Norwegian Air cancels order for 97 Boeing aircraft, sues Boeing
airlinegeeks.com
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https://www.thelocal.no/20200520/china-become-norwegians-big...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_C919
[EDIT] asked further questions
I never heard of the 787 engine problems, this seems to be severe also.
The Comac is an interesting option, but it will still need several years. Airbus is the only option.
Are you saying there needs to be a global ban on allowing Chinese entities to invest?
Why would not some entity in China be allowed to own a share?
Uber also owns a large portion of DiDi.
All Chinese companies have a party leader in their board and seem to take over critical infrastructure ( telecom, finance, harbors, logistics, energy) or contain privacy-sensitive info.
Even if it's games, then suddenly censorship is applied ( tournaments/chats).
And I hope you know why Uber even has shares in Didi :)
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-airlines-that-fa...
We have plenty of experience with airline bankruptcies, and they’re basically all the same.
United Airlines took 38 months. American Airlines, about 26 months. 2 years for Delta.
The problem is the domino effect: a newly recovered airline is much leaner and tends to put the non-bankruptcy filers at risk.
For example, congressional discussions on a "Phase 4" financial support package have been pushed back and back for over a month now.
The sense of urgency is not helped by the fact that the deadline to apply for PPP funds passed yesterday, with over $130 billion unspent.
I mean, I haven't heard anyone of authority say the flaws with the Max aren't fixable. If the Max "never flies again", it will just be because it's rebranded, not because it's a fundamentally different aircraft.
I'm not an airframe designer by any means but from the countless threads that I've read on this website about this subject (coming from people who seemed more knowledgable than me on the subject) it did seem like the plane was fundamentally unsound at a design level.
As I understand it, the 737 MAX was the first commercial airframe ever approved by the FAA with this sudden inflection point in behavior when approaching a stall. (There's a term for it, something like "positive rate characteristic", but I forget. Perhaps someone who knows it will mention it here.) Seeing how well that worked out, one hopes it'll also be the last such airframe approved.
edit: And, having checked the Wikipedia page for the system, I find myself surprised that that is in fact a lie Boeing has told.
They may as well go ahead and try to rebrand the damned thing, I guess. On top of everything else they've done, I can't see how it would make their problems any worse...
also edit: Via Wikipedia, 14 CFR 25.203: "No abnormal nose-up pitching may occur. The longitudinal [pitch] control force must be positive up to and throughout the stall." This is the characteristic the MAX lacks due to the engine placement. If you want to add an active system to correct for that, the AoA sensor is what you use to drive it, since that's what tells you the difference between the direction of airflow and the angle of the wing. That's how you know you're approaching a stall, and need to add a negative pitching moment. But if that sensor jams, which being a mechanical device it can do, and you don't have input from another sensor so you can see the disagreement, you risk spurious activation of the system when it isn't needed, potentially forcing the aircraft out of level flight.
I get that it's in Boeing's interest to claim MCAS isn't an anti-stall system. Why would they say anything else? To do so would implicitly admit not only that they built an aircraft that would fail dangerously in a common situation, but also that the FAA let them get away with selling it and selling it as type-identical with prior versions lacking the fail-dangerous characteristic. Neither admission would serve their interests.
But, equally, why should we take them at their word on this, or indeed anything? It's pretty clear that their corporate interests have ceased to align with ours as potential airline passengers. It's generous unto foolishness, in light of that, to give them the benefit of any doubt whatsoever.
Virtually all aircraft will do that, including the original 737. Different aircraft do this at different points; provided the pilot is trained for the aircraft, it's not a fundamental problem.
The problem for the MAX is they wanted pilots to be able to treat it like an airplane it wasn't.
But evidently the stick shaker isn't enough, because the 737 MAX also has MCAS, which operates to actively deflect the nose back down as the aircraft approaches stall. That shouldn't be necessary. That's the thing that other airframes, including prior marks of the 737, do not do. In those airframes, you don't need to push the nose down to get away from a stall. You only need to stop pulling the nose up. MCAS exists to try to replicate this behavior in the 737 MAX, but that MCAS needs to exist for that purpose is enough to demonstrate that the 737 MAX does not behave that way by default.
I agree that the falsely shared type certification, and the consequent lack of training on the MAX's type-unique and dangerous stall behavior without MCAS, is a problem. Where we disagree is that I don't consider acceptable a design that exhibits that behavior at all in the absence of an active control system that can fail or be turned off. Neither do the relevant regulations for certification - I linked them above; they make no mention of an exception for an airframe with something equivalent to MCAS - and neither, historically, has the FAA. Not, at least, until the 737 MAX was itself type-certified, and the way that process played out is itself highly suggestive of significant corruption, in the form of regulatory capture if nothing else.
How do you suppose they might do that without completely redesigning the plane? I don't think type recertification is why they kept the landing gear the same length.
Plus Southwest basically won’t buy anything but 737s, so maintaining that type rating was critical to selling the new plane to one of their biggest customers.
Boeing had initially proposed a clean sheet redesign of the 737, but the market for that aircraft is very sensitive to training and operation costs.
Not really. Without MCAS, the plane would not have been certifiable. (So, MCAS does make it more similar to the regular 737 in that it is certifiable, but that was not the only reason.)
This is flown to test the stick force as a function of load factor. Now, it is a certification requirement that the stick force increases basically linearly with the load factor ("The stick force curve must have a stable slope" [3]), and that was not given - the stick slacked.
This is what MCAS was designed to address.
From what I gather, a 737 MAX without MCAS would not be certifiable, but safely flyable, possibly with some surprising, but manageable behaviour under very rare circumstances: namely, flying at a high angle of attack with high speed would require you to release some stick force instead of having to pull hard to keep the nose up.
Having said that, the whole saga has revealed so many problems at Boeing and the FAA that I am reluctant to fly the 737 MAX and 787 myself.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/the...
https://www.scribd.com/document/53095046/NASA-Information-Su...
What Boeing did was hide the change in flight characteristics caused by the new engines using software, so pilots didn't need to retrain, and they borked the implementation.
I strongly recommend not getting your 737-MAX facts from HN. Every time the topic comes up, the discussion continues to be riddled with inaccuracies, many of them strongly held beliefs.
However if the original 737 in the 60s had the design of the MAX, its pilots would be taught how to fly it without any MCAS software and it would fly just fine.
From my understanding, the MCAS system was built to offset these problematic default states that come with using an old body not compatible with the upgrades made. I also heard the weight of these new engines caused wings to develop stress cracks.
Not sure how it could be considered safe without a better designed MCAS system and addressing the other issues.
> It simply handles differently than pre-MAX 737s in certain scenarios
It handles differently than previous 737s due to airframe changes (namely engine position). MCAS was meant to "correct" this for the purpose of skipping re-certification. The airframe isn't fundamentally flawed, the process of certifying it this round was flawed. Which caused Boeing engineers to implement a flawed MCAS system.
See for example here:
https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/73132/did-boein...
(I agree, FWIW, that the plane would by flyable, easily in nearly all flight regimes, and carefully in some flight regimes, without MCAS. But that is not the issue at hand.)
In reality, the force curves always deviate from the ideal, save in fly-by-wire designs. There are two different issues at play:
The first is a force curve that deviates so much that it becomes unintuitive or unmanageable to fly. This would not be acceptable, but I have not seen someone claim the 737 MAX would be characterized this way.
The second is whether the force curves of the older 737s matched the MAX closely enough. These pilots are expecting a certain behavior, and under single certification, could be going back and forth between these models often. Even small differences in handling between these could be jarring and lead to bad stick inputs.
This is a much more demanding requirement because of the context; in the first case, a pilot is making one transition to a new aircraft that they expect will be different from what they flew before. In the second, they are switching between aircraft often, perhaps after long stretches of becoming accustomed to one model or the other. They must then constantly be aware of these differences and continually adjust for them, a situation ripe for error.
My understanding is that the 737Max flies kinda like a 757 without MCAS. It's not a big deal.
It is hard to find reliable sources on this, I must say.
I base my conclusion for example on these excerpts from [1]:
> MCAS would trigger in narrow circumstances. It was designed “to address potentially unacceptable nose-up pitching moment at high angles of attack at high airspeeds,” Boeing told the FAA in a proprietary System Safety Assessment
(This doesn't specify whether it would be unacceptable for certification, or for certification under the same type certificate.)
> Engineers determined that on the MAX, the force the pilots feel in the control column as they execute this maneuver would not smoothly and continuously increase. Pilots who pull back forcefully on the column — sometimes called the stick — might suddenly feel a slackening of resistance. An FAA rule requires that the plane handle with smoothly changing stick forces.
(This seems to indicate that it would be unacceptable under the general FAA rule.)
[1] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/the...
Here is one example: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-737max/boeing-prop...
My understanding of that issue: The 737 is wired in such a way that was considered fine when it was designed. In 1998 an MC-11 crashed which resulted in revised design standards that would render the 737's wiring invalid, except the 737 was already a proven design by this point and consequently has been allowed to continue flying the way it is. The 737 MAX continues to use this wiring configuration, which was initially considered fine because the the 737 MAX "is a 737", a proven legacy design.
> Boeing did not forget how to design planes.
I certainly did not and would not suggest otherwise. It's possible I'm mistaken about the above, I'm certainly not an expert on FAA matters, but I earnestly don't think I'm wrong. If you still think I'm wrong, I'd appreciate a substantive correction.
The safety analysis was turbo hosed, the documentation was shat, they hid the issue from operators and regulators alike, and went out of the way to not make simulators.
They removed previous generation's safeties (the oh shit yank back hard electric trim switch override), and removed a level of granularity in terms of capability to isolate the flight computer from the trim motors (which they have to do because they can't certify the plane to carry passengers otherwise), they have electrical control and power circuits to the trim motors too close together, and not sufficiently protected from a thrown turbine blade.
The aerodynamics (without MCAS functional) fail to pass airworthyness requirements for passenger transport that have been in place since time immemorial, and critical structural components (pickle forks) are showing alarming degrees of premature failure given their design lifetime.
Explain to me how a plane that doesn't at all implement graceful degradation to a fundamentally safe configuration is not "fundamentally flawed". Explain to me how plane's assembled from components that are failing well before their designed lifetime (and yes, I understand MTBF) is not a sign fundamental flaws. Even with all the fixes they're doing, the design shows an astonishing lack of good engineering sense. You don't keep around an awkward, unpredictable, unergonomic tool built by someone who demonstrated a willful disregard for doing Generally Accepted Engineering Practices, and who have repeatedly been found to do stupid things like leaving tools or metal shavings to foul or clog up filters, damage gaskets/seals etc.. You bin it, and make/get one that won't kill 200 people a failure instead. I don't give a damn how expensive a mistake it was.
There are lines you don't cross. Supporting bad business is one of them. Bring on the Depression. Maybe it's time we all figured out what good business looks like all the way around again.
And no, all that isn't belief or mere opinion. It's fact laid bare for all to see. You can fly on them and risk your loved ones if you like. I know the mentalities that drive those types of boondoggle and I'll have none of it. Show me a massive culture revamp in Boeing first, then I'll consider it again.
Boeing failed to provide sufficient redundancy for the MCAS system and proper training to the air crews.
The thing is, we do know a lot about those flaws and the only way to really fix those flaws is with a clean-sheet redesign.
The MAX would have flown again, for sure, pre-COVID. However, designs without known fundamental design flaws can handle worldwide airline lift needs for the foreseeable future.. and it's legitimate to wonder what that means for the future of the MAX.
That's just not true. People seem to be conflating the fact that the design required software-controlled stability (e.g. MCAS) as a "fundamental" design issue. That's just not the case. The problems were:
1. MCAS was not sufficiently redundant.
2. Boeing tried to get away with the changes to the MAX without requiring recertification or pilot retraining, which was just wrong.
Both #1 and #2 have straightforward fixes.
Most pilots and planes were basically sitting idle anyway. It's good for them to remain somewhat active. And fuel was given away for pretty much free because the overproduction was filling up expensive storage space.
This would have been the ideal moment to teach 737 pilots to properly handle the Max aircraft without needing MCAS.
Well, its not legal to have the 737 MAX without MCAS, so its a moot point.
MCAS exists to compensate for undesired control forces as high (near-stall) angles of attack, its not legal to have those performance characteristics in an aircraft.
If this was Airbus, this would have been done in software since the A320 series is fly by wire.
#2 is being changed.
This is baloney. There are already 2 AOA sensors on the plane, but MCAS originally only read from one of them: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/03/boein...
This is a fundamental design flaw for a system which can have catastrophic consequences. This should have been classified as a DO-178B level A system (capable of crashing the plane) but was misclassified by Boeing. DO-178B level A systems require triple redundancy.
People in Alaska will do things like come down to Anchorage and buy all their supplies for several months from Fred Meyers and Costco and box it all up on a freight pallet and have Alaska Air ship it back to the remote area these people live in.
For example, the DC-10 was also a flawed airplane with a terrible safety record in the 70's which was grounded by the FAA as a result. But the flaws were fixed and the plane is still in operation today, now with a safety record comparable to other similar planes.
Furthermore this was in a different era before the internet. People only had the mainstream news to go on.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-26259236#:~....
Safety is not a complicated goal to achieve. You identify hazards and you rectify them. The hard part is identifying them, which in this case has already tragically happened.
Your easy fixes for the dreaded 737 max sound like those of an armchair expert.
I'm sort of amazed they haven't done that already...
Edit: to clarify a bit, I know this because I'm a nerd and sometimes pick flights specifically because of the type of plane used. I quite enjoyed the A380. :o)
If you're scheduled to fly on a 737-800 but there's a problem with the jet, they might swap it out for a 737-400 (which is pretty much just an older generation of the -800, similar to how the -800 is an older generation of the MAX 8) and it would go completely unnoticed by almost every passenger. That happens less often nowadays that most (all?) of the -400s are retired, but I would expect it to start happening again once the MAXs return to service and they are being deployed side-by-side with the NGs.
I've never had the plane model changed in my flying experience.
I believe bigger airline alliances actually have a pool for such mishaps, spare planes with just the alliance branding on them, I've seen them at airports though not sure how the ownership worked.
>A Boeing 737 Max due to be delivered to Ryanair has had the name Max dropped from the livery, further fuelling speculation that the manufacturer and airlines will seek to rebrand the troubled plane once it is given the all clear to fly again.
>Photos have emerged of a 737 Max in Ryanair colours outside Boeing’s manufacturing hub, with the designation 737-8200 – instead of 737 Max – on the nose. The 737-8200 is a type name for the aircraft that is used by aviation agencies.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jul/15/boeing-737-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX#737_MAX_200
Basically, the high density requires an extra set of exit doors, so this is a MAX 8 with two more overwing exit doors. Its still branded as a 737 MAX.
Boeing and some of their customers have switched back to using just numbers and leaving out the 'max' from the name.
If they did a public rebranding, it would defeat the purpose of trying to hide the name from the public.
What are Boing's alternatives here? I guess they should go back to the drawing board and scrap this idea of just adding some large engines on a plane that was not made for them. But that fatal idea, have put them in a horrible position.
The airline business seems to be very much about saving money on fuel, and creating a new fuel efficient airplane is going to take a lot of time (which is guess is why they did this quick and dirty hack the last time, to stay competitive).
In a business like that trust is everything, and I feel the more they are trying to force people into that flawed airplane, the less likely it seems that people will trust them ever again.
Just imagine, there is one more crash related to this, and what the fall out would be. Boeing as a company would be toast.
That's the risk Boeing is dealing with on hand.
And it won't be just Boeing's problem, it will also be airlines' problems for not taking firmer stance.
But the Space and Defense Contracts would be more than enough to keep the company around
When production really kicks in ten years from now, the world will look different - everybody is flying really old gas guzzler planes.
Additionally, the people doing this work are an extremely limited resource. Major schedule changes disrupt all the future work they previously scheduled. You can't just bring in some contractors to fill in because the work is rather new/novel every time.
Now with Covid, another possibility has opened up: a massive surplus of aircraft for the coming decade might actually make it redundant. Airlines will die left and right and there will be more than enough cheap planes to go around even without the MAX-8's.
I'd have no problem flying in one, as soon as authorities approve it.
In a healthy environment, there’s always downward pressure on ticket costs, and you have to find efficiencies elsewhere. We aren’t in a healthy environment anymore...
Long flights traditionally were serviced by wide body aircraft , in recent years with longer range and favourable ETOPS regulations narrow aircraft like 737 max and 320neo were desirable for low volume long haul routes.
Also at the time of design in 2010 jet fuel prices were at all time highs , fuel prices are at all time low now .
Given the surplus in the market , Low fuel prices, drop in demand the ROI for investing in 737 max may not simply exist anymore.
Currently 7.5 hrs/day [3] for small narrow bodies, 10.09 hrs/day [2] for large narrow bodies and 12.48 hrs/day [1] for wide bodies.
[1] https://web.mit.edu/airlinedata/www/2019%2012%20Month%20Docu...
[2] https://web.mit.edu/airlinedata/www/2019%2012%20Month%20Docu...
[3] https://web.mit.edu/airlinedata/www/2019%2012%20Month%20Docu...
(Yeah I know there are probably 30 year old airframes still flying nowadays, and they're still airworthy).
Source: You can look up my profile and comment history. I don't work on the civil side, but I know how things work in the USG.
...it seems like maybe Norwegian Air is reeling from coronavirus-induced low demand and is trying to escape its responsibilities.
This seems a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Boeing employees 145,000 people. You're advocating making the equivalent of a small city jobless based on the actions of a very small contingent.
Additionally, aerospace is a capital intensive business. To give up Boeing would mean the likely-permanent loss of sophisticated manufacturing capabilities in the United States.
Nobody is starting a new aircraft manufacturer on AWS using Javascript. It would take tens of billions of dollars to even begin to attempt to re-create a company with Boeing's capabilities.
No one has ever advocated that every person at Boeing be fired and that's not what happens in large corporate bankruptcies. So no, that's not what the other poster was advocating.
In general, I've seen people advocating that Boeing's shareholders be wiped out, senior management fired and the company be rebooted with a thorough dedication towards "safety first" as opposed to "short-term profits first".
As long as investors don't feel their moral Hazzard, companies will keep doing the same things. Because investors will keep investing in them because they'll get bailed out at the end.
Why wouldn't you invest in boeing if you know they are going to prioritize short term profits (good for you) and as soon as that comes back to bite the company it's going to be bailed out.
And if you keep bailing them out, it's in the companies best interest to prioritize short term profits over long term consequences, because that's what's best for investors.
Government bailouts pervert the market in extreme ways (you are essentially subsidizing risk), and it's the very reason why too big to fail companies keep doing the stuff they do.
The point of the "market" is leaving the pricing to investors, if they fail to price the company correctly then it's their loss, just like it's their win when the stock goes up.
The best option for too big to fail businesses failing is to buy 100% of it's shares when it declares bankruptcy (at close to $0), fire all top level management and the board, inject the cash needed and fix the companies culture to a prdoduct focused instead of finance focused (that's why the people rescued it), then IPO once it's numbers are in the green (or give one share to every tax paying resident)
> [Norwegian Air] delayed general shareholders meeting on Tuesday and on the same day Boeing started re-certification tests for MAX aircraft
Even on domestic flights in Europe they are a pretty reasonable experience, much better than Ryanair and Easyjet at least. They are often priced about 10-20% more expensive than Ryanair and Easyjet when you probably get double the comfort and service and half the annoyances. I might sound like a shill for Norwegian but I think they really fill the Southwest niche here - a decently low cost (but not lowest) airline that doesn’t treat you or it’s employees like shit.
That’s not to say they are without flaws either. I and others have had some sketchy times where Norwegian has fought awarding the EU mandated reimbursement for delayed/cancelled flights. But no other international airline in Europe straddles the line between legacy carrier level of service and barebones low-cost as well as Norwegian.
"However, with the scheduled flights gradually resuming, the airline is restructuring its fleet and focusing on short- and medium-range destinations. Europe’s fourth-largest low-cost carrier will likely completely discontinue the long-haul flights that sank the company into debt."
For example, Tesla's deposit is refundable: https://www.tesla.com/support/model-3-reservation-deposit
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/21/tesla-refund-and-return-prob...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-20/tesla-wou...
Will it be just as easy if Cybertruck doesn't live up to the hype? I'll report back.
It'll be interesting to see how that plays out, for Boeing as well as for Norwegian. I doubt they're the only airline that's been considering this kind of action.