Stress-testing airplane wings | Hacker News Reader

Stress-testing airplane wings

popularmechanics.com

34 pointsCarolineW10 comments

I was talking to someone in this industry, and he was lamenting the fact that there is revolving door between Boeing and the FAA, who runs these tests.

He said the consequence is that the testing is less stringent for Boeing planes than for Airbus planes, since it is often their friends (and sometimes their own design!) being tested.

You would think these tests have a fixed set of outcomes, but it turns out there is a lot of flexibility allowed by the testers. Which makes sense since they make the rules and want to make sure those Boeing planes are passing.

They justify it by saying that it's only fair since Airbus is funded by the government (not realizing how much Boeing is subsidized by the government too).

It's made me wary of flying on Boeing equipment.

Same coziness goes on with EASA certifying Airbus aircraft. And then EASA gives Boeing a harder time with this understanding. This is why countries/regions have their own aviation regulators that perform their own independent evaluations of new aircraft headed for their country. FAA certification is good within the US only. It took us six years to get EASA cert after FAA; it took our euro competitor the same time for the opposite.

I seriously doubt anybody gets lax treatment when it comes to meeting the standard requirements of a FAA certification. Regardless of the background of the persons carrying out the certification.

With that said, FAA certifications aren't completely unbiased and non-Boeing certifications may be subjected to additional scrutiny above and beyond the standards.

I used to work in Flight Simulation and specifically worked on a project that had to go through a baseline certification for training readiness.

It was an 80s era simulator, produced by a manufacturer other than Boeing, running on older hardware. We installed and updated the system to match the airlines tail number configuration, added new engine models (GE to P&W), updated the visuals to match the current runway configurations, and updated the engine avionics from analog to glass displays. Subject to say, there was a lot riding on our ability to get it certified.

After experiencing the process first hand. There's definitely some room for subjective bias. They came up with every reason they could think of to fail the system but in the end we met the baseline and then some so it was passed.

I think the bigger issue is that Boeing is closely tied to the policymakers so they have carte blanche to pass new standards that fail old-yet-reliable systems. Keep in mind that, unlike the software development world, stability trumps technological advancement. Unless the former directly contributes to the latter in a way that improves safety (ex requiring TCAS). Systems running on 20-30 year old hardware are the norm, not the exception.

To make matters worse the FAA regularly releases advisory circulars (ie not standards) that are sometimes leveraged by certifiers as if they are standards. They can't really enforce a non-standard but that won't stop some from attempting to use them as leverage.

A system that fails the first time can still be certified but the process to resubmit will likely delay operations for months. For a Commercial Full Flight Simulator that could add up to $750-$1500/hour, 24 hours/day, 7 days/week in lost revenue. Considering simulators are a 'cheap' alternative to flying actual aircraft, I could only imagine how much an airline stands to lose if an aircraft were to fail.

Boeing is a prime example of a government sanctioned monopoly. It's allowed to be so because the company is vital to the US economy, the barrier of entry is too high for a competitor to enter, and Boeing has to compete on the international stage with Airbus. In simulation, the story is the same except instead of Airbus/Boeing it's CAE/Alteon (ie Boeing).

Many of the new policies introduced are 'safety theatre' designed to artificially raise the watermark drown the competition.

The ironic thing is, Boeing has grown so large they they're basically running out of room for growth. Their only option going forward is relocation and/or outsourcing. Both of which they've already started to do.

I remember watching the documentary series on the design and making of the Boeing 777. I remember seeing this segment on how far the wings actually flexed upwards. But most of all, I remember the genius of dampening the toilet seats so they don't bang when let down. They did it because bangs and loud noises scare passengers.

If you're interested in the documentary, it's a 5 part PBS series from the 90's. You can find it on Youtube.

Another interesting thing: that documentary was part of Alan Mulally's plan to make Boeing play nice internally. [1]You can't be as nasty if there's a film crew watching.

1. https://books.google.com/books?id=18idhw_C4xgC&pg=PA61&lpg=P... American Icon, page 61,62

I'm surprised at how old the footage appears to be. Goes to show that commercial flight hardware remains largely similar in the past decade or two.

This isn't software development. Why reinvent the wheel?

Same could be said for CNC machining.

New airliner types are actually pretty uncommon. New models of existing types happen more often, and are typically incremental improvements on the basic design, and usually do not rebuild/redesign the wings or other major flight-oriented components of the airframe.

Consider that in the past 15 years only three new types (Airbus A380 and A350, and Boeing 787) have entered service from the two major manufacturers, while the same time period has seen nine new models of pre-existing types from those manufacturers (the A320neo, the high-takeoff-weight variant of the A330, the 737-900, 747-8, 777-200LR, 777-300ER and the 787-9).

Being serious about reliability is not cheap.

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