Airbus topples Boeing as biggest plane maker

Deutsche Welle by MSN ^ | January 6, 2019 | Ashutosh Pandey

[NorseViking]

Europe's Airbus has become the world's biggest plane maker this year as its US rival Boeing struggles to get its bestselling MAX jets back in the skies.

Airbus — which has trailed Boeing since 2012 — delivered a record 863 aircraft in 2019, Reuters news agency reported, citing airport and tracking sources. Boeing, on the other hand, had delivered just 345 planes by the end of November and is on course for its worst performance in more than a decade, mainly hurt by the grounding of the MAX aircraft.

The US plane maker delivered 806 aircraft in 2018, slightly more than its European rival's tally of 800.

Boeing's 737 MAX jets have remained grounded since March last year following a fatal crash of the plane in Ethiopia that killed 157 people. The tragedy took place less than five months after another MAX crashed in the Java Sea off the Indonesian coast, killing 189 people. The grounding has cost the plane maker more than $9 billion (€8 billion) so far.

Boeing, which is also facing several compensation claims from victims' families and airlines hit by the grounding, has reported just 30 new orders for its MAX planes since the crash in Ethiopia. The plane maker said last month it would suspend production of the beleaguered aircraft in January amid concerns that the grounding would last well into this year.

[Yo-Yo]

Haven’t seen reports of cancelled MAX orders. Have some been cancelled?

There have been a handful, but amount to barely a blip on the 4,500 aircraft backlog of orders.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4313931-boeing-reports-8_1b-in-cancellations

One key takeaway, however, is that the huge fall out in the order book that many were expecting after the Boeing 737 MAX has not (yet) happened. We are seeing some relatively small orders falling out of the books and some conversions from the MAX to the Dreamliner, but that's about it.

[MeganC]

“The original purpose of MCAS was to address a handling issue in a narrow regime of flight, and was a sound concept.”

I disagree.

Mounting the engines forward of the center of gravity also changes the pitch in normal flight.

https://leehamnews.com/2018/11/14/boeings-automatic-trim-for-the-737-max-was-not-disclosed-to-the-pilots/

“The drawback of a larger nacelle, placed further forward, is it destabilizes the aircraft in pitch. All objects on an aircraft placed ahead of the Center of Gravity (the line in Figure 2, around which the aircraft moves in pitch) will contribute to destabilize the aircraft in pitch.”

Solving that problem removes the need for the MCAS and it also resolves the pitch problem.

Solve those issues and the 737 is back in production again.

[cymbeline]

“huge fall out in the order book that many were expecting after the Boeing 737 MAX has not (yet) happened. “

Could that be because the customers know the plane is basically a good plane? A pilot friend of mine thinks those crashes were simply due to 3rd world pilot incompetence.

4500 backolog. Wow!

[Yo-Yo]

There’s a Youtube video of a reenactment of one of the crashes. The plane hit the ground almost vertical. The pilot turned MCAS on and off. How could plane’s control system point the plane almost vertical into the ground? How could it prevent the pilots from manually leveling the plane?

After the first fatal crash, Boeing issued this airworthiness directive that outlined exactly what MCAS did, how it can runaway due to a faulty flight attitude sensor, and how to disable MCAS.

The Lion Air crash was perhaps understandable, but the Ethiopian Airlines crash happened two months after the directive was issued, and the pilots should have been well aware of the potential issue and exactly how to quickly and correctly respond to it.

The problem was that in the implementation of MCAS that ultilmately found its way into the MAX, MCAS would repeatedly input down trim to the horizontal stabilizer until the trim limit was reached. That would make it very difficult to pull the aircraft back up at very high speeds. But the pilots would know that repeated uncommanded down trim was being applied, as a large horizontal trim wheel near the pilot's knee would be moving very rapidly with a loud whirring motor noise.

I'm not sure which YouTube video you saw, but here's one by 737 instructor pilot Mentour who demonstrates what MCAS runaway trim looks like in a simulator, and how to correct it:

https://youtu.be/xixM_cwSLcQ?t=969

[Yo-Yo]

Solving that problem removes the need for the MCAS and it also resolves the pitch problem.

Solve those issues and the 737 is back in production again.

The issue was not instability in the aircraft, it was an unacceptable lightening of the control feel near the edge of a stall, which is unacceptable.

Stop using the LEAP-1B engines, and the need for the larger nacelle is removed. Now you're building the 737-NG.

Problem solved? Sure, except for the increased fuel burn, which was the whole point of the MAX.

http://www.b737.org.uk/mcas.htm#background

MCAS is a longitudinal stability enhancement. It is not for stall prevention (although indirectly it helps) or to make the MAX handle like the NG (although it does); it was introduced to counteract the non-linear lift generated by the LEAP-1B engine nacelles at high AoA and give a steady increase in stick force as the stall is approached as required by regulation.

[Kickass Conservative]

737 MAX is like New Coke and the Edsel. The only difference is only one of the three killed 340 People.

Once an Airline puts the 737 MAX back into service, the reaction of the paying Passengers will determine its fate.

There may well be a backlash that will doom the Plane. Boeing survived the original 737 Rudder issue that caused two fatal Plane Crashes and they survived the Battery Fire issue on the 787.

The 737 Max may be a bridge too far. Time will tell.

[pepsi_junkie]

Boeing looks like it is in a death spiral. They put all their eggs in adapting their top aircraft to counter a brand new Airbus plane and it resulted in deaths and ongoing hemorrhaging of bad press ever since. Did they know? Did they cover it up? Did they bribe FAA officials or just take advantage of them? Et Cetera. In the meantime those planes they put all their eggs in are sitting in hangars and no new orders are coming in, only lawsuits.

But maybe they have some solution to turn it around. I hope so, most of the aircraft industry in the USA used to be in California and they destroyed it so all that's left is Boeing and the defense aircraft manufacturers (and you can't fly coach in an F-35).

Probably they will be deemed too big to fail and bailed out.

[cymbeline]

“repeatedly input down trim to the horizontal stabilizer until the trim limit was reached”

I’ll look at that video when I have time.

I’d think a flight control device wouldn’t direct the plan downward. Doesn’t it know the plane’s true front-to-back tilt (I don’t mean angle of attack)? Pilots for decades have had an indicator on the dash showing that — showing the plane’s tilt relative to the horizon.

[Yo-Yo]

I’d think a flight control device wouldn’t direct the plan downward. Doesn’t it know the plane’s true front-to-back tilt (I don’t mean angle of attack)? Pilots for decades have had an indicator on the dash showing that — showing the plane’s tilt relative to the horizon.

It's not the aircraft's angle in relation to the horizon that determines angle of attack. It is the angle of the aircraft to the apparent wind, and that is sensed by an Angle of Attack sensor.

The problem was that the AoA sensor was defective, giving a false high AoA reading, fooling MCAS into triggering when it shouldn't have. The faulty AoA sensor would continue to give a false high angle of attack reading even if the aircraft were plummeting straight down.

Compounding the problem is that the aircraft has two AoA sensors, but only used one for MCAS. It never cross-referenced the other AoA sensor to see if they disagreed.

Part of the fix to MCAS is this simple cross check of the two sensors, and disabling MCAS if they disagree.

[cymbeline]

“It’s not the aircraft’s angle in relation to the horizon that”

I mean why doesn’t the MCAS or any flight control unit look at the plane’s angle in relation to the horizon as well as the angle of attack? It’s like a sanity check which the MCAS perhaps didn’t have enough of.

Passenger planes, after all, are not hoverboards.

[Yo-Yo]

I mean why doesn’t the MCAS or any flight control unit look at the plane’s angle in relation to the horizon as well as the angle of attack? It’s like a sanity check which the MCAS perhaps didn’t have enough of.

The purpose of MCAS was to increase stick pressure during high angle of attack flight. High angle of attack flight can occur during a level flight turn. High angle of attack flight can occur when pulling out of a steep dive.

The real question is why didn't MCAS cross reference both AoA sensors. THAT would be the apprpriate "sanity check."

The other real question is why was the "AOA DISAGREE" warning removed from the flight display for models of the MAX that did not include an AoA indicator. Originally, all versions of the MAX was supposed to have this warning, but the feature was inadvertently left off of models that didn't include the optional Angle of Attack indication on the flight displays, and Boeing determined that it wasn't important. Had the AOA DISAGREE warning been available to the pilots, even in the as-delivered implementation of MCAS the pilots would have known that something was amiss and all of the horizontal trim being automatically input was not correct.

There was a lot of poorly thought out last minute modifications to MCAS that doomed the two aircraft. If you're interested, this is a good article describing the malfeasance of Boeing:

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/the-inside-story-of-mcas-how-boeings-737-max-system-gained-power-and-lost-safeguards/

The MAX is basically a sound design, and MCAS is basically a sound concept, but Boeing also made several very questionable decisions in the rush to get the MAX certified, and it was these poor decisions that have made worldwide regulators question ALL aspects of the MAX certification process, dragging the recertification of the MCAS fix much longer than it otherwise should have.

The MAX should have been back in the air by September 2019, but the understandable regulatory delays could put the process off until April of 2020 or more. The MAX will end up being grounded for over a year.

[cymbeline]

“The purpose of MCAS was to increase”.

I appreciate your informative posts. Enough for now.

I imagine the 737 MAX will be the safest, most dumb-pilot-proof plane in the sky once it’s back in the air.

[cymbeline]

“The purpose of MCAS was to increase stick “

Here’s the blow by blow video of one of the crashes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5P8CkVckmA

[cornfedcowboy]

I have every confidence that the 737 MAX will be discontinued. Won’t ever be another one commissioned and existing airplanes will be become cargo aircraft.
Passenger airlines simply won’t fly it.

[cornfedcowboy]

4500 aircraft order backlog? This doesn’t sound possible.

[deport]

Air plane manufacturers around the world. Many more than
I would have guessed.

https://www.aviationfanatic.com/ent_list.php?ent=3

[Yo-Yo]

4500 aircraft order backlog? This doesn’t sound possible.

There are 4,545 unfilled MAX orders as of November 2019, according to Boeing's own numbers found at:

http://active.boeing.com/commercial/orders/displaystandardreport.cfm?cboCurrentModel=737&optReportType=AllModels&cboAllModel=737&ViewReportF=View+Report

So far, 387 MAX aircraft have been delivered.

At just over $100 million per aircraft, that is a lot of U.S. economic activity.

Now do you see why Boeing just can't just "scrap the 737 MAX and start over" because of a few lines of computer code?

[Captain Jack Aubrey]

This is a sad day.

[Yo-Yo]

Thanks for the video. Somebody had fun with Microsoft Flight Simulator. It matches pretty closely the accident report. Had the crew no oversped the aircraft, they could have manually trimmed the aircraft.

Instead, they turned the Stabilizer Trim control switches back on and sealed their fate, contrary to Boeing's flight manual and the emergency airworthiness directive sent two months earlier.

[tallyhoe]

There’s a Youtube video of a reenactment of one of the crashes. The plane hit the ground almost vertical. The pilot turned MCAS on and off. How could plane’s control system point the plane almost vertical into the ground? How could it prevent the pilots from manually leveling the plane?

The two crews that flew these planes into the ground were not competent to be even flying not alone a sophisticated Air Vehicle.. These two crews that were flying the 737 max 8 would have killed everybody on board Capt Sully’s Chesley Burnett Sullenberger aircraft that hit the flock of birds. He landed his plane in the Hudson river successfully. If he would have listened to the Air traffic Control after he called a mayday he would have killed everyone on board.