Boeing CEO says planemaker could be forced to cancel 737 Max 10 | Hacker News Reader

Boeing CEO says planemaker could be forced to cancel 737 Max 10

reuters.com

64 pointsthecosmicfrog81 comments

Well, yes, when you are unable or unwilling to build the product to modern safety standards, you should be forced to cancel it.

is the consensus that Boeing's engineering prowess is unrecoverable now, post-McDD merger?

I don’t know if that is the consensus but I struggle to find a major program there that isn’t completely rotten.

MQ-25

F/A-18E/F

777

Tactical fighter aircraft are a bright spot but they aren’t long for this world.

The MQ-25 is a repurposing of a failed armed drone program.

The F/A-18 is from the 70s, and the Super Hornet's from the mid 1990s.

The 777 first flew in the mid 1990s.

There's not much recent to brag about.

X-37/B

Started in 1999, and it's a little hard to gauge efficacy of a program we know very little about.

Exactly so has existing almost entirely in the window we're talking about. But I think we can guage it by a, still going after 22 years and b, having exceeded design orbit duration by 3x. Obviously the air / space force / nasa etc have been sufficiently happy with the program to keep it going for so long.

IMHO, converting the carrier based armed drone program (UCLASS) into a carrier based refueling drone program (CBARS) is one of the most sane and prudent things military acquisition has done in recent times.

Why push a cutting edge technology for which there is no immediate need into operational status?

Why not instead harvest the low-hanging fruit, while simultaneously using it to refine carrier operations, and then restart UCAV development later when technologies have had more time to mature?

The 777 entered service in '95.

Yeah, I challenge anyone to show me a unconditionally successful Boeing program post 2000 AD. Please. Please show one to me. I am begging you here.

Aboulafia had like fifty graphs on exactly how Boeing is doomed, at least as a unified company; they might survive in pieces after a GE-style split. Big B is spending all their money on precisely the wrong products, and leaving the right products to die on the vine.

This . . this must be what it was like with the late stage evolution of the Soviet design bureaus, but far, far, far worse. With somehow less accountability.

No one inside knows what anyone else is doing, and they're this close to just shipping boxes of parts and marking off a successful delivery of a finished good.

How Boeing has avoided the Mother Lode of all Fines is a mystery to me. Except it's not really a mystery, we all know why, but . . please let me keep my illusions.

So I'm probably ignorant, but the 787? I've seen it as a great aircraft that has moved the bar significantly... there have been some issues, but I'm surprised that you wouldn't even consider it a successful program?

I can’t say too much, but check the deliveries on the 787 that past few months ;)

Looks like the answer is... none...?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_787_orders_and_...

Boeing halted deliveries of the 787 in May 2021 with the FAA notably citing manufacturing defects. Currently isn't resumed yet.

yeah, I think it was the first product of the "new Boeing" where everything was outsourced to lower cost subcontractors and none of the resulting parts fit together...

Boeing T-7 Redhawk

This was jointly designed by Saab.

What's the track record for huge companies successfully fixing major problems with their internal quality / engineering cultures?

My impression is that usually or always the company just ends slowly dying instead. I'm thinking of IBM, and maybe Intel, GE, Boeing.

I have the impression that Microsoft has couthed up a lot since the 1990s. Idk though.

That's the impressive part - 2 major pivots to save the company from certain death even though they almost missed the Web, and then mobile.

But maybe it's easier w/ software, less capital and physical equipment than a company building something

At this point, they should be offering the highest salaries of any company in the aerospace industry to recruit the best talent, same way google does.

But they're not. That's... the whole problem really.

This is literally the 'too big to fail' outcome. Boeing sucks. They're only selling planes because AirBus can't build enough for all customers.

It's disappointing that mess after mess they're not held accountable. I suppose on the one hand, the U.S. wants a competitor to AB. But, AB does need a competitor, right? It's not like it's a good thing if Boeing goes away and AB has no competition.

>They're only selling planes because AirBus can't build enough for all customers.

That certainly wasn't the case for the A380. A380 is my favorite plane to fly on, but Boeing beat them badly in market analysis.

The company sank 25+ Billion in A380 development and cant even cover the cost of manufacture so they shut it down. AB also received 9 billion in EU government aid for the AB380.

When it comes to too big to fail, it certainly goes both ways.

A real shame too, I love flying on the A380. It's so big it just slides through the air like butter, and the higher cabin pressurization makes you feel more alert when you arrive (plus the fact that you probably slept better since it wasn't bouncing around as much).

Agreed, it has some of the best business class layouts too.

Unfortunately it can't land and be supported in most airports

Yes, flying first class or even coach in Emirates in an A380 was spectacular and a whole different experience than any other flying, full stop. I wish everyone could experience it.

they are bringing it back to service since air travel demand grown, not so sure about production

> The company sank 25+ Billion in A380 development and cant even cover the cost of manufacture so they shut it down

Yes, and then they quickly pivoted to building the A320neo, and that one just flies without issues, because apparently they know how to build planes that conform to modern safety standards.

If Boeing does go down, the US government would very quickly copy the French playbook of building massive state-backed enterprises that was also used to create Airbus. No serious competition for Airbus wouldn't be good for anyone, but it wouldn't come to that. That should not be the reason why Boeing is allowed to continue.

It seems like you are saying the same thing as me except Boeing already is a massive state backed enterprise

I guess, but I'd say Boeing needn't be too big to fail.

perhaps nothing should be too big to fail, including AB and Boeing.

That said, the failure of either AB or Boeing would be a difficult transition and it would take several decades to have close to a replacement, if one can arise at all.

Having a large domestic aircraft manufacture is not a given, and comes with a lot of economic and military advantages.

Odd take given Boeing has the deeper order book.

What's the point of this plane? It's not that cheap, it's not that good for fuel efficiency, it misses most modern (decade old) systems like eicas. Seems another odd Boeing plane that woukd only sell because the competition cannot fill all orders.

Easy baggage loading at remote airports.

It being a refresh of old design, means it's cheaper to retrain people (don't have to full training for the totally different aircraft), a lot of your supporting infrastructure can stay the same while being cheaper to operate.

And, in theory (ahm, MAX had some tiny, minor issues there) should be safe and reliable, as it's based on well known and tested platform.

That's a very nice way of saying that it finds a way to extract profit from regulatory systems which 10yr olds could poke holes in. /hj

That's not really the intention behind the initial concept. If you are able to update a plane to make it more efficient while keeping the same behaviour and the same interfaces for the pilot, then it is great and there are no safety concerns with that.

The only issue on the Max is that as part of the refresh, they were not able to keep the same behaviour. And then, instead of fixing it with additional engineering or requiring new training, they hid that under the carpet and made sure the FAA accept itq, leading to crashes and deaths. Plus the denial after the first crash was really disgusting.

One of the charges in the MAX crashes were that _it did_ need a whole new training class

Ding! The whole issue was that they cheated to hide the differences to avoid additional training. Which proved fatal as the pilots were unaware of those differences.

This generally means the aircraft is the best choice to prop up customers whose business is slowly failing, and would be severely harmed by having to invest in improvements to the supporting infrastructure. This is not altogether surprising since air travel has been increasingly commoditized, so aircraft operators who don't price in long term capital improvements can outcompete (or for the worse ones, just stay afloat at all) for some period of time.

So it's no different than any other business with eye-wateringly expensive infrastructure, really.

Boeing ended production of the 757 18 years ago and they still have no strategy for a successor besides more duck tape on the 737.

If I understand the timeline properly, Boeing had a strategy, at least nominally: NMA, an all-new replacement for the 757. Boeing had to be brow-beat by their biggest customers to support the initiative, but at least from the outside they seemed to acquiesce.

Airbus responded with the A321XLR, betting it could reach market faster. Boeing countered by dropping NMA and trying to copy the Airbus approach of racing to market with a stretch variant of their workhorse (737 MAX vs A321neo). But Airbus was actually able to execute. A321XLR is on the verge of shipping while Boeing has been caught flat footed, again.

Also, A321XLR has significantly better specs than the 737 MAX 10 as the former was designed when Airbus thought it was going to compete with the NMA. 737 MAX 10 tries to be a cheaper alternative to A321XLR, but in trying to be a cheaper alternative to a cheaper alternative, Boeing lost the plot.

What I don’t understand is why Boeing didn’t work with the 757 instead. It’s a much newer design already comparable in size to the A321, and a new 757 variant would have had commonality with many airlines’ existing 757s and not run into the limitations Boeing has had literally “max”ing out the 737.

Boeing 757 does not have cockpit commonality/type rating with 737

I think Boeing missed a chance to update the 757 with 787 cockpit commonality

737 has had a digital cockpit since the NG launched prior to the turn of the century. That was a big deal at the time as they had to strong arm Southwest into taking it as-is and not creating a steam-gauge one-off. I guess DCAC/MRM was good for something after all.

I wonder if this is an example of the downsides of not just doing something right from the beginning. If I understand correctly, this whole 737 Max kerfuffle was born out of Boeing trying to reduce costs for their "new" airplane by retrofitting an old one, intending to save on all sorts of costs. I don't know much about airplane development and manufacturing, but it almost seems like it would have been cheaper to just design a new airplane. Certainly would have saved lives, lawsuits, fixing hardware with software, and all this regulatory investigation.

My understanding is that building it correctly would require airport gates to be upgraded + pilot retraining. That would have killed the competitive advantage against the A320Neo.

As far as I know, pilots have been forced to retrain anyway due to the crashes and the revelations of the MCAS and other systems being much different than the existing 737. So I don't think that was saved.

I'm fairly certain I recall some pilots flying the day or sometime before one of the planes that crashed had the exact same issue with the same plane that crashed. Again, if I recall correctly, that pilot happened to be able to figure out the issue and was able to disable the system. So, it's really quite pathetic Boeing has been able to get away with this for so long. They knowingly lied and hundreds of people died because of that.

>> "the debts that we’ve had to accumulate"

Like the $5B (and counting) for bungling the KC-46 design?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_KC-46_Pegasus#Flight_...

What about Starliner? It is years behind schedule and a huge embarrassment to the US' play in space.

> huge embarrassment

Is a huge overstatement. SpaceX has made an equivalent capsule that has been working for more than a year. The US Gov should stop being wasteful and just cancel the other program (or redirect the money to something useful: e.g. buy more F-15s or something).

It's an embarrassment to Boeing maybe, but not the US' play in space.

"We've had to accumulate . ."

Hahaha oh nice, that is really nice. They completely blew out bond sales in the 6 months before the 737 max crisis even hit - let alone COVID - accruing 3 or 4 times as much debt as anyone else in the industry. What made them "have to" accumulate that debt? Elves?

Anyone wanna guess where half that new debt was spent? C'mon, c'mon just take a guess.

In a way it is a good thing. They should be forced to take many steps back and look at where they bungled up. For starters, not trying to fix aerodynamic issues with software patches, and getting honest engineering back at the helm should be on the top of the list.

It's hard when your customers are requiring you to do mutually exclusive things. First, reduce fuel consumption by significant amounts, which requires changes to aerodynamics or engines (this is just physics). Second, don't make any major changes, because major changes would be too expensive for customers to implement and make the whole project not feasible.

There's no "honest engineering" that will solve the problem. This is exactly what regulators are for, because there are huge incentives for the executives on both the airline side and the Boeing side to make a deal here... everyone saves money and takes home huge bonuses.

True. And for unimaginable long term costs.

I'd say the fact the regulations are there at all, led to this issue. If there wasn't, there would be nothing to 'work around', and Boeing (and Airbus) would be more free to design the planes they and their customers wanted.

As it is, we have a bunch of regulations, and obviously no greater safety; the planes designs have issues anyway, as they did here with the 737 Max.

There's certainly regulatory capture going on in Boeing too, no doubt, but that's also a point for removing the regulatory system, not a point for 'making it better', usually by adding more rules, seldom subtracting rules.

But both of these issues can be solved, at a cost to...shareholders. And that's really where the problem lies. Since the merger, Boeing has been laser-focused on quarterly results and stock prices. In the short run that boosts equity valuations, but in the long run, as we've seen, it really hurts the company when it takes focus away from the product on which they run their business.

> There's no "honest engineering" that will solve the problem

There very much is: tell the customers that changing aerodynamics means changing the plane. Full stop.

Sounds like Boeing is blackmailing FAA here - "Approve 737 Max 10 before the deadline for EICAS kicks in, or we wouldn't be able to get it approved under those new safety rules for a long time (and what is bad for Boeing is bad for the country)"

Forgive my ignorance, but what's this "deadline for EICAS" you are talking about? Are they going to change part 25 certification requirements? Is there a source, a draft document for that?

sounds like it https://www.flightglobal.com/airframers/december-deadline-co...

Recently, an Airbus A380 just continued to fly for 10h+ with a torn exterior like it was nothing. Boeing have failed to make use of a 2+ years (!) Covid-induced grace period to fix a plane that was apparently designed by accountants and MBAs rather than engineers.

It is time to stop putting profits over people's safety and call an end to this debacle.

Trash it and send some executives and managers to prison

isn't it amazing that 350 people died and years later no one has been put in prison yet?

It's infuriating

They did prosecute someone, which looked to me like a case of throwing an underling out of the bus, but it looks like that person was acquitted by a jury:

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/boeing-test-pilot-...

Former Boeing test pilot found not guilty of deceiving FAA

A jury in Texas has found a former Boeing test pilot not guilty of deceiving federal regulators about a key flight-control system on the Boeing 737 Max jetliner

(March 2022)

exactly, that guy was just a fall guy. If a system / organization is designed such that the fate of something as critical as an aircraft depends on ONE test pilot, that system needs to be re-assessed. All those managers / senior engineers / decision makers should be fired / fined and the worst of them should be put in prison.

He was in charge of the testing program at some level. He wasn't purely a pilot.

Don't you have to break the law to go to prison? Or are we trying to recreate the old comintern and frame fallguys in order to make us feel justice was served when sad things happen.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/boeing-charged-737-max-fraud-...

If it aint Airbus take the bus

If it ain’t Boeing I ain’t going.

Not joking?

parent was quoting the original mini-poem, created after Scarebus* had many pilot induced issues due to the new paradigms in the cockpit (sidesticks, etc.) -- *-term from the same era

If it’s Boeing, I’m not going.

I wish there were regulations that forced airlines to make it known to customers which airplane they will be flying on. It is my understanding that airlines can post this information, but then in the end, it it up to their discretion at time of flight which plane model to use.

I do not want to step on a 737 Max, if that means throwing away my Southwest points, then so be it.

And searching on this, to see if Southwest had returned to using 737 Max planes, which they have, I found this: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/legal...

Seems they had a hand in all of this as well.

Most airlines would only have one of Airbus A320 series/737 series, so if you get a ticket for an airline only flying the former, it's highly unlikely you'll get switched to a 737 (Max or otherwise). The exception is code sharing/wet leasing/airline alliances (e.g. you might get an Iberia plane when booked with British Airways).

One of the main change is that yhe max 10 required the design of a new telescopic landing gear so that it fits in the 737 fuselage. https://simpleflying.com/boeing-737-max-10-extending-landing...

Ah great, then US carriers could use their ordered 737-MAX 10's to run all of those flights they keep cancelling lately. Silver lining folks!

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