In this case I don't blame the FAA so much as I do blame Boeing. I worked in the industry for about 10 years, and I think Boeing cheated the system in this case. Yes, certainly it could be said that FAA failed on oversight, but for many years Boeing had a well-deserved reputation in the industry. They played by the rules and delivered good aircraft. In this case they beat the rules, and the FAA didn't catch it, but I'm judging from a great distance.
Well there may be no such thing, yet, the main reason flying is popular is that they so seldom do. But my point is the implication that Boeing MAX failed because of outsourcing and frugality is insane.
And yet, no evidence that the code was inferior, other than it was Indian firm at $9 hr. I'd like to know how MAX flights with no problem, and what that difference was in the two that crashed.
The plane crashed, not because of cheap foreign labor, but in my opinion, because of an unforeseen design flaw, and somewhat cavalier and overconfident attitude at its discovery.
I and my colleagues wrote software for the Eurofighter but none of us had any experience of "real aviation and aerodynamic" and we were the highest paid engineers in the company. This is nothing to do with how much they were paid. All software has to go through safety and quality control. Little doubt that Boeing cut back on those requirements. All software is tested on simulators until approaching the final stages
Other than relying on one damn sensor, which I attribute to complacency and overconfidence, I see very little in actual evidence that Boeing shortcutted safety and testing requirements.
The engineers Boeing selected to save costs failed. IOW, Boeing MAX failed because of bad management.
Depends if they met the requirements and standards Boeing set. The person I want to hear from is the Chief Boeing Engineer who signed off on the design.
The downfall of Boeing is a huge sucess for our Airbus. Airbus was already slightly ahead of Boeing. And the new A320 basicly forced Boeing in panic to bring out the 737 MAX. Now Airbus gets billions of billions of contracts worldwide, while Boeing cant get out of negative headlines.
The design flaw was seen, otherwise tehy would not have installed the MCAS software. They used the ld 737 fuselage and added teh much bigger A320 engines. To get those engines udner teh wing, they had to push them forward. This makes the flight profile instable. To correct this they installed MCAS...well...
Boeings mistake has cost them bigly, and will keep draining their profits for many years. The managers responsible should be fired. A grand jury should eventually investigate how this happened.
Add the fact that their quality has become very low. Airlines denie to accpet aircrafts build in their charleston plant. They find garbage and trash inside new aircrafts and sharp metal parts inside.
None of the many 737 iterations starting in the 60's had any trouble with pitch stability, and they did not have MCAS. With the MAX, there was insufficient pitch stability to the point that the engineers were forced to add MCAS, and likely that was all predicted by engineering calculations, before the MAX ever flew. That means something. My bet is that if the truth could be known, the MAX never completed a standard flight test program for certification, emphasis on the word "standard", as in industry wide. So you're not going to see any evidence because those are secret company records. Engineering calculations showed the design to be unstable in pitch, and that is why MCAS was incorporated, a band-aid approach to a very serious problem, corners were cut, and the airplane was brought to market. Even before the fatal accidents, there were at least 5 reports within the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System, all made by line pilots flying the airplane, that described very real pitch problems with the airplane.
While it may be true about pitch, it is not true about yaw, the 737's have crashed due to rudder jamming. "During the 1990s, a series of rudder issues on Boeing 737 aircraft resulted in multiple incidents. In two separate accidents, pilots lost control of their Boeing 737 aircraft due to a sudden and unexpected movement of the rudder, and the resulting crashes killed everyone aboard. A total of 157 people aboard the two aircraft were killed.[1] Similar rudder issues led to a temporary loss of control on at least one other Boeing 737 flight before the problem was ultimately identified. The National Transportation Safety Board ultimately determined that the accidents and incidents were the result of a design flaw that could result in an uncommanded movement of the aircraft's rudder.[2]:13[3]:ix The issues were resolved after the NTSB identified the cause of the rudder malfunction and the Federal Aviation Administration ordered repairs for all Boeing 737 aircraft in service. Thermal shock testing revealed that the uncommanded rudder movement could be replicated by injecting a cold PCU with hot hydraulic fluid. Thermal shock resulted in the servo's secondary slide becoming jammed against the servo housing, and that when the secondary slide was jammed the primary slide could move to a position that resulted in rudder movement opposite of the pilot's commands.[2]:79[3]:294 The NTSB concluded that all three rudder incidents (United Flight 585, USAir Flight 427, and Eastwind Flight 517) were most likely due to the PCU secondary slide jamming and excessive travel of the primary slide, resulting in the rudder reversal.[3]:294"--https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_rudder_issues The NTSB called it a design flaw; I call it an unforeseeable danger. As to the present problem, I consider it to be a very similar experience.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, make fun of the hippie, lol. What I said is true though. A corporation's board doesn't make decisions as people they make decisions by weighing what is best for the corporation. I've been involved in companies that take care of their employees but they were small and very family like.
Oh for sure heads will roll, and rightly so. The problem is the managers were just following orders from the higher ups. Either that or were given a bottom line to meet no matter what. The people that really made these decisions are insulated and there will be a number of fall guys for the press. But yeah, Boeing really messed up here.
The point is that Boeing paid $9/hour for software engineering and got $9 worth of value in return Which is not enough to keep a 737 Max in the air
I'm waiting for the final NTSB report to come out on both crashes. This thread is just about bashing Boeing and I think we've beaten this horse to death in other threads.