Boeing 737 Max8 Aircraft Crashes and Investigations [Part 5] 19

[Sparweb]

This is the continuation from:

thread815-445840
thread815-450258
thread815-452000
thread815-454283

This topic is broken into multiple threads due to the length to be scrolled, and images to load, creating long load times for some users and devices. If you are NEW to this discussion, please read the above threads prior to posting, to avoid rehashing old discussions.

Thank you everyone for your interest! I have learned a lot from the discussion, too.

Some key references:
Ethiopian CAA preliminary report

Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee preliminary report

A Boeing 737 Technical Site

Washington Post: When Will Boeing 737 Max Fly Again and More Questions

No one believes the theory except the one who developed it. Everyone believes the experiment except the one who ran it.
STF

 

[LittleInch]

So Muilenberg is gone and a slew of stories like this

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/22/business/boeing-dennis-muilenburg-737-max.html

that says there was a frosty meeting between him and the FAA chief.

Some reports now thinking it will be the summer before any clearance.

https://www.theguardian.com/busines...-to-approve-737-max-jets-backfires-for-boeing

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[davefitz]

I don't think the botched launch of the Boeing Starliner over the weekend helped DM's chances either. My guess is they are researching a plan B, splitting the company and letting the commercial division go bankrupt. In the very odd event Pelosi takes over, then the 2 democratic senators from washington state would have more pull on the FAA and plan B would not be neccesary.

"...when logic, and proportion, have fallen, sloppy dead..." Grace Slick

 

[waross]

Possibly the root cause of this mess may be the investors and the board of governors.
Profit above all else.
There has been comments about the How McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing's money.
Right. McDonnell Douglas executives and board members conspired to set this up.
OR.
Did the Board of Boeing look at the management style of McDonnell Douglas and want it for themselves?
Getting the manager that they wanted and eliminating a rival at the same time would be worth a lot of money and they spent the money.
Moving the management offices 1700 miles to Chicago, was this done without the approval of the board of directors?
It may not have been the best but it is a good arrangement for a hatchet management style and great for a management style that is telling when they should be asking.
It seem as if Boeing's mindset has been to "Manage" the crisis rather than letting good engineers solve the problems.
Why did Muilenberg stay in his position so long?
The board was confident that he could "Manage" the issues.
Firing Muilenberg was not so much a mark against Muilenberg, he is whet he is, it is an acknowledgement by the board that they made a mistake in believing that they could "manage" their way out of the mess and that Muilenberg was the man to do it.
If the Power Point approach and pressure on the FAA would have worked for Boeing, then Muilenberg could have got the job done.
This may be a sign of a crack in the shield of hubris isolating a Board of Directors.
The Board may have finally realized that they cannot bully their way out of this and are switching to plan "B".

This situation reminds me of a problem faced by a friend many years ago.
He had a small business consulting business.
A small manufacturer hired him to find out why his manufacturing business was losing money.
It was a good business.
It could make money.
It should make money.
It was losing money.
The reason, the owner continually diverted men and resources from the production line to work on repair jobs.
The revenue from the repair jobs did not come near to covering the losses due to the interruption of the manufacturing flow.
My friend was working on the final report.
His comment to me:
"How do I tell an owner that what his company needs in order to show a profit is a new owner?"
I wonder if there is a loose parallel here?
Does Boeing need new owners?
Many months ago I suggested that the problem may be solved by raising the landing gear and moving the engines back under the wings.
There may be other, technical reasons why this won't work but the reasons that I was given, too costly, need approvals, take too long, etc. pale into insignificance when compared to the time, expense and approvals that the present course of action has occasioned.
The point is not raise the landing gear.
The point is it may be time to abandon MCAS and fix the plane.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

 

[BrianPetersen]

Firing the CEO and then appointing the replacement from within the same management team does not make it look like the board of directors has figured out, or accepted, that THEY are the problem.

If the plane cannot fly correctly without MCAS then probably it has to be accepted that MCAS done "correctly" with three sensors and proper redundancy (probably also cross checking those sensors against what the AoA "should" be based on other flight control settings) has to be retrofitted to all of the MAX aircraft that have already been built. And then after that's done, the MAX line of aircraft should end production until it can be properly re-engineered, potentially with longer landing gear and the engines repositioned so as to not cause flight control problems. And while that's in progress, the company as a whole needs to shift back to being driven by engineering rather than financials. You know, back to when Boeing really was a great and well respected company.

Whichever the course of action, it needs to be a decisive choice. They need to bite the bullet and deal with it properly. If that means splitting the company up into "good" and "bad" and bankrupting the "bad" with its liabilities (see General Motors) then so be it.

I don't think a new CEO appointed from within is going to get that done.

But maybe I'm wrong.

 

[waross]

Dating not from the first or second crash, but from from instant message in 2016 when a test pilot complained about MCAS.
The cost to Boeing has been estimated to reach $14 Billion.
In hind sight, with four years and $14 Billion they could have done a better job, cheaper.
But with 387 Max 8s delivered and another 400 built and not delivered, times $121 million, there is another $95 Billion sitting idle.
At 1% that's over $952 million in interest a year.

If that means splitting the company up into "good" and "bad" and bankrupting the "bad" with its liabilities (see General Motors) then so be it.

If it is shown that the split was created to avoid liabilities incurred before the split, the total company may still be liable.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

 

[davefitz]

Well, they have had 9 months to identify employees that could offer problematic testimony and then reach negotiated settlements on what these testimonies may be in the ensuing lawsuits and investigations. That could be one of the reasons they kept DM onboard- he knew who else was aware of the skeletons in their closet. His departure agreement likely includes a standard clause to keep lips sealed. As Deniro says in "the Irishman" ( as he realizes he needs to shoot his best friend)- "it is what it is."

"...when logic, and proportion, have fallen, sloppy dead..." Grace Slick

 

[VEBill]

'...a standard clause to keep lips sealed..."

No use during a deposition.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Its interesting that the lawyer has walked as well now.

He will know fine how deep the poo is....

Its been weeks now since the FAA walked out of the powerpoint presentation from Boeing which was meant to be the documentation for MCAS 2. Nothing since, next information point is likely to be Jan statement to wall street by BA.

 

[RVAmeche]

I expect this saga will become another seminal lecture topic when discussing engineering ethics, design, and schedule/profits.

 

[thebard3]

I expect this saga will become another seminal lecture topic when discussing engineering ethics, design, and schedule/profits.

Yes, among the informed. For the rest, this will just end up being an example of how a few bad players making bad decisions can quickly ruin the reputation of a company, it's employees, and also one of the finest and most venerable aircraft designs ever. I'm sure there are lots of folks out there who have just decided that Boeing jets are junk and will never fly on one again(good luck with that, though).

Brad Waybright

It's all okay as long as it's okay.

 

[moon161]

"Its interesting that the lawyer has walked as well now.

He will know fine how deep the poo is...."

Yeah, I worked for a medical device mfg on contract, after the FDA told them 'We're gonna be back in a year, this is the list of things you need to fix, take care of it....'

The army of temps I was in and the director of Quality assurance/regulatory affairs was gone when all the testing was approved and filed. They didn't want anyone who knew where there were bodies when the FDA came back around.

 

[waross]

My wife is talking about a trip next year to a destination served mostly by Boeing.
At present prices it will cost an extra $60 on a $600 ticket to avoid flying Boeing.
It is more a matter of distrust of the company than distrust of the older planes.
Rather than trying to avoid certain models, it's easier and safer to avoid Boeing.
How things change.
If it's not Boeing, I'm not going!
Is becoming
If it's not Boeing, I'm not going!


Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

 

[waross]

Its interesting that the lawyer has walked as well now.

Link

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

It's pretty easy in the EU to avoid the max you just don't book with ryanair which it would be a cold day in hell before I would anyway or Norwegian. Avoid those two and you pretty much certain you won't fly on a max for the next 5 years from the point of it getting certified again.

Btw they are junk compared to pre MD merger. And you lot Inn the USA will have to fly on them like it or not.

 

[thebard3]

I would fly on the first MAX to leave the gate. Once that bone-headed software is tweaked out of the MCAS I know it will be one of the safest planes in the sky.

Brad Waybright

It's all okay as long as it's okay.

 

[waross]

It's not the plane.
It's the company I no longer trust.
After Max, what's next?
Certainly not my safety.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

 

[thebard3]

Well, one would think the billions this is undoubtedly going to cost Boeing would be a lesson hard-learned. Assuming they have kicked out all of the guilty parties and return to their roots, the company has a good product line and a somewhat besmirched reputation, but that can be won back. It's not unusual for a company to let some incompetents run the store from time to time, which usually manifests into some kind of disaster. A consequence is that sometimes this sort of thing drives away the best talent, which is harder to recover. Warren Buffet famously said that he would only own a company that an idiot could run, because an idiot would eventually end up running it.

Brad Waybright

It's all okay as long as it's okay.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Its not the software that's the problem, if it was only the software then it would be flying again already.

Its pretty obvious that there are other certification issues which the software was meant to cover up. But now people external to Boeing are looking at the aircraft properly they are surfacing. More than likely Boeing knew about them from before the first flight of the MAX but managed to blind side the FAA to get certification.

I have a suspicion that the MCAS was in fact an anti-stall system instead of just a control response tweaker.

The Canadians have issued a bluff saying if it fly's fine with out the MCAS we will let it fly again without it with a bit of training. And Boeing haven't touched it. Which leads a lot of us to suspect there are more fundamental issues than Boeing plus regulators have been saying.

Problem is for pilots we just don't know how the thing works or how it performs with a single AoA failure.

 

[IRstuff]

This seems to be all a bit of a red herring, not that I'm defending Boeing, but if anyone thinks that Airbus is immune from this sort of problem, they're dreaming. The two 800-lb gorillas duke it out, year after year, competing on price and performance, but they're neck and neck, which I suspect means they're doing about the same sort of thing.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Well they are immune from geometric issues that Boeing have with the 737.

The Airbus has room for even bigger engines before they run out of space under the wings and have to get creative to fit the engines on.

The issues with redundancy and fbw architecture have been dealt with years ago. Yes there are still snags appear but the redundancy in the system means that nobody died.

Either the 737 is fbw or its not. If it's not then it has to comply with the manual handling regs. If it is the system architecture has to comply with the fbw regs.

Currently the max complys with niether And getting it to comply with either set of regs may be impossible.