8 ms·

These should not fly for a decade. They're rewriting the avionics from scratch. This should require a years-long process of testing, external auditing, and appr

These should not fly for a decade. They're rewriting the avionics from scratch. This should require a years-long process of testing, external auditing, and approvals. I'd even go so far as to say in flight, we should require competitor review. That's right, no trade secrets. If you want your Hello World up in the air, you better let your competitor vet the source code. This is an engineering boondoggle and an embarrassment for Boeing. Software does not need to be this complicated. Design a damned airframe that's airworthy without needing stabilization hacks.

macspoofing 7y ago
A decade is too long but I agree with your sentiment. The underlying problem with the 737 Max was commercial pressure leading to cutting corners and creating an unsafe plane (or plane with an unsafe core component) ... and now commercial pressure is again being applied on their R&D teams, which are probably scrambling because they know every day means millions in losses. That's not a great environment for quality and safety. Boeing has to come out and say that the plane won't be back until at least 202x to take the pressure from their engineering and testing teams, so they can salvage this plane (and it may not be salvageable), instead of doing this month-to-month thing where they are hoping the FAA will sign-off on whatever latest change they put out.
- joobus 7y ago
  Boeing makes up 8.8% of the Dow right now, the largest component. There is a lot of pressure from the finance community and the government to get this recertified to keep the stock market from going down.
  - dtwest 7y ago
    I had to comment, nobody in finance pays attention to the Dow. It's a meaningless index. Look into how it is constructed if you're curious as to why. But to your point, it makes up 0.78% of the S&P500 which is not insignificant for sure.
    - LanceH 7y ago
      It makes up a far larger portion of US influence on aviation, which might bring the real push from the government.
  - dhimes 7y ago
    Tough shit. Index funds may take a hit, but better a market crash than and airline crash.
    - SkyBelow 7y ago
      How many people actually agree? Yes, if you ask them, the social costs and gains of each answer being given means most will disagree. But is that actually what we value more when their isn't a social cost to being honest with the 'wrong' answer? Is that what our actions speak too? I think we live in a world that puts a value on the plane crash and sees a certain level of cost from plane crashes as acceptable in the payoff is high enough. And this isn't unique to just plane crashes, look at what movie and music stars are allowed to get away with that would quickly get you or I a 20 year prison sentence.
      - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        The thing is, if they don't actually get it right, and another plane crashes, the stock is going to take a massive hit. So even if all you care about is the stock price, you have to get the fix right.
        SkyBelow 7y ago
        While enough crashes will hurt the stock, I don't think this is enough of a counter to the existing pressure because it is possible to modify a business in a way that increases stock value, sell the stock, and then let others take the losses when the public perception hits the point people stop buying the product (in this case, stop using flights flown with Boeing airplanes).
    - overcast 7y ago
      Let them take a hit, that's the best time to buy more.
  - eigenvalue 7y ago
    That is incredibly misleading. The Dow is not representative of the entire stock market anymore. The S&P 500, which is only the 500 largest public companies by market cap, has a combined market capitalization of ~$25+ trillion. Boeing has a market cap of ~$200b, so that represent 0.8% of the total. If you include the top 3,000 public companies (i.e., the Russell 3000), the combined market capitalization is over $32 trillion. The idea that regulators at the FAA are going to let them fly a dangerous plane "because of the stock market" is absurd.
    - SkyBelow 7y ago
      >The idea that regulators at the FAA are going to let them fly a dangerous plane "because of the stock market" is absurd. They already let fly a dangerous plane. Given they have already done so, an explanation like 'stock market pressure' is no longer absurd.
      - dk- 7y ago
        the Icon A5 is also a certified death trap. but i guess it allows the consumer to chose risk with their wallet...
    - joobus 7y ago
      You can argue for days about your favorite index, but the Dow is printed on every financial news channel, every newspaper, every finance and trading site, every evening news show. You are naive if you think the Dow doesn't matter, or that the largest military supplier doesn't have large influence over government and finance.
  - chopin 7y ago
    They may pressure FAA and maybe EASA into a certification but with other agencies (the Chinese) I think it would be more difficult. Not to mention what happens if one of re-certified planes falls out of the air. People will refuse to board these planes.
  - api_dolla 7y ago
    The Dow is also extremely outdated
davidhyde 7y ago
Agreed, the MAX was only designed to beat the competition to market with the least amount of re-certification and re-training. That gamble (with Boeing's reputation, the FAA reputation and most importantly, people's lives) did not pay off. They won't get away with rushing though certification of a complete rewrite of their flight software. The world is watching now. Time to cut losses and junk the MAX entirely.
- anticensor 7y ago
  Slightly redesigning the wings and fitting 4 engines which are sized similarly to ones in 737-400, instead of 2 large engines might solve the problem.
  - raisedbyninjas 7y ago
    The entire point of the Max was to use these two new large higher-efficiency engines.
  - xvf22 7y ago
    Four engines are generally way more inefficient than two big ones. That's why they're being phased out. A340,B747,A380, BA146, etc.
    - Xixi 7y ago
      Contrary to popular belief, quad engine planes are not inefficient [1], at least not in terms of fuel consumption (we are talking 1% to 2% difference). In terms of dispatch reliability however I think they are doing somewhat worse than twins, as they are more likely to have one engine out of service. And it not a small problem: a plane flying revenue passengers is an asset, but a plane not flying is a liability. At least two of the planes you list are not being phased out because they were quads. The A340-300 was doing very well against the 777, however the A340-600 did very poorly against the 777-300ER. This is because the frame was too long and narrow, requiring extra reinforcement not to bend, thus ending up much heavier than the frame of the 777. The frame itself was grossly overweight, the extra engines were a rounding error. The A380 was (and still is) extremely efficient (in terms of fuel burn per seat, at equivalent seating density), with a fuel consumption similar if not better than that of 787s or A350s, despite engines one generation older. It is, however, way way too big. In the end flying empty seats is very inefficient. But that has little to do with having 4 engines instead of 2. The re-engined 777-9 will certainly be the most efficient plane flying when it is launched in 2021. Yet sales are lacking. It may, like the A380, turned out to be too big. [1] https://leehamnews.com/2015/12/11/bjorns-corner-twins-or-quads/ https://leehamnews.com/2015/12/11/bjorns-corner-twins-or-qua...
jackhack 7y ago
>>Software does not need to be this complicated. >>Design a damned airframe that's airworthy without needing stabilization hacks. In effect you are stating that you understand better than the hundreds of engineers involved with this project why these design trade-offs were made. Careful with that line of thinking. You're nearly guaranteed to be wrong. There are a host of reasons for the design in place: Efficiency, ease of implementation, familiarity with the components/technology, reliabilty of subsystems, availability of components, cost, maintenance complexity, etc. etc. etc. And, don't forget, efficiency standards. As the whole world freaks out about CO2 and global climate change/cooling/warming, and the insta-crowd 'air travel shames' those who use these magnificent machines, it's important to realize that some of these design decisions maximizing efficiency are the hereditary descendants of cultural pressures, too. Not to excuse any engineering f-ups, but there's a lot more to it than just 'build a simple tube with wings and an engine.'
- Rooster61 7y ago
  > ...why these design trade-offs were made. While your line of reasoning is sound in most scenarios, in this case, the why is pretty obviously written on the wall. The overriding reason why this hacky-hack software solution was slapped into the airframe was to keep from having to reclass the plane following the addition of too-large engines. Your reasons listed played into the design decisions that became MCAS, but the underlying reason as to why any of this nonsense was needed in the first place is because non-engineers forced a shitty situation on the people who actually implement these airframes. Hacker News is frequented by engineers from multiple disciplines, including software engineering, and many of those engineers know the kinds of terrible design decisions forced by management that come about to make a quick buck. People are pissed about it due to this fact, and rightly so.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    I get the impression half of HN is pissed at Boeing because they understand terrible management-driven engineering decisions. The other half just think we're "pissed off at Boeing" and makes claims like "well, they should have just built the plane right." And so you get engineers taking umbrage (IMHO, rightly so) for the ridiculous simplification being made by the second half.
ajnin 7y ago
An extensive rewrite in only a few months (they expect a return to service by the end of the year), involving a whole new paradigm of 2 computers monitoring each other vs the old failover mechanism. I'm sure the aviation industry has extremely stringent coding standards, but that's just not realistic and asking for bugs (aka risks to the safety of passengers and crew).
- carlmr 7y ago
  >involving a whole new paradigm of 2 computers monitoring each other If I read this article correctly that was already the case.
mzkply 7y ago
Isn't there massive avionics commonality with all other modern Boeing AC? On the Airbus side, all types from A320 to A380 share a significant common core.
EricE 7y ago
>They're rewriting the avionics from scratch. So claims Bloomberg. Since there seems to be overwhelming consensus in this thread (that I also agree with) that it would be colossal stupid, I'd wait until we see confirmation from some other source. Bloomberg hasn't had the best record with facts or nuance in many stories recently.
- AnssiH 7y ago
  Here's a Seattle Times article from Aug 1st describing the redesign, citing "three sources": https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/newly-stringent-faa-tests-spur-a-fundamental-software-redesign-of-737-max-flight-controls/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/newly...
SoftwareMaven 7y ago
> Design a damned airframe that's airworthy without needing stabilization hacks. The 737 Max is stable, as all commercial aircraft have to be. MCAS is not a system to take an unstable 737 and make it stable. It's a system that was meant to take a changed 737 and make it fly nearly identical to a previous 737, so pilots didn't have to get a new type rating (a very big deal for airlines). Juan Brown, a commercial pilot and certified flight mechanic, on YouTube has a (great series of videos)[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6SYmp3qb3uPp1DS7fDy7I6y11MIMgnbO https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6SYmp3qb3uPp1DS7fDy7...] talking through the mess that is Boeing made of MCAS, including what the actual problem is.

macspoofing 7y ago

A decade is too long but I agree with your sentiment. The underlying problem with the 737 Max was commercial pressure leading to cutting corners and creating an unsafe plane (or plane with an unsafe core component) ... and now commercial pressure is again being applied on their R&D teams, which are probably scrambling because they know every day means millions in losses. That's not a great environment for quality and safety. Boeing has to come out and say that the plane won't be back until at least 202x to take the pressure from their engineering and testing teams, so they can salvage this plane (and it may not be salvageable), instead of doing this month-to-month thing where they are hoping the FAA will sign-off on whatever latest change they put out.

joobus 7y ago
Boeing makes up 8.8% of the Dow right now, the largest component. There is a lot of pressure from the finance community and the government to get this recertified to keep the stock market from going down.
- dtwest 7y ago
  I had to comment, nobody in finance pays attention to the Dow. It's a meaningless index. Look into how it is constructed if you're curious as to why. But to your point, it makes up 0.78% of the S&P500 which is not insignificant for sure.
  - LanceH 7y ago
    It makes up a far larger portion of US influence on aviation, which might bring the real push from the government.
- dhimes 7y ago
  Tough shit. Index funds may take a hit, but better a market crash than and airline crash.
  - SkyBelow 7y ago
    How many people actually agree? Yes, if you ask them, the social costs and gains of each answer being given means most will disagree. But is that actually what we value more when their isn't a social cost to being honest with the 'wrong' answer? Is that what our actions speak too? I think we live in a world that puts a value on the plane crash and sees a certain level of cost from plane crashes as acceptable in the payoff is high enough. And this isn't unique to just plane crashes, look at what movie and music stars are allowed to get away with that would quickly get you or I a 20 year prison sentence.
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      The thing is, if they don't actually get it right, and another plane crashes, the stock is going to take a massive hit. So even if all you care about is the stock price, you have to get the fix right.
      - SkyBelow 7y ago
        While enough crashes will hurt the stock, I don't think this is enough of a counter to the existing pressure because it is possible to modify a business in a way that increases stock value, sell the stock, and then let others take the losses when the public perception hits the point people stop buying the product (in this case, stop using flights flown with Boeing airplanes).
  - overcast 7y ago
    Let them take a hit, that's the best time to buy more.
- eigenvalue 7y ago
  That is incredibly misleading. The Dow is not representative of the entire stock market anymore. The S&P 500, which is only the 500 largest public companies by market cap, has a combined market capitalization of ~$25+ trillion. Boeing has a market cap of ~$200b, so that represent 0.8% of the total. If you include the top 3,000 public companies (i.e., the Russell 3000), the combined market capitalization is over $32 trillion. The idea that regulators at the FAA are going to let them fly a dangerous plane "because of the stock market" is absurd.
  - SkyBelow 7y ago
    >The idea that regulators at the FAA are going to let them fly a dangerous plane "because of the stock market" is absurd. They already let fly a dangerous plane. Given they have already done so, an explanation like 'stock market pressure' is no longer absurd.
    - dk- 7y ago
      the Icon A5 is also a certified death trap. but i guess it allows the consumer to chose risk with their wallet...
  - joobus 7y ago
    You can argue for days about your favorite index, but the Dow is printed on every financial news channel, every newspaper, every finance and trading site, every evening news show. You are naive if you think the Dow doesn't matter, or that the largest military supplier doesn't have large influence over government and finance.
- chopin 7y ago
  They may pressure FAA and maybe EASA into a certification but with other agencies (the Chinese) I think it would be more difficult. Not to mention what happens if one of re-certified planes falls out of the air. People will refuse to board these planes.
- api_dolla 7y ago
  The Dow is also extremely outdated

davidhyde 7y ago

Agreed, the MAX was only designed to beat the competition to market with the least amount of re-certification and re-training. That gamble (with Boeing's reputation, the FAA reputation and most importantly, people's lives) did not pay off. They won't get away with rushing though certification of a complete rewrite of their flight software. The world is watching now. Time to cut losses and junk the MAX entirely.

anticensor 7y ago
Slightly redesigning the wings and fitting 4 engines which are sized similarly to ones in 737-400, instead of 2 large engines might solve the problem.
- raisedbyninjas 7y ago
  The entire point of the Max was to use these two new large higher-efficiency engines.
- xvf22 7y ago
  Four engines are generally way more inefficient than two big ones. That's why they're being phased out. A340,B747,A380, BA146, etc.
  - Xixi 7y ago
    Contrary to popular belief, quad engine planes are not inefficient [1], at least not in terms of fuel consumption (we are talking 1% to 2% difference). In terms of dispatch reliability however I think they are doing somewhat worse than twins, as they are more likely to have one engine out of service. And it not a small problem: a plane flying revenue passengers is an asset, but a plane not flying is a liability. At least two of the planes you list are not being phased out because they were quads. The A340-300 was doing very well against the 777, however the A340-600 did very poorly against the 777-300ER. This is because the frame was too long and narrow, requiring extra reinforcement not to bend, thus ending up much heavier than the frame of the 777. The frame itself was grossly overweight, the extra engines were a rounding error. The A380 was (and still is) extremely efficient (in terms of fuel burn per seat, at equivalent seating density), with a fuel consumption similar if not better than that of 787s or A350s, despite engines one generation older. It is, however, way way too big. In the end flying empty seats is very inefficient. But that has little to do with having 4 engines instead of 2. The re-engined 777-9 will certainly be the most efficient plane flying when it is launched in 2021. Yet sales are lacking. It may, like the A380, turned out to be too big. [1] https://leehamnews.com/2015/12/11/bjorns-corner-twins-or-quads/ https://leehamnews.com/2015/12/11/bjorns-corner-twins-or-qua...

jackhack 7y ago

>>Software does not need to be this complicated. >>Design a damned airframe that's airworthy without needing stabilization hacks. In effect you are stating that you understand better than the hundreds of engineers involved with this project why these design trade-offs were made. Careful with that line of thinking. You're nearly guaranteed to be wrong. There are a host of reasons for the design in place: Efficiency, ease of implementation, familiarity with the components/technology, reliabilty of subsystems, availability of components, cost, maintenance complexity, etc. etc. etc. And, don't forget, efficiency standards. As the whole world freaks out about CO2 and global climate change/cooling/warming, and the insta-crowd 'air travel shames' those who use these magnificent machines, it's important to realize that some of these design decisions maximizing efficiency are the hereditary descendants of cultural pressures, too. Not to excuse any engineering f-ups, but there's a lot more to it than just 'build a simple tube with wings and an engine.'

Rooster61 7y ago
> ...why these design trade-offs were made. While your line of reasoning is sound in most scenarios, in this case, the why is pretty obviously written on the wall. The overriding reason why this hacky-hack software solution was slapped into the airframe was to keep from having to reclass the plane following the addition of too-large engines. Your reasons listed played into the design decisions that became MCAS, but the underlying reason as to why any of this nonsense was needed in the first place is because non-engineers forced a shitty situation on the people who actually implement these airframes. Hacker News is frequented by engineers from multiple disciplines, including software engineering, and many of those engineers know the kinds of terrible design decisions forced by management that come about to make a quick buck. People are pissed about it due to this fact, and rightly so.
- ethbro 7y ago
  I get the impression half of HN is pissed at Boeing because they understand terrible management-driven engineering decisions. The other half just think we're "pissed off at Boeing" and makes claims like "well, they should have just built the plane right." And so you get engineers taking umbrage (IMHO, rightly so) for the ridiculous simplification being made by the second half.

ajnin 7y ago

An extensive rewrite in only a few months (they expect a return to service by the end of the year), involving a whole new paradigm of 2 computers monitoring each other vs the old failover mechanism. I'm sure the aviation industry has extremely stringent coding standards, but that's just not realistic and asking for bugs (aka risks to the safety of passengers and crew).

carlmr 7y ago
>involving a whole new paradigm of 2 computers monitoring each other If I read this article correctly that was already the case.

mzkply 7y ago

Isn't there massive avionics commonality with all other modern Boeing AC? On the Airbus side, all types from A320 to A380 share a significant common core.

EricE 7y ago

>They're rewriting the avionics from scratch. So claims Bloomberg. Since there seems to be overwhelming consensus in this thread (that I also agree with) that it would be colossal stupid, I'd wait until we see confirmation from some other source. Bloomberg hasn't had the best record with facts or nuance in many stories recently.

AnssiH 7y ago
Here's a Seattle Times article from Aug 1st describing the redesign, citing "three sources": https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/newly-stringent-faa-tests-spur-a-fundamental-software-redesign-of-737-max-flight-controls/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/newly...

SoftwareMaven 7y ago

> Design a damned airframe that's airworthy without needing stabilization hacks. The 737 Max is stable, as all commercial aircraft have to be. MCAS is not a system to take an unstable 737 and make it stable. It's a system that was meant to take a changed 737 and make it fly nearly identical to a previous 737, so pilots didn't have to get a new type rating (a very big deal for airlines). Juan Brown, a commercial pilot and certified flight mechanic, on YouTube has a (great series of videos)[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6SYmp3qb3uPp1DS7fDy7I6y11MIMgnbO https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6SYmp3qb3uPp1DS7fDy7...] talking through the mess that is Boeing made of MCAS, including what the actual problem is.