[KiloAlpha]

Things are getting murkier for Boeing and FAA on the 737-Max safety issue. I just saw this on AVHerald:

On Apr 27th 2019 it became known, that four independent whistleblowers, current and former Boeing employees, had called the FAA hotline for whistleblowers regarding aviation safety concerns on Apr 5th 2019. The concerns reported were wiring damage to the AoA related wiring as result of foreign object damage as well as concerns with the TRIM CUTOUT switches. The FAA believes these reports may open completely new investigative angles into the causes of the two crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia.

Full article is here - http://avherald.com/h?article=4c534c4a/0045&opt=0

[libranof1987]

No fair-play award for Boeing! They seem to have shortchanged Southwest, their biggest 737Max customer.

Boeing did not tell Southwest Airlines, its largest 737 Max customer, that a standard safety feature designed to warn pilots about malfunctioning sensors had been deactivated on the jets.

The safety feature is an alert that lights up in the cockpit if a plane’s angle-of-attack sensors transmit faulty data about the pitch of the plane’s nose. This feature is known as an angle-of-attack disagree light and was included in previous versions of the 737.

Southwest did not know about the change until after the fatal crash of a Lion Air flight in Indonesia. The airline, in a statement to CNBC, said Boeing had indicated through its manual that the disagree lights were functional on the 737 Max.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/28/boei...d-off-wsj.html

[the_skyliner]

Boeing CEO in recent open meeting with shareholders:

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/29/i...ing/index.html

I am not surprised by the arrogance and constant will to put the blame back on the pilots.

And when asked about safety features being offered as "optional":

And Boeing made airlines pay extra if they wanted an alert that lets pilots know if two sensors are contradicting each other. After the crashes, the company said in congressional testimony it would make that feature standard on planes in the future.
Muilenburg defended that earlier decision to include the alert as an option in his prepared remarks.
"We don't make safety features optional," he said. "Every one of our airplanes includes all of the safety features necessary for safe flight."

[boohooper]

Originally Posted by drive2eternity

OT: Clarification for some members who seem to be confused regarding the aircraft and airline type facing troubles presently.

Jet Airways and Spicejet have 737-800 MAX. The aircraft type which was involved in the Lion Air crash and the Ethiopian Airlines crash. It is made by Boeing.

Indigo, Air India and GoAir are having the Airbus 320 NEO, which is plagued with engine troubles in its Pratt and Whitney engines and already has a DGCA circular stopping its flights to Andaman.

So they have resorted to P & W from Rolls Royce to save money?

[blackwasp]

Came across this video that explains the economics behind the decision of Boeing to continue the 737 line with modifications than go for an all-new design.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfNEOfEGe3I

Further read - https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-s...nvestigations/

[ads11]

Originally Posted by blackwasp

Came across this video that explains the economics behind the decision of Boeing to continue the 737 line with modifications than go for an all-new design.

https://www.Youtube.com/watch?v=BfNEOfEGe3I

Further read - https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-s...nvestigations/

Came here for this and to post myself actually!
Really love this channel and this video really feels like it knocks it out the park with the clarity with which it outlines why Boeing made the choice it did at the time. All the news mash ups rightfully excoriate the company for the 737 Max debacle that tragically cost so many lives but I can't deny that they went with a low risk option at the time. I don't want to go into how poorly the FAA and Boeing handled the initial backlash following the 2nd crash but anyway - subscribe to Wendover aviation geeks, his videos are just great! (EDIT: Managed to get my dad into this channel on a rare evening he had free and there weren't any movies he wanted to see)

Ah heck, it really needs to be said, after a bunch of wins for Boeing's military divisions on some big contracts and programmes, this 737 Max nightmare is really going to leave a scar on the company. It's become clear that rather than being trite, management have decided to come out fighting. I'm not sure that's a great look at all except for your own shareholders who themselves must be sweating and/or dumping their stock. I wonder how Jack Leahy must've been licking his lips if he were still at Airbus. Come to think of it, if COMAC were inclined they could aggressively use this opportunity to big up their own C919 at Boeing's expense. I mean sure it won't achieve anything meaningful because no record whatsoever is scant consolation even against a currently jaded product in a market that rightfully has customer skepticism now. Still, flaunt it at a few airshows and profiteer really. Just the rule of the jungle. Congressional leaders were vicious when it came to gutting the C-Series before it even had a chance, so maybe it's time balance dictates Boeing gets dealt a body blow of their own.

Question - in light of the overbearing bad news coming out of this - what happens next? The 737 Max line is pretty much doomed surely is it not? No new orders I would imagine, or at least substantial ones for some time. Do Boeing finally light a fire under a team to get cracking on a clean sheet design or do they work overtime and patch all the holes in the current design till the next break? I imagine the new incoming CEO will have to make a big call on just this. If they go clean sheet, that's exiting a whole sector pretty much no? For a decade at the very least or the long lead time for development while you somehow hope those same economics above forces the hand of big operators to keep a slow dripline of NG derivatives or MAX (v2.0) to keep tip toeing out the factory.

I have an ancillary question - the P8 Poseidon is based on the 737 airframe, though without any of the engine related issues that come with the Max, but still I wonder if the issues highlighted here impact in any way the military derivative?

[Jeroen]

Airbus is laying low over this Boeing debacle. Not unusual in industries with only 2-3 competitors.

Why Airbus isn't pouncing on Boeing's 737 MAX turmoil https://www.reuters.com/article/us-a...-idUSKCN1S51SI

[V.Narayan]

In response to ads11's question: The P-8I is based on the 737-800 airframe and corresponding CFM56 normal sized engine. The 737-800 is a part of the NG series of airframes which did not have the problems of the MAX . To best of my knowledge the P-8I is safe from the troubles of the MAX.

[Sutripta]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

without having the lawyers looking over the shoulders of the engineers.

Just engineers?
Boeing's muted response so far is I think on advice of its lawyers. (If it wants to say something, it gets others to say it for them. Unless forced to by law).

Regards
Sutripta

[GTO]

An excellent article from The Verge on this topic. I like it because it shows the business side to the problem:

Boeing’s 737 and Airbus’ A320 are the two main players in the massive — and massively profitable — market for narrow-body passenger jets. Together, both airplanes comprise nearly half of the world’s 28,000 commercial airliners. Chances are that if you’ve ever flown anywhere at all, you’ve flown on one of them.

Both manufacturers are locked in a race to make their airplanes cheaper for airlines to operate, especially when it comes to fuel.

In 2018, for instance, Southwest Airlines’ fleet of 751 Boeing 737s burned through 2.1 billion gallons of fuel at an average cost of $2.20 per gallon for a total of $4.6 billion. A 1 percent increase in fuel efficiency would save $46 million. That’s nothing to sneeze at, even for a company that earned $2.5 billion in net profit.

A DEVELOPMENT CYCLE CAN’T BE FAST, CHEAP, AND GOOD
So Airbus and Boeing constantly tweak their airplanes to squeeze single percentage-point gains out of them. But complete overhauls are rare: the 737 last received one in 1997, with the debut of the third-generation 737NG, while the A320 hadn’t been refreshed since its launch in 1988.

Then, on December 1st, 2010, Airbus stunned the aviation community. In secret, it had developed a more efficient version of the A320 called the A320neo (which stands for “new engine option”). It would burn about 6 percent less fuel than the 737NG. That was a stunning leap in fuel efficiency, delivered at a time when the price of jet fuel was at a near-record of $2.50 per gallon.

Airlines loved it. The following summer at the 2011 Paris Air Show, the aerospace industry’s equivalent of Black Friday, Airbus sold a record-setting 667 A320neos in the span of a week. That was more orders than the 737s had received in the entirety of 2010.

Boeing was caught flat-footed. It had spent four years debating the future of its narrow-body jet program, and it still did not have an answer to its most basic question: whether Boeing should make a brand-new design or revamp the 737 yet again.

In the face of the existential threat from the A320neo, Boeing’s execs made up their minds in a matter of weeks. The company would launch a fourth-generation 737, and it would do it in record time.

The 737 Max was, plain and simple, a stopgap measure.

[the_skyliner]

So apparently Boeing knew about the Max's problems prior to Lion air crash:

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/05/u...ert/index.html

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by the_skyliner

So apparently Boeing knew about the Max's problems prior to Lion air crash:
]

The problem with these sort of news flashes is that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to make any sense of it. Because it doesn't say what Boeing specifically knew. It does not clarify/specify what issues have been reported.

Every single day dozens of of "issues" get reported to Boeing on all their airplanes in operation around the world. Same for Airbus or any aircraft manufacturer. All of these reports get looked into, validated and when necessary action taken, whatever that might be.

We know that AoA by its very nature are susceptible to damage. Happens all the time. So the likelihood of that happening and setting of various alarms, stick shakers etc is there. But bear in mind, Boeing design was based on the crew being able to act as the last line of defense in these cases. If they did, that would have been within the design envelope. It would be unlikely to be flagged up the chain of command. Everything worked as intended. With current knowledge, it has become apparent that for various reasons they had a major design flaw on their hands.

Now, if there had been carriers reporting problems with the MCAS / AoA and questioning the design as such, that would be a very different matter all together. Maybe that happened, we don't know.

But I would think that if carriers aren't happy with a design aspect of a plane, they will ensure themselves that Boeing senior management becomes aware.

To understand whether Boeing really made a mistake here, we need much more context/detail. I am sure that will start emerging in the days/weeks to come.

Jeroen

[norhog]

https://youtu.be/BfNEOfEGe3I

A very basic question.
The control surfaces of 737 is still operated by cables.? At least the first part of the video says so.
I would have thought the pilots inputs to the stick is converted to electric signals and then given to hydraulic actuators by way of solenoid valves which causes the control surfaces to move under hydraulic power.
In Airbus these electric signals are fed in a computer and it does some deciding in this whole thing as to how much to move the surfaces and all.
But is 737 still a seat of your pants type of aircraft??

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by norhog

[
But is 737 still a seat of your pants type of aircraft??

Yes, even the Max variant is all Cables and pulleys, with hydraulic (power) assistance and sort of fly by wire spoilers. That's all.

Jeroen

[im_srini]

Originally Posted by Sutripta

...
Hope the accident report dwells on how the design landed up using readings from a single AoA sensor only.
This keeps on puzzling me. If true.
...

Came across this recent video about the 737-Max...

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

While most of the information has already been "outed," it does hint at a reason why the MCAS was driven off of a single sensor.
Apparently, the single-sensor decision was a deliberate one since having a 2 sensor system would've meant mandatory simulator training or "Level-D" training ( 35:20 into the video ).
It appears that a system complex enough, or critical enough, to require redundant inputs would've forced simulator training on the pilots for the Max & Boeing wanted to avoid this at all costs.
Perhaps, the folks from the industry could help us understand why this is so & what a "Level-D" system is.
.