Why not just get rid of the system? Or just take it offline physically?
The crashes will probably cost Boeing billions. Overall, though, still a drop in the bucket compared to designing a new plane from scratch. Sad for the victims, but true.
Oxymoron?
Terrific.
Also the yaw damper problem years back; they only had one when safety mandated two. You’d get un-commanded rudder action to full extreme flipping the plane on its back.
In simulator tests, government pilots discovered that a microprocessor failure could push the nose of the plane toward the ground. It is not known whether the microprocessor played a role in either crash. When testing the potential failure of the microprocessor in the simulators, “it was difficult for the test pilots to recover in a matter of seconds,” one of the sources said. “And if you can’t recover in a matter of seconds, that’s an unreasonable risk.”
...
The reports on both crashes indicate the pilots had much longer than a few seconds to recover.
Why does this sound like they completely failed in safety design? You’re supposed to do tests where components fail to show your safety concept working. HARA/FMEA/MC-DC etc.
Where’s the redundancy?
This plane is a bow-wow. Sad to say. Doesn’t come close to replacing the best ever, the rocket, the 757.
The Max doesn’t have the power to take off in hot, high altitude scenarios.
So unlikely to be used for ‘heavy’ loads out of minimum runway locations. The 757 could.
Re-engine the 757, add some new electronics.
This is bull$hit! I trained pilot knows how to deal with a “runaway trim situation.” You turn off the automatic system, and resort to what most non-commercial pilots do, manually trim the plane. My next door neighbor is a Southwest Captain. SW flles ONLY the 737. He tells me that there are two switches at hand that disable tne motors that drive the stabilizer trim system, and there is a manual crank to speed up the trim process if needed. He told me that only a seriously training deficient pilot would have crashed either of those planes. A/C are not video games, they need to have pilots who know the basics of flying, wherein when the bells and whistles are inoperative you have the abilty to resort to basics.
What would you replace the microprocessors with?
A different type of microprocessor should be tested first and would be time consuming.- -Tom
Isnt this the purpose of testing? Find the problems and fix them? Personally, I am happy to learn they found problems. Every one they find is one less to encounter outside the simulator.
737 MAX interest ping!
I honestly didn’t expect that ANOTHER problem would surface with the new 737...I hope Boeing is thinking about an alternative to the MAX like maybe a new version of the 757 that can handle the fancy new engines.
I was planning to post “In before the ‘pilot error’ Boeing cheerleaders” but it looks like I got to the thread too late.
Could there be sabotage here? Find the engineer who just happened to leave Airbus and find his way to Boeing. This is starting to look a little too pat to me. Picture a few heads getting together at Airbus, and thinking up one or two slick little booby traps that could be engineered into one or more Boeing plane models, that would cause a lot of trouble before discovery. And then draw straws to see who comes to the States and applies for a job at Boeing. Crazy me!
“The sources say Boeing engineers are trying to determine if the microprocessor issue can be fixed by reprogramming software or if replacing the physical microprocessors on each 737 Max aircraft may be required.”
I’ve asked prior the rhetorical question how many Chinese-borne engineers worked on the 737MAX project for obvious reasons.
This is now officially starting to stink to high heaven and I suspect that the bureaucracy may very well collaborate with Boeing to keep the facts about this under wraps (software or hardware...either of which would give Chinese aviation builders a massive boost). This has the makings of a scandal of epic proportions.
Theres a Bloomberg article floating around claiming Boeing had HCL do some of the coding, using $9 per hour foreign labor.
With luck, HCL will be sued into oblivion.