and bad code.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >Unless you're a pilot I'm not sure why anyone would expect
| that to be common knowledge.
|
| It should sure as hell be common knowledge to the pilots of
| the plane. I would have expected something like this to be
| on a checklist somewhere though: "Step 74, check uptime in
| Flight Computer, pull breaker if too high"
|
| Why would it be insane for a computer controller of what is
| essentially industrial machinery be designed to be reset at
| least once every other day? They "reboot" the engines damn
| near once a flight! Most pilots have experience and
| training on shutting down a plane for say overnight and
| then starting it from cold and dark the next day.
|
| It's an odd idea to us software developers but the computer
| isn't the primary function of the plane, and doesn't need
| to serve customers 24/7. If the computer is 100% reliable
| only for 18 hours, and the plane cannot fly for longer than
| 12 hours in the first place, is that a problem?
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| There was a mandatory patch for that in 2020.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > you need to cycle the power on the planes every 3 days or
| else the reset themselves
|
| Huh? Try 51. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33233827
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Some A350s needed a reboot every 149 hours (6 days) for a
| while.
|
| https://gizmodo.com/turn-it-off-and-on-again-
| every-149-hours...
| anigbrowl wrote:
| 50 injuries on a commercial flight is very unusual. The story
| is about half description of the incident and half background
| info on Boeing's ongoing woes. It doesn't seem reasonable to
| expect an engineering explainer on a breaking news story.
|
| _There are experts somewhere that can put events like this
| into context, but they 're not cited and the story isn't
| written around that kind of analysis, so we're left to supply
| it ourselves. Human nature suggests that the blanks we'll fill
| in will be a disaster movie, because that's "fun" to think
| about._
|
| That seems kinda patronizing, considering there's a first hand
| report describing the effect of the sudden drop:
|
| "That's when I opened my eyes and there was various individuals
| at the top of the plane. Just stuck to the roof and then they
| fell to the floor. And then I just realized I'm not in a movie,
| this is actually for real," he told CNN's Erin Burnett.
|
| Are readers supposed to just ignore this, or the pilot's
| comment that the plane apparently rebooted and he lost all
| control of it?
| sooheon wrote:
| You want a news story to be an engineering postmortem instead?
| notRobot wrote:
| For those who haven't read the article: this was a severe
| failure, the plan dropped altitude suddenly, the pilot had no
| control, and people in the flight were literally tossed around.
|
| > _About 50 people were injured in the incident, with one person
| in serious condition, emergency services said._
| coolThingsFirst wrote:
| how come, it's the safest mode of transportation.
|
| it's just jet fuel and meat travelling in a tight tube together.
| maybelsyrup wrote:
| Anyone have the tail number for the airplane involved? Is it CC-
| BGG? Wondering if there's any way to tell if this is one of the
| 787s built in South Carolina or in Washington state.
| damiankennedy wrote:
| Yes, it was CC-BGG that had the incident and landed in
| Auckland, then the flight to Santiago was cancelled.
| astrange wrote:
| Don't think I like the news article structure where the reporter
| spends half the article listing everything bad that happened
| recently, that isn't actually a cause of the event, but is just
| there to make you feel bad about who they've decided to make the
| article about.
| robmusial wrote:
| In the Air France flight 11 [0] situation the pilots thought they
| were having instrument and control issues, they had to go around,
| and there was much panic in the cockpit. It turned out the entire
| thing was pilot induced and the aircraft was fine. Because of
| Boeing's massive failures on the minds of everyone it'll be
| interesting to see if this was truly an instrumentation failure
| or something else.
|
| [0] https://simpleflying.com/air-france-boeing-777-serious-
| incid...
| chrisbolt wrote:
| Reminiscent of AF447[0] which also involved pilots making
| conflicting inputs.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447
| bombcar wrote:
| At some point the systems are going to be so good that the
| second pilot is more of a liability than an asset.
| seatac76 wrote:
| Oh wow I was expecting some really bad turbulence. Saw the WSJ
| video of the passenger who mentioned that the pilot told him "he
| lost his instruments", how does this even happen aren't they
| supposed to have redundancy.
| space_oddity wrote:
| I'm becoming more and more afraid of flying with each passing
| day. And this fear sometimes hinders my life.
| kelnos wrote:
| Title is misleading, and should be changed to match the original
| headline. Pilot has not reported that information directly; this
| is hearsay from a passenger.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I remember being on a 787 not long after they were introduced and
| after boarding, we had a 20 minute delay because of an equipment
| problem that required "rebooting the plane" (the pilot's words).
| They did a full power shutoff, the cabin lights went off for a
| few minutes (and the cabin quickly warmed up because the A/C was
| off and the electronic window shades turned clear), then about 20
| minutes later the pilot said everything was good and we were
| ready for departure. The rest of the flight was uneventful.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| The first versions of the Dreamliner had some kind of software
| bug that ended up generating a requirement of a hard reboot
| every X hours until it could be fixed. I don't know if I would
| have the guts to board the plane after seeing that!
| bombcar wrote:
| It was a timer that overflowed, I think, and nobody had left
| the plane "on" without shutting it down for whatever time it
| took to overflow.
|
| https://www.i-programmer.info/news/149-security/8548-reboot-.
| ..
|
| To be fair, 248 days is quite a long time.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The Boeing story is starting to sound a bit like the crime-in-
| cities story. We always can find some examples somewhere due to
| sheer volume of Boeing planes and people in cities. However, both
| are very safe.
|
| We have a social problem of embracing speculation, misinformation
| and disinformation and movements that are little more than angry
| mobs, and of treating with contempt an adherence to facts and
| rationality. With ever more information out there, and ever more
| speculation, mis- and disinformation, we need to utilize the
| latter - the facts and rationality - more than ever. They are
| proven tools for distinguishing fact from all the fictions we
| humans have some urge to embrace.
|
| I still think Boeing has legitimate liability and responsibility,
| and needs to fix their manufacturing and safety situations.
| Airplane manufacturing can't respond only when things get worse.
| sparrc wrote:
| Not really. No airplane was ever grounded by the FAA since the
| 1970s, when they grounded the McDonnell Douglas DC-10.
|
| Since the merger, the FAA has grounded both of Boeing's new
| planes (The 787 Dreamliner and the 737 Max).
|
| Boeing's safety record is objectively declining. They are
| shipping out airplanes with safety issues that are being found
| "in production". This is why their planes are being grounded
| (something that never happened to Boeing pre-merger).
| sio8ohPi wrote:
| Number of groundings depends on the subjective judgement of
| FAA employees. It's not useful as an objective measure.
|
| Christ, Boeing planes used to just _spontaneously explode_
| back in the 90s, and the only reason more people weren 't
| killed was that two of the three had the good fortune to
| happen on the ground.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The fact is that very people have been killed by Boeing
| planes, and you won't be killed in one either.
|
| The FAA's job is to prevent that - to stop it before it
| happens. I don't at all object to them grounding planes.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Or maybe the pilot made a mistake and is trying to save face by
| blaming the instruments. I suggest waiting for the investigation
| to figure out what went wrong.
|
| For example, he could have slipped while climbing out of the seat
| and fell against the control column.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Aren't turbulence / tailwinds / low pressure zone the only things
| that can cause a plane to suddenly lose lift and drop?
|
| I don't think there's any control input that can cause that, this
| story doesn't seem to make sense.
| sio8ohPi wrote:
| Quantas 72 is a flight that experienced a sudden uncommanded
| pitch-down (-0.8g), causing injuries.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72
|
| So it's in principle possible.
|
| But passengers are notoriously clueless, to the point that
| "there was a go around and I thought we were all going to die"
| is practically a meme in aviation circles. Wait a few days and
| see what comes to light once it's investigated.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Given that all we have is hearsay, and we've seen many incidents
| like this in the past that were caused by "clear air turbulence"
| ... I'm going to default to assuming it was not a mechanical
| defect in the plane until we know otherwise. It is by far the
| most likely answer.
| Animats wrote:
| The 787 is full fly by wire. Was there actually a failure of the
| flight control system? So far, there's not much info.
|
| Overview of 787 control system.[1]
|
| [1] https://ioactive.com/reverse-engineers-perspective-on-the-
| bo...
| codalan wrote:
| Fun fact: So is the braking. There are no hydraulic backup
| systems in place.
| berkut wrote:
| This sounds a bit like this issue:
|
| https://www.aviationtoday.com/2015/05/05/boeing-787-power-is...
|
| Which was an issue where the 787's Generator Control Units went
| into failsafe mode after being powered on for 248 days...
| dz0ny wrote:
| On Dec 2nd 2016 the FAA had issued their airworthiness directive
| AD 2016-24-09 summarizing: "We are adopting a new airworthiness
| directive (AD) for all The Boeing Company Model 787-8 and 787-9
| airplanes. This AD requires repetitive cycling of either the
| airplane electrical power or the power to the three flight
| control modules (FCMs). This AD was prompted by a report
| indicating that all three FCMs might simultaneously reset if
| continuously powered on for 22 days. We are issuing this AD to
| address the unsafe condition on these products."
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