Boeing 737 Max
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Friday, August 21, 2026 17:40
VIEWED: 21693
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Quote:The FAA could certify the 737 Max as ... cargo planes that aren't allowed to carry more than the pilots. To protect the two pilots, the planes could be modified to have ejector seats like on the B-1 or B-2 bombers. That's one way the problem could be solved about how to get people to take Boeing's word for fixing the plane.
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Saw a story that Boeing had completed their software upgrade a few days ago.
Wonder how many people will take their word for it.
And how can their CEO remain in that position, after this disaster?
www.wired.com/story/utc-aces5-ejection-seat-b2-bomber
www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2018/05/18/air-force-b-1-lan
cer-blew-escape-hatch-in-emergency-landing-but-its-seat-did-not-eject
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Boeing Built Deadly Assumptions Into 737 Max, Blind to a Late Design Change
At first, MCAS — Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System — wasn’t a very risky piece of software. The system would trigger only in rare conditions, nudging down the nose of the plane to make the Max handle more smoothly during high-speed moves. And it relied on data from multiple sensors measuring the plane’s acceleration and its angle to the wind, helping to ensure that the software didn’t activate erroneously.
To ensure it didn’t misfire, engineers initially designed MCAS to trigger when the plane exceeded at least two separate thresholds, according to three people who worked on the 737 Max. One involved the plane’s angle to the wind, and the other involved so-called G-force, or the force on the plane that typically comes from accelerating. The Max would need to hit an exceedingly high G-force that passenger planes would probably never experience.
Then Boeing engineers revised the system, expanding its role to avoid stalls in all types of situations. They allowed the software to operate throughout much more of the flight. They enabled it to aggressively push down the nose of the plane. And they used only data about the plane’s angle, removing some of the safeguards.
The current and former employees, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the continuing investigations, said that after the first crash, they were stunned to discover the revised MCAS relied on a single sensor.
“That’s nuts,” said an engineer who helped design MCAS.
“I’m shocked,” said a safety analyst who scrutinized it.
“To me, it seems like somebody didn’t understand what they were doing,” said an engineer who assessed the system’s sensors.
Regulators didn’t conduct a formal safety assessment of the new version of MCAS. William Schubbe, a senior F.A.A. official, said, “The way the system was presented to the F.A.A., the Boeing Corporation said this thing is so transparent to the pilot that there’s no need to demonstrate any kind of failing.”
Boeing declined to say whether it had conducted a new safety analysis of the revised MCAS.
More at www.nytimes.com/2019/06/01/business/boeing-737-max-crash.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Boeing Co learned that a cockpit warning light on its 737 MAX jetliner was defective in 2017 but decided to defer fixing it until 2020. Either save lives now or save money until 2020.
The defective warning light alerts pilots when two sensors that measure the angle between the airflow and the wing disagree. Faulty “angle of attack” data is suspected of playing a role in two deadly crashes involving Boeing’s best-selling 737 MAX in Indonesia in October 2018 and in Ethiopia in March 2019.
Boeing decided in November 2017 to defer a software update to correct the so-called AOA Disagree alert defect until 2020, three years after discovering the flaw, U.S. Congressmen Peter DeFazio and Rick Larsen said in a press release on Friday. Boeing only accelerated this schedule after the Lion Air accident in Indonesia, they added.
Boeing has said it discovered the problem in 2017, soon after it began delivering its top-selling 737 MAX aircraft to customers. But it did not inform the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) about the defect until after the Lion Air crash more than one year later, the lawmakers said.
www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-737/boeing-delayed-fix-of-defective-
737-max-warning-light-for-three-years-u-s-lawmakers-idUSKCN1T8284
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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How Boeing’s Bean-Counters Courted the 737 MAX Disaster. The company fell into tight-fisted hands — with fatal consequences.
www.thedailybeast.com/how-boeing-bean-counters-courted-the-737-max-dis
aster
The decision to launch the MAX was taken by James McNerney, the company’s first boss without a background in aviation, with a résumé that included Procter & Gamble, McKinsey, General Electric and 3M. At GE McNerney was schooled under the hard-nosed bottom-line philosophy of Jack Welch.
When McNerney retired as chairman from Boeing at the age of 66 in 2016 he left with $35.8 million, part of it from selling stock but he still retained $238 million in stock and was awarded a pension of $3.2 million for 15 years. (Boeing production line workers had an annual bonus equivalent to nine days of pay.)
The days when a single generation of brilliant Boeing engineers doubled the speed at which airliners flew and created the world’s leading airplane company were long gone. It’s true that the costs of making that giant leap meant that Boeing was never a stellar stock market performer, and it took enormous risks. Launching the 747 jumbo nearly bankrupted the company. And Boeing executives were modestly rewarded compared to today’s corporate norms.
It was not a culture that McNerney thought admirable. He told financial analysts that running a company on the basis of “every 25 years a big moonshot, produce a 707 or a 787, that’s the wrong way to pursue this business. The more-for-less world will not let you produce moonshots.”
But the 737 MAX demonstrates that—regardless of whether you believe in moonshots - the engineering ethic at Boeing has yielded too much power to the profit motive. Saying that the 737 is suboptimal is too technically polite. It doesn’t describe the seriousness of the continual compromises made to avoid launching a new model. Boeing knew that the MAX could never match the quality of an all-new airplane.
Boeing had never taken that route with any airplane before; it was not part of the company’s tradition to knowingly settle for second-best.
As a result, the bitter irony is that no airplane has made more money for Boeing than the 737, and in the company’s 100-year history no airplane has so jeopardized the company’s reputation.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:What is this?
Originally posted by second:
How Boeing’s Bean-Counters Courted the 737 MAX Disaster. The company fell into tight-fisted hands — with fatal consequences.
www.thedailybeast.com/how-boeing-bean-counters-courted-the-737-max-dis
aster
The decision to launch the MAX was taken by James McNerney, the company’s first boss without a background in aviation, with a résumé that included Procter & Gamble, McKinsey, General Electric and 3M. At GE McNerney was schooled under the hard-nosed bottom-line philosophy of Jack Welch.
When McNerney retired as chairman from Boeing at the age of 66 in 2016 he left with $35.8 million, part of it from selling stock but he still retained $238 million in stock and was awarded a pension of $3.2 million for 15 years. (Boeing production line workers had an annual bonus equivalent to nine days of pay.)
The days when a single generation of brilliant Boeing engineers doubled the speed at which airliners flew and created the world’s leading airplane company were long gone. It’s true that the costs of making that giant leap meant that Boeing was never a stellar stock market performer, and it took enormous risks. Launching the 747 jumbo nearly bankrupted the company. And Boeing executives were modestly rewarded compared to today’s corporate norms.
It was not a culture that McNerney thought admirable. He told financial analysts that running a company on the basis of “every 25 years a big moonshot, produce a 707 or a 787, that’s the wrong way to pursue this business. The more-for-less world will not let you produce moonshots.”
But the 737 MAX demonstrates that—regardless of whether you believe in moonshots - the engineering ethic at Boeing has yielded too much power to the profit motive. Saying that the 737 is suboptimal is too technically polite. It doesn’t describe the seriousness of the continual compromises made to avoid launching a new model. Boeing knew that the MAX could never match the quality of an all-new airplane.
Boeing had never taken that route with any airplane before; it was not part of the company’s tradition to knowingly settle for second-best.
As a result, the bitter irony is that no airplane has made more money for Boeing than the 737, and in the company’s 100-year history no airplane has so jeopardized the company’s reputation.
This seems like the best post I've seen from you in a very long time, or forever.
Are you ill? Do you have fever, or cough due to cold?
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The pilot who orchestrated the dramatic plane landing in the Hudson River 10 years ago told a congressional panel Wednesday that he can see how crews would have struggled during the recent Boeing 737 MAX crashes after he spent time in a simulator running recreations of the doomed flights.
"I recently experienced all these warnings in a 737 MAX flight simulator during recreations of the accident flights. Even knowing what was going to happen, I could see how crews could have run out of time before they could have solved the problems," Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger told the House Transportation Committee during a hearing on the embattled plane model.
Sullenberger, whose "Miracle on the Hudson" landing in 2009 saved the lives of all 155 people on board, told the panel that it's important planes don't have "inadvertent traps" for pilots.
www.cnn.com/2019/06/19/politics/chesley-sullenberger-boeing-737-max-sc
enario/index.html
"We should all want pilots to experience these challenging situations for the first time in a simulator, not in flight with passengers and crew on board," Sullenberger told lawmakers.
"Some (U.S.) crews would have recognized it in time to recover, but some would not have," Carey testified. Sullenberger agreed, saying it's unlikely that more experienced pilots would have had different outcomes, adding, "we shouldn't have to expect pilots to compensate for flawed designs."
"These two recent crashes happened in foreign countries," said Sullenberger. "But if we do not address all the important issues and factors, they can and will happen here."
www.npr.org/2019/06/19/734248714/pilots-criticize-boeing-saying-737-ma
x-should-never-have-been-approved
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:Are you ill?
Originally posted by second:
The pilot who orchestrated the dramatic plane landing in the Hudson River 10 years ago told a congressional panel Wednesday that he can see how crews would have struggled during the recent Boeing 737 MAX crashes after he spent time in a simulator running recreations of the doomed flights.
"I recently experienced all these warnings in a 737 MAX flight simulator during recreations of the accident flights. Even knowing what was going to happen, I could see how crews could have run out of time before they could have solved the problems," Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger told the House Transportation Committee during a hearing on the embattled plane model.
Sullenberger, whose "Miracle on the Hudson" landing in 2009 saved the lives of all 155 people on board, told the panel that it's important planes don't have "inadvertent traps" for pilots.
www.cnn.com/2019/06/19/politics/chesley-sullenberger-boeing-737-max-sc
enario/index.html
"We should all want pilots to experience these challenging situations for the first time in a simulator, not in flight with passengers and crew on board," Sullenberger told lawmakers.
"Some (U.S.) crews would have recognized it in time to recover, but some would not have," Carey testified. Sullenberger agreed, saying it's unlikely that more experienced pilots would have had different outcomes, adding, "we shouldn't have to expect pilots to compensate for flawed designs."
"These two recent crashes happened in foreign countries," said Sullenberger. "But if we do not address all the important issues and factors, they can and will happen here."
www.npr.org/2019/06/19/734248714/pilots-criticize-boeing-saying-737-ma
x-should-never-have-been-approved
This seems to be the only thread in which you make pertinent and sensible posts.
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Fix for the 737 Max needs its own software fix
The software fix Boeing was earlier working on was supposed to prevent the anti-stall system from kicking in on data from a single sensor, recalibrate how powerfully it worked, and limit the number of times it could trigger. But tests of the software fix showed that in some cases, substantial upper body strength would be required to fully comply with the recommended emergency checklist. One of the final steps to stabilize the plane requires manually turning a wheel control, but the action of the anti-stall system could potentially make it too difficult to turn in rare cases.
That could mean more time is needed to stabilize the plane than is available — in the two crashes that have occurred the malfunction occurred minutes into the flight at fairly low altitudes, when pilots have just seconds to make critical decisions and act.
Boeing said the newest software fix it’s working on “will reduce pilot workload.” If the software can’t address the issue, it might have to change computer chips in all the 737 Max planes it’s delivered.
https://qz.com/1653879/faa-says-boeing-max-needs-additional-software-f
ix/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has presented Boeing with five major requirements that need to be addressed before the 737 MAX returns to service.
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-05/europe-sets-out-demands-for
-boeing-before-max-can-fly-again
1) Reduce the difficulty manually turning the trim wheel
2) Address the unreliability of Angle of Attack sensors
3) Address the training situation
4) Investigate software issues with a lagging microprocessor
5) The biggest and newest to join the list of problems involves the autopilot system in the aircraft, which reportedly fails to disconnect in some emergency scenarios.
Investigations have concluded that pilots who encounter a stall scenario relating to the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) or similar flight control emergencies have difficulty disconnecting the autopilot.
Bloomberg notes the autopilot doesn’t completely disconnect. This could mean the system is designed in a way to work with MCAS so closely it still believes it has greater authority than the pilots.
Having to redesign, or modify, the existing autopilot system would take enormous amounts of time and resources.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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American Airlines said on Sunday it is extending for a fourth time cancellations of about 115 daily flights through November 2 due to the ongoing grounding of the Boeing Co 737 MAX jets.
Southwest Airlines, the world’s largest MAX operator, has removed the aircraft from its scheduling through Oct. 1, and United Airlines Holdings until Nov. 3.
American Airlines cut its annual profit forecast in April, blaming an estimated $350 million hit from the MAX groundings.
American’s chief executive, Doug Parker, has been among the most vocal supporters of the MAX aircraft, saying on June 12 that it was “highly likely” flights would resume by mid-August.
www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-airplane-american/american-airline
s-extends-boeing-737-max-cancellations-for-fourth-time-idUSKCN1U90CI
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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