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Wow. That's is insane. It appears to be the airline operator (their IT system), not the airline manufacturer that's at fault here though. So it seems a bit w

by louthy 6y ago

Wow. That's is insane. It appears to be the airline operator (their IT system), not the airline manufacturer that's at fault here though. So it seems a bit weird that this is categorised as a Boeing issue?

duxup 6y ago
>categorised as a Boeing issue Seen this a couple times in articles about Boeing. Another article had a title about how an airline cancelled all their Boeing orders. Reality, they cancelled all their Airbus orders too (clearly stated in the article) ... and the airline reiterated in the article would continue just flying Boeing planes and in the future planned to buy a different model of Boeing instead of the one they canceled. But the title implied something different, and the comments were filled about how this was a big deal for Airbus... and the typical tribal riffing off the title.
usremane 6y ago
The issue was first noticed by the aircraft regarding the weight difference. So i guess, they have to report an issue to drill down the root cause. This is because several things could be the root cause. It could also have been possible that the weighing scale (i don't know the technical term) of the plane was faulty. Point being they need to report it as an issue. But i didn't see anywhere in the report that it mentioned airline manufacture was at fault? It concludes that the IT system used by the operator was at fault.
- bbarnett 6y ago
  Yet the article also says it assigns a female adult, and a child a specific weight. Which means the weight is a ballpark anyhow. They aren't weighing anyone until totalled when on the plane. Would they blame overweight people, if a bunch of over average people got on, and skewed that?? edit: just re-skimmed the article, I still don't get how a statistically averaged weight, which can be wildly variable for specific flights, causes issue because it was wrong. Am I missing something? Is the average supposed to mostly be OK, thus not requiring fuel changes and delays for almost all flights, sav the outliers?
  - danaris 6y ago
    There's a big difference between using a mean weight for the correct category of people—which, by definition, will on average be correct, though you might occasionally get enough very overweight people to make it slightly off—and using a mean weight for the wrong category entirely, and thus ending up systematically skewing your calculations. Just to pull some numbers out of, ah, thin air for an example, if you were using 110lbs as the average weight of a child and 160lbs as the average weight of an adult woman, your airplane seats about 200, and roughly one-third of your passengers are adult women, half of whom use "miss" as their title, that works out to 50 lbs difference * ~30 passengers = 1500lbs. That's gonna make a big difference.
    - bbarnett 6y ago
      I guess. I just envision a random scenario where a league of... overweight women, are all on the same flight. This seems to be in the UK, so what if an all female travel group, from the US, for the portly, showed up? When I visited the US, there seemed to be an inordinate amount of people in scooters that were quite.. large. At least, this is what was in my head. Then again, I just realised... do they have to buy two seats? Maybe I'm over analyzing all of this.
      - danaris 6y ago
        To the best of my knowledge, there's no systematic requirement for very overweight people to buy multiple seats—though I recall hearing a couple of such people note that they tended to do so for their own comfort. I would also point out, though, that it's just as likely that there would be something like a gymnastics or other sports team on a plane, which I think should be somewhat under the average weight (despite the extra muscle mass).
nightpool 6y ago
What little I remember from the 737MAX issue is that manufacturers are generally thought of as (and regulated as if they were) providing fully complete systems and processes to airlines, so even for things like maintenance or day to day operations—while technically shared liability between the manufacture and airline—generally falls more on the manufacturer to ensure the safety and consistency of. That said, could just be a quirk of the reporting that we're seeing the manufacturer side of it and not the airline side here.

by louthy 6y ago

duxup 6y ago

>categorised as a Boeing issue Seen this a couple times in articles about Boeing. Another article had a title about how an airline cancelled all their Boeing orders. Reality, they cancelled all their Airbus orders too (clearly stated in the article) ... and the airline reiterated in the article would continue just flying Boeing planes and in the future planned to buy a different model of Boeing instead of the one they canceled. But the title implied something different, and the comments were filled about how this was a big deal for Airbus... and the typical tribal riffing off the title.

usremane 6y ago

The issue was first noticed by the aircraft regarding the weight difference. So i guess, they have to report an issue to drill down the root cause. This is because several things could be the root cause. It could also have been possible that the weighing scale (i don't know the technical term) of the plane was faulty. Point being they need to report it as an issue. But i didn't see anywhere in the report that it mentioned airline manufacture was at fault? It concludes that the IT system used by the operator was at fault.

bbarnett 6y ago
Yet the article also says it assigns a female adult, and a child a specific weight. Which means the weight is a ballpark anyhow. They aren't weighing anyone until totalled when on the plane. Would they blame overweight people, if a bunch of over average people got on, and skewed that?? edit: just re-skimmed the article, I still don't get how a statistically averaged weight, which can be wildly variable for specific flights, causes issue because it was wrong. Am I missing something? Is the average supposed to mostly be OK, thus not requiring fuel changes and delays for almost all flights, sav the outliers?
- danaris 6y ago
  There's a big difference between using a mean weight for the correct category of people—which, by definition, will on average be correct, though you might occasionally get enough very overweight people to make it slightly off—and using a mean weight for the wrong category entirely, and thus ending up systematically skewing your calculations. Just to pull some numbers out of, ah, thin air for an example, if you were using 110lbs as the average weight of a child and 160lbs as the average weight of an adult woman, your airplane seats about 200, and roughly one-third of your passengers are adult women, half of whom use "miss" as their title, that works out to 50 lbs difference * ~30 passengers = 1500lbs. That's gonna make a big difference.
  - bbarnett 6y ago
    I guess. I just envision a random scenario where a league of... overweight women, are all on the same flight. This seems to be in the UK, so what if an all female travel group, from the US, for the portly, showed up? When I visited the US, there seemed to be an inordinate amount of people in scooters that were quite.. large. At least, this is what was in my head. Then again, I just realised... do they have to buy two seats? Maybe I'm over analyzing all of this.
    - danaris 6y ago
      To the best of my knowledge, there's no systematic requirement for very overweight people to buy multiple seats—though I recall hearing a couple of such people note that they tended to do so for their own comfort. I would also point out, though, that it's just as likely that there would be something like a gymnastics or other sports team on a plane, which I think should be somewhat under the average weight (despite the extra muscle mass).

nightpool 6y ago

What little I remember from the 737MAX issue is that manufacturers are generally thought of as (and regulated as if they were) providing fully complete systems and processes to airlines, so even for things like maintenance or day to day operations—while technically shared liability between the manufacture and airline—generally falls more on the manufacturer to ensure the safety and consistency of. That said, could just be a quirk of the reporting that we're seeing the manufacturer side of it and not the airline side here.