News: 1596527771

Include 3 randomly selected Boeing board members...

Would that be because of COVID-19 or reluctance to board a 737 MAX ?

If one type of bug doesn't get you the other will...

It's good to see that the FAA is happy that the 737 Max will soon be fit to fly. However a few thoughts occurred to me.

1) Will other aviation regulators such as the CAA trust the work done by Boeing and the FAA?

2) Will there be any demand for these aircraft, given the slump in flights due to the corona virus pandemic?

3) Will the airlines give the paying customer the choice of risking a flight in an aircraft with such a tainted reputation?

My answers are:

1) Maybe, if the FAA and Boeing are completely transparent on the steps being taken to put right all the faults and design choices that led to the crashes.

2) Probably not in the short term. Airlines have a big enough job trying to coax passengers back given the impositions of mandatory quarantine on a lot of tourist destinations.

3) Not a chance in hell. Firstly, it would definitely put people off, me included, if they were told that they were going to be flying on such a problem riddled design and secondly the logistics of actually informing people would be difficult and probably impossible.

So, to sum up it looks like we are going to have to trust that this time Boeing has got it right and that the FAA has actually done its job and made sure that this aircraft really is safe to fly.

We shall see but I for one will not be volunteering to act as a crash test dummy for the foreseeable future.

" Will other aviation regulators such as the CAA trust the work done by Boeing and the FAA? "

Good question. Europe and China are among those who have said they will not trust the FAA and will make their own evaluations.

Europe has been negotiating with Boeing and the FAA to get this far, so changes they demand are already incorporated. If acceptance leaks into 2021 the UK will no longer be under the European umbrella, but would the CAA want to snub the FAA? They are probably hoping for early certification so they don't have to think about it.

But I'm guessing China is likely to play a joker against America's Trump card (see what I did there? ;-) ) in trade negotiations and refuse.

Whom the rest of the industrialised world chooses to follow will be the interesting bit. A flight where you are licensed to take off or land, but not the other, is not going to go well.

A flight where you are licensed to take off or land, but not the other, is not going to go well.

I thought there were already countries whose certification processes for aircraft & pilots was already distrusted so can't fly to Europe.

There are. A number of African, Asian and former USSR countries are on the shite list. Note that usually its dependent on the trustedness of their Engineering certifications. (ie will the wheels fall off). Probably pilot training too but not 100% on that one.

3) Notification Is a piece of piss technically. The aircraft operating a schedule is a standard piece of information already circulated with all operator and support systems.

You correctly identify the main problem that is if people realise they are flying a MAX they will want to change flights, so therefore the Operator has a built in reason not to tell them.

Or the operator will specify the equipment as a 737-700 or something else on its fleet but reserve the right to use different equipment for operational reasons. Makes seat reservations a pain though,

You know that many airlines gives the plane type when you book a ticket ?

So you can basically choose to fly ( or not ) on a given plane type.

Personnally I'll try to do my best to avoid having to fly on a 737MAX.

...what about governance changes? It's clear from this and their commercial crew program that the company's rotting from the top.

And who's going to face the 346 charges of manslaughter?

Governance changes have already been made. Mostly cosmetic, but some real safety authority has been transferred back to the engineers, from the beancounters who originally stole it. Time will tell whether enough has been done.

The US judicial system is, thank goodness, a law unto itself, despite President Hasn't-the-Brains-of-a-Muppet's best efforts. Nobody does well in trying to second-guess its prognostications, and nothing is likely to happen soon.

An expensive condition not mentioned, presumably because Vultures cannot imagine anybody unable to fly, is pilot re-training.

Many airlines bought the Max on the strict condition that no expensive and timewasting pilot retraining would be necessary, it was one of the Max's big selling points.

Boeing's own internal recommendation, certain to be endorsed by the FAA, is for proper simulator-based retraining to be introduced. A lot of airlines will then demand compensation for being sold a product under false pretences, in some cases written into the purchase contract. I wouldn't mind betting that some will use it as a loophole for cancelling a purchase they can no longer afford.

I'm not sure this will now be as much of a problem. Anyone who wants to cancel their contract already had that opportunity. But the alternative is still the A320 Neo, which means re-training all your mechanics and possibly re-doing your whole logistics system. Which is worse.

I'm sure it'll be used to screw more financial sweeties out of Boeing. But remmeber that the airlines aren't running close to full capacity, so training pilots isn't the stretch that it would have been even 9 months ago. So I'm sure if Boeing pay up for things like simulator time, it'll be only a bit financially painful for them to sort. I presume it's more of a problem if you're running a mixed fleet of old 737s and new MAXes - but then with MCAS de-fanged like this will it have to be a new type certfification, or just some mandatory training?

That still seems the big question to me. If MCAS can be safely made so much less powerful now, how come Boeing felt they had to beef it up so much in the original test flying program? Because they've still go to fix the problem of the plane climbing due to the aerofoil effects of the bigger engines.

A lot of airlines are firing pilots, because they have no passengers to fly, and therefore, no need for the most expensive employees on their payrole.

> That still seems the big question to me. If MCAS can be safely made so much less powerful now, how come Boeing felt they had to beef it up so much in the original test flying program? Because they've still go to fix the problem of the plane climbing due to the aerofoil effects of the bigger engines.

I read that the original design, and safety assessments, were based on an "open loop" design, where MCAS would make a single correction, but that it was implemented as "closed loop", so the system would continually poll the AOA sensor and apply further corrections every few seconds. In an "open loop" system with a failed sensor, the annoyance of a single unexpected downward trim is easily correctable. So the failure was probably classed as "minor", and a single sensor input was allowed. In a "closed loop" system, the plane will continually over-rule the pilots until it hits the ground. Clearly in "catastrophic" territory, as demonstrated by Lion and Ethiopian.

Classifying it as one in the safety assessment, but then erroneously implementing it as the other, is what should land people in jail for several hundred counts of manslaughter (never going to happen though - there was good profit to be made, after all). It's also a text-book example of why self-certification is a corrupt disaster. The true American way.

On the positive side for Boeing, fixing it is as "simple" as implementing it the way it was originally designed. Plus a few other tweaks to improve it, since even the way it was originally designed was a bit crappy, and everyone is now looking (only using one sensor, when two were available).

"due to the aerofoil effects of the bigger engine"

The engines had to be moved forward to leave some ground clearance or they would have had to redesign landing gears and such in a very old design, anyway the thrust was moved forward adding to the nose up force especially during take off.

Bigger engines means fatter engines here.

Such a sorry saga.

I am inclined to think that type approval and recertification is what should have been persued by the FAA but they are undoubtedly under pressure from Boeing, the US government and presumably the larger Boeing shareholders, to go for the cheapest option that sounds as though they are doing their job.

Time will tell if they went far enough, assuming the max is going to rise phoenix like into the air again, it will be flying without me that's for sure.

From the article: "Changes to horizontal stabilizer trim wire routing installations are also required, to give pilots better control."

yeah, no, not so much. Unless you count not losing electrical systems as "giving pilots better control"

From the [1]FAA's preliminary report on the return to flight of the 737 MAX :

"6.6 Electrical Wiring Interconnection System (EWIS)

Requirements(§ 25.1707)As part of the FAA’s review of these design changes, the agency re-reviewed the entirety of the 737 MAX horizontal stabilizer control system. This review revealed that the physical separation of the horizontal stabilizer trim arm wiring and the horizontal stabilizer trim control wiring does not meet the criteria specified in 14 CFR 25.1707. This design standard was promulgated in 2007 and therefore is part of the certification basis of the 737 MAX but not of previous Boeing Model 737 airplanes. Certain wiring installations must have enough physical separation so that a wiring failure cannot create a hazard. (See 14 CFR 25.1707)."

"The stabilizer trim arm wiring has since been rerouted in 12 areas of the airplane’s Electrical Equipment bay and Section 48 to prevent a potential simultaneous short circuit between the stabilizer arm and control wiring and another 28VDC wire. "

[1] https://www.faa.gov/news/media/attachments/737-MAX-RTS-Preliminary-Summary-v-1.pdf

Still ain't going

So much better than the old version of this rhyme.

Exploding centre fuel-tanks, runaway rudders, runaway stabilisers, then crap FMCs, no stall protection and all the other crap they build would keep happening, but the know-nots would still trot out: "If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going".

Glad to not hear that rubbish any more.

Para 3 of the article reads:

"Those errors cost 346 lives and saw Boeing pay at least $19bn in compensation to families of the deceased, payments to airline customers and lost revenue."

How does the $19bn break down between the three items in that list? From memory if you took out the first item, compensation to the families of the victims, the sum lost to Boeing would be... $19bn. The compensation payments were a rounding error on that sum. I'd also suggest changing the paragraph since Boeing haven't paid the overwhelming majority of the sum, they've lost it from the drop in revenue. The paragraph as written implies they have paid it out, when they never had it in the first place.

Corrections by those with a more accurate breakdown of the $19bn welcome.

Last I heard Boeing lawyers were trying to force the compensation trial for killing a bunch of people to be moved to the lowest-paying area on the planet they could find. They aren't called shareholders because they share.

Have Boeing given up maintaining that they are "making an already safe plane even safer?"

That was a proper tone-deaf new-speak bit of lawyer approved verbiage if ever I've seen one. I haven't yet seen them actually step up and accept any responsibility, presumably because they're still hoping to keep slipping the right envelopes to the right officials and avoid any legal responsibility (remember Trump's comments about needing Einstein to fly planes... whatever that was meant to mean?)

Boeing are "great" at spin. Remember the great 787 Dreamliner battery clusterfuck? They came out with an awesome statement that their batteries hadn't caught fire, they had merely "vented with flame"!

Now I'd have accepted that, if they'd taken up a suggestion that was made here in the El Reg forums. Which was that you put all the batteries down the side of the aircraft, in fireproof boxes, and each has its own bent chromed exhaust pipe poking out the side of the plane, so it looks like a drag-racer. Then it would look super-cool with all the batteries spitting flames out the side, and you'd want them to fail more often.

As for the compensation for passengers thing, isn't it limited by the Warsaw convention still? I know that airlines only have to pay out a maximum of £20 for lost luggage, because in 1920 £20 was a serious amount of money, but it was never index-linked in the treaty. And I thought that also seriously limited liability for killing passengers. Though all bets may be off for Boeing, as if this isn't an example of negligence - then I can't imagine what would be. And that's assuming they're not guilty of worse...

The The Montreal Convention (formally, the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air) has replaced the Warsaw Convention

Ochib,

Thank you. I'd totally missed that. You learn something new every day...

Buy that applies to an accident. The lawyers for the victims are likely suing on the grounds that Boeing deliberately built an unsafe aircraft and lied to the regulators about it.

their customers will find not so eager customers willing to fly their Max's regardless of how cheap the tickets.

Expect a rebranding soon.

It's already been re-branded. MAX has been missed out and it's going to be something like the 737-8200 - at least for Ryanair. I don't know if that's universal or if all airlines will call it something different.

Now the 737-Max will have to control two data sensors before engaging in suicidal behavior. That, along with the other changes, seem to be a good thing.

What a shame Boeing didn't think of that before.

...every airline that was going to take these is now saying; "Thank fuck that Boeing gave us a cast iron excuse to cancel that order.". Let's face it, nobody's going to be buying commercial aircraft for quite some time.

Boeing Co customers cancelled orders for 355 of its 737 MAX jets in the first half of 2020,

Not a chance! They are still trying to wiggle out of commitments, and I've no doubt at all that the bean counters will find ways to roll back the 'unnecessary' extra expenses.

I emailed Ryanair, twice, to ask if the 737 MAX's they were buying had included the MCAS warning light.

They never responded.

Make of that what you will.

I make it that you are an irrational optimist and a bit of a pedant. I imagine the minimum wage call centre email answering drone looked at your email and thought a) what's MCAS? b) why is this person asking me this and c) why does anyone care?

For every 1 El Reg reader who will 'never fly on a 737-MAX' there will be a million customers who don't care, don't know what plane they are on and won't realise that the 737-Nimbus 2000 is a 737-MAX with a piece of vinyl stuck over 'Max'.

Even if they do get a service pack to convert them from rocks into planes, how would we as customers ever know if the particular one we are expected to get onto has been fixed or not ?

How about a big sticker on the way in that we can all see or better still, visibility of the sensors on the plane as we approach ?

I guess the new game is American Roulette, its like Russian Roulette, except they use planes instead of guns.

Personal view - no trust in Boeing as profits came before safety, you can probably bet someone is looking at the big hole in the bottom line and trying to figure out how to fix that for "shareholder value", but I bet nobody is worrying too much about the end customers or learning the real lesson of doing things right, rather than doing things cheap.

Now we know that one sensor can screw the plane, will they be fitting 3 or 5 to ensure that even if one fails, the plane still does what its supposed to - gets people safely from A to B with no nasty surprises.

My next concern - what about all the other places on the plane that the same logic was applied to save a few quid ??