Boeing wants FAA to exempt MAX 7 from safety rules to get it in the air
seattletimes.com
seattletimes.com
> If they fail to do so, the system can quickly overheat the carbon composite material and damage the structural integrity of the engine pod.
> The problem is there’s no alert or indication to the crew that the system needs to be turned off. They just have to remember to do it.
> If they forget, or are distracted by other tasks, the overheating can begin to damage the structure after just five minutes.
This is all you need to know to pass judgement on Boeing Management. Whatever happened to Boeing's "Engineering Excellence" ?
Suits.
McDonnell Douglas happened [1].
More details are in the book "Flying Blind" [2]. It shows how Boeing's culture of Engineering Excellence was gradually replaced with MD's rotten parasitic culture through the process that is better described as "reverse acquisition". Formally Boeing acquired MD, but in reality MD took over Boeing.
[2] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/646497/flying-blind...
“Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course over-estimated since it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favour. Take that man I had aloft. He held on as if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds or rubies. To you? No. To me? Not at all. To himself? Yes. But I do not accept his estimate. He sadly overrates himself. There is plenty more life demanding to be born. Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world. He was worth nothing to the world. The supply is too large. To himself only was he of value, and to show how fictitious even this value was, being dead he is unconscious that he has lost himself. He alone rated himself beyond diamonds and rubies. Diamonds and rubies are gone, spread out on the deck to be washed away by a bucket of sea-water, and he does not even know that the diamonds and rubies are gone. He does not lose anything, for with the loss of himself he loses the knowledge of loss. Don’t you see? And what have you to say?”
MBAs took over, that's what happened. A story as old as capitalism.
It seems Boeing is now set on destroying all reputation and goodwill earned over decades and by extension making American Technology and Management a laughing stock in the World.
Management by accounting ... cost of paying death settlement is cheaper than building a proper airplane.
And they have the temerity to call those societies which still practice "Blood Money restitution" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_money_(restitution)) as "savage, backward and uncivilized".
I've heard Boeing folks suggest that the 1997 acquisition of McDonell-Douglas (who was having serious financial difficulties at the time) ironically resulted in the latter's MBA-heavy management taking over Boeing leadership. The result has been a less profitable company with a now poor and getting worse safety record: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing...
For those who still do not understand what unchained captialism looks like. This is a taste of it. The phrase "the market will correct itself" may be true eventually but ignores the hundreds of people that have die before that happens.
Also the airline industry as a whole also has a stellar safety record, Boeing's issues notwithstanding.
That's not to say that your core thesis is necessarily wrong, but airline manufacturers aren't a great vehicle to argue that point.
Like Volkswagen Dieselgate Like Samsung Exploding Phones Like CPU Branch Prediction Idiocy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectre_(security_vulnerabilit...
They had to patch "micro code" to turn off the branch prediction in order to fix the security issues, which if they hadn't had that basically a ton of institutions would have been SOL (think banks unable to patch security holes in their computer systems - bodes poorly if you also realize banks aren't usually able to patch their systems overnight).
Also yes, branch prediction is "a good thing" without which processors wouldn't be able to reach the performance they have today. Starving the whole instructing pipeline at every branch for dozens of cycles is not great.
Even the processor on the BCM2835 used in the first raspberry PI had branch prediction, and for good reason.
Slow-downs of up to at least 30% did in fact occur (with the older hardware): https://www.techradar.com/news/more-details-emerge-on-how-mu...
As for assuming access and tricking into execution of what you wanted, branching forms the foundation for many if not all OS level security features, in the form of boolean flags, bits behind protected memory (protected by more branching), etc. If the result of a compare causes code to execute that should not (for security reasons), then you have caused execution of what you wanted, which can lead to exposure of e.g. operating system secrets. And with such access it then becomes (sometimes) possible to executing more of what you wanted.
I.e. trusted code could be used to cause insecure results.
Oversimplification, sure, but the truth (exposure of register results due to fault of the hardware) is overly technical and under-emphasizes the severity of the issue, so it is somewhat intentionally misleading...
- Today - "Alaska Airlines grounds Boeing 737 Max 9 planes after mid-air window blowout" (47 comments, so far): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38889774
Considering the MCAS[0] failures were largely software defects in an autonomous system, seems plausible to me...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maneuvering_Characteristics_Au...
What are you talking about?
What Tesla markets and sells falls into SAE Autonomous Ground Vehicle classifications, just not level 5.
Nothing I wrote spoke to anything Tesla sells being L5 (or any particular level at all).
Edit: On the topic of MCAS, it strikes me as a system akin to around an SAE L2/L3, overriding pilot inputs to prevent a perceived crash/stall risk. This AIUI is well within the autonomy space Teslas operate...
In this case I don't see how you could make the same argument, clearly the new planes were not safer than the old ones or they wouldn't have been grounded.
I can anticipate and avoid a drunk driver in many situations. I’d never expect that behavior out of any human driver.
Just to add to the conversation a bit more: Humans give away their intentions in more ways than turn signals, as a human you subconsciously know what the other is trying to do, just by watching. It's difficult to explain, and you gotta have driven a car to understand.
These self-driving vehicles aren't even close to mimicking that aspect. Leading us, humans on the road, a bit more clueless on what's going on.
People will slam on the brakes when they see an animal run out on the road. It's generally considered better driving practice to not do that, as you risk rear end collisions, but that behaviour from humans does exist.
That said, my current MG4 is just as bad with emergency lane-keeping, but with the added entertainment of it being on by default and needing to be disabled on every trip. Level 5 self-driving won't happen for decades.
I'm glad you're safe, and honestly you were set up to fail (hence the GP's point). Thank you for taking the responsible choice and not putting yourself in the same dangerous situation again.
I haven't driven a Tesla, although I've been in an uber where the guy used FSD and it didn't do anything crazy. I don't think anecdotes on the internet are going to settle this, an independent body needs to work with insurers etc. to track statistics to determine which driver assistance features are helping and which are hurting.
Except that they never provided hard data to support this argument.
Until they do that I'll consider it the usual Tesla marketing lies and bullshit.
I fear that wouldn't matter, because they could end up working (indirectly) for stockholders that find that dollar-to-lives tradeoff desireable.
I would hope that is also taught in management schools, as they appear to be the ones making these decisions.
Boeing is not an engineering culture, it is an MBA culture. This is the result.
It is clear, by deadly example, that Boeing *management* is not capable of running a company that produces a safe plane. It is, after all, difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
All the engineering ethics in the world does nothing against the greed of Boeing's management.
The value of a company's equity is based on the net present value of future returns. That means that while short term earnings are important, so are earnings in the moderately distant future. (depending on risk free interest rates)
If a company like Boeing were properly managed, they'd give suitable priority to engineering excellence, at least to the point of not having critical failures like these, because that's core to their ability to compete with Airbus/etc in the future.
The real issue you're concerned about is that it is very difficult to align the interests of corporate managers with the interests of the company. It is relatively easy to align senior management with short term stock prices, but it is difficult for the public to figure out that the gains they see (less engineering cost, faster turnaround time, etc) come at the expense of the longer term viability of the company, so the former gets priced into the short term stock price (and so executive compensation) and the latter does not.
Sure managers are guilty.
But managers did not write the code. "Engineers" did.
As long as there are engineers writing that code (also see VW and #Dieselgate) there will be managers who do this. Engineers need to take a stand and don't do everything. Like professionals. "He made me do it" is not an excuse for hundreds of dead people.
See the Challenger disaster for a high profile example.
If I don't rob the bank, someone else will!
Yes, and then the other engineer is responsible for the dead people, not you. But if your job is more important than other peoples lifes, I guess, yes, you do as you have been told.
Or maybe we stop people from trying to force others to rob banks. Nip the problem in the bud.
Why do you want to let managers get away with toxic behavior and then blame the subordinates?
You: "Why do you want to let managers get away with toxic behavior."
I have UBI.
All free people have the authority to refuse their manager's orders.
But people like money.
The MBA program should include more ethics courses and perhaps an adapted version of the Hippocratic Oath.
--> MBA Oath : https://mbaoath.org/
Boeing management --and their flat-out inability to out-innovate the competition at cost-- are the real reason behind the push to certify at all cost.
Comac C919 - First flight: 2017, introduced 2023, number built: 10 (3 in service?)
Sukhoi Superjet 100 - First flight: 2008, introduced 2011, number built: 229
Boeing 737 MAX - First flight: 2016, introduced 2017, number built: 1,376
Airbus A320 NEO - First flight: 2014, introduced 2016, number built: 3,092
They're not even in the same ballpark. It'll take Comac decades to make those inroads and Sukhoi is done for.
[1] https://asiatimes.com/2023/09/russia-defies-sanctions-with-h...
Considering that Russian engineering culture is even worse than that of Boeing (and probably massively so) it’s unlikely that they can ever be competitive if that’s the main issue
The C919 is a decent plane, but by most accounts a decade behind in tech and efficiency. And for short-haul operations, efficiency is the most important thing.
The only real competitor to Boeing today is Airbus. Comac can be one 10-20 years down the line.
FAA approval is only a slam-dunk because it is recognized internationally as a steward of quality and reliability. By asking the FAA to start certifying sub-par planes, Boeing will not only destroy their own brand but will bring the FAA down with them.
Guys from Boeing, here's a free piece of advice: don't. Just don't.
Today I learned that my refrigerator has a more complex anti-icing control that the engine inlet on the 737 Max (by virtue of having a $10 snap switch in the circuit).
The first almost is reasonable, the second is kinda batshit.
>Boeing would have until mid-2026 to design, test and certify a permanent fix for the engine anti-ice system defect that would then be retrofitted to all MAXs.
Or Boeing can keep the planes grounded, fix the problems, and recertify later.
Airplanes are not the latest video game: we try to avoid a bunch of downloadable software patches required for a brand-new airplane (just as I think should be the case for video games, too).
Also... continuing to have a 737 rating for decades, all in the interest of saving pilot retraining hours and making it cheaper for airlines to purchase these new aircraft, is partially why we're in this problem in the first place. Boeing needs to suck it up and truly claim a new airplane is, well, new, and requires new training.
The first would be reasonable if there were hundreds of such planes already flying and grounding them would result in huge disruptions. But this plane is not yet certified. How can you go to the FAA with a half-baked product and tell them that you'll get it right eventually? Considering the whole MAX history?
That's the beauty of it, Boeing until recently certified themselves, with minimal FAA oversight. It's precisely because of the MCAS fiasco that there is actual scrutiny from the FAA, and much more importantly, from the actually competent people at EASA that will actually check things instead of trusting Boeing's bullshit. Note that this is actually unprecedented, normally air authorities trust each other, but FAA dropped the ball so bad with Boeing that EASA had to step in and insert itself into the process and stop automatically assuming the FAA did it's job.
Seems like a valid technical solution but a human-factors nightmare. Boeing needs to read the room.
fall off I heard that before.
[Senator Collins:] Well, I’m not saying it wasn’t safe, it’s just perhaps not quite as safe as some of the other ones.
[Interviewer:] Why?
[Senator Collins:] Well, some of them are built so the front doesn’t fall off at all.
I did it on Twitter tho: https://twitter.com/chx/status/1743343104906686673
"The aircraft is a 737 Max 9 and received its certificate of airworthiness on October 25, 2023."
The fact that this issue is present in the existing 737 Max variants, and none appear to have actually experienced a structural failure, suggests the probability is low.
It is easy for a bunch of keyboard warriors here on HN to insist that only zero risk is acceptable. In the real world, everything is a continuum and without knowing quantifiably where on the risk continuum this issue is, any discussion is meaningless.
There are ~100 000 flights per day worldwide. I'd say the conditions described occur all the time
In a large enough dataset and given enough time, a meteor will eventually hit a plane in-flight and destroy it. Should regulation require the airplanes carry anti-meteor armor?
Your qualitative judgement that these conditions described occur all the time actually suggests it's not a big deal, because the currently-flying Max 8 and Max 9 variants have the same issue, and none have experienced a structural failure.
The scenario here is that, if the pilots forget to turn off anti-ice, the nacelle will eventually overheat, weaken, and possibly fail. But clearly that is not guaranteed to happen, or happen immediately. What I'm saying is that actual decision-making here depends on what the statistics of this possible failure actually are, given that the pilots forget to turn off the anti-ice.
You can start with statistics of icing/de-icing a plane vs. statistics of meteors hitting a plane.
Low probabilty is much too high for this domain, of course. The question is, how low?
In airplane design, almost all catastrophic failures happen only the first time.
Presumably you meant airliners specifically?
Piston engines sometimes stop unexpectedly. This happens in general aviation, and sadly it quite often results in a fatal crash.
If you ban piston engines and only allow turbine engines (which are much less prone to unexpectedly stopping), you effectively kill general aviation.
The fact that the space shuttle flew 60 times without SRB o-rings being a problem suggests that the probability of their failure was also low.
> "it cannot be shown that the EAI [Engine Anti-Ice] system meets the probability requirements applicable to this regulation."
In my understanding, Boeing is asking for to be excluded from the risk assessment entirely. They know there is a possibility that the structure could be weakened enough to fail during normal flight.
> "the nacelle inlet structural temperatures during EAI operation may cause the inner barrel to lose sufficient strength such that capability to carry limit and ultimate loads may not be maintained."
> "analysis and engineering flight testing showed there is a potential for structural damage."
Their entire justification for why the risk is acceptable is that no one has had parts fly off yet and surely pilots will follow the flight rules to turn off the deicer:
> "737 MAX has been in service since 2017 and has accumulated over 6.5 million flight hours. In that time, there have been no reported cases of parts departing aircraft (PDA) due to overheating of the engine nacelle inlet structure".
> "Operators [Pilots] must adhere to the mandatory AD [Airworthiness Directive], mitigating the potentially unsafe condition."
Oh, and they petition relief from some of the human factors requirements as well. Which indicates they don't want to be judged based on the probability that pilots will not turn off the EAI.
That's your rationale?
Have we forgotten when NASA management discounted concerns about O-rings in part because one hadn't catastrophically failed yet? (Until Challenger)
I initially thought she was overreacting but based on what I’m seeing from Boeing here I have to thank her for her diligence.
The root cause was human factors.
Boeing 737: 149 accidents
Boeing 747: 49 accidents
Airbus A300: 33 accidents
Airbus A320: 28 accidents
Boeing 737 NG / Max: 27 accidents
Edit for context (thanks /u/janice1999) there are 11,182 Airbus A320s and ~8400 Boeing 737 NG / Max so even pro rated Boeings recent planes are worse and the A320 has been out a few years longer too.
edit:
I found some and put it into a Sheet for convenience of sort-ability.
As far as raw accident per flight data, only Concorde is worse than the Max series. Wow.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FTq3PwQMb83dnNtxwZoY...
Stunning.
Alaska Airlines Flight 1282
The 737 MAX was an unsafe design which Boeing was aware of and failed to address.
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/a-matter-of-millimeters-...
Airbus’s flight controls worked sufficiently well that the pilots could still keep the plane in the air and then land it successfully despite the massive damage to the plane.
Airliner crashes always make the news, so many casual observers overestimate their frequency by orders of magnitude. The statistics remain clear as day: airliner crashes are incredibly rare. They're incomparably rarer than road traffic accidents, for instance. Most years, no US airlines have any fatal crashes.
I recommend this YouTube video as a general overview of aviation safety. It's about the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash, but also covers airliner safety and big-picture aviation safety.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpGl2_fVr2Y (Kobe Bryant Crash-- Risk by the Numbers)
"The aircraft is a 737 Max 9 and received its certificate of airworthiness on October 25, 2023."
I moved on, and I'm glad I did. Boeing sucks. I feel like I dodged a bullet.
What does that mean? Like you sent in a new application every other day?
Why would you re-apply after getting rejected? Don't you need to get more experience on your resume?
Job rejections virtually never get explanations. Even if you've interviewed in person, it's extremely unlikely. That's just how it is. Nothing specific to Boeing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSeries_dumping_petition_by_...
the point is to make tests not fail. you can’t fail the test you don’t take.
the logic is completely sound. it’s just also removed from reality. which might make it seem a bit mad.
I also think it's important to recognize no one commenting in the article has seen the analysis, knows what is meant by "structural damage" or what went into Boeing saying a failure resulting from it is "extremely improbable". Could be it's a solid analysis, the structural damage they mention is no where approaching a concern, and they think it's extremely improbable for good reason. Or not, I just don't think we know.
That being said, it is hard for me to look at this as something other than another example of poor company culture. You have a component that can be damaged when exposed to temperatures above a certain limit, for a certain length of time, connected to a heater that can heat it above that limit for longer than that time... And no systems to stop this?
This strikes me as being due to someone without an engineering degree saying "We've always used this heating system, there's no need to go through an in depth new analysis or testing regime to validate it's use, that would cost lots of money!".
Yeah, I'm not sure I'd trust Boeing's judgement on the probability of catastrophic events at this point...
> In 1963, under Welch’s management of the facility, an explosion at a factory blew off the roof, and he was almost fired for that episode.
Checks out
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/02/books/review/the-man-who-...
That's a very bad example. Boeing failed with the 2707 supersonic transporter because federal funding was cut, and assuming that they'll be left behind by the obvious future of supersonic passenger transportation with the Concorde and the Tu-144, decided to make a plane filling other niches that were going to be left. Like cargo, which wasn't going to need the speed, but needed capacity. The 747 was a dual use cargo and passenger design.
Welchian management is just another spin on the old "restaurant fire" mafia scheme: bank up debt on assets before selling the plumbing and torching the place. Like the mob, it makes a handful of cash for some random top guy, and absolutely wrecks everything else, forever.
It's hard to not take stories like this personally, having spent time inside the Boeing mothership. The power of this organization to destroy value rivals that of a small-ish military occupation; the ability of Boeing to do anything meaningful in an engineering context is pretty obviously at an end[1]. It's a testament to past cleverness - and to the knowledge and dedication of line workers, maintenance, and aircrew - that any legacy Boeing product ever works, at all, ever. And that's why we're now fixing deficiencies like this in goddamn flight checklists. Because it's all that's left.
[1] Whatever innovation leaks from the company today is wholly from acquisitions, and those always have all cash choked from their lifeless corpses within five or ten years. Even DoD procurement has put a big red flag on the Boeing RFPs that come in, although that's also related to their increasing inability to estimate costs better than RANDINT.
When MCAS led to crashes, they dialled it back, increasing the power of the pilot relative to the computer. That's not a solve. In either case, the aircraft has an additional point of failure that properly designed aeroplanes do not have.
The 788 is great but the 787 MAX, not so much.
Needless to say this new story does not inspire further confidence.
> Boeing wants FAA to exempt MAX 7 from safety rules to get it in the air
I bet they do and the FAA should rightly tell them to fuck off if they're not willing to go through the formal procedure to get their proven-dangerous planes back into commercial aviation.
Did Toyota change their safety culture as a result?
Hah… no.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_unintended_acceleration...
The code quality can be best described as criminally negligent, unsafe, spaghetti garbage with incorrect concurrency sprinkled on top for laughs.
2. In my car, if I step gently on both pedals, they both take effect. (Which is reasonable: starting uphill is a thing.). If I step harder on both pedals, the car chimes at me and the motor output is reduced automatically.
If this event occurs within 10 years of launch he:
* forfeits 10x the compensation he received from boeing including capital gains to the families
* spends 3-5 years in prison for wrongful death
Let's see how confident he is when he has skin in the game
Calhoun makes the decision, reaps the profits regardless of outcome. If things go wrong boeing pays (maybe) and hundreds of people die
"Boeing said..." Why bother asking proven liars anything?
> If it's Boeing, I ain't going.
[1] https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/23039-if-it-aint-boeing-i...
Switching from one airplane to another isn't like switching from a Honda to a Toyota car. It requires lots of training and thus cost.
Southwest as the prim example has many 100s of pilots trained on a 737, they have a huge maintenance network that is trained for the 737. They don't fly any Airbus at all, thus they have 0 experience in their whole operation.
Switching would a monumental task. It was reported that Southwest took a serious look at A220 program, but has since doubled down on 737 for the next couple decades.
Many airlines have switched to higher amounts of Airbus and Airbus has made inroads into the US market. But partly now Airbus has so many orders for 737 Max sized planes that if you order one, your gone have to wait for a long time. So, maybe you still rather get that 737MAX instead.
For a while the market was more like 50/50, now we are trending towards a 40/60 market, or potentially even more. And that doesn't take into account that Boeing lowering prices quite to get some of these contracts.
And partly due to the bombing of Gaza aided by Boeing JDAM systems, I guess.
Shareholders need to suck it up, and Boeing needs to start with a clean sheet of paper and design airplanes the same way their parents did. Enough coasting on re-engines.
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/faa-grounds-some-boei...
Which is terrifying...
https://www.google.com/finance/quote/BA:NYSE?sa=X&ved=2ahUKE...
Pilots are not machines, and can't be expected to have a 0% error rate.
Otherwise stand by for:
- "You don't really NEED that much fuel reserve, it's expensive."
- "You can fly with one of those redundant components failed, stop whining."
- "You don't NEED those inconvenient crew rest requirements. Stop whining, pound some coffee, and fly tired."
- "We don't NEED to do all this expensive maintenance."
- "We don't NEED all these expensive boomer pilots with 10,000 hours of experience and combat time over Vietnam/Iraq/Afghanistan. Fire them, hire the rookie from the regionals, and pay them $50,000 a year. Pilots are just bus drivers anyway."
Genuinely curious: what aspect of flying an F18 in a hostile environment with a goal of destroying things while trying to stay alive is useful for flying a 400-passenger airliner? You might say "well, the trying-to-stay-alive portion is relevant", but that involves things like high-g turns which airliners are not so good at, and ultimately ejecting is the final option, also not so good with 400 passengers on board. "It's a jet engine!" Ok? So? Does that mean I can't drive an EV if I qualified on gasoline? Does that mean I am qualified to drive an 18 wheeler because I've previously driven a Ferrari? (No, it does not).
It seems to me that F18 flight hours contributing towards Boeing 787 pilot certification is a jobs program for military pilots. Not saying that's not a good idea: we need (for now) a strong human air force.
Unlikely that they will panic and become completely incompetent when something goes wrong.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/extreme-fear/201112/...
"In the case of Air France 447, it appears that Bonin, in his panic, completely forgot one of the most basic tenets of flight training: when at risk of a stall, never pull back on the controls. Instead, he held back the controls, in a kind of panicked death-grip, all the way down to the ocean. Ironically, if he had simply taken his hands away, the plane would have regained speed and started flying again."
"He went on to join the RAAF at age 17 in 1975. During his first training flight the instructor did not stop him from putting the plane into a downward spiral, after which he left de Crespigny to stop the plane from plummeting to the ground alone. The incident left him terrified but heightened his awareness of the dangers of complacency and human error in flight."
This team of pilots was able to bring back the largest passenger plane in the world back to a safe landing even after an engine effectively exploded and punctured the wing, fuel tanks, and fly-by-wire electronics.
So I am thinking that the next time I am on a plane, I hope the pilot has military training.
To correct your analogy, a career professional Formula One, IndyCar, or NASCAR driver would absolutely have a MUCH greater chance at adapting to driving an 18-wheeler than your average Joe, because they understand things like friction, turning and braking performances of different vehicles, and the visual, tactile, and auditory signs that a vehicle is or isn't being pushed to its limits. Sure, they would have to learn the finer points of driving such a massive vehicle, but they're starting off with advanced driving knowledge most don't have.
The average military jet pilot can perform the routine tasks of an airline pilot, and also handle inflight emergencies, by the time that they're a twentysomething flight student who hasn't even earned their wings yet. I know because I once was one.
They spend the rest of their career layering skills on top of that concerning how to fly in combat and employ their weapons system tactically AFTER they've already proven they can fly from point A to point B and handle inflight emergencies. What airline pilots do for a living is bare-minimum table stakes for what tactical aviators do. The appeal of the airlines isn't a more challenging job; it's not having to deploy away from your family and do dangerous things anymore combined with a union paycheck.
I'm open to evidence of their regulations being substantially driven by airline unions, but I've never heard of this.
edit I think I just found exactly that. From page 23 of this 2014 MSc thesis [0]
> Airline labor unions have fought to increase on the job safety for their members through litigation, supporting regulations, and member education. Labor unions were instrumentals in pushing for the adoption of safety measures such as TCAS and the anti-fatigue rest rules of FAR117.
[0] https://commons.und.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1398&con...
If you enjoy your weekends and are equally grateful kids don't work 12 hour days, and someone didn't die at work today, perhaps you could get off the fence.
Why the triangle shirtwaist factory fire isn't enough to encourage people to like unions, I'll never know:
> Because the doors to the stairwells and exits were locked[1][8] – a common practice at the time to prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks and to reduce theft[9] – many of the workers could not escape from the burning building and jumped from the high windows.
link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi...
At first, they were really good to the users. Now they don’t care about the users, only care about the shareholders.
This is insane
What are the chances that even a very well trained and experienced major US airline crew would forget to turn of the engine anti-ice within 5 minutes of non-icing conditions? Greater than zero for sure.
The problem isn't knowing whether or not you're in possible icing conditions if you think to ask the question, but rather reliably remembering to evaluate it every single time you enter and exit possible icing conditions.
* SAT - static air temp (air temp before the ram rise).
It should be a caution light or something at least.
But ATPs don't have any trouble evaluating "am I in potential icing conditions?" as they've been doing it for one to many thousands of hours previously.
This kind of mistake has been made so often and lives have been paid that I find it crazy that it's still being proposed.
If it were just a temperature thing, you'd think it could be automated, but I don't think that's really the main thing they're dealing with here.
In theory this means switching the system off when you exit the clouds.
This is usually pretty noticeable, but maybe less so at night, since you might be breaking out into a pocket or a clear layer between other layers, without visibly seeing much of anything outside.
I would hesitate to comment on the feasibility of this beyond what the interviewed persons have said, precisely because they're not clarifying (to the readers in any case) what the actual thresholds here are. And the interviewees don't seem convinced that this is a reasonable/safe requirement.
But easy to forget to check the instrumentation.
>The device sounds a warning after 25 seconds of inactivity by an engineer. If the engineer fails to respond to the warning tone within 15 seconds, the system applies the brakes and stops the train.
https://www.newstimes.com/local/article/Alerter-system-preve...
Although on reflection, that undersells the level of stupidity being proposed here. The pilots need to not only respond to no prompt, but be actively monitoring a condition changing state so that they can then perform the unprompted action.
So, in all seriousness... by what algorithm are the pilots performing this assessment that is not something a computer can perform? How on Earth is it not cheaper and faster to add that to the system than petition a government agency for an exemption? What are all the computers on a plane even for other than monitoring state changes and performing actions in response? Even high-assurance, safety-critical coding should be able to outpace a Federal bureaucracy on something like this comfortably.
I've heard stories of cases where development orgs were given the option of changing a line of code or re designing the hardware. They of course redesigned the hardware.
If you are no longer capable of building safe planes, your next best option is to petition the government to accept unsafe planes.
If your company can't build safe planes, the real "next best option" is to fix your company.
Loss of market share. As in, customers actively looking at the type of aircraft when they book a ticket. Airplanes becoming reluctant to ordering Boeing.
At this time, every $1 you invest in making it known what Boeing does since 15 years, results in $2 or $3 of loss of market share for Boeing. Absolutely the time to buy ads to promote articles about Boeing.
I would actually trust Comac more than Boeing, as Comac has something to prove, whereas Boeing has been proven to crash planes and bribe the FAA.
In 2013 they received frames (the circular structures that make the fuselage) which instead of being machined, has been created manually. Voids were all in the wrong place because the workers had taken the blueprints symmetrically.
Did they ditch the frames? Of course not? They remade the cuts so that it fits upside down! And soldered the I-beam parts that had been cut! Result: The circular frames, which are a critical structural component, have twice as many gaps and holes and soldered sections than the designed piece.
Bulkheads, circular frames, MCAS… It’s appalling engineering practices.
And the dinner party system with FAA, introduced by Mac Donnell’s practices when it was bought over, has to stop. They should not be friends in real life.
Boeing's staff and plant are strategic assets, its executives and shareholders aren't. The US government could totally let harm come the latter group.
Ask yourself: would you take a position at Boeing trying to "fix the company"?
The only way out of this is to poach the few remaining employees that still have technical knowledge, setup a new company that refuses to employ everyone with a vested interest in Boeing, and take their market. This is hard for aerospace because of the sheer complexity of the product and the baseline quality levels needed to deliver a safe experience.
As an executive with guaranteed $xM in pay over a few years?
Sure — if I fail, I’ll just use that position as a stepping stone to my next executive role.
Why wouldn’t I take a shot at something positive, when there’s little to no downside?
This is why we have the world that we do.
I believe the board and executives would genuinely want me to fix it.
But it may nevertheless be impossible due to organizational mechanics, entrenched bureaucracy, short-sighted shareholders, etc.
I was just pointing out that it’s ridiculous to pretend nobody would want the job because it’s likely to fail when there’s only upside, for both yourself and the company. A literal win-win.
Implying there’s something negative in my comment because it’s easy to be cheaply cynical (and the cheap cynicism in the comment I originally replied to) is what’s actually wrong with the world — and why things are so bad.
Who gives up on something that only has upsides without even trying?
So here's the more detailed sincere response, based on experience working in a similar large, similarly dysfunctional technology company (and also knowing people who spent several years at Boeing specifically):
It is usually not possible for a chief executive to fix a company. The reason is simply sheer complexity. A company of 100,000 people has potentially 100,000! (factorial) different working relationships within it. In practice it's less because not everyone communicates with everybody else, but even a small department of 100 people has more different relationships than anyone can possibly keep track of. No one executive is going to know every single employee, every team, every project. And without them having those personal relationships, they don't have enough trust to convince people to alter their behavior.
If the company is in trouble in the first place, that means that the way they do business is no longer adapted to the marketplace. So you need to get the company to make changes. But if you root cause each individual problem, you find that the company is fractally fucked up. The employee is usually acting according to the incentives available to them; if they did things differently, they would fail to get the cooperation needed to accomplish their goals (at best) or lose their job (at worse). And that's the key part: in a big company, achieving any goal, regardless of how small, requires the cooperation of many different people. In a normal functioning company things mostly work because these habits of cooperation grew up in good times, working culture & processes adapted themselves to the activities that actually made the company money, and so when people just do their jobs good things basically result. But as the company grows and ages, it ossifies. Over time they want to do things like introduce a new jetliner, but find that the right combination of people with the right skillsets to do things like make engine nacelles that don't explode no longer exist.
This is why advice for turnaround CEOs is "get the wrong people off the bus and the right people on the bus". And they frequently hire outsiders, or folks from much earlier in the company's history. Their first task is to stabilize finances. Their next task is to identify the parts of the company that are still functional, then double down on them (often made harder because these folks were often laid off as part of stabilizing finances). Their next task is to sell off or lay off all the folks that are embedded in organizations that are no longer serving the company's purposes. Remember that there are > 100K employees, and you're building a product of exceptional engineering complexity, and that nobody knows everything the company is doing. It's pretty hard to have enough visibility into the company's product, engineering, supplier relationships, employee base, finances, etc. to do this correctly.
I think it's very likely that nobody currently at Boeing has the ability and willingness to make the kinds of changes they would need to make in order to become a functional company again, because Boeing has spent over two decades systematically purging senior engineers from management and leadership in order to become another crappy company full of empty suits with MBAs, who don't understand the product they're making, and don't care if they're literally killing people and the company is rotting out from under them as long as they can monetize the rot to make their quarterly numbers.
If the use fails the plane crashes.
Two very different problems.
This is very good.
The correct analogy would have been: if the driver did not press the button then the train accelerates until they do. Not good.
Over night most normal operations cease, so it's quiet on the bridge. But an officer is on duty to keep watch, because the ship is still moving, often relatively fast, and it needs a human to obey pre-existing route plan decisions, observe changing conditions, stay alert to other vessels and so on. However, the bridge (on a modern large ship) is warm and dark and at night tired humans in warm dark rooms will sleep.
So BNWAS will (if operating correctly) periodically need to be "nudged" to show that the officer on watch is awake and somewhat paying attention. If they do nothing for a while the BNWAS will alert them and if they ignore that it will eventually alarm critical crew, often the Master ("Captain") of the ship or other senior officers who are asleep in their cabins.
Now of course nobody wants to leave a nice dream to discover that instead of your teenage girlfriend agreeing to go on that picnic you never got to that sound is their boss, very angrily demanding to know what the fuck you're doing curled up by the radar console. So unfortunately sometimes after a serious incident (e.g. cargo ship has "decided" to wait right next to a small island a few miles from the usual route from 4am until midday, and then when it gets to a dock it seems very smashed up at the bottom as though it was grounded and had to wait until higher tides lifted it clear...) we find the BNWAS has been disabled crudely (it's not as though ship's crew tend to be IT experts)...
But this is a completely different scenario. The BNWAS is not something which causes a disaster if you forget to react, it's an alarm to prevent such disasters which would otherwise be commonplace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_navigational_watch_alar...
Instantly reminded me of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sifa
[1] Moral Crumple Zones: Cautionary Tales in Human-Robot Interaction by Madeline Clare Elish
Also note that blaming the human has been Tesla's strategy for avoiding responsibility on their software drive system failures.
Oh, you floored it while the car was pointed at the wall? It has cameras, why didn't the car disable the go pedal?
This is happening more and more with cars, and it seems inevitable that it will happen in other spaces as well, as software is expected to protect us from ourselves.
The latest Tesla features manual window wipers and if you don't use them right the car explodes.
1. Wait for people to report a problem 2. Inform users that they were doing it wrong, it was always intended for you to do it the other way
E.g. how to hold your iPhone.
Reference?
In its petition to the FAA, Boeing argues the breakup of the engine nacelle is “extremely improbable” and that an exemption will not reduce safety.
“The 737 MAX has been in service since 2017 and has accumulated over 6.5 million flight hours. In that time, there have been no reported cases of parts departing aircraft due to overheating of the engine nacelle inlet structure,” the filing states.
Read: happens at least twice a week
Wow, that's a great phrase. "No reported cases" is a serious weasel-phrase, and "parts departing aircraft" is much easier to take than "things falling off planes."
>I fly the MAX. That switch is left on all the time by accident. If it was a catastrophic issue we certainly would already know. https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/18z8mk6/737_max_d...
which I guess is reassuring in a way.
I think the one they went with was much better.
Slap a temperature sensor on/in/near the heater
Monitor current through the heater for temperature coefficient response
Capacitive sensing of ice on the heater
A timer that shuts off the heater after some time and a buzzer to alert the crew
You could even have a thermal fuse with a manual time-limited override
Honestly there's so many easy ways to prevent thermal runaway that creating a situation where THE ENGINE FALLS OFF is inexcusably negligent.
My space heater has no less than three independent, redundant safeties. As does my clothes iron, my coffee pot, my slow cooker. It really is not that complicated.
Matt Stoller wrote a compelling article asserting that the breakdown at Boeing resulted from the breakdown of the separation between their military and civilian divisions: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-coming-boeing-bailout
If you think about it, civilian standards must be way higher than military ones; you're talking about millions of people per year who can't bail out of a crashing plane.
MCAS is a reflection of their systems integration engineers not being the caliber and experience they need: it was obviously a defective design.
If they had done what they needed to do and designed a new plane from scratch, those people wouldn't be dead.
OR if they'd simply acknowledged the changed characteristics of the plane, struck deals with purchasers to subsidize training expenses, and let pilots fly it themselves... those people wouldn't be dead.
Boeing's recent behavior, as reported by this article, warrants further disgust and ought to be featured in the mainstream news.
And sensing icing on an inlet isn’t as simple as you make it out to be.
Maybe this is overly optimistic, but I'm confident they could figure out something if they wanted to.
(I hear from the rumor mill, something similar is happening at Google).
Edit: Also depending on altitude ambient temperature can vary over a range of several hundred degrees - it gets really really cold at 40,000ft.
The FAA approved a mitigation for an issue in MAX 8 and 9 planes. The MAX 7 has the same issue, so Boeing is asking for the same mitigation to be approved.
If the FAA thinks it’s acceptable for the 8 and 9, I don’t see why asking for the same for the 7 is bad.
On the other hand, if the FAA doesn’t think this is acceptable for the 7, then I don’t see why it would be acceptable for the 8 and 9.
Either it’s an acceptable mitigation and all 3 should play by the same rules, or it’s not and all MAXes should be grounded (FWIW, the mitigation seems ridiculous to me and I’m leaning towards the latter).
But it doesn’t take a genius to see that in this particular case, there is no evidence (at least none provided in the article, nor none that I’m aware of) that the 7 is different from the 8 or 9 in regards to how the engine icing system works (or doesn’t, in this case).
Boeing should fix their shit. Not melting the nacelle is a simple feedback loop. Humans shouldn't be running that loop.
If the plane’s issue is the exact same issue and the mitigation is the same mitigation that’s already been approved by the FAA as effective, yes, and this is currently how things work. See the MEL. If mitigation X is approved for situation Y, then it is approved for all situations of Y (within the same context). You don’t have to go to the FAA to get a new approval to take off every time Y happens, you just do X and you’re approved.
That's basically the argument Boeing is making. However, there is a counter argument that the FAA could make (though I don't know if they are): in order to limit the risk exposure now that this issue has been discovered, the same mitigation should not be allowed on any new variants not already in service, even though it is allowed for the ones already in service, because taking variants out of service is a much bigger deal than not allowing new ones into service.
But if that was the argument, then that would also mean that we shouldn’t allow any newly built 8s and 9s to enter service, and I don’t see that happening.
Yes, that's a fair point, although doing that would require some sort of modification of the existing certification of 8s and 9s, and I'm not sure how that would work. If those certifications were simply revoked, all 8s and 9s already in service would be grounded until the issue was fixed. But if they are simply left alone, new 8s and 9s can come into service since those variants are certified. An Airworthiness Directive, which is what is currently issued by the FAA for 8s and 9s, by itself doesn't prevent new units from coming into service.
Why not? As you appear to agree, it's the same problem for all of them, and the problem is a simple one that should never have reached this point in the first place. So all of them should be held to the same standard. If that means not certifying the 7, it should also mean revoking the certification of the 8 and 9 until the issue is fixed.
> Boeing should fix their shit.
Indeed. And since the same shit is on Max 8 and 9, they should fix those too now that the shit has been discovered, and be held to the same standard for all. I don't understand why you aren't arguing for that.
Or they misunderstood your comment, or they skimmed it badly, or you wrote it badly.
Either the mitigation is acceptable to make the plane safe to fly, or it’s not. “Well this one already existed before we knew about the issue, whereas this one is new” doesn’t actually change the risk calculus nor the effectiveness of the mitigation.
And exception is a deviance that must be tracked and taken care of adding mental load to the list of things a pilot has to do.
The normalization is pushing this deviance into a new system that isn't complete and therefore has no refit requirement over a large base of aircraft.
The MAX8 does not have a fix, it has a complicated checklist of workarounds for dynamic behaviors that should be automated.
Then the next level of failure you're inducing is that ' 8 = 7 '.
The combined systems of the MAX8 are not and do not equal the combined systems of the MAX7. You have re-asses the mitigation on every airframe that differs or you end up with a field of people splattered everywhere. If Boeing actually does the reassessment as they should, it will be about as intensive as actually removing the issue and reducing the workload of the pilot in the first place.
That's why a lot of people are pissy about this, as Boeing is trying to say they did it once and that work transfers to a new system perfectly. Didn't work so well with the other MAX8's that splattered themselves.
Even if you disagree with this mitigation, every time a new MAX 8 rolls off the production line and enters service, the problem grows larger. Why is this okay, but not with the same for a MAX 7?
Again: either the mitigation is effective enough for MAX variants, or it’s not. I see no reason the two variants should be treated differently here.
[edit- the fact boeing can extort congress is scary]
No it is not. Here, you are doing just the normalization of deviance I'm talking about.
An airplane is parts, and an airplane is a system. Just because you use part X in system 1 doesn't mean a mitigation strategy for part X works the same in system 2. For example system 2 (or the MAX 7 in this case) could also have an addition dysfunction in cold weather that by itself is low risk, but when coupled with this procedure now represent a significantly higher risk of loss of aircraft event.
This is the the kind of problem that shows up in new/changed systems when accepting risk from previous systems at their previously measured outcomes.
The FAA has many, many safety rules, but which ones apply to a particular situation depend on a number of factors. For example, if you're flying by yourself in a small airplane, you don't even need a pilot's license! (solo student)
In the world of aircraft certification, on one end you have experimental aircraft that untrained people designed and built and may be extremely dangerous. The FAA is relatively hands-off on this as long as you put EXPERIMENTAL in big letters on the side and don't charge anyone for a ride. When you start to get into heavier, faster planes, like people who buy MiGs, there are rules about where they can operate that are intended to protect the public on the ground, but not the pilots/passengers. On the other hand, a new Boeing commercial jet is subject to intense scrutiny in almost every aspect. Obviously you see an enormous difference in accident rates between commercial airliners and experimental homebuilts.
One other dimension of this is grandfathering. Once a design is set, can be very expensive to change it. You might like the 737 to have better redundancy in its hydraulic system, and if Boeing ever designs a replacement for it, they will have to put that in. However, if every regulation the FAA made applied to existing designs, either the FAA would have to keep the new regulations to an absolute minimum, which would harm safety going forward, or Boeing would have to redesign their planes every year, or maybe even send all of the old planes to the scrapyard!
This is not economically feasible, so the FAA only grounds aircraft for very serious safety issues. Parts are allowed to have tolerances in service that they aren't allowed to coming off the production line. Similarly, old design aircraft are allowed to have features that a new design aircraft wouldn't.
What this allows the FAA to do though is to improve safety incrementally as new designs are created. Since it's so much cheaper to put in a new feature in a new design, it's economically feasible to provide safety for progressively more unlikely failure scenarios for these aircraft. Gradually, the old aircraft are retired, and safety gets progressively better.
The 737MAX notwithstanding (and you could make a strong argument that Boeing abused the grandfathering rules with that aircraft), the progressive and dramatic improvements in airline safety over the past 100 years is a testament to the wisdom of this approach.
Except the type certificate issued by the FAA for a given aircraft is by definition the FAA saying that the type meets all applicable standards and is safe to fly. So is the granting of exceptions to any applicable requirements.
The FAA doesn’t say “eh maybe, it’s a judgement call” to an aircraft manufacturer when telling them whether or not the plane can board passengers. They may include various factors, probabilities, and judgement calls in their own determination of if the type gets certified or not, but ultimately there _is_ a determination made: either it can fly in a given context, or it cannot.
If the argument is “we learn and get better over time, and just because we approved something yesterday doesn’t mean we approve it today”, I fully agree with that, but within reason. And while I don’t agree with this mitigation being an acceptable exception, I also don’t think it’s “insane” or incredulous for Boeing to ask for it, given that the FAA already approved the same thing previously.
Even given that a type certificate has been issued, whether or not it is legal to fly depends on the circumstances of the flight. Just as an example, under part 91 (private flying), complying with manufacturer's service bulletins is optional, but under part 135 (charter) or part 121 (airline), it's generally mandatory.
Therefore, is the FAA saying it's safe to fly a plane that doesn't hasn't completed its manufacturer service bulletins? No. They're saying the acceptable level of risk under part 91 is higher.
Grandfathering aircraft that exist indefinitely makes sense to me, but I don't see why designs should be grandfathered indefinitely for new builds, when we have learned a lot and increased our expectations significantly in the intervening years.
The more dangerous the plane is to people on the ground, the more severe the limitations. For example for the really dangerous ones, they'll give you a limitation of "Flight over a densely populated area or in a congested airway is prohibited."
That’s also why service bulletins exist.
To illustrate why this matters, imagine a more extreme situation, where it was somehow discovered that a similar flaw existed in all Boeing and Airbus jets. If a single new jet were being developed that had a similar risk, it could be enough to prevent certification, but we wouldn't stop all air travel because of it - the cost would be too high.
Grounding just MAX jets obviously wouldn't have that degree of impact, but the cost to airlines and to passengers would still be significant.
That being said, I'm also on the "this mitigation is ridiculous" camp. They can't even have a humidity sensor that turns the de-icer on and off?
It defies how we made it through the first hundred years of commercial aviation with pilots having to deal with more complex tasks than an "up/down" switch.
Please refer to this chart that shows the accidents/incident rates over time and their incredible trend towards zero!
https://i.imgur.com/PVaPAdX.png
That didn't happen just by itself!
Those planes have been retrofitted over time or are in significantly decreasing use for passenger aircraft.
Over reliance on automation is an issue, to be sure, but in the macro sense, it is one part of a significant downtrend in fatalities.
Just imagine that automated future. MCAS everywhere! We should start the debate now which language all that automation should be written.
The most obvious example is the button to enable the anti-ice systems. If you don't push that button upon encountering icing conditions then you die. Of course you don't really die in either of these cases. At least not right away. Lots of other things have to go badly first.
This is why aviation relies on checklists. There are myriad things that must be turned on and off in each phase of flight, and checklists ensure that pilots don't forget.
No, but it's helpful for people like me, who didn't remember the correct spelling.
"Boeing Military Airplane Company; Hughes Satellite Systems; Hughes Helicopters minus the civilian helicopter line (which was divested as MD Helicopters); Piasecki Helicopter, subsequently known as Boeing Vertol and then Boeing Helicopters; the St. Louis–based McDonnell division of the former McDonnell Douglas Company; and the former North American Aviation division of Rockwell International."
making it not just too big to fail, but too important to US and allies' defense to fail. I guess defense could be split from commercial aviation which could be reduced to producing parts to keep fleets in operation until Airbus can replace all planes over 30 or 40 years. Some of McD-D's commercial planes have a second life as military, though, e.g. the P-8 Poseidon based on the 737-800.
I took a couple of cross-USA flights recently, some on 737-800 and some on 737 MAX 8 and noted that the 800's cruising speed is faster (cf. United's Hemispheres magazine). I suppose the carbon footprint of the MAX is lower, but whatever happened to flying at mach 0.9 ?
Someone made a website showing which airlines have the most delays, so airlines just added an hour of padding to every scheduled flight, and then fly slower / burn less fuel when there aren't delays. We do the same thing with commuter trains. Someone was mad that they were late to work one day during a snowstorm or something. Now trains with a top speed of 80mph take 80 minutes to go 40 miles. But are on time 99% of the time! Look at all the time saved from not being late to work!
Personally, I'd rather be 4 hours late to work once a year and save 1 hour commuting every day. But the masses have spoken and decided the opposite. I work from home, so not my problem, I guess.
Maybe the issue isn't that people complain about shitty service, but the fact that the service is shitty in the first place. At 80mph and at 30mph.
My favorite US-ism is when Andrew Cuomo (the governor of New York at the time) shut down the NYC subway because of a forecast of 24" of snow. The reason the subway was built was because of the transport disruptions caused by a big snowstorm in 1910. To close it for a snowstorm was the ultimate irony. The snowstorm didn't materialize and he looked like an idiot. The MTA then developed an actual service plan to keep the subway open during snow, and it hasn't been a problem since. (Well, not for me. For people that live on non-underground lines, they are probably annoyed. I think the pre-Cuomo policy was "play it by ear and hope for the best". That was rarely ideal but probably let a few people get home from work before trains started getting stuck. Now nobody gets stuck, but they also get stranded when the snowstorm ends up not being bad.)
The mitigation I suppose would be to get them underground in advance, and when/if the snow hits you just run with what you've got.
Honestly, in the 12 years I've lived in NYC, there have really only been 2 or 3 nasty snowstorms. Generally things ran OK except the one time Cuomo freaked out. (Hurricane Sandy was pretty nasty, of course. Rain and storm surge are much worse than snow here.)
The reason Cuomo pre-emptively shut down the subway was because a few years prior there had been a serious snowstorm that did severely disrupt subway service. He was trying to avoid a repeat of the same scenario. It turned out that the weather forecast was wrong, but if we actually did get 2 feet of snow and the subway was up and running the next day, with nobody stranded in tunnels or on bridges, he would have looked like a genius.
Cuomo did a lot of stupid stuff (e.g. spending millions on pointlessly renaming bridges and setting up illegal highway signs), but that particular move was not one of them.
To this day, the MTA says that over 12" of snow would still result in system disruption and service suspension: https://pix11.com/news/transit/how-much-snow-will-shut-down-... ("Posted: Jan 5, 2024 / 09:24 AM EST")
> The MTA predicts that over 12 inches of snow or blizzard conditions could cause “significant service suspensions” or a full system shutdown. However, before that, there are several contingency plans in place for winter weather and extreme snowfall.
14 inches in 2021.
> To this day, the MTA says that over 12" of snow would still result in system disruption and service suspension
I think the MTA's "underground only" service plan is fine: https://new.mta.info/map/9471. This popped up right after the big shutdown. I don't see why 12" of snow would have to go to a full shutdown, unless MTA employees can't get to work. (I don't know how likely that is.)
Maybe we'll find out tomorrow! (I'm personally placing my bets on "100% rain".)
(Edit to add: apparently we got 27 inches of snow on 1/23/2016 and all underground subway service ran. I have absolutely no memory of this. I might have been in Vermont skiing.)
New York's snow woes really surprise me. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and really only ever heard about snow days on TV. We would get 3 feet of snow and still have to be at school the next morning. Every winter, I dreamed of the "phone tree" being executed. I learned the weather patterns that would result in a lot of snow. I looked at the weather page in the newspaper every day, and glued myself to the TV after school if it was looking good for snow. A few times a year, I would get really excited. It was looking like a big one. I'd stay up late and look at the snow piling up on our deck. Higher than I'd ever seen! The next morning I'd wake up and turn on the local news and watch the list of school cancellations, as my parents got ready to go to work. Never mine. Not once. I think my parents would usually drive me to school, though, which was nice.
So I guess I'm just surprised how in New York we just shut down the city upon the forecast of a couple feet of snow. Maybe it's necessary at scale. Or maybe we're just wimps.
> Cuomo did a lot of stupid stuff (e.g. spending millions on pointlessly renaming bridges)
I'm still mad about this one.
The real question in a Boeing breakup, IMHO, would be what happens with BGS, because the org as a whole does an insane amount of hide-the-salami with repair/return/rebuild.
In this world, and that country, it won't happen, and if it did it would be a cure worse than the disease
Airlines found out that people, in aggregate, care more about ticket prices than about speed. Flying a bit slower allows planes to be more fuel efficient, and thus allows them to offer lower ticket prices.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/1997-merger-paved-way-boeing-...
Your experience with technology is consumer safety systems. These are designed so safety systems can't be overriden: the tech is protecting you from yourself.
If you think this is "bad", you really ought to watch the startup sequence of a large commercial airliner. There are lots of things depend on the crew to do the right thing and it literally happens thousands of times a day, every single day, with an accident record that is far better than consumer safety systems.
In this particular case, the engine anti-ice system needs to be turned off within 5 minutes of icing conditions going away. The pilots union has said they are concerned about this. There needs to be a better system than that.
> The problem is there’s no alert or indication to the crew that the system needs to be turned off. They just have to remember to do it.
Looks like one more armchair commenter has yet to learn about the Airbus flight law system; it's not possible to put the aircraft into an unsafe state in Normal Law.
AFAIK, Boeing has nothing comparable.