Airplanes and Accounting Games: The Coming Boeing Collapse?
mattstoller.substack.com
mattstoller.substack.com
2) We can't discount all the revenues generated by defense spending, both by the US and abroad. That's a non-trivial amount of Boeing's income.
3) The US Gov't may not allow Boeing to fail for National Security reasons. Both as a major Defense Contractor, and as the sole producer of domestic airliners. (that is, if Boeing is even in a position to fail)
I think the 737-MAX issues are bad, but not bad enough to destroy the company. The 737 airframe has been the workhorse for decades, and I don't see that changing soon. Major airlines operating the 737 variants will just continue to use the perfectly good 737-700,800 and 900 variants until something new and fixed comes out.
There are underlying hardware concerns, from the wings to the sensors themselves, that may require retrofits. MCAS can be patched, but I'm not convinced that a patched MCAS can fully address the hardware concerns.
Intuition says you need three.
There is a backup to extend the landing gear if the primary hydraulic system fails, the plane can fly with one engine out, we make sure that even if an engine explodes it does not damage the air-plane, etc.
On the latter point, you can continue flying without autopilot or landing-assenting electronics and pilots are trained to do so.
MCAS has failed on all counts, it has been very unreliable and fail-deadly.
Boeing will have a lot more freedom if it can do away with that.
But I don’t know if they can do that without bringing up the MAX to modern standards. The 737 is an old design.
But I largely disagree with grandfathering new planes because they’re built to an old design.
We don’t allow it for cars, why would we for aircraft?
This is not the airlines fault. The second sensor should not have been optional if failure of the first sensor might lead to catastrophic failure.
MCAS was added to the autopilot/flight computer system, which was brought forward from previous 737 designs, where there are two flight computers, each with an independent set of sensors; in case of disagreement, between the flight computers, autopilot would disengage and return control to the pilot. And in general, the types of things a pilot would do in response to commanded nose down would disable the autopilot until manually engaged again.
Unfortunately, MCAS acts autonomously, was not disclosed to pilots, and was not able to be disabled without also disabling electric trim control. Because it was built on top of the existing flight computer, which is safe enough, the behavior doesn't appear to have been separately considered.
From what I've read of the proposed fixes in news stories, it doesn't really address the root issue in my mind that the pilots should be able to turn off MCAS; although it does seem likely that it would activate erroneously less often, and that the plane will remain more controllable in the event that it does activate erroneously, it still seems like the situation would be dangerous in case it arises; which would seem possible if both Angle of Attack sensors failed in the same way at the same time. A third AoA sensor might help detect broken sensors, and make it less likely that all three would return the same wrong value simultaneously, but a switch to turn off MCAS would follow the Boeing philosophy of giving pilots control and letting them handle rare events.
Its a lot more than that...planes crashed and people died.
It doesn't matter if you fix the underlying problems, there will be a giant loss of confidence in the company and the product. That is all rightfully so, the company put profits in front of safety, and there is no reason to believe that will be fixed.
Time heals all wounds, so to speak. Boeing suffered a pretty bad PR problem, which then drove cancelled orders and more. It will take time to earn that trust back with the 737-MAX, however there's still plenty of 767, 787, some 747, and a few 757's still flying without any problems.
It may shock you that pilot error is the leading cause of airline crashes.
Nevertheless, to your point these crashes occurred due to "fixable problems" sure...and anytime a plane crashes due to "fisable problems" legally it goes without saying there was negligence. But what seems to be ignored here is there was more than negligence...based on the documents already made publicly available the company knowingly shipped the planes with the issue.
>Time heals all wounds, so to speak.
Well I'm sure that was what the managers thought when they minimized the engineers concerns about these aircraft...then again you don't see very many Zeppelins flying around nowadays.
What people are missing is that if Boeing is 'too big to fail' for the US Government, then burying the risk, soaking up the resulting windfall, and pressing the accelerator as they turn towards the brick wall was the right thing for them to do.
I'm uncertain about your point where everything is fixable- don't forget, it needs to be fixable without significant pilot training, or else it'll remove airline's reason to stick with boeing.
However, that doesn't matter! Boeing can fail as hard as it wants, and the executives will keep their money, and the US Government will still need to save the company.
The only losers will be pension funds, employees, and citizens- people without any say in the matter.
The 737-MAX's problem is that they changed the center of gravity of the plane so that it's not stable without an active system to correct that (MCAS). A failure in that system has already crashed 2 planes and killed hundreds. I don't think you can throw an active system on an inherently unstable airframe and call it a fix. Airplanes need to be as fail-safe as possible.
That coupled with lack of training of how to react to exactly that scenario, and we have the events that transpired.
All of which is fixable one way or another.
So it makes sense to step back, and fix things the right way before you reintroduce the system back into the market.
So to answer your question there are now multiple issues at play and they are effectively redesigning the flight computer system as a whole. This is not a quick fix.
But what you cannot do is change the fact that the MCAS is necessary. The plane is always and forever going to be off-balanced and require an active system to account for that. Active systems will fail. Maybe they can fix it such that the failure rate is negligible, but I doubt it.
Unstable flight profiles are not foreign in aircraft, and requiring computer systems to maintain stable flight is nothing new.
The problem is entirely how this specific system was implemented... and that can be fixed.
They might be, but fly by wire does not imply that.
For the record, I don't believe Airbus plans are unstable in the way the MAX is, whose instability, from what I understand, came about because they were trying to fit larger engines on the original 737 frame (to prevent pilot retraining), and so had to move the wings higher.
Something like an F-16 however is less stable and requires constant adjustment of flaps etc. there dynamic properties of air to air dogfight are more important.
A quick google search seemed to imply most unstable airframes were military or experimental, not commercial. Unstable airframes are not appropriate for commercial airliners unless you can point to a good reason. "We don't want to train pilots" is a bad reason. The FAA should have pushed back very hard on this point.
Personally I think the flaws in the 737-MAX design process were so deep that it would be safest to just scrap the plane. It's not that the issues cannot be fixed, but rather that we'd be better off starting over from scratch knowing that good design principles will be followed the whole time.
At high thrust, slow speed, high aoa it is a little too close to neutrally statically stable.
C f. to airliners that can break up from dynamic yaw instability if the yaw dampers fail in some flight regimes.
"It highlighted the role of the co-pilot in stalling the aircraft while the flight computer was under alternate law at high altitude. This "simple but persistent" human error was given as the most direct cause of this accident"
I also acknowledge that the specific terms I use in this comment might not be 100% down to the letter terms used in the aviation industry (such as unstable frame). The point being made here is corners were cut, Boeing is 100% to blame for the situation they find themselves in with the 737 MAX.
In avionics, fighter jets are unstable requiring computers and algorithms to keep them flying. This is in part to the speed of which they travel, the [Dassault Rafale](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dassault_Rafale) has multiple levels of redundancy to correct negative flight conditions (it has three computers I believe).
Even with the fixes, the plane is still going to be unstable. However, fortunately, unstable planes like passenger jets which move slower can still be manually flown (unlike fighter jets moving at Mach 1). But, I am definitely not going to fly on a 737 MAX if I can avoid it, not until it has proven itself in service for 10 years. I wouldn't say fixing an engineering problem with the software and additional sensors inspires confidence.
Dynamically unstable airframes should not be a thing in passenger jets. The only reason the 737 MAX is unstable is that they put bigger engines on a 737 and moved them up because of how low the 737 sits on the ground, thus disrupting the centre of gravity and requiring pitch correction when at full thrust.
The Airbus A320 has no such issues with its design. It can safely glide during total engine loss for quite a long distance. Could the 737 MAX claim the same thing?
At full thrust the nose would point too far upward with the new design, potentially causing a stall. MCAS automatically pushed the nose down if the nose was detected to be pointing too far up. Pilots received a two-hour training course on an iPad before being allowed to fly on the 737 MAX, they didn't even highlight the new MCAS system. The training material didn't even mention the new MCAS software...
The worrying thing about this entire situation is the MCAS system relied on a single AOA (Angle of Attack) sensor and overreacted and took control of the plane. Given planes are known for their levels of redundancy, a single sensor and some overzealous software coupled with other mistakes resulted in hundreds of lives lost. Pilots were not even notified in the cockpit that the MCAS software had taken over control of the plane. How insane is that?
This all happened because Boeing pretended the 737 MAX was basically the same as the 737. The cause of the problems was not because of poor software, it was because Boeing tried to cut costs and put in a bandaid solution for the unstable frame they created. The software did its job, it's the lack of redundancy and ability to manually override the system that was the problem. They're just doubling down on it because there is no alternative to the engineering problem they created.
MCAS = May Crash Any Second
1. Cash flow issues, since they have hundreds sitting around they haven't been paid for yet. 2. Storage issues, since they have hundreds sitting around. 3. To make it clear to the FAA that there's a limit to how long re-certification can take without larger economic impacts.
I would fully expect that with Boeing and the Airlines' pressure on the FAA, and the FAA's current schedule, the aircraft should be re-certified in January. It could slip again, with another issue or a government shutdown, but those are not that likely.
Good to know they've got their priorities straight. Would hate to see the U.S. economy lose any jobs building unsafe aircraft.
There is a trade-off to be made here, and it's not just between money and lives - it's also between the certainty of a small number of deaths and the chance of a large number of the same.
This was always possible. The reason Boeing didn't do it in the first place is because it would have required full retraining of all pilots.. the promise of the 737-MAX, at least from an airline perspective, is that you can take all your existing 737 pilots and put them through a much shorter cross-training program and immediately have highly qualified staff operating these planes in your fleet.
Without this, the 737-MAX will have to be operated as any other entirely new aircraft. Boeing's mistake here really is manifold.
Whatever they do - scrap it an build a new model (be it derived from 737 pre-MAX or something else) or "fixing" 737-MAX there will be lots of eyes on it and request for training. I don't think the argument is relevant. They are too deep in the sh*t.
It's the more a problem of increasing lift from the forward-mounted engines, not CG. Active control systems are just fine. The airframe is not inherently unstable.
armchair aerospace engineers are the worst.
It's 30 percent of Boeing's income. Definitely not enough to prop them up.
The feds could always rewrite regs to help Boeing, like limiting the grandfathering that allows airlines to fly aircraft that don't meet current safety regulations.
It wasn't just that everybody was leveraged, but the structure of that leverage, the short time periods of rolling over the debts and loans that would result in an extremely rapid negative feedback loop, various accounting rules insensitive to what was necessary for the system to unleverage, etc.
Times have changed.
I agree entirely. They'll either bail them out, or just pass laws that prevent Boeing from being Sued.
I think airlines love the situation. The balance between supply and demand for new aircraft has taken a hit. That means any glut in capacity has been erased and pricing power has gone up a lot.
Airlines had an excuse to cancel flights and put you on a different schedule, all while claiming force majeure.
While the 737 variants are fine, they have a shorter range than the MAX. The MAX can do some interesting transatlantic routes (UK,FR,ES,PT) and east coast US/Canada that are dicey in a non-MAX.
But airlines aren't suddenly cancelling flights. They're looking at their schedule and consolidating whatever they can. And charging more for the remaining seats.
And the value of the aircraft they already own just went up.
I've also seen some airlines downgauge turbojets to Q400s, which is slower but saves a ton on fuel.
Routes that needed to run X times per day to be competitive (because people want flexibility in departure and return times) can now be consolidated into X minus Y flights with the same number of passengers.
It's 2019, airlines have automated processes to rebook when a flight is cancelled.
And upstart airlines trying to build their fleets couldn't.
And automated rebooking is a fantasy. Sure, the airline will try to default you onto some other connection, but I've always ended up talking to a human afterwards and picking out a better alternative.
The public doesn't trust these planes. It doesn't matter how fixable they are.
Secondly, its not a software problem, the plane is structurally deficient. A problem they tried to solve with software. These planes cannot fly without a computer adjusting them to keep the balance, something that is not true of any other major aircraft. The problem can be solved with software, but its more like a bandaid.
EDIT:
Heres a quick explanation of the plane:
The 737 engines used too much fuel so to make a more attractive plane for poorer countries, Boeing decided to install more efficient engines with bigger fans, creating the 737 MAX.
Boeing used a 737 airframe for economic reasons (it was way cheaper, didn't require pilot retraining), but needed more ground clearance for bigger engines. The 737 design cant be practically modified to have taller main landing gear. The solution was to mount to engines higher on the plane. This made the plane more unstable, so they slapped the software solution on. This "fixed" the problem, but then the plane was more complex to fly, which led to the crashes. But Boeing didn't want a plane that required retraining, so they hid the complexity of the software solutions, which led to crashes because the pilots didn't know what was going on.
First I have heard of this issue, though I haven't been following it closely. Citation, please?
From what I understand, MCAS functions to emulate the similar flight experience of prior 737 aircraft to minimize pilot retraining..l
They ended up with a problem where bad inputs to the MCAS system could only be countered by disabling the electric trim motors. Once you did that the only way to fix the trim was via a manual wheel which didn't have enough mechanical advantage when the elevators were loaded. That itself was a festering problem carried forward from the original design.
In fact, a cursory search shows the opposite.
The MCAS is exactly the cause of the issues and was the software that caused the crashes because it behaved unexpectedly to the pilots. The whole reason why Boeing leaned on software was because their sales pitch was that this new plane was essentially the same as a 737 so it didn't need any extra training. But this was false. They needed this MCAS because the mechanics of flying the plane were vastly different, I think because of the location of the engines, etc. That's the whole issue, where Boeing lied to the FAA and sold the 737MAX as a drop-in replacement for the 737 when it really wasn't. So if you don't even know this then you need to start from scratch and do your own research.
> These planes cannot fly without a computer adjusting them to keep the balance.
I haven't seen anything suggesting that. If MCAS was completely ripped out of the computers, these planes still can be flown, right? The pilots would need to be trained on the differing characteristics, but it isn't inherently unstable like some military jets are.
The planes could not legally fly without MCAS, because they fail a required stick force linearity certification requirement. (FAR 25.173)
I suggest you need to continue doing your own research on when MCAS comes into play and why. Especially if you're going to condescend to others.
Aerospace engineer here. This is incorrect. The MAX exhibits different pitch behavior at high angles of attack than the 737NG, which would normally require a different type certificate. MCAS was their attempt to change the handling characteristics of the MAX aircraft so that it was sufficiently similar to previous iterations of the 737.
This is not the same as being "structurally deficient". The fatalities arose from a combination of ethic failures at Boeing, financial pressures from large customers, bad safety design of the MCAS system, and inadequate pilot training.
Plenty of aircraft flying today exhibit nose-up pitch tendencies at high angles of attack. This is not an intractable problem; it's just not a problem that Boeing could solve while keeping to the 737NG type.
Boeing used a 737 airframe for economic reasons (it wwas way cheaper, didnt require pilot retraining), but needed more ground clearance for bigger engines. The 737 design cant be practically modified to have taller main landing gear. The solution was to mount to engines higher on the plane. This made the plane more unstable, so they slapped the software solution on. This "fixed" the problem, but then the plane was more complex to fly, which led to the crashes. But Boeing didn't want a plane that required retraining, so they hid the complexity of the software solutions, which led to crashes because the pilots didn't know what was going on.
Sure you can say the plane was structurally fine, but this is semantics, they created a plane that was unstable because it was cheaper.
Interpreting your comments in the most charitable way, you must have reasons for your opinions that convince you, so it would contribute more to the discussion if you explained why.
Nobody rejects "semantics".
Apart from that, I don't have to like people saying "it's just semantics" if they mean the exact opposite.
In the aerospace industry, semantics matter. "Structurally deficient" implies that the aircraft structure itself (i.e. the spars, ribs, load-bearing skin, etc.) is unsafe. This is not accurate, and neither is it accurate to say the MAX is "unstable". These are terms of art with precise engineering meanings.
Precision in language matters, and to dismiss it as "semantics" pre-empts any meaningful discussion of the issue at hand. It's like saying float vs char is "semantics". Those differences matter.
edit: Also, when you say the engines were put "on top of the plane" it makes me question if you've ever actually seen a MAX 8.
I'm sure the pitch up tendency is worse on the MAX, but I don't believe MCAS was added to enable the re-use of the same type certificate. The handling problems were worse than anticipated as is evidenced by the low-speed activation of MCAS.
My guess is that the 737 MAX on its own wouldn't meet the handling requirements. It's been a while since the Ducommun scandal, but more recently Boeing was caught knowingly installing unsafe parts (NG/MAX slat tracks that didn't meet spec) and forging repair documentation for Air Canada. Pardon me if I take any claims that Boeing is spewing with a lump of salt.
inadequate pilot training.
It's hard to train for something that the manufacturer won't disclose or implement in the sims. It's even harder when the remedy (moving the trim wheels) is physically impossible.
That was the demand from the airlines; that there be no training delta. For that you need to remain within the same type, or at least close enough that they're equivalent.
>My guess is that the 737 MAX on its own wouldn't meet the handling requirements.
Correct.
>It's hard to train for something that the manufacturer won't disclose or implement in the sims. It's even harder when the remedy (moving the trim wheels) is physically impossible.
Yes. The training the pilots received on the differences between the MAX and the NG (i.e. no training) was inadequate to prepare them to fly the aircraft safely.
Those are two separate issues. There are currently four generations of 737 on the TC[1] and sim time is required between the different generations. Look at the 777 vs 777X, there are radical changes and yet the 777X is (for now) grandfathered on the 777 TC. A change requiring a new TC (or STC) is an order of magnitude more dramatic.
The training mandate drove the poor design of MCAS but wasn't the reason MCAS was implemented. Even with training the MAX would never have met FAA regs without something like MCAS.
The list price of the MAX is around $100 million, and Southwest wanted $1 million per aircraft if training were reqiured. If it were simply a matter of more appropriate training Boeing would've already taken the 1% haircut and moved on. American talked a good game about not wanting the MAX at all if training were required, but let's face it they'd probably rather take the training hit than wait in line for an A320 production slot. Instead Boeing shuttered the production line because the problem is simply not that easy to solve.
If it were simply a matter of stick force gradient Boeing could've likely just modified the elevator feel computer. Instead Boeing went the route of moving the whole damn stabilizer, a particularly odd choice because the stabilizer moves very slowly -- slower than a reasonable person would want to prevent an impending stall.
1: http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgMakeMod...
It's no longer an engineering problem.
Now it's a trust problem.
Boeing, the FAA, and the airlines have demonstrated that they can't be trusted to make the right decision when passenger safety conflicts with quarterly earnings per share.
They'll roll the dice and hope they can fix the problem, as cheaply as possible, before the next catastrophe.
So it doesn't matter if they find an engineering fix.
The public will never trust that it's really fixed, and re-branding this dud won't fool anybody.
The sooner Boeing figures this out, the less money they'll lose.
I'd say the handling is bad enough to require something like MCAS in order to be safe. If not, they would have just disabled it and ate the cost of training pilots for the new variant. Instead they think it's better (cheaper) to try to fix MCAS while letting planes pile up that will likely require extra training on the new fix anyway.
In other words I agree. It probably doesnt fly well without help, as opposed to just flying differently.
Where the heck did you get that from? The MCAS failures were caused by a failure of the AOA sensors, not any kind of handling characteristics.
MCAS was originally intended to handle high speed, high altitude situations. Flight testing found that there were handling problems at lower speeds and altitudes that MCAS could "fix". So MCAS was given roughly twice the authority it was originally designed with and it was then programmed to activate in lower speed situations as well. The FAA, of course, was kept in the dark.
If you're curious go through the Seattle Times articles.
Why is it wrong to rely on software?
I'm not sure I understand the issues you're talking about but many military aicraft are deliberately built to be dynamically unstable and need constant software control to fly.
It is crazy to accept a flawed design when people's lives are at stake. A plane isnt a movie or a song. You cant just fix stuff in post. Do it right the first time.
Some specific fighter variants are built this way, yes. But the risk tolerance for a single-seat fighter aircraft that has to fly combat sorties is very different than for a civilian airliner with hundreds of people onboard.
Yes. It's also well understood that combat pilots accept the possibility of death when they sign up for military service. That's not the risk tolerance that is accepted for passenger travel.
I think you mean any other major civilian aircraft. No recent major combat aircraft can fly at all without significant computational assistance.
This does not excuse the 737-Max shitshow in the slightest...if anything it makes it worse.
Aside from Airbus? Isn't basically every Airbus in the sky at this point flown by a computer with the pilots making requests for what they'd like it to do? This has long been a fundamental ideological difference between Boeing and Airbus, with Boeing just now starting to get into the same game Airbus has been doing for a while.
Don't forget Boeing's own 777 and 787, both are fly-by-wire also.
In any case, that's what I was trying to get at. The game Boeing is playing with MCAS is a step in the direction that Airbus has a lot more experience with.
That's a rather misleading take, given by people pushing a certain agenda. The first officer in question was hauling the stick back as far as it would go. This resulted in the plane stalling. That's not a matter of confusing flight modes or computer behaviour - pretty much any aeroplane will stall if you pull the stick back all the way (and what else would you expect to happen?)
As far as I know, on the normal flight mode (normal law) the computer behavior of an Airbus is that it will not stall if you pull the stick back all the way - it will go as far as it can before stalling, and no more. But that depends on the sensors which had failed, so the computer had to switch to a mode which didn't have that protection.
Update after reading na85's comment: The 737 Max is dynamically stable.
Also apparently a few Airbus models are not FbW.
Only the legacy ones before the A320, namely the A300 and A310. Not really relevant nowadays.
“ The 737 engines used too much fuel so to make a more attractive plane for poorer countries ...“
It was AMERICAN Airlines and Southwest (of yes the USA) who pushed Boeing into creating the Max, not “poorer countries” (unless you count the US among those)
I think the fact that this has been allowed to happen is evidence of your third point. I'm not sure if the MAX plane or MAX brand is salvageable but I don't think Boeing as a company will be allowed to fail.
Well...not to excuse the poor decisions that lead to the problems with the MAX, but this arguably isn't one of them. Military jets have been unflyable without computer assistance for decades, and it was only a matter of time before such tech made it into commercial aerospace. Though the advantages of maneuverability conferred to fighters from dynamic instability aren't useful in passenger flight, I'd argue that computerized flight controllers are sufficiently mature and battle tested that building a commercial jet which is dependent upon computer control isn't really an oversight, provided the systems are well designed and redundant.
Remember, the issue here wasn't with the flight characteristics per se, it was penny pinching administrators who removed redundancy from a critical system to save (and attempt to mark up) a couple hundred dollars per plane.
Well, it was and it wasn't. In order to meet the stated demands of their customers (large airlines who didn't want to retrain pilots on a new type), they had to stick to the same 737 type certificate. The engines on the MAX change the centre of gravity such that the handling characteristics were too different. The regulators would not have allowed the MAX to share the type certificate with the 737NG as it was, so MCAS was born.
I'm convinced that the MAX 8 itself could have been certified as a distinct type (without MCAS, using some other system that wasn't half-baked) and we would not be having this conversation because those two crashes would not have happened.
At least as I see it, the flight characteristics led to MCAS because of penny pinchers.
It was a desire to keep a common type rating that led to the need for MCAS to pass 25.173 because of the landing gear causing an insufficiently (though still positively) longitudinally stable aircraft, not a desire to keep the handling characteristics "similar" to the other 737s, but to keep them legal at all.
What I'm suggesting is that if they were to just call it say, the 797 (or whatever), then they could make the handling characteristics different from the 737 and solve the pitching moment problem in a different way that would have been safer.
Source for that claim?
I’ve read extensively on the topic and have internal Boeing sources and everything I’ve seen says MCAS was needed to maintain the type rating, not that without MCAS the plane wasn’t airworthy.
25.173.c requires the stick force curve to have a stable and minimum slope of 1 lbf/6 knots.
At high angles of attack (low speeds), the stick force reduces slightly as compared to lower angles of attack (higher speeds). This requires a negative slope at a point on the stick force curve, violating both the minimum slope and the stable slope requirement of 25.173. (indirect source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-boeings-737-max-failed-1155... ). They couch it as "pushes the nose up" (though the image cited is dual sourced to Boeing and a WSJ graphics author, so I'll wager that "pushes the nose up" is WSJ content rather than Boeing content).
http://newsinflight.com/2019/03/29/what-causes-boeing-737max...
https://abnormaldistribution.org/index.php/2019/04/30/ieee-s...
https://www.quora.com/Does-the-fact-that-the-pilots-of-the-7...
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4286602-boeing-737-max-misc...
The situation of Boeing is that they've boxed themselves into a corner from an engineering and regulatory viewpoint. The plane could be made flyable with enough modifications - of course. But those modifications are supposed to meet regulatory constraints AND the FAA is facing heat for letting them get away with what they got away with.
But with enough pressure, sure, the FAA may approve WTF Boeing does to make the plane work. But then, there's a big spotlight on this stuff and there are a lot of people saying right they'll never fly an 737 MAX ever again. Sometimes bad publicity can distracted or waited out but I don't see this as possible now - the story too photogenic, Boeing can't wait years. Just as much, the world's regulatory agencies aren't necessarily deferring to the FAA any more after this.
So this looks really bad for Boeing.
I think you'll find those have ejector seats fitted. I'm not sure that kind of dynamic instability will ever be worth the it for passenger jets. It's not as if they are getting into dog fights much.
Er...no? The difference is that for the military jets there is an advantage, a requirement, that is helped by the plane being unstable and thus needing assistance (manoeuvrability).
For commercial airliners, there is no such requirement or advantage in normal circumstances (that is, unless you are trying to salvage an old airframe and press it into a role it is unsuited for because you are to cheap to develop the appropriate new airframe). You want a regular plane to be stable.
Yes, but the maneuverability demands on military jets are what caused that to be a requirement. Passenger aircraft are not generally supposed to be unstable on any axis, and don't pull a couple of Gs in any direction for dogfights (as if dogfights are still a thing).
This sounds good (blame it on cheapo mgmt) but really is not true. For one, the system never had redundant sensors, so they couldn't have been "removed". Secondly, the systems were designed by engineers -- with the mandate of no retraining necessary, true -- but I don't see where anybody stood up and said this is a failed/doomed system (except outsiders, after the fact). Third, "hundreds of dollars" is a total joke. The point of compatibility with previous 737s was a major selling point, worth billions of dollars in orders from airlines who liked the 737, instead of requiring them to choose between an entirely new Boeing design vs a semi-familiar (for many airlines) Airbus. It also had side effects of getting to market faster and reducing recertification and training expenses, likely totalling billions in additional savings.
Sources: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/2/18518176/boeing-737-max-cr... https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/a-lac...
That's some magical thinking right there. Very few people are going to get on one of these planes as long as the bad design is papered over with a software fix.
Additionally, I would be happy to put my family or my own backside into a Max8 flown by a Southwest, American, or United crew.
Sure you can. McDonnell Douglas was a failed commercial airplane manufacturer propped up by their military sales. Look where that got them.
But who could take over for Boeing? Lockheed Martin is the only plausible answer, but is that what anybody wants? Together Lockheed and Boeing would be something like 4x as large as the second largest contractor for the federal government, so that's not great. And would Lockheed Martin even want that? Right now Lockheed Martin provides support for 50-some C-5's, but with the addition of Boeing they'd have to take on support for hundreds military aircraft derived from Boeing's commercial models. Particularly, all of the Air Force's hundreds of tankers for aerial refueling are made by Boeing (or McDonnnell Douglas), derived from commercial airliners with hundreds more on order. Would Lockheed get back into the commercial airliner business (which they left in the 80s)? If not, then what would the economics of Lockheed manufacturing and supporting hundreds of airliner-derived military jets look like?
Can you be more specific about the nature of the instability? Is it lateral, longitudinal or directional stability that is at issue?
People who run around parroting that the Max8 is "unstable" are telling you more about their level of knowledge of aerodynamics than facts about the Max8 airplane.
the technical problems? of course. the cultural problems that caused the problem in the first place?
Boeing still needs to pay an extremely hefty WTO penalty for that because it's considered state subsidizing. Bad idea to consider it a plus, in terms of accounting.
Not very much, including the impending launch disaster tomorrow, would destroy Boeing. The us can't let it fail, it's too big.
I think you mean tonight, and why do you think it will be a disaster?
Foresight is 20/20. See my comment that is a child of (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21703179)
It was obvious that this was going to happen. NASA was giving a pass to Boeing on a lot of things,there was lots of organizational pressure to not screw it up, and it failed its previous test due to careless error.
Sadly the put order I placed did not execute because I don't know how to effectively trade in illiquid markets yet.
I've also made some duds like predicting that catalunya would successfully secede.
What's your confidence level that, in let's say 6 months, 737-MAX flies again in the US and the EU?
(Feel free to answer with another time frame that makes more sense for you).
"The board of Boeing is a group of people who know how to cut corners on safety". Is this in evidence? They're the CEOs or former CEOs of Amgen, Duke Energy, Allstate, Aetna, and Medtronic, along with 2 Admirals and a couple ambassadors.
Blackrock has ~$7 trillion in AUM.
Blackstone is an "alternative" asset manager with <$0.5 trillion in AUM. An order of magnitude smaller.
The Wikipedia pages on each even say "not to be confused with <the other one>"
> I’m not a financial analyst and I haven’t gone through the numbers in detail
> Boeing also said on its conference call some customers have stopped making advanced payments. [...]
> I’m not a financial analyst and I haven’t gone through the numbers in detail, but I’m going to go out on a limb and assert that this is not good news.
I'd say you don't need to be a financial analyst to realize customers not paying you is not a good thing.
I think the underlying one-paragraph hit which I paraphrase as: the way the cost of the hole they are digging is buried into future sales is not making the author comfortable is something which really demands discussion of Airbus accounting. If they also do this, if the entire industry is using future profit models to justify up-front capital and operational spend, Then its not just risk in the US markets, it's worldwide.
(at some level it's worldwide anyway: the investor model these days can't stop at national borders unless the investment itself is regulated, which may be possible in the case of Boeing, I don't know)
Comac, I wouldn't know. Bombardier is now in J-V land which may be recognition of the limits of what they can do with their own money.
I could also say it reaches into Rolls-Royce. Engine leasing is funding engine development: if they stop future sales, because people select GE engines, are they actually in profit purely on the operational charge model of the engines sold?
> The problem is that accounting for these costs have been pushed into the future based on anticipated sales, which is risky but manageable IF you can build safe aircraft airliners want to buy.
Boeing's accounting methods are perfectly fine (arguably even preferable) if they are able to sell the planes whose costs they are spreading into the future. The question (and the risk to shareholders) is whether they cut so many corners to juice financial results that that will prove not to be the case.
Is that a typo or just a different spelling (in Portuguese)?
Boeing 737 Max aircraft have aerodynamic and engineering design flaws
The sensors that can detect potential problems were not reliable. There are two sensors but the Boeing design only used one of them.
Boeing cut corners to save money
To save even more money, Boeing allowed customers to order the planes without warning lights. The planes that crashed didn't have those warning lights.
There were pilot training and maintenance log issues.
Finally, according to the Seattle Times, the regulators got into bed with companies they were supposed to regulate
Conclusion:
This company should go out of business and the MBAs that cut costs on this plane thrown in jail for murder
All I see in the currently best civilization of the world is MBAs not getting jailed when a mass crime is committed. HSBC for managing the drug cartel’s money in USA, Volkswagen for deceit on pollution, Boeing/FAA for collusion (although it could change, but doesn’t seem likely). Is it just an evolutionary mistake and in a few generation we’ll accept to treat company-baked criminality as a sum of individual criminal acts deserving prison, or is there a stable factor where whatever level of development we reach, company managers get away with it?
[Accounting Turbulence at Boeing] Unlike its rival Airbus, Boeing used a practice called program accounting to record its commercial aircraft expenses since the 1980s.
Combined, that represents a significant fraction of Boeing's $132b in total (gross) assets.
Genuinely curious -- it seems like it's in our interest to ensure that Boeing is around, that they are sustainable, that workers continue to view Boeing as a good job, that they have the right motivations of safety vs profit, etc.
The issues at play here affect top level management and their incentives, but let's talk about USPS deliveryman.
Comparing government workers that rarely can be fired with specially motivated unique individuals is far from fair.
Socialized expenses but privatized profits (via corruption, etc).
I have seen 'wrath' of the public markets causing the company to collapse. But here that's highly undesirable, hence I see the OP's question as quite reasonable.
I feel the markets work in a darwinian manner, and as soon as we cant allow the company to fail, they stop working well.
1) Building safe passenger jetsplanes is very much rocket science, and there are only a couple of companies capable of producing one at all, economics aside.
2) absence of boeing will also result in effective airbus monopoly and pain for consumers. It will take decades for any startup to even come close to replacing them.
3) we already have mediocrity, and the industry is hugely risk averse. There are designs by nasa and others, that significantly improve fuel economy and comfort, like "flying wing" design. They have stayed on the drawing board for 30 years because of risk aversion. That's the designs startup should be working on, if they have the chops to raise funding and prove safety.
Source: my bos is an ex-airspace engineer
Spacex basically surpassed NASA in ten years. Boeing is an overrated pile of garbage
NASA has so many capabilities SpaceX never will. They have flown probes to gas giants and out of the solar system, landed on Moon, Mars and on Titan, have done atmospheric entry on Jupiter, build nuclear powered rovers, designed the SAFE reactor, James webb telescope, asteroid rendezvous, the list goes on an on.
SpaceX has only ever flown three vehicles: Falcon 1, Falcon 9 and Dragon. They never did a mission outside low earth orbit, they have no means to land on the moon, or to power a spacecraft heading for Pluto, where solar power is useless. They don't have any experts in thousands of instruments Nasa designs and operates to observe black holes, underground ice on mars, etc. SpaceX also benefits from access to Nasa tech, facilities and funding.
They are different organisations: SpaceX builds a vehicle and refines it endlessly to create a perfect product. Nasa does exploration and research, their vehicles aren't products, they are unique, custom built scientific instruments.
Airbus was created as a government initiative and Chinese and Russian national manufacturers are state owned.
I would not rule anything out.
The author raises a valid point that the financial engineers on the board beed to go.
Here is a decent article from when many were mothballed in 2009: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/airlines-park-idle-planes-in-th...
- Less water
- Less sodium if parked near a sea
Chemically it seems better to be above the clouds then bellow them.
The corrosion in air is near instantaneous, and, unlike rust on iron, forms an impervious barrier, preventing further degredation.
Mind: aircraft are not comprised entirely of aluminium, and there are components which may suffer degredation. Airframe-as-a-whole, however, not so much.
There are also aircraft which have been in continuous active service for decades -- the DC-3 and B-52 being two notable cases. These do see periodic overhauls, but net environmental exposure isn't the limiting factor.
Flight-cycles, and cumulative metal fatigue (a distinct problem of aluminium to a much greater extent than iron or steel) is. Both wing flex cycles and pressurisation/depressurisation (takeoff-landing cycles) are far more significant.