Posted on 05/17/2019 12:13:37 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
The 737 Max is a flawed design. Instead of building a new plane to meet the needs of a specific market, Boeing’s senior executives made the decision to upgrade the 737 in an attempt to get the plane to market sooner to prevent its largest competitor, Airbus, from securing orders for its own aircraft.
When testing revealed that the heavier engines and the forward placement location of the engines on the 737 Max created new and unsafe flight characteristics, did Boeing shut down the program? No. Boeing made the decision to come up with a software fix to force a solution to the fact that the company had pushed the original design of the 737 far past its limit.
Imagine a car company builds a new model that, due to the design, the front of the car points upward when driven faster than 30 miles per hour. To “fix” the problem, the car company increases the weight in the front of the car by 500 pounds. Technically, the car rides more level. However, due to an imbalance in weight between the front and rear of the car, the car can skid sideways when going around corners...
The engineers at the auto company create software that forces the car to drive slower around corners eliminating the issue. Over a period of weeks and months, reports begin to surface that when the car is forced to drive slowly around corners, it’s nearly impossible to steer the car and keep it on the road. “That’s an easy fix,” proclaim the engineers, and software is developed to automatically steer the car around corners...
Unfortunately, in a period of several days, multiple families are killed while driving the car, because for some unknown reason, the car decides to start steering itself without warning...
(Excerpt) Read more at observer.com ...
It would only take about 30 minutes to watch them all but
it’s certain to give you some peace of mind and if
you start from the beginning you’ll get the whole story.
7
Was this article written by a hyperventilating woman?
Bingo. That’s the problem. I won’t fly on one either.
I still don’t understand the single sensor design. You can’t fix that with software.
Airbus made a similar gamble with the A380 - which arrived about 15 years too late. Boeing had already gotten a stranglehold on the large jet segment with the more efficient twin-engine 777 and will probably keep that lead for some time to come, killing off both the A380 and their own 747-8 in the process. The medium-large segment continues to be competitive, with the 787 and A350 both selling well.
But Boeing has won the large jet market just when it appears most the future profit growth is going to come from the smaller jet market. The MAX's problems make it look like - suddenly - Boeing does not have a solid entry in that race.
No they have not had 40,000 flights “without an issue”... that’s a false statement.. they have had 40,000 flights without a crash.
Also, NOT every model of the 737-Max has this particular issue that 1 sensor causes input override... it is only a specific cheaper model that only used 1 sensor to decide to override pilot input. Other models used multiple sensors.... but you had to pay more for that feature.
I GUARANTEE that BOEING LIED to the FAA, or greased some palms to get that single sensor override certified for airworthiness.
You will find malfeasance within BOEING, and possibly the FAA as well, when it comes to how that version of the plane got certified for airworthiness.
Actually the 737 Max was an afterthought, after AIRBUS beat them to the punch with a competing model with newer engines and better fuel efficiency.
Boeing scrambled to do the same thing with the 737, but the problem was the 737 airframe was too close to the ground for the new engines to be mounted under the wing, like the previous engines.
So they tweaked the design to push the engines up in front of the wing to get the engines off the ground.. This of course changed flight characteristics of the aircraft, as now the thrust was no longer toward the back of the wing, but near the front, and changed the center of gravity and other things as well.
Using software to attempt to counter these changes, isn’t a problem per se... if it is done right, you can certainly do so... Hell the X29 would crash every time without software constantly correcting its control surfaces independent of the pilot input.... Its that unstable.. No Human could adjust enough to keep it airborne long.
The failure in the 737-max is that one model (a cheap variant) kicked in the override of pilot input to prevent stall, based solely on 1 sensors input... If that sensor went bad... the plane would think it was about to stall and try to nose down regardless of the pilots control. This created a SINGLE point of failure, which NO commercial airliner should ever knowingly Have... And there is no doubt in my mind ENGINEERS would have voiced this concern...
And the FAA would NEVER have certified this as airworthy had they known this... (unless someone in the FAA was on the take).
So, you have a situation, where BOEING either LIED to the FAA (by omission, or directly) or they Bribed certain individuals in the FAA to certify it anyway.
The LATTER is less likely, but not impossible. The most likely reality is BOEING flat out LIED about how this system worked to the FAA to get airworthiness certification.
Airbus had been studying the idea of a more efficient A320 model for a number of years, but it wasn’t until 2008-2009 with the development of the Pratt & Whitney PW1100G and CFM International LEAP that they could proceed. If I remember correctly, the wing design on the A320neo is quite different to accommodate the larger-diameter PW1100G and LEAP-1A engines. Of course, it required an all-new engine pylon design and a changed landing gear design, too.
You are correct, but the main thing with the 320 retrofit vs the 737 is that the 320 was far enough off the ground to keep the engine under the wing... Yes it needed work.. but it still remained under the wing.
It wasn’t hey, strap that new engine on with no other work, didn’t mean to imply that’s all it was... It was indeed work for the 320 to get those more fuel efficient engines on it.
Tying the single sensor design to an option, rather than admit the original 737 design had been stretched to its absolute limits and make it standard is the entire issue here.
It is an incredibly short-sighted decision. These are the people that pioneered the study of cascading failure in aerospace disasters. Same company designs a single pinch-point source of failure in a system built to essentially end-run the FAA airframe recertification process.
Wow, that is stupid.
I suspect that allowing the MAX to fly with an amended, as opposed to a new, type certificate involved undue influence of some kind - maybe only patriotic, but baksheesh is not out of the question.
Boeing should have anticipated that the angle of attack sensors might fail, and designed a safer failure mode when it happened.
They didn’t, and the lawyers will discover. Probably some engineers warned management, but management declined action.
To make matters worse, the Boeing president alluded to a software only fix during the earnings call. He did not communicate a redesign of the angle of attack sensor system which would have been much more assuring.
I flew in the max several times from several different US airports. I will fly on them again. I cant believe any pilot would intentionally fly a plane they believe is crash prone. They would be suicidal. Crashes of foreign planes with inexperienced pilots who barely know how to fly do not scare me.
First reported on EE Times. Publication by Engineers, for Engineers.
Agreed, he is a real ignoramus. And his automobile analogy is pathetic beyond belief.
They put the engines in the wrong place And tried to fix it with software.
What could possibly go wrong?
Brittain Ladd is a global strategy, retail and supply chain management consultant. He specializes in designing and implementing strategies for retailers with a focus on cross border, e-commerce and physical retail store operations.Are you CERTAIN we should disregard this guy?
Indeed, the A321neo Hawaiian Airlines now operates has the range to fly from the US West Coast to Hawaii easily.
Boeing does not have a warped business ethic. That is just your opinion. I worked there 32 years. You?
Thanks for researching his CV.
Perhaps he slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
It is not a 737. It is a totally different plane and it should be treated as such with intense training and documentation.
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