Boeing 737 Max
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Friday, August 21, 2026 17:40
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Boeing 737 MAX Grounding Could Stretch Into 2020 per Wall Street Journal
Boeing Co. 737 MAX planes are unlikely to be ready to carry passengers again until 2020 because of the time it will take to fix flight-control software and complete other steps, an increasing number of government and industry officials say, even as the company strives to get its jet back into service this year. . . .
In late June, Boeing and the FAA disclosed still another flight-control problem on the MAX, involving failure of a microprocessor that meant test pilots couldn’t counteract a potential misfire of MCAS as quickly as required.
Since the 737 MAX and its earlier version, called the 737 NG, share the same flight-control computer, fixes related to the microprocessor also apply to NG models, thousands of which remain in service around the world.
More at www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-737-max-grounding-could-stretch-into-2020-
11563112801?mod=e2tw
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:Not only are those other interesting stories and updates not as crucially pivotal as this one, but they also serve to underscore this one, more and more.
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.
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Quote:Only hundreds of 737 MAX are grounded, but if the FAA decided to ground thousands of 737 NG, it could drive Boeing out of business. Since the 737 MAX and its earlier version, the 737 NG, share the same flight-control computer, fixes related to the microprocessor also apply to NG models, thousands of which remain in service around the world.
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Not only are those other interesting stories and updates not as crucially pivotal as this one, but they also serve to underscore this one, more and more.
More at www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-737-max-grounding-could-stretch-into-2020-
11563112801?mod=e2tw
As of 31 May 2019, a total of 7,097 737NG aircraft have been ordered, of which 7,031 have been delivered.
As of March 2019, a total of 393 737 MAX have been built.
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 CEO says its 737 Max just needs a quick software fix. Aviation experts disagree.
David Strauss from Barclays asked Boeing's CEO, “You talked about a software fix for this latest issue that the FAA identified. Are you for sure it’s a software fix at this point and not also potentially a hardware fix?”
Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg repeated the company’s party line. It was confident that what was needed was a software update, rather than any change of hardware, he told Strauss.
In FAA simulator tests last month, test pilots experienced a “catastrophic failure,” in which they were unable to regain control of the plane. Under the same circumstances, an actual aircraft might have been lost mid-flight. The plane’s microprocessor speed was said to be a contributing factor, with the plane’s new control software potentially triggering an automatic nosedive.
Sources told Reuters it was still unclear whether a software upgrade could fix the problem or whether the plane would need a more complex, hardware-based solution.
The software relies on systems known for their propensity to fail (angle-of-attack indicators) and did not appear to include even rudimentary provisions to cross-check the outputs of the angle-of-attack sensor against other sensors, or even the other angle-of-attack sensor. None of the above should have passed muster. None of the above should have passed the ‘OK’ pencil of the most junior engineering staff.
More at https://qz.com/1674857/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Rudder Cable Failure – an internal battle at the F.A.A.
www.nytimes.com/2019/07/27/business/boeing-737-max-faa.html
F.A.A. engineers found they had little power when they raised concerns.
Early on, engineers at the F.A.A. discovered a problem with one of the most important new features of the Max: its engines. The Max featured more fuel-efficient engines, with a larger fan and a high-pressure turbine. But the bigger, more complex engines could do more damage if they broke apart midair.
The F.A.A. engineers were particularly concerned about engine pieces hitting the cables that control the rudder, according to five people with knowledge of the matter and internal agency documents. A rudder cable severed after takeoff would bring down the jet.
The F.A.A. engineers suggested a couple solutions, three of the people said. The company could add a second set of cables or install a computerized system for controlling the rudder.
Boeing did not want to make a change, according to internal F.A.A. documents reviewed by The Times. A redesign could have caused delays.
Most of the F.A.A. engineers working on the issue insisted the change was necessary for safety reasons, according to internal agency emails and documents. But their managers sided with Boeing.
F.A.A. managers conceded that the Max “does not meet” agency guidelines “for protecting flight controls,” according to an agency document. But the requested changes would interfere with Boeing’s timeline. The managers wrote that it would be “impractical at this late point in the program,” for the company to resolve the issue.
Engineers at the F.A.A. were demoralized. “During meetings regarding this issue the cost to Boeing to upgrade the design was discussed,” the engineer wrote.
An F.A.A. panel found managers siding with Boeing had created “an environment of mistrust that hampers the ability of the agency to work effectively.” The panel cautioned against allowing Boeing to handle this kind of approval, saying “the company has a vested interest in minimizing costs and schedule impact.”
But by then the panel’s findings were moot. Managers at the agency had already given Boeing the right to approve the rudder cables, and they were installed on the Max.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Southwest Airlines, which operates an all-Boeing 737 fleet, said last week it plans to take its new Max planes out of its schedule until early January.
Ryanair executives expected 58 of the planes for the summer of 2020, Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary warned on Monday. “It may well move to 20, it could move to 10, and it could well move to zero if Boeing don’t get their s--- together pretty quickly with the regulator,” O’Leary said.
www.cnbc.com/2019/07/29/ryanair-rails-against-boeing-for-aircraft-dela
ys-from-737-max-grounding.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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Newly stringent FAA tests spur a fundamental hardware redesign of Boeing’s 737 MAX flight controls
www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/newly-stringent-faa-tes
ts-spur-a-fundamental-software-redesign-of-737-max-flight-controls/
In sessions in a Boeing flight simulator in Seattle, two FAA engineering test pilots, typically ex-military test pilots, and a pilot from the FAA’s Flight Standards Aircraft Evaluation Group (AEG), typically an ex-airline pilot, set up a session to test 33 different scenarios that might be sparked by a rare, random microprocessor fault in the jet’s flight-control computer.
This was standard testing that’s typically done in certifying an airplane, but this time it was deliberately set up to produce specific effects similar to what happened on the Lion Air and Ethiopian flights.
The fault occurs when bits inside the microprocessor are randomly flipped from 0 to 1 or vice versa. This is a known phenomenon that can happen due to cosmic rays striking the circuitry. Electronics inside aircraft are particularly vulnerable to such radiation because they fly at high altitudes and high geographic latitudes where the rays are more intense. . . .
The FAA pilots took a further step. They flew the same fault scenario again, this time deliberately allowing the fault to run for some time before responding. This time, one of the three pilots didn’t manage to recover and lost the aircraft. . . .
Prior to that, Boeing had classified this failure mode as a “major fault,” a category that can be mitigated by flight-crew action. The one pilot’s failure to recover immediately changed the classification to “catastrophic,” and FAA regulations require that no single fault can be permitted to lead to a catastrophic outcome. That meant Boeing must fix it and eliminate the possibility. . . .
“There are active means of protecting against bit flips,” said retired Boeing electronics manager Schaeffer. “We always built it into our own software.”
One standard way to fix such a problem is to have a second independent microprocessor inside the same flight-control computer check the output of the first. If the second processor output disagrees with that of the first processor for some specific automated flight control, then no automated action is initiated and the pilot must fly manually.
“Now it takes two processors to fail to get the bad result,” the person familiar with the tests said. “You are no longer in the realm of a single point failure.” . . .
David Hinds, a retired Boeing flight controls and autopilot expert, said that clearly “something got missed” in the original MAX certification of MCAS and now this microprocessor fault.
“I’d like to think you’d catch this on first pass,” said Hinds. “They should have looked harder at some of this.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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They should revoke that last CEO's retirement package, or force him to remain invested in Boeing stock, during it's decline.
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Quote:The first flight of the 737 was April 9, 1967. The good news is that after 52 years of flogging a tired old design, the next iteration of a Boeing plane the same size as the 737 won't be based upon the ancient and decrepit 737. Instead, it will be a brand-new design with absolutely nothing carried over from the 737, except it has got two wings and one tail.
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
They should revoke that last CEO's retirement package, or force him to remain invested in Boeing stock, during it's decline.
Boeing Yellowstone Project
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Yellowstone_Project
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 Four-Second Catastrophe: How Boeing Doomed the 737 MAX
www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/the-four-second-catastrophe-how-boei
ng-doomed-the-737-max/ar-AAFTIuc
Four minutes into the flight, the pilots finally touched on the source of their problems, simultaneously calling out “Left alpha vane!” Erroneous signals from that malfunctioning sensor tricked the onboard computers into believing the jetliner’s nose was angled too high, causing MCAS to push it down again and again. But it was too late. Flight 302 nose-dived, hitting the ground.
In designing the flight controls for the 737 MAX, Boeing assumed that pilots trained on existing safety procedures should be able to sift through the jumble of contradictory warnings and take the proper action 100% of the time within four seconds.
Boeing bet nearly everything on those four ticks of the clock. The company’s belief in its engineering, and its reliance on pilots to be flawless cogs, enabled Boeing to speed the latest iteration of its most important airliner to market.
FAA rules typically assume the human will intervene reliably every time, but that is an unrealistic assumption for human performance.
In 1996, an FAA study of a subset of experienced propeller-plane pilots found that only one out of 26 reacted to a stabilizer emergency within four seconds.
A 2008 study for the FAA, one of the most recent, found commercial pilots in simulator tests sometimes became confused when confronted with unfamiliar failures and reiterated that certification standards were unrealistic.
In meetings with Boeing officials at an FAA office in the Seattle area around 2013, the plane maker described the system as simply a few lines of software code, according to Richard Reed, a former FAA engineer who participated in those discussions. Boeing outlined how a single sensor that measured the angle of the plane's nose would trigger MCAS, Mr. Reed recalled, but argued a failure wasn't likely and the system would kick in only in extreme conditions.
“Let’s quit messing around about the chances of this happening being rare,” Mr. Reed remembered saying. “If it can happen, it’s going to happen.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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