FAA Orders Grounding of 171 Boeing 737 MAX 9 Aircraft Following Alaska Airlines Incident
FAA Orders Grounding of 171 Boeing 737 MAX 9 Aircraft Following Alaska Airlines Incident
In the last few moments, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered the temporary grounding of 171 Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft operated by U.S airlines or in U.S territory.
This generation of 737 seems cursed. The MCAS scandal (and it was a scandal), just before the new year there were warnings to operators to check for loose nuts and now this.
Boeing are not having a good time.
There never should have been a “this generation” of 737, at least not how it was designed. It basically should have been an entirely new designation but they kept trying to shoehorn upgrades into it so pilots wouldn’t have to get recertified.
I entirely agree, But I also kinda understand it. Without the new engines they could not compete with the A32x product line. But they wouldn't fit without the tricks they pulled. It should have been a new airframe designed to take those engines.
That re-design and certification would take too long though, and they'd lose huge market share to airbus.
Now, I say I understand their actions, this does not mean I agree with them!
It also minimizes tooling costs.
They exist solely to increase shareholder value. Planes are just a method for doing so. Now the corner cutting is showing consequences.
It's almost like the 737 was obsolete decades ago and Boeing chose to zombify its corpse instead of lay it to rest and develop a better narrow body!
Look up documentaries about Boeing and their culture after the MD merger.
Ironically enough MD covered up a fatal door blowout risk in the DC-10 which killed hundreds of people. We don't yet know if this current incident was actually caused by a design fault, but the DC-10 door accident definitely was.
The whole history of the decision-making that led to the MCAS system made it clear to anyone who's ever worked in an engineering organization that more failures were coming. The engineers saying "This is a problem, don't do it this way" and the management saying "STFU, I'm in charge, do as I say" never, ever leads anywhere good.
The Boeing MCAS story and the fact they were not held accountable at all terrifies me. Not the idea of the augmentation, I kinda understand they needed to fit bigger engines onto their existing frame until they can make and certify a new one. It's not a good solution, but I can understand the business thinking behind it.
Here's where it goes wrong for me.
- Not documenting the MCAS system, in order to cheat the system to not require recertification for the plane. Adding a system that can make trim changes without informing the pilots and that there isn't a documented way to override was an accident waiting to happen.
- Worse to me, is the fact that while the aircraft has two AoA sensors, the MCAS system only takes input from one of them. This is terrifying. There's no way the software can know the inputs could be wrong. So the software would effectively try to kill people all the while thinking it's actually doing you a favour.
It was a debacle that should have been investigated further. Now, it's not fair (although it probably is) to compare Boeing putting their toes into more flight automation against airbus. But the modern airbus jets use multiple sensor sources, and when there is a disagreement, they will reduce flight protections and inform the pilots about it, pilots that will be trained on the various flight modes that can come out of this. Just using one sensor was just a crazy decision, and I bet it was based on cost.
What's going on now though is more a general QC/QA situation. Where I think it overlaps with the MCAS situation is that both the lack of redundancy in MCAS sensor input and the lack of QC in general just reeks of ruthless cost-cutting.
The plane experienced a fuselage failure where the door blew out and was delivered something like two months ago.
This fuselage failure actually happened where a door could be in the future. These locations are called plugs, if an airliner decides to add the door at some point in the future the plug is removed and a door is added in its place. In this instance the plug was more of a cork and popped upon pressurization.
The plug was more of a screw top. It's a plug in function, not in installation. Boeing probably deserves a lot of shit for this in it's pile of cost-cutting Max approval schemes but let's be accurate
That’s not supposed to happen.
The side fell off.
Well, the hidden door blew out.
This is what happens when you let the financial dicks push out the engineering dicks. Plain and simple.
The timing with the MAX 7 exemption request is special.
The C919 looks more attractive every time the MAX stumbles