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Comment by geogra4 | Hacker News Reader

Who would trust Boeing after this? Airbus must be feeling pretty good right now.

To be cynical, it probably worked out well for Garuda since their finances aren't strong. And with 5,000+ Max still in the backlog this is 1% of orders, so not much of a hit for Boeing. About $5 billion at list price, probably much less in reality.

What would really impress would be if they now ordered 49 COMAC C919 narrowbodies from China. That would send a signal that airlines are fed up with the A-B duopoly and that they're not prepared to take recycled designs any longer.

"...that they're not prepared to take recycled designs any longer".

I believe that the use of recycled designs is one of the major guarantees for aircraft safety! There is nothing wrong with a gradual development process, where only small modifications are done from one revision to the next. This is a bit like continuous integration principles in software development. Building on former experience as much as possible is an important factor of quality assurance (and also efficient in many other aspects).

I understand your point, though: small modifications can sum up to a point, where they do not blend smoothly in the base design anymore - as is the case with the larger engines of the 737 8 max. At some point, designers have to refactor big.

What went (criminally) wrong with the 737 8 max, in my eyes, is the attempt to treat a large redesign as a small modification, to save (certification) time and money. It went horribly wrong, causing loss of lives and trust in the company.

And obviously Boeing is not able to understand the consequences of the loss of trust. Last week I thought, the worst thing that Boeing could do now, was to offer quick fixes (like hot patches for the software), as this would proof their incapacity to embrace the scale of the problem. But this is exactly what happened.

Indeed, I too was shocked to see them come up with a patch solution vs recognizing that perhaps the plane design and the oversized engine are the areas that need attention. Sorry Boeing, some things don’t blow over. I think the public took note and the damage is already done. The best thing they can do now is own up to their mistakes. I have a feeling it will take all the lawsuits combined to make any impact though.

Embraer has had a lot of success with regional planes.

True, but Embraer does not have a competitor to the Max 8 and larger A320's.

I think it's easy to predict that Garuda is just trying to create some leverage to negotiate a discount with Boeing, and they will just re-affirm their order quietly in a few weeks or months. I expect more airlines doing the same. Boeing marketing and sales is probably working overtime to make sure most of this stays out of the news.

I do not think so.

The reason might rather be that it doesn't make sense to purchase an aircraft passengers are reluctant to fly with. No matter how well the problems of the 737 8 MAX are resolved, its reputation is tainted. Every further accident of that type will be blamed to Boeing.

It reminds me a lot of the DC-10 in the 1970s.

Boeing will probably have to rename the 737 8 MAX and marketing it as a brand new type.

I'll believe it when I see it. Much more likely they will just fix the plane as they have already communicated they will do, airlines will continue buying it, and people will happily board the airplanes.

I'm pretty sure the percentage of travelers who check the type of aircraft an airline uses before booking is counted in some small fraction of a percent. I surely never did, and never heard anyone mention they did.

Also, Boeing is not going to fool any airline by simply re-branding the plane, so if airlines pressure them now to get discounts on their 737 MAX 8 orders, that obviously also applies to the rebranded plane.

That'd be an interesting move, and perhaps a plausible one since the maintenance/training/spares providers all being based in China isn't such a big deal for an Indonesian company

(though the issue here appears to have been Boeing didn't recycle enough of the previous generation 737...)

Or maybe some MC-21s from Irkut?

The Airbus A320neo production lines are booked through 2025. Airlines and leasing companies can't really cancel their 737 Max orders and buy A320neos instead. Maybe Airbus can get more orders for other models if buyers decide to go with Airbus instead of Boeing for larger planes, but that can also be an expensive switch to make if their pilots are certified for the Boeing but not the Airbus models. There are plenty of factors at play here.

It's true that both Airbus and Boeing have a huge backlog of orders for aircraft at the moment, with a lot of growth in air travel in Asia.

However, the airline industry is cyclical and the current boom might be particularly big because of very low interest rates. Many aircraft are bought and leased through third party companies and everything is heavily financialised (these days, what isn't?). Additionally there are manufacturers (including a Chinese company) trying to break into the short haul market. If there is a large bust there will be a lot of orders cancelled and these cancellations may hit Boeing harder than it's competitors.

A bad knock on internal and external confidence in both Boeing and the FAA could have lasting repercussions, Boeing might find it harder and slower to develop new aircraft if they and the FAA have to rebuild institutional capability and then convince the world that they have done so. The recent investigation by the Seattle Times makes for grim reading: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/faile...

Seems neither the FAA nor Boeing can be trusted. How can anyone without expert knowledge have the final say so in technical certification? It sounds like FAA just chose to cut corners and passed the problem down to the company. Do family members of victims have a solid case for lawsuits here? I hope they do because this process has to change if the people are to trust in those who are supposed to be looking out for safety.

Yeah, chances are this is not the only expedient hack Boeing has done to pass testing.

The FAA approved this. So who can trust the FAA after this? They can expect more oversight from other national approval agencies.

I wonder if the EU could replace the FAA simply by setting up stricter regulations and banning planes from their airspace that don't pass.

Make the FAA irrelevant.

That’s kind of what happened here already. The FAA didn’t ban it, the CAA did. The FAA said they wouldn’t, but a day later they did anyway.

Well, Airbus has also had its share of issues with bad pitot tube data combined with automation leading to catastrophic accidents. [0] From the evidence so far it seems Boeing made a similar mistake. It's not the first and unlikely to be the last.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

When you actually look at the linked article it wasn't so much an equipment problem, but really a crew issue. Something often conveniently hushed over in those recent discussions.

While there was equipment failure this was not the main cause of the crash. The very same article you link to list the following as the cause of the accident :

  the crew made inappropriate control inputs that destabilized the flight path;
  the crew failed to follow appropriate procedure for loss of displayed airspeed information;
  the crew were late in identifying and correcting the deviation from the flight path;
  the crew lacked understanding of the approach to stall;
  the crew failed to recognize the aircraft had stalled and consequently did not make inputs that would have made it possible to recover from the stall.

There's one mentioning of the pitot tube in this list. And certainly not as the main cause:

  temporary inconsistency between the measured speeds, likely as a result of the obstruction of the pitot tubes by ice crystals, causing autopilot disconnection and reconfiguration to alternate law;

I interpret this that the plane worked exactly as it should. Essentially it was really the crew that fucked up.

It's not really comparable with what happened (probably) on those 737MAX8 planes that crashed.

There's no question the crew made serious mistakes that led to the stall and subsequent crash in the AF 447 case. Yet you could argue Airbus and AF did not sufficiently highlight this case to ensure adequate training to ensure a proper response. Something similar may emerge from the 737Max cases.

I would trust Boeing after this.

With so many eyes on them at the moment, next couple of decades should be pretty good in terms of following the rules.

If we learned anything it should be that you should never trust anyone. The FAA trusted Boeing.

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