Boeing 737 Max by SIGNYM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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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Saturday, June 8, 2019 6:02 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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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Sunday, June 9, 2019 7:46 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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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Monday, June 10, 2019 7:29 PM

Quote:
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.

What is this?

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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Thursday, June 20, 2019 6:28 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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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Thursday, June 20, 2019 5:10 PM

Quote:
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

Are you ill?
This seems to be the only thread in which you make pertinent and sensible posts.

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Thursday, June 27, 2019 7:06 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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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Wednesday, July 10, 2019 9:01 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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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Sunday, July 14, 2019 7:56 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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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Monday, July 15, 2019 7:33 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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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Monday, July 15, 2019 5:52 PM

Quote:
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.

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.

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Monday, July 15, 2019 7:12 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
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.

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.

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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Thursday, July 25, 2019 12:31 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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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Sunday, July 28, 2019 6:14 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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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Monday, July 29, 2019 9:56 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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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Monday, August 5, 2019 8:12 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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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Tuesday, August 6, 2019 2:07 PM

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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Tuesday, August 6, 2019 4:21 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
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.

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.

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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Saturday, August 17, 2019 10:56 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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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Wednesday, September 18, 2019 7:08 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

A panel of international air-safety experts is set to condemn the U.S. approval process for Boeing’s 737 MAX jets, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The task force is finishing its report into how the flawed jets were allowed to fly in the first place, and it’s expected to call out the Federal Aviation Administration for what it reportedly describes as a lack of clarity and transparency in the way it allowed Boeing to assess the safety of certain flight-control features.

It will reportedly conclude that essential design changes didn’t get enough attention from the FAA. The report will also say the agency didn’t share enough data with foreign authorities during its original approval of the MAX two years ago, and relied on mistaken assumptions about how pilots would react to flight-control emergencies.

The report will be released in the next few weeks and will be the first official outside review of MAX certification since the fleet was grounded around the world following two crashes.

www.thedailybeast.com/boeing-737-max-international-panel-of-experts-wi
ll-condemn-faa-jet-approval-says-report

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, September 18, 2019 1:27 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Didn't that all happen under St Obama's tenure?

The insane never-Trumpers will be driven even more insane in the wash/ rinse/ spin/ repeat/ cycle they mistake for reality.

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Wednesday, September 18, 2019 1:55 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Didn't that all happen under St Obama's tenure?

The Republican controlled Congress cut the budget to the FAA. The result? Plane crashes. Republicans cut the IRS budget. The result? $500 billion per year increase in tax cheating.

“Unfortunately, we no longer have a stable, predictable funding stream, and this uncertainty has caused serious problems in the system,” Rinaldi testified. “We have experienced 24 short-term extensions of authorization, a partial shutdown of the FAA, a complete government shutdown and numerous threats of government shutdowns.”

www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/white-house-endorses-
plan-to-remove-30000-faa-workers-from-federal-payroll/2017/03/16/ce4a4e3c-099c-11e7-93dc-00f9bdd74ed1_story.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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Wednesday, September 18, 2019 2:13 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Didn't that all happen under St Obama's tenure?

Quote:
Originally posted by SLOPPY:
The Republican controlled Congress cut the budget to the FAA. The result? Plane crashes. Republicans cut the IRS budget.

Didn't St Obama sign that budget? Doesn't the buck stop with the President?

The insane never-Trumpers will be driven even more insane in the wash/ rinse/ spin/ repeat/ cycle they mistake for reality.

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Thursday, September 19, 2019 6:27 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:

Didn't St Obama sign that budget? Doesn't the buck stop with the President?

First point: "The buck stops here" is President Harry S Truman's motto. Truman nuked hundreds of thousands of civilians. Killing all those innocents did NOT bring WWII to a close, no matter what you been told by fools and ignoramuses, and it certainly did start an arms race that cost Truman's country more than $10 trillion and may destroy the world. Obviously, the buck does not stop with the President, for if it did, Truman deserves punishment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_of_the_United_States

Second point: Congress writes the budget; not the President. I have heard a thousand times the President blamed for what Congress did. If the President does NOT sign the budget, it is equivalent to the President nuking the Federal Government. See Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and Truman for how destructive that is.

Third point: From years of experience, I know you will never stop misunderstanding how government works and who is responsible for what, 1kiki. Not understanding is one of your defining characteristics, along with your feeling that you know what you don't know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, September 19, 2019 7:24 AM

If nukes weren't made in WWII, they eventually would have been made, which would have led to an inevitable arms race.

It's the main idea behind the theory that even if we're not alone in the universe, there's almost zero chance we'll ever be visited by anybody because the likelihood that any sentient race would develop space travel sophisticated enough to explore other planets before annihilating themselves is almost nil.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Thursday, September 19, 2019 7:26 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:

Didn't St Obama sign that budget? Doesn't the buck stop with the President?
First point: "The buck stops here" is President Harry S Truman's motto. Truman nuked hundreds of thousands of civilians. Killing all those innocents did NOT bring WWII to a close, no matter what you been told by fools and ignoramuses, and it certainly did start an arms race that cost Truman's country more than $10 trillion and may destroy the world. Obviously, the buck does not stop with the President, for if it did, Truman deserves punishment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_of_the_United_States

Second point: Congress writes the budget; not the President. I have heard a thousand times the President blamed for what Congress did. If the President does NOT sign the budget, it is equivalent to the President nuking the Federal Government. See Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and Truman for how destructive that is.

Third point: From years of experience, I know you will never stop misunderstanding how government works and who is responsible for what, 1kiki. Not understanding is one of your defining characteristics, along with your feeling that you know what you don't know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Why don't you stop blaming Trump for everything then.

Seems you do a lot of picking and choosing what rules you follow and when you follow them.

And you're the poster child for Dunning Kruger Syndrome. Not the good one either.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, September 22, 2019 7:55 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Why don't you stop blaming Trump for everything then.

Seems you do a lot of picking and choosing what rules you follow and when you follow them.

And you're the poster child for Dunning Kruger Syndrome. Not the good one either.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

Trump came to Boeing's defense after the first and second crashes. He suggested rebranding that model so that passengers would forget what happened. It was only after every country in the world had banned the 737 MAX that Trump stopped pressuring the FAA to keep the 737 MAX flying.

How Boeing's Managerial Revolution Created The 737 MAX Disaster

Nearly two decades before Boeing’s MCAS system crashed two of the plane-maker’s brand-new 737 MAX jets, Stan Sorscher knew his company’s increasingly toxic mode of operating would create a disaster of some kind. A long and proud “safety culture” was rapidly being replaced, he argued, with “a culture of financial bullshit, a culture of groupthink.”

Sorscher, a physicist who’d worked at Boeing more than two decades and had led negotiations there for the engineers’ union, had become obsessed with management culture. He said he didn’t previously imagine Boeing’s brave new managerial caste creating a problem as dumb and glaringly obvious as MCAS (or the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, as a handful of software wizards had dubbed it).

In the now infamous debacle of the Boeing 737 MAX, the company produced a plane outfitted with software programmed to override all pilot input and nosedive when a little vane on the side of the fuselage told it the nose was pitching up. The vane was also not terribly reliable, possibly due to assembly line lapses reported by a whistle-blower, and when the plane processed the bad data it received, it promptly dove into the sea.

It is understood, now more than ever, that capitalism does half-assed things like that, especially in concert with computer software and oblivious regulators: AIG famously told investors it was hard for management to contemplate “a scenario within any kind of realm of reason that would see us losing one dollar in any of those transactions” that would, a few months later, lose the firm well over $100 billion—but hey, the risk management algorithms had been wrong. A couple of years later, a single JP Morgan trader lost $6 billion because someone had programmed one of the cells in the bank’s risk management spreadsheet to divide two numbers by their sum instead of their average. Boeing was not, of course, a hedge fund: It was way better, a stock that had more than doubled since the Trump inauguration, outperforming the Dow in the 22 months before Lion Air 610 plunged into the Java Sea.

And so there was something unsettlingly familiar when the world first learned of MCAS in November 2018, about two weeks after the system’s unthinkable stupidity drove the two-month-old plane and all 189 people on it to a horrific death. It smacked of the sort of screwup a 23-year-old intern might have made — and indeed, much of the software on the MAX had been engineered by recent grads of Indian software-coding academies making as little as $9 an hour, part of Boeing management’s endless war on the unions that once represented more than half its employees.

Here, a generation after Boeing’s initial lurch into financialization, was the entirely predictable outcome of the byzantine process by which investment capital becomes completely abstracted from basic protocols of production and oversight: a flight-correction system that was essentially jerry-built to crash a plane. “If you’re looking for an example of late stage capitalism or whatever you want to call it,” said longtime aerospace consultant Richard Aboulafia, “it’s a pretty good one.”

“As an investment professional, allow me to inform Congress as to how Boeing has viewed this whole crisis.” Paul Njoroge laid out the sequence of 737 MAX orders, ten-figure stock buybacks, and dividend hikes.

“Could that be the reason Boeing did not feel obliged to ground the MAX even after the second crash of the Boeing 737 MAX?” he asked. “Back to my very essential question, why wasn’t the MAX 8 grounded in November after the first crash in the Java Sea? One hundred and eighty-nine lives were lost, and executives at Boeing cared more about its stock price than preventing such a tragedy from occurring again,” and so had begun “a pattern of behavior blaming innocent pilots.”

More at https://newrepublic.com/article/154944/boeing-737-max-investigation-in
donesia-lion-air-ethiopian-airlines-managerial-revolution

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, September 22, 2019 11:00 AM

lol... oh.

You want to go back to the thread title now, huh?

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, September 22, 2019 1:10 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
lol... oh.

You want to go back to the thread title now, huh?

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, September 22, 2019 2:32 PM

I don't fly.

I don't care.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, September 22, 2019 2:43 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Quote:
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
Didn't St Obama sign that budget? Doesn't the buck stop with the President?

Quote:
Originally posted by SLOPPY:
First point: "The buck stops here" is President Harry S Truman's motto. Truman nuked hundreds of thousands of civilians.

So? What does that have to do with your idiocies about Trump being responsible for everything bad and St Obama responsible for nothing? What does that have to do with your huge and morally corrupt double standards?

Quote:
Originally posted by SLOPPY:
Second point: Congress writes the budget; not the President.

Not only is that claim dishonest, it's severely factually wrong. The OMB (executive branch - in case you don't know it that's the presidential branch) creates the budget and proposes it to Congress. "The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 requires the President to submit the budget to Congress for each fiscal year". Then the CBO studies it and each house may or may not pass a version which may or may not be amended. "There is no obligation for either or both houses of Congress to pass a budget resolution. There may not be a resolution every year; if none is established, the previous year's resolution remains in force. For example, the Senate has not passed a budget resolution for FY2011, FY2012, or FY2013".

Quote:
Originally posted by SLOPPY:
I have heard a thousand times the President blamed for what Congress did. If the President does NOT sign the budget, it is equivalent to the President nuking the Federal Government. See Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and Truman for how destructive that is.

And then the president may veto the budget - as did Clinton ("Further information on the vetoed appropriations bills in 1995: United States federal government shutdown of 1995 and 1996") and St Obama (December 30, 2009: Vetoed H.J.Res. 64, a joint resolution making further continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2010, and for other purposes. Override attempt failed in House, 143–245, 1 present (260 needed).").

And guess what? The government wasn't annihilated in a governmental nuclear holocaust.

Quote:
Originally posted by SLOPPY:
Third point: From years of experience, I know you will never stop misunderstanding how government works and who is responsible for what, 1kiki. Not understanding is one of your defining characteristics, along with your feeling that you know what you don't know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Jeeze - I don't know SLOPPY.

Isn't it you who posted claims that are entirely wrong?

And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?

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Sunday, September 22, 2019 2:47 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Anyway - to get back to St Obama somehow not being responsible for the budgets he signed - yanno, especially the ones that underfunded the FAA that led to the manufacturer-driven approval procedure for the 737 Max -

Care to try again, SLOPPY?

The question - how is St Obama not responsible for the budgets he signed?

And if democrats don't do anything different, how are they any better?

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Thursday, September 26, 2019 5:08 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Federal investigators say the FAA’s Boeing 737 Max inspectors were insufficiently trained

The FAA’s Office of Audit and Evaluation in February said it found that 16 of 22 safety inspectors did not complete formal training while 11 of the 16 lacked flight-instructor certificates.

The FAA told a Senate panel in April 2019 that all Boeing 737 Max inspectors who worked on the Flight Standardization Board that sets pilot training and procedures were qualified, but the Special Counsel’s office said its findings contradicted that.

www.cnbc.com/2019/09/24/federal-investigators-faas-boeing-737-max-insp
ectors-were-underqualified.html

The FAA and its European counterpart, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), were also called out for being aware of an unusual method for controlling the Max's nose angle, which may have been an issue in the recent disasters concerning the aircraft, a document shows.

Although the EASA said that the additional procedures and training would "clearly explain" to pilots the need to manipulate a rarely-used manual wheel, these were not listed in the flight manual, according to a copy from American Airlines seen by the Reuters news agency.

The EASA and FAA ultimately determined that the set-up was safe enough for the plane to be certified, however.

In the EASA document, the regulator said simulations showed the electric thumb switches could not keep the 737 MAX properly positioned under certain conditions, including those of the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines crashes, according to the Indonesian preliminary report and a source with knowledge of the Ethiopian air traffic control recordings.

The flight conditions were similar to those described in the EASA document, a source at Lion Air told Reuters. The source said that training materials before the crash did not say the wheel could be required under those conditions but that Boeing advised the airline about it after the crash.

Boeing declined to comment on the EASA document or its advice to Lion Air, citing the ongoing investigation into the crash.

www.aljazeera.com/ajimpact/investigator-inspectors-werent-qualified-73
7-max-work-190925041840797.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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Sunday, September 29, 2019 1:45 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Boeing is expected to fix the 737 Max version of MCAS by making it work more like the one designed earlier for the KC-46.

https://qz.com/1718506/boeings-737-max-mcas-has-better-designed-milita
ry-forerunner/

Accident investigators looking into the 737 Max crashes have implicated a key system known as MCAS. Now it appears that a version of the system Boeing created years earlier for a military fuel tanker had a better design.

That’s according to a Wall Street Journal report published today on the system’s history and the push to build safeguards into it for the tanker, known as the KC-46A Pegasus. It’s a plane based off Boeing’s 767 passenger jet. Those safeguards were not incorporated into the version installed on the 737 Max. On both planes, the system is intended to combat the natural tendency of the airplane to pitch upwards.

Notably, pilots of the KC-46 are able to override the MCAS — or Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System — simply by pulling on the controls, the Journal reports. It quotes an Air Force procurement chief as saying, “We have better sensor data. But most importantly, when the pilot grabs the stick, the pilot is completely in control.”

On the 737 Max, by contrast, the MCAS remained active even if the pilots pulled on the controls. The system would repeatedly push the plane’s nose down.

The Journal also notes that the KC-46’s MCAS relies on two sensors measuring the plane nose angle and compares the readings from each, as Air Force Magazine reported in March. The 737 Max version relies on just one.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, October 3, 2019 7:39 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Boeing rejected 737 MAX safety upgrades before fatal crashes, whistleblower says

www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing-whistleblowers-c
omplaint-says-737-max-safety-upgrades-were-rejected-over-cost/

A Boeing engineer submitted a scathing internal ethics complaint alleging that management had blocked significant safety improvements during the jet’s development.

The ethics charge, filed by 33-year-old engineer Curtis Ewbank, whose job involved studying past crashes and using that information to make new planes safer, describes how around 2014 his group presented to managers and senior executives a proposal to add various safety upgrades to the MAX.

A version of the proposed system, called synthetic airspeed, was already installed on the 787 Dreamliner, but not on the MAX.

The complaint, a copy of which was reviewed by The Seattle Times, suggests that one of the proposed systems could have potentially prevented the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people. Three of Ewbank’s former colleagues interviewed for this story concurred.

The details revealed in the ethics complaint raise new questions about the culture at Boeing and whether the long-held imperative that safety must be the overarching priority was compromised 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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Thursday, October 3, 2019 8:50 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Boeing rejected 737 MAX safety upgrades before fatal crashes, whistleblower says

www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing-whistleblowers-c
omplaint-says-737-max-safety-upgrades-were-rejected-over-cost/

A Boeing engineer submitted a scathing internal ethics complaint alleging that management had blocked significant safety improvements during the jet’s development.

The ethics charge, filed by 33-year-old engineer Curtis Ewbank, whose job involved studying past crashes and using that information to make new planes safer, describes how around 2014 his group presented to managers and senior executives a proposal to add various safety upgrades to the MAX.

A version of the proposed system, called synthetic airspeed, was already installed on the 787 Dreamliner, but not on the MAX.

The complaint, a copy of which was reviewed by The Seattle Times, suggests that one of the proposed systems could have potentially prevented the crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people. Three of Ewbank’s former colleagues interviewed for this story concurred.

The details revealed in the ethics complaint raise new questions about the culture at Boeing and whether the long-held imperative that safety must be the overarching priority was compromised on the MAX.

This might be redundant. Who is really under the impression Boeing did not sell out their reputation with that last CEO, McNerney?

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Thursday, October 3, 2019 10:07 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

This might be redundant. Who is really under the impression Boeing did not sell out their reputation with that last CEO, McNerney?

Boeing had promised the airlines that the MAX would be so minimally different from the prior 737 model that no additional pilot certification or flight simulator training would be necessary. In particular, Boeing promised to pay Southwest Airlines “$1 million per tail” if the FAA were to require expensive simulator training. Do the math: Southwest will buy 1,000 planes and get a rebate of $1 billion if Boeing adds the safety feature that would have prevented the crashes. What do you think management will do, if they are more concerned about their paycheck than your safety? Logic says no new safety features will be installed unless management is absolutely, positively, 100 percent sure that the safety feature will prevent a crash. Such certainty will never exist.

The MAX program leaders had always mandated that, if it’s not required for function or certification, it’s not going on the airplane.

www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing-whistleblowers-c
omplaint-says-737-max-safety-upgrades-were-rejected-over-cost/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, October 11, 2019 10:06 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

FAA failed to properly review 737 MAX jet's anti-stall system

“The JATR team found that the MCAS was not evaluated as a complete and integrated function in the certification documents that were submitted to the FAA,” the 69-page series of findings and recommendations said.

“The lack of a unified top-down development and evaluation of the system function and its safety analyses, combined with the extensive and fragmented documentation, made it difficult to assess whether compliance was fully demonstrated.”

The report also questioned FAA’s limited staffing to oversee certification tasks it designated to Boeing and said there were an “inadequate number of FAA specialists” involved in the certification of the 737 MAX.

There were signs that Boeing employees conducting FAA work faced “undue pressure. ..which may be attributed to conflicting priorities and an environment that does not support FAA requirements,” it said.

www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-boeing-airplane-faa/faa-failed-to-prope
rly-review-737-max-jets-anti-stall-system-jatr-findings-idUSKBN1WQ0H8

--------
A review of the 737 Max approval found the FAA signed off on a plane it didn’t fully understand

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) delegated far too much of the certification process of the 737 Max plane to its manufacturer, Boeing, and didn’t comprehensively understand a new flight system on it that was later linked to two deadly crashes, the international panel that has been reviewing the plane’s approval process has found.

https://qz.com/1726157/

--------
Will JATR Report On Boeing 737 MAX Further Delay Relaunch?

If regulators lack confidence in Boeing’s ability to submit complete and reliable documentation of their testing, then they are bound to want to take a closer look at any new information they receive now. Even if that information is complete, to the best of Boeing’s ability, the collective of regulators are unlikely to uniformly agree to a rapid re-approval.

www.forbes.com/sites/marisagarcia/2019/10/11/will-jatr-report-on-boein
g-737-max-further-delay-launch/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, October 16, 2019 7:34 PM

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/air-canada-scrubs-737-max-202557292.
html

Air Canada scrubs 737 Max from schedule until Feb. 14 amid lingering uncertainty
[The Canadian Press]
The Canadian PressOctober 16, 2019
Air Canada scrubs 737 Max from schedule until Feb. 14 amid lingering uncertainty

Air Canada will keep the Boeing 737 Max off its flying schedule until Feb. 14, citing "regulatory uncertainty" nearly a year after authorities across the globe banned the plane from the skies following two fatal crashes in five months.

The country's biggest airline had earlier scrubbed the 24 jetliners from schedules until Jan. 8. For now, major U.S. carriers hope to welcome the Max back into the fleet in early to mid-January.

The Boeing Co. has said it expects federal authorities to greenlight software changes to the aircraft, but regulators say they don’t have a set timeline.

Air Canada's chief commercial officer said the extension until Valentine's Day will give Air Canada "scheduling predictability" as it rolls out its new reservation system.

"We are taking this prudent step as a result of the ongoing regulatory uncertainty about the timing of the aircraft returning to service," Lucie Guillemette said in a release Wednesday.

The airline said it will lease two more wide-body aircraft at least through March Break to help compensate for the absence of the Max planes, which make up about 20 per cent of Air Canada's narrow-body fleet and would typically carry about 11,000 passengers per day.

WestJet announced in September it was removing the 737 Max from its schedule until Jan. 5.

Sunwing Airlines Inc. said in August that its four Maxes will be absent from the rotation until mid-May, with some 3,000 flights having been affected over the summer alone.

Last month, Air Canada's chief financial officer said he expected that Transport Canada may not approve the plane for takeoff until early next year.

Michael Rousseau noted his airline doesn't fly other 737 models, giving it an unenviably "unique" position relative to North American competitors as Air Canada's Max pilots sit relatively idle while those at rival carriers find more productive deployment in the cockpit of other 737 jets.

Air Canada faced a tougher third quarter because of the grounding, forecasting a two per cent decline in capacity from a year ago.

About 26 Max 8s were initially slated for delivery between the March grounding and mid-2020, but have been partly pushed back. The Airbus A320s they were set to replace are less fuel-efficient, piling on more costs.

Air Canada, like WestJet, has also had to lease aircraft and cancel some routes to compensate for the Max 8's absence.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2019.

Companies in this story: (TSX:AC, TSX:WJA)

Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press

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Wednesday, October 30, 2019 3:50 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Southwest had $1 million per 737 MAX rebate clause on training

www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-airplane-southwest/southwest-had-1-m
illion-per-737-max-rebate-clause-on-training-idUSKBN1X92D4

Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg said on Wednesday Southwest Airlines Inc had a $1 million per plane rebate clause in a contact with Boeing Co if the FAA required simulator training unique to only the 737 MAX planes.

Representative Peter DeFazio, who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said the rebate would have covered 280 planes ordered by Southwest.

The article does not say it, but the 737 MAX simulator should have, but did not, train pilots on how to handle the idiosyncratic malfunction that crashed the plane twice. If the simulator had included such training, Boeing would have been powerfully motivated to re-engineer 737 MAX so that it could not malfunction in the first place.

Wrong signals to the horizontal stabilizer jack-screw crashed two 737 MAXs

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, December 18, 2019 9:43 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

One photo shows why Boeing had to shut down production of its grounded 737 Max
www.businessinsider.com/photos-show-boeing-737-max-sitting-untouched-s
nowy-kansas-carpark-2019-12

Photographs show the fuselages of almost 100 Boeing 737 Max planes sitting unused at a Kansas factory.

The image was taken by Reuters at the headquarters of Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kansas. Spirit is one of the hundreds of companies in the Boeing supply chain that help produce the finished product.

The photo shows Boeing's snarled production line, which was getting ever more clogged as the company built planes that could not be delivered to customers.

On Monday, Boeing acknowledged its strategy of building planes that couldn't immediately fly was no longer sustainable, and it said it would freeze the production line in the new year. It is not clear when it will be restarted.

Spirit AeroSystems has the capacity to produce about 50 fuselages a month for the Max, and it employs about 13,000 people in Wichita. It is the city's biggest employer. The company earns 80% of its revenue from Boeing, according to data provided to Business Insider by Bloomberg.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, December 18, 2019 9:52 AM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...

Quote:
Originally posted by second:

Wrong signals to the horizontal stabilizer jack-screw crashed two 737 MAXs

That is one terrifying video, second. Flight is scary enough without having to think it could be down to a giant nut and a giant bolt.

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Wednesday, December 18, 2019 9:55 AM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
One photo shows why Boeing had to shut down production of its grounded 737 Max
www.businessinsider.com/photos-show-boeing-737-max-sitting-untouched-s
nowy-kansas-carpark-2019-12

Photographs show the fuselages of almost 100 Boeing 737 Max planes sitting unused at a Kansas factory.

The image was taken by Reuters at the headquarters of Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kansas. Spirit is one of the hundreds of companies in the Boeing supply chain that help produce the finished product.

The photo shows Boeing's snarled production line, which was getting ever more clogged as the company built planes that could not be delivered to customers.

On Monday, Boeing acknowledged its strategy of building planes that couldn't immediately fly was no longer sustainable, and it said it would freeze the production line in the new year. It is not clear when it will be restarted.

Spirit AeroSystems has the capacity to produce about 50 fuselages a month for the Max, and it employs about 13,000 people in Wichita. It is the city's biggest employer. The company earns 80% of its revenue from Boeing, according to data provided to Business Insider by Bloomberg.

Gov bail out? I hope not.

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Wednesday, December 18, 2019 10:34 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Quote:
Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:

Wrong signals to the horizontal stabilizer jack-screw crashed two 737 MAXs

That is one terrifying video, second. Flight is scary enough without having to think it could be down to a giant nut and a giant bolt.

Do you remember when Serenity crashed in the movie? If Boeing built Firefly class spaceships, Serenity would have never flown again because of Boeing's light weight construction methods, about as tough as an aluminum beer can.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, December 23, 2019 11:17 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

Boeing has fired Chief Executive Officer Dennis Muilenburg, following a year of intense scrutiny and industrial setbacks set off by twin fatal crashes of its 737 MAX jetliner.

Chairman David Calhoun will take over as CEO and president.

A Boeing official said the board deliberated over the weekend and they made the decision to fire Muilenburg in a phone call on Sunday. Too bad the GOP's Senators won't deliberate over the phone, then fire Trump. It really is that easy, despite that your average Trump lover thinks it can only be a complicated and slow process. The Constitution does not say it is. Mike Pence is ready to replace Trump, as David Calhoun is ready to replace Muilenburg.

The company’s shares rose nearly 4% in early trading.

The company said this month it would stop production of the jets in January.

www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-737-max-ceo/boeing-fires-ceo-muilenb
urg-as-737-max-crisis-deepens-idUSKBN1YR1FL

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, December 23, 2019 2:31 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Well, I'm sure the board didn't object when CEO pulled in one profitable year after another, but somebody had to be scapegoated! It won't save the company tho: They're trying to pull up from a nosedive 500 ft above ground.

This is a little bit like blaming Trump for decades of USA policy failures.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

I'd nuke a BILLION PEOPLE if it would save the other 7 billion from living under Putin. Hell, I might go all the way to the last 100 people on Earth to keep this planet from being under fascist rule.- WISHIMAY

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Monday, December 23, 2019 6:39 PM

Boeing Starliner sent to orbit and rendezvous with Space Station - IT'S SOLE PURPOSE FOR BEING BUILT IN THE FIRST PLACE - is sent to WRONG ORBIT, so that the Mission to connect with Space Station is a catastrophic failure (good thing nobody's lives were on the line!) and the Mission was Aborted.
Boeing Sales Team calls this a "glitch" - ho hum.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/20/boeings-starliner-flies-into-wrong-orb
it-jeopardizing-trip-to-the-international-space-station.html

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Monday, December 23, 2019 6:57 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"Boeing's light weight construction methods" are probably important when you're dealing with gravity. The trick is to make an aircraft both light and strong.

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Monday, December 23, 2019 7:00 PM