Posted on 03/07/2024 6:14:00 PM PST by libh8er
……… The first safety concern the FAA identified could shut off anti-ice systems on both engines for Boeing 737 MAX 8 and 737 MAX 9 craft stemming from a potential single point of failure.
“The unsafe condition” the FAA document states, “if not addressed, could result in loss of thrust on both engines due to damage from operation in icing conditions without (the anti-icing systems) and can result in loss of continued safe flight and landing.”
The agency states the unsafe condition is likely to exist or develop on other products of the same design.
The second safety measure targets the engines of the 787 Dreamliner series.
The FAA review states the new directive was prompted by a report of heat damage on multiple engine inlets around the engine anti-ice duct, which could cause damage around the duct.
The damage could result in “reduced structural strength” and the inlet falling from the plane, “resulting in subsequent loss of continued safe flight and landing or injury to occupants from a departed inlet contacting the airplane.”
(Excerpt) Read more at globalnews.ca ...
DEI killed Boeing.
Airbus is out there outcompeting. What a shame. Now Korea and Japan may have to do our military shipbuilding. They’ll do it on budget and on time.
My last American car was in the early 70’s. Been Toyota ever since. Anyone see a pattern?
H1B visa Indians wrote the 737 MAX software.
There is a fundamental flaw in the design of the plane that they tried to remedy with highly complex software.
How a 50-year-old design came back to haunt Boeing with its troubled 737 Max jet
Both cases are theater, diverting the public's attention.
bkmk
I read a paper which claimed Boeing’s problems began with their merger with McDonnell Douglas Corporation and a fundamental shift of focus from engineering to business.
“Anyone see a pattern?”
♫ Look for the Union Label ♫
...and now, look for the DEI label too.
Also look for the EPA label too.
The new fuel-efficient high-bypass engines are larger in diameter than the old tubojet engines the plane was built for. Basically, the new engines won't fit under the wings, the bottom of the cowlings would drag on the runway.
Rather than redesign the plane with taller landing gear for the ground clearance they needed, they moved the engines ahead of the wing so they could raise them up.
Now the center of gravity has changed because the heavy engines were moved forward. Boeing tried to fix this with software but it obviously was inadequate.
It would have been expensive to redesign the plane with taller gear, but not as expensive as the last two or three years have been for the company.
That shift is not unique to Boeing. Working in American manufacturing for 25 years, I have observed the same trend in many outfits, from small to medium to big. Bottom line is the king.
+1
Thank you
It has got to suck being at Boeing right now with the FAA up your back side.
I've always drove a Honda.
UAW is crap. So that explains Boeing when it was bought out by McDonnell Douglas.
Newer, more fuel-efficient Airbus planes were coming into service around 2010. Boeing had two options: a new, clean-sheet-of-paper design to replace the 737 or one last round of revisions to improve fuel economy. They chose the latter. That required bigger diameter engines which had to be mounted up high for ground clearance (the Airbus planes sit higher off the runway to accommodate the bigger engines) and further forward. That created unstable aerodynamics which they countered in software — software they never told the airlines or pilots about.
It was really a bad executive decision to try to life-extend that old airframe one more time.
That’s what happens when you let MBAs and bean counters run the company instead of engineers.
Yep
While SpaceX’s Starship and Super Heavy booster are still in development, the SpaceX Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy are now more reliable than Boeing. Some days a Falcon 9 is launched from both the east and west coasts of America (Kennedy & Vandenberg launch sites).
One of the most interesting mottos at SpaceX:
The best part is no part.
If something has less parts, there is less to go wrong. The first Falcon 9 used Merlin engines. The redesigned Merlin engine has 30% less parts.
Instead of using the FAA to interfere with Starship, perhaps the FAA could contract with SpaceX to updated Boeing’s engineering. Boeing began its downward trajectory when the bean counters became more important than the engineers.
Boeing was already dying from within. The merger with McDonnell-Douglas put bean counters in charge of the company rather than the engineers who had built Boeing into what it was.
Almost all of the 737 design changes over the past 20 years are driven by airline bean counters. The biggest culprit has been Southwest Airlines. SWA is the largest B737 customer Boeing has.
When the New Generation 737 was designed, SWA demanded that the cockpit look like the classics. Big , bulky switches were used where push buttons could have served the same purpose in a less cluttered fashion. They also required that the CRT display look a lot like the old round dial gauges. I always joked about having so many round looking things to tell me the heading.
Much of the bean counter drive was to keep training costs to a minimum, so everything had to look the same for FAA training approval.
I wish they had just improved on the 757 design with a lighter wing spar and more efficient engines. The 757 was a proven design. It was a real workhorse and a dream to fly. But that would have increased costs for any airline that only flew the 737.
The 737 is a 1964 design that has been tweaked and stretched so many times to meet customer demand. We may have witnessed the limits on that tweaking.
For perspective, the 737 was Boeing’s first regional jet. Now look at what it is being asked to do.
EC
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