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When it comes back online, the 737 MAX 8 will probably be the safest passenger plane in the world. A second wave of issues would present an existential threat

When it comes back online, the 737 MAX 8 will probably be the safest passenger plane in the world. A second wave of issues would present an existential threat to Boeing, they are aware of this and you can be sure that every design element is being triple checked to make sure nothing at all is missed from the MCAS issue or anything else. Even the greediest capitalist executives imaginable would not take a gamble on there being a second wave of problems with that plane. Downvotes? HN is using downvotes as a silent disagree button? We are reddit now? At least come out and post a reply explaining why you think this warrants a downvote.

kozak 7y ago
It still not clear for the general public (i.e. me) what will happen when MCAS gets disabled due to a faulty sensor. Will there be an increased chance of stall in some difficult situation (low visibility combined with other issues, etc)? If no, then why have MCAS at all? If yes, then does it mean there is still a safety issue overall?
- kuzehanka 7y ago
  Pure speculation, but I expect they will have to lose the equivalence certification with 737 (one of the key elements of the MCAS fiasco). Pilots will need to undergo additional training on the 737 MAX to understand the flight characteristics without MCAS. That additional training will cause some cash bleed but is not a huge deal. To be clear, multiple pilots have come out saying that flying without MCAS doesn't present any additional stall risk. It just requires additional training to handle the plane. MCAS only existed to allow for this equivalence certification and bypass the need for pilot training. Maybe they will remove MCAS entirely since training is now likely to be required no matter what.
  - zaroth 7y ago
    It’s possible that the plane is safer to fly without MCAS and that the deadly system was only added to exploit an FAA loophole to reduce the rollout costs. IMO this would paint Boeing in the worst possible light, and result in the maximum possible legal liability at the end of the day.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
have_faith 7y ago
Even the greediest capitalist partakes in mental gymnastics to justify to cheapest course of action. There's no such thing as rational actors.
creaghpatr 7y ago
Cynical, but I agree. Plane crash rate always seems to decrease after high-profile malfunctions. Not to mention pilots flying those planes will presumably be on extra alert.
- beamatronic 7y ago
  And ready to hit STAB TRIM CUTOUT on a moments notice. Edit: typo
arkitaip 7y ago
"When it comes back online, the 737 MAX 8 will probably be the safest passenger plane in the world." Until they cheapskate the next airplane design and cause the deaths of hundreds of people.
addicted 7y ago
That assumes that the fundamental organizational/lack of oversight issues that led to the MCAS fiasco, didn’t lead to other, more fundamental problems that cannot be resolved (and worse, could not be identified on review).
- DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
  This is my concern as well. It's terrible that the 737 MAX got into service with these flaws. But I'm more frightened that this shows major shortcomings in our regulatory system, with no clear indications that they'll be addressed.
zaroth 7y ago
The cultural changes that led to this being possible in the first place took decades to occur. It will take longer than the time 737 MAX will be grounded for Boeing to heal itself, assuming the current leadership is even capable of doing so. Only after Boeing can fully own the systemic failures which led to this tragedy can this work begin. IMO we will know that process has only just begun after several very high ranking resignations or firings.
- alexis_fr 7y ago
  Decades to occur? Huh. Boeing bought Macdonnel Douglas in 1997.
  - flo123456 7y ago
    Well that IS two decades ago.
Zenbit_UX 7y ago
> A second wave of issues would present an existential threat to Boeing, they are aware of this and you can be sure that every design element is being triple checked to make sure nothing at all is missed from the MCAS issue or anything else. Sort of like how Samsung recalled the note 7 when it started catching fire? They did "extensive testing", claimed to have fixed the issue and then re-released it with a green battery icon in the header only to have them catch fire again? No, I call bullshit. Companies aren't always as smart or as cautious as you give them credit for. Especially when they're bleeding money because of a recall. The pressures internally to patch and release are huge. If it's safer when it comes back it will be solely due to the FAA's work.
- notahacker 7y ago
  Aviation in general and the new commercial aircraft market in particular is just a little bit more safety conscious than the cheap end of the consumer electronics market...
lultimouomo 7y ago
This assumes MCAS is not painting over a more fundamental flight characteristic issue, such as the larger engines causing undesirable stall behavior. I have no idea if this is the case, but if it is I can totally see Boeing trying over and over to paint over the issue, as they would probably lose way too much if they had to scrap the project.
- frickinLasers 7y ago
  That's absolutely the case. > Now, when the pilots applied power to the engine, the aircraft would have a significant propensity to “pitch up,” or raise its nose. This propensity to pitch up with power application thereby increased the risk that the airplane could stall when the pilots “punched it” > Worse still, because the engine nacelles were so far in front of the wing and so large, a power increase will cause them to actually produce lift, particularly at high angles >of attack. So the nacelles make a bad problem worse." https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/boeing-737-max-unsafe-to-fly-new-scathing-report-by-pilot-and-software-designer-ed5jwi2s8kCuGTAgFXR0GA/ https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/boeing-737-max-unsa...
  - kuzehanka 7y ago
    It's not a safety issue. The 737 MAX has a tendency to nose-up harder than the 737 when thrust is applied. It's different from the 737 but it's not inherently unstable or unsafe or anything of the sort. Someone who understands the flight characteristics of the MAX 8 can fly it just as safely as any other passenger plane. tl;dr the plane isn't inherently less safe, it is different in flight characteristics, and Boeing tried to negate that difference with software in order to cut certification costs. Here's Mentour Pilot explaining it[1]. This is the same guy that recently made the news for 'proving' the 737 MAX 8 MCAS problems. He also explains why Boeing sold AOA disagree as an option, and shockingly, it was not a conspiracy to save a few thousand bucks like reddit/HN seems to believe. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD0JabYjF3A&t https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD0JabYjF3A&t -- Seriously who the fuck is downvoting my comments here? Come out and post a reply explaining your downvote, coward.
StreamBright 7y ago
Not sure how you can make an airplane safe if it is by design cannot be made safe. Adding more software updates wont fix the fact that the turbines are too big for this body.
mcv 7y ago
The real issue is whether it's going to require recertification and extra training for pilots. Not needing those two things were a major competitive advantage for the 737 Max, and if the FAA doesn't require recertification, I'm not so sure other airline authorities are going to take its word for it.
opencl 7y ago
I highly doubt that it'll be the safest passenger plane in the world, the entire reason they added MCAS was because the airframe design is fundamentally prone to stalling. So now they have an aircraft that's prone to stalling with a software anti-stalling system that works most of the time. The "fix" didn't even add triple redundant AOA sensors with a voting system like Airbus uses.
battletested 7y ago
As I understood from previous discussions is that the MCAS is there to compensate for a physical design flaw. This plane should never been accepted by the IATA.
jpdus 7y ago
> Even the greediest capitalist executives imaginable would not take a gamble on there being a second wave of problems with that plane. Well I guess the downvotes happened because this statement seems to be totally unsubstantiated. Did you see any signal of transparency and accountability at Boeing so far? Any personal consquences? In my opinion this shows again a flaw of late-stage capitalism. No one in Boeings leadership gains anything from transparency or really "fixing" Boeing´s problems and culture. In the opposite, these steps would cost lots of money and would probably cost the current leadership their job (and bonus). This really is a principal/agent problem and a problem between (not-measureable) long-term goals and (financial) short-term rewards. From my point of view, its absolutely not understandable how Muilenberg still has his job. Even if the whole development happened before his time, at least the second crash is 100% his responsibility and there is no way a manager with his record would still be in charge in all other western countries (e.g. Europe or Japan).
xysg 7y ago
nope. the design of the plane was already flawed from the start due to the placement of the engine, and that's why they needed MCAS to fix it. if MCAS is taken away, the plane goes back to being flawed. but since MCAS itself is a flawed solution, it's a lose-lose situation. I wouldn't fly in a MAX 8 if you paid me to.
CaptainZapp 7y ago
Doesn't change the fact that they essentially tried to fix an ancient design, no more suitable for this day and age, with a lot of software. Instead of a clean sheet engineering of something really good. And all this based on purely commercial objectives. Based on some of the things, written by far more competent people than me, the airframe, due to the different placement of the larger engines is inherently aerodynamically instable. I'm not sure that it's physically possible to turn this into the safest passenger plane in the world.
linuxftw 7y ago
> When it comes back online, the 737 MAX 8 will probably be the safest passenger plane in the world. Completely unfounded opinion here. Past success of a corporation does not contribute to future success. My presumption is they fired all the valuable engineers, outsourced as much work as possible, and they are simply functioning as a large financial firm rather than an engineering firm. To put it bluntly, the people in charge of Boeing are stupid and not trustworthy. They didn't invest to modernize their manufacturing and hire the best engineers, they cut costs and their quality is suffering. Hopefully passengers will be able to successfully sue airlines for flying Boeing's junk.

kozak 7y ago

It still not clear for the general public (i.e. me) what will happen when MCAS gets disabled due to a faulty sensor. Will there be an increased chance of stall in some difficult situation (low visibility combined with other issues, etc)? If no, then why have MCAS at all? If yes, then does it mean there is still a safety issue overall?

kuzehanka 7y ago
Pure speculation, but I expect they will have to lose the equivalence certification with 737 (one of the key elements of the MCAS fiasco). Pilots will need to undergo additional training on the 737 MAX to understand the flight characteristics without MCAS. That additional training will cause some cash bleed but is not a huge deal. To be clear, multiple pilots have come out saying that flying without MCAS doesn't present any additional stall risk. It just requires additional training to handle the plane. MCAS only existed to allow for this equivalence certification and bypass the need for pilot training. Maybe they will remove MCAS entirely since training is now likely to be required no matter what.
- zaroth 7y ago
  It’s possible that the plane is safer to fly without MCAS and that the deadly system was only added to exploit an FAA loophole to reduce the rollout costs. IMO this would paint Boeing in the worst possible light, and result in the maximum possible legal liability at the end of the day.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

have_faith 7y ago

Even the greediest capitalist partakes in mental gymnastics to justify to cheapest course of action. There's no such thing as rational actors.

creaghpatr 7y ago

Cynical, but I agree. Plane crash rate always seems to decrease after high-profile malfunctions. Not to mention pilots flying those planes will presumably be on extra alert.

beamatronic 7y ago
And ready to hit STAB TRIM CUTOUT on a moments notice. Edit: typo

arkitaip 7y ago

"When it comes back online, the 737 MAX 8 will probably be the safest passenger plane in the world." Until they cheapskate the next airplane design and cause the deaths of hundreds of people.

addicted 7y ago

That assumes that the fundamental organizational/lack of oversight issues that led to the MCAS fiasco, didn’t lead to other, more fundamental problems that cannot be resolved (and worse, could not be identified on review).

DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
This is my concern as well. It's terrible that the 737 MAX got into service with these flaws. But I'm more frightened that this shows major shortcomings in our regulatory system, with no clear indications that they'll be addressed.

zaroth 7y ago

The cultural changes that led to this being possible in the first place took decades to occur. It will take longer than the time 737 MAX will be grounded for Boeing to heal itself, assuming the current leadership is even capable of doing so. Only after Boeing can fully own the systemic failures which led to this tragedy can this work begin. IMO we will know that process has only just begun after several very high ranking resignations or firings.

alexis_fr 7y ago
Decades to occur? Huh. Boeing bought Macdonnel Douglas in 1997.
- flo123456 7y ago
  Well that IS two decades ago.

Zenbit_UX 7y ago

> A second wave of issues would present an existential threat to Boeing, they are aware of this and you can be sure that every design element is being triple checked to make sure nothing at all is missed from the MCAS issue or anything else. Sort of like how Samsung recalled the note 7 when it started catching fire? They did "extensive testing", claimed to have fixed the issue and then re-released it with a green battery icon in the header only to have them catch fire again? No, I call bullshit. Companies aren't always as smart or as cautious as you give them credit for. Especially when they're bleeding money because of a recall. The pressures internally to patch and release are huge. If it's safer when it comes back it will be solely due to the FAA's work.

notahacker 7y ago
Aviation in general and the new commercial aircraft market in particular is just a little bit more safety conscious than the cheap end of the consumer electronics market...

lultimouomo 7y ago

This assumes MCAS is not painting over a more fundamental flight characteristic issue, such as the larger engines causing undesirable stall behavior. I have no idea if this is the case, but if it is I can totally see Boeing trying over and over to paint over the issue, as they would probably lose way too much if they had to scrap the project.

frickinLasers 7y ago
That's absolutely the case. > Now, when the pilots applied power to the engine, the aircraft would have a significant propensity to “pitch up,” or raise its nose. This propensity to pitch up with power application thereby increased the risk that the airplane could stall when the pilots “punched it” > Worse still, because the engine nacelles were so far in front of the wing and so large, a power increase will cause them to actually produce lift, particularly at high angles >of attack. So the nacelles make a bad problem worse." https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/boeing-737-max-unsafe-to-fly-new-scathing-report-by-pilot-and-software-designer-ed5jwi2s8kCuGTAgFXR0GA/ https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/boeing-737-max-unsa...
- kuzehanka 7y ago
  It's not a safety issue. The 737 MAX has a tendency to nose-up harder than the 737 when thrust is applied. It's different from the 737 but it's not inherently unstable or unsafe or anything of the sort. Someone who understands the flight characteristics of the MAX 8 can fly it just as safely as any other passenger plane. tl;dr the plane isn't inherently less safe, it is different in flight characteristics, and Boeing tried to negate that difference with software in order to cut certification costs. Here's Mentour Pilot explaining it[1]. This is the same guy that recently made the news for 'proving' the 737 MAX 8 MCAS problems. He also explains why Boeing sold AOA disagree as an option, and shockingly, it was not a conspiracy to save a few thousand bucks like reddit/HN seems to believe. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD0JabYjF3A&t https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD0JabYjF3A&t -- Seriously who the fuck is downvoting my comments here? Come out and post a reply explaining your downvote, coward.

StreamBright 7y ago

Not sure how you can make an airplane safe if it is by design cannot be made safe. Adding more software updates wont fix the fact that the turbines are too big for this body.

mcv 7y ago

The real issue is whether it's going to require recertification and extra training for pilots. Not needing those two things were a major competitive advantage for the 737 Max, and if the FAA doesn't require recertification, I'm not so sure other airline authorities are going to take its word for it.

opencl 7y ago

I highly doubt that it'll be the safest passenger plane in the world, the entire reason they added MCAS was because the airframe design is fundamentally prone to stalling. So now they have an aircraft that's prone to stalling with a software anti-stalling system that works most of the time. The "fix" didn't even add triple redundant AOA sensors with a voting system like Airbus uses.

battletested 7y ago

As I understood from previous discussions is that the MCAS is there to compensate for a physical design flaw. This plane should never been accepted by the IATA.

jpdus 7y ago

> Even the greediest capitalist executives imaginable would not take a gamble on there being a second wave of problems with that plane. Well I guess the downvotes happened because this statement seems to be totally unsubstantiated. Did you see any signal of transparency and accountability at Boeing so far? Any personal consquences? In my opinion this shows again a flaw of late-stage capitalism. No one in Boeings leadership gains anything from transparency or really "fixing" Boeing´s problems and culture. In the opposite, these steps would cost lots of money and would probably cost the current leadership their job (and bonus). This really is a principal/agent problem and a problem between (not-measureable) long-term goals and (financial) short-term rewards. From my point of view, its absolutely not understandable how Muilenberg still has his job. Even if the whole development happened before his time, at least the second crash is 100% his responsibility and there is no way a manager with his record would still be in charge in all other western countries (e.g. Europe or Japan).

xysg 7y ago

nope. the design of the plane was already flawed from the start due to the placement of the engine, and that's why they needed MCAS to fix it. if MCAS is taken away, the plane goes back to being flawed. but since MCAS itself is a flawed solution, it's a lose-lose situation. I wouldn't fly in a MAX 8 if you paid me to.

CaptainZapp 7y ago

Doesn't change the fact that they essentially tried to fix an ancient design, no more suitable for this day and age, with a lot of software. Instead of a clean sheet engineering of something really good. And all this based on purely commercial objectives. Based on some of the things, written by far more competent people than me, the airframe, due to the different placement of the larger engines is inherently aerodynamically instable. I'm not sure that it's physically possible to turn this into the safest passenger plane in the world.

linuxftw 7y ago

> When it comes back online, the 737 MAX 8 will probably be the safest passenger plane in the world. Completely unfounded opinion here. Past success of a corporation does not contribute to future success. My presumption is they fired all the valuable engineers, outsourced as much work as possible, and they are simply functioning as a large financial firm rather than an engineering firm. To put it bluntly, the people in charge of Boeing are stupid and not trustworthy. They didn't invest to modernize their manufacturing and hire the best engineers, they cut costs and their quality is suffering. Hopefully passengers will be able to successfully sue airlines for flying Boeing's junk.