Boeing Needs an Act of Congress or Something Worse to Get Max 7 and 10 Flying
crankyflier.com
crankyflier.com
That's just a normal company.
...because it's bad for money to break them. Money is still the motivation.
Honestly, if you aren't part of the aviation industry in some professional capacity, I don't think you're entitled to an opinion on this.
Boeing: "the Next Hundred Years".
That ship has largely already sailed after the 737 Max crashes.
"You don't share my opinion, [and you lack credentials,] so kindly don't speak" is becoming an increasingly common debate stratagem.
It would be so much gentler if it were phrased as, "Industry professionals have spent a lot of time thinking about this. I'm not sure your conclusions capture the complexities and nuances of the situation, but I understand your points".
"Also, lawmakers, ensure the aviation experts fix this."
"Having regard to our advisors, we, the US lawmakers, have concluded that one criterion according to which aviation experts should judge their fix is that planes should have a doobywhacky in them, because aviation experts have assured us that a doobywhacky is important. But we will give them two years to get their plane certified without the doobywhacky on a legacy basis, since it seems like a good faith effort should be able to get legacy planes certified within two years."
"Aviation experts at Boeing, we, the aviation experts at the FAA would like to know some information about your planes."
"Aviation experts at Boeing, we, the aviation experts at the FAA need to know some information about your planes; what you have said is not good enough and you've left many questions unanswered."
"Oh, hi, US lawmaker, we, the lobbyists at Boeing thought you might like to know how bad it would be for you if the law isn't changed, yeah, we know everyone thought a good faith effort should be able to get legacy planes certified within two years, but you know how complicated planes can be."
And at this point, I think there are two possible replies: "Everyone believed it should have been possible, and there are clearly problems at Boeing's end, so they need to wear their mistakes; it's not like they're left with nothing and it's widely agreed that 737 MAX represents an end-of-line design so the cost is not excessive" or "The two years was written into the law to get these particular models out without conforming to the law; if they can be approved under the strictest application of the old rules, does it hurt if the approval is made just before the two year deadline, or just after it? In either case, it's flying according to the legacy certification. So we'll just extend the period a little."
I certainly think a case can be built either way, but knowledge of aviation is really only a minor part of the decision making process facing lawmakers right now.
If retraining those pilots, mechanics, and other support personnel are required, then why not do it? Sure, it will be expensive, but if the costs are human lives, c'est la vie.
Unless the proposal is to only use the aircraft for flying cargo, this is absolute nonsense.
As soon as the public is allowed to board the aircraft for regular flights, then *OF COURSE* the public is entitled to an opinion about how safe aircraft should be. To even suggest otherwise is, frankly, nonsense.
The 737max should either be scrapped or limited to cargo only (at best).
But money is the motivator here and the MAX is starting to look like a loss leader. Big question here: what will southwest do if the MAX requires a new certification by pilots? Stick with Boeing (meaning Boeing pays for this mistake) or flip entirely to airbus (and Boeing loses a major customer)
If you truly work in aviation, then you should consider finding another career. Our industry needs less people with your type of thinking.
The amount of people who have to have went "this doesn't seem too important, I don't need to check this" is unfathomable. That such an error was not caught speaks of a deep rot in the entire organization, from management down to the guys writing the software.
But please, keep opining.
But this is never an excuse even if this software had been delivered from a contractor it is the duty of Boeing to write specific requirements and to test them, while making sure that the requirements cover all forseeable eventualities.
This isn't frontend development. You do not just ship software some third party wrote for you.
Sometimes individuals or teams will, with herculean effort, do a clever thing here or there, but by and large Boeing leadership has created an environment that's actively hostile to innovation. I've never seen an incompetent person fired, not once. It's always the superstars and the go getters.
Occasionally they buy some company, exhaust its goodwill, then zombify it with dead-eyed MBAs as a meaningless "Center of Excellence". It's such efficient value destruction they should figure out a way to pack it into a JDAM.
While the requirements for the MAX were largely defined by Southwest Airlines, Boeing's sales targets for the plane focused largely in developing ecosystems, i.e. airlines in Southeast Asia or Africa.
It's not logical nor practical to think that pilots in developing countries should meet the training norms in the US. Developing countries don't have air forces or general aviation ecosystems anything close to the size and scale of the US.
If you are going to develop a plane to sell in a certain market, the plane must be able to accommodate the needs of the market. This is why automation and fly-by-wire is the way to go. It's also why the future will be further automation, up to and including autonomous flight.
Assuming you didn't want to just scrap or major-refit the planes entirely, presumably the right answer was to back away from the "We'll make it the same type rating." Then you can probably discard the MCAS system, which regardless of its technical merits is a hopelessly damaged brand.
I get that there was some financial penalty attached to that strategy, but I have to imagine they long ago sailed past that cost in settlements, reputational damage, and cancelled orders.
It's not like this is going to buy back their reputation either. People don't want to see legal loopholes and "here's a patch fix you can bolt on the side and it really fixes it, we're sure, honest, trust us." They want some obvious and grand gesture to help restore trust, like "we're ripping out the Fly Into The Ocean mechanism and retraining every pilot that walks within three kilometres of these planes at our own colossal expense."
Of course, my opinion of Boeing has been undermined since mid-Pandemic; they have a factory nearby and every day there was a huge cluster of employees protesting the vaccination mandates. At this point, I'd feel more confident in an Tupolev product.
Someone deep in the bowels of Boeing is running the numbers, I assure you - and right now the cheapest option is "get the FAA to let them run without this thing" but once that window closes the next cheapest may be "add the thing" or it may be "negotiate with the airlines with purchase orders to do something" which could include offering to up-train pilots on type, paying cancellation fees, who knows.
And as long as the first option is open, they'll argue that it's the only possible option.
Also I still don't understand why the executive board of Boeing aren't in jail (I mean I "know", in the sense that they're rich and so the laws don't apply to them, I just don't understand why that still works even in such blatant cases of deliberate mass murder)
If MCAS only activates in very rare scenarios, then why have it at all? And if it's necessary in these scenarios, how safe is the aircraft if it's disabled?
The entire 737 series is already comprised of retractable gear aircraft.
TL;DR that adds engineering complexity and/or would trigger redesigns of other components. The MAX 8 was supposed to be an economical refresh - a stopgap until the Y1/"New Midsize Airplane" was ready. (The sales/economic failure of the Y1 "787 Dreamliner" means the Y1 project is paused while Boeing waits for next generation technology to become available. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Yellowstone_Project )
The A350 employs the same technology and is an economic success.
https://s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/ziggyworks/coolstuff/Boei...
it does nothing however to ameliorate the fact that most of the original 737 buyers who were grounded have moved on to Airbus or variant Boeings with a less haunted track record.
Irrespective of Boeing’s egregious safety lapses? I think not.
Every 737 flying today, including the two already-certified MAX variants, does not have EICAS. If it's such a massive safety concern, then why are they still allowed to fly? Of course, it's not a massive safety concern. EICAS is great, and requiring it in future aircraft is a good thing, but aircraft without it are still safe.
The additional two years given from the law passing until the requirement would go into effect were basically to allow the MAX 7 and 10 to be certified without EICAS. And in all practical likelihood, Congress will give Boeing an extension to allow them to be certified without EICAS in 2023. There's really no reason not to, aside from "fuck Boeing."