Posted on 01/05/2020 9:38:55 PM PST by BenLurkin
The plane was grounded worldwide in March after two crashes that killed 346 people. The company determined a software fix was likely to correct the issue with the automatic safety feature that caused the crashes.
However, as part of a December audit of the plane’s safety ordered by the US Federal Aviation Administration, Boeing found “previously unreported concerns” with wiring in the 737 Max, according to a report earlier Sunday from the New York Times. The company informed the FAA last month that it is looking into whether two sections of wiring that control the tail of the plane are too close together and could cause a short circuit — and potentially a crash, if pilots did not react appropriately -— the Times reported, citing a senior Boeing engineer and three people familiar with the matter.
Orders for the 737 Max dried up following the grounding, and it wasn’t until November that Boeing recorded its first new orders since the grounding. In the meantime, the company had continued to produce the planes at a rate of 42 jets a month, in hopes of a quick recertification by airline regulators around the globe.
(Excerpt) Read more at ktla.com ...
Doesn’t sound like that big a deal. Wiring should be easily fixable. If the wing or fuselage has to be redone, that’s a big deal.
Agreed...
It depends. There is a lot of wire in an airplane. Mostly in very inaccessible places.
I don't have figures on a 737 Max, but a 747-400 had 171 miles of wire in it. 737 is a newer design with more electronics so it might have even more wire than the 747 even though that is a larger plane.
This wire all gets crammed into some very small and tight places in the aircraft. Repairing it is difficult.
The Max is likely dead anyway and Boeing may end up bankrupt.
But the newer designs utilize more bus-type configurations with digital packet switching and fewer individual wires.
I guess designing and engineering anything is a compromise and a balance between conflicting things, but it sounds like the Max was too much of a compromise with bad results and nasty surprises.
You know the Government will never let that happen
Wiring placement isn’t nearly as big of a deal as software that crashes you into the ground because its misinterpreting air speed sensor data.
I’m a little confused by all of this. Newer wiring should be less susceptable to short circuit. Digital packet switching can reduce the number of wires and allows for wires that are less susceptible to shot circuit. Fiber optic cables can’t short. They are generally used with copper wires, but there are copper wires designed to make short circuits far less likely. For instance, shielded twisted-pair Ethernet cables have shielding to prevent this. I would also assume that the wires would be covered in plenum, a fire-resistant layer, which also helps here. If I’m required to run plenum cables in a drop ceiling and to use sheilded-twisted pair when close to electric wires and built-in lights, surely the FAA has greated requirements for plane manufacturing.
[This wire all gets crammed into some very small and tight places in the aircraft. Repairing it is difficult. ]
Re: The Max is likely dead anyway and Boeing may end up bankrupt.
I strongly disagree.
The 737 MAX - after almost 500,000 flights - has a perfect safety record in North America, Europe, and wealthy Asian countries.
Boeing’s stock price - $332 ($187 billion market cap) - is currently higher than it was in January 2019.
That’s it. And it doesn’t make it easier or more affordable to fix. It is easier to fix electric issues in 1989 Toyota than in a 2009 Audi. The latter is nearly impossible.
Was wiring design or assembly outsourced overseas?
Aircraft design & manufacturing can take decades when you start from a clean sheet of paper. But done right, you get a successful product that flies well. Still, a successful aircraft design can fail in meeting the airlines projected needs 10 years out.
So the temptation arises to take a successful design (the 737) and “stretch it” to have it fill a niche that it wasn’t originally designed for. The Risk: you take a well-balanced plane that flew well in it’s original design and you unbalance it such that it requires some fancy software to manage the control inputs. Not good.
I know that a lot of Boeing stuff is done overseas.
E.G. - China makes a big deal to buy Boeing, but only if parts of the plane are made in China. Indonesia gets another slice of the pie/plane.
I can understand the wheeling and dealing - but it must be a huge mess in coordinating it all.
I wonder what would happen if WW III starts.
“Hey Frank - the Pentagon wants us to switch over to building bombers to fight the Chinese.”
“Okay - but we don’t build wings anymore - the Chinese do that for us.”
The people who did it were for sure.
The plane has a system that can result in pointing the nose of the aircraft suddenly toward the ground at low altitudes and without pilot input. The system is only there to simulate the way a regular 737 flies so pilots that were already certified to fly the 737 wouldn’t have to retrain for a new plane. It was a short cut so the plane could be brought to market sooner without a total redesign. If the pilot knows how to quickly disarm the system everybody lives. If he doesn’t everybody just might die. An unbelievably flawed and dangerous design.
What happens when green eye shade non-engineers run the show.
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