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How a 50-year-old design came back to haunt Boeing with its troubled 737 Max jet

  
Via:  Split Personality  •  5 years ago  •  24 comments


How a 50-year-old design came back to haunt Boeing with its troubled 737 Max jet
A set of stairs may have never caused so much trouble in an aircraf

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A set of stairs may have never caused so much trouble in an aircraft.





First introduced in West Germany as a short-hop commuter jet in the early Cold War, the Boeing 737-100 had folding metal stairs attached to the fuselage that passengers climbed to board before airports had jetways. Ground crews hand-lifted heavy luggage into the cargo holds in those days, long before motorized belt loaders were widely available.





That low-to-the-ground design was a plus in 1968, but it has proved to be a constraint that engineers modernizing the 737 have had to work around ever since. The compromises required to push forward a more fuel-efficient version of the plane — with larger engines and altered aerodynamics — led to the complex flight control software system that is now under investigation in two fatal crashes over the last five months.

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Yes, it's that simple. In order to properly raise the plane's ground clearance with new landing gear the wings and fuselage would have to be completely redesigned, something Boeing has stubbornly resisted for 5 decades.




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Split Personality
Professor Guide
1  seeder  Split Personality    5 years ago
The crisis comes after 50 years of remarkable success in making the 737 a profitable workhorse. Today, the aerospace giant has a massive backlog of more than 4,700 orders for the jetliner and its sales account for nearly a third of Boeing’s profit.

Better get this straightened out quickly......

 
 
 
Ed-NavDoc
Professor Quiet
1.1  Ed-NavDoc  replied to  Split Personality @1    5 years ago

Excellent article SP. Thanks. 

 
 
 
Split Personality
Professor Guide
2  seeder  Split Personality    5 years ago
“Boeing has to sit down and ask itself how long they can keep updating this airplane," said Douglas Moss, an instructor at USC's Viterbi Aviation Safety and Security Program, a former United Airlines captain, an attorney and a former Air Force test pilot. "We are getting to the point where legacy features are such a drag on the airplane that we have to go to a clean-sheet airplane."
 
 
 
Bob Nelson
Professor Guide
3  Bob Nelson    5 years ago

I don't know if we'll ever get the full story... but this beginning really, reall stinks!

Good find, SP.

 
 
 
Split Personality
Professor Guide
3.1  seeder  Split Personality  replied to  Bob Nelson @3    5 years ago

the new extra large engines,

needed to be angled slightly toward the nose to avoid too much "thrust hitting the fuselage and tail,

have about 17 inches of clearance from the runway

which increases the risk of FOD to a level of stupidity,

in my humble opinion.

 
 
 
Bob Nelson
Professor Guide
4  Bob Nelson    5 years ago

FAA approved...

jrSmiley_89_smiley_image.gif

 
 
 
Split Personality
Professor Guide
4.1  seeder  Split Personality  replied to  Bob Nelson @4    5 years ago

and certified...

 
 
 
Bob Nelson
Professor Guide
4.1.1  Bob Nelson  replied to  Split Personality @4.1    5 years ago

Interesting complement:

 
 
 
Split Personality
Professor Guide
4.1.2  seeder  Split Personality  replied to  Bob Nelson @4.1.1    5 years ago

Also a good article.

 
 
 
Kavika
Professor Principal
5  Kavika     5 years ago

Great find SP....Looks like the shit may indeed hit the fan. 

 
 
 
Perrie Halpern R.A.
Professor Principal
6  Perrie Halpern R.A.    5 years ago

Hi SP,

Read your article a little earlier in the day, and then shared with the hubby. Really interesting how one thing leads to another (should I post a music video... OK, since you asked...

Anyway, talk about unforeseen outcomes. Yikes! Kind of doing tech on this site, but without the deadly results. And that is the thing about tech, as I have found out the hard way ( and gained a good understand from Tig), is that even in the best testing conditions, there is no way to know for sure that there isn't one little gremlin in the works..

Did you say what is a gremlin?

Well this is what they are known for:

And here is one caught in the act:

You never want that on a plane. Just ask William Shatner

But all kidding aside, it is shocking that Boeing didn't see this just knowing that programs can fail. 

 
 
 
pat wilson
Professor Participates
6.1  pat wilson  replied to  Perrie Halpern R.A. @6    5 years ago

I loved Twilight Zone and William Schatner was in several. He did a great job on those episodes.

 
 
 
Perrie Halpern R.A.
Professor Principal
6.1.1  Perrie Halpern R.A.  replied to  pat wilson @6.1    5 years ago

Me too. I loved the one in the diner also. I think it was called "Nick of Time". He was also in the Outer Limits and Judgement at Neurenberg. 

And of course Star Trek! 

 
 
 
Bob Nelson
Professor Guide
7  Bob Nelson    5 years ago
 
 
 
Split Personality
Professor Guide
8  seeder  Split Personality    5 years ago

According to friends who fly the Boeing "heavies" 747 and up, the FAA allows Boeing to pick a team of elite engineers to certify Boeing's own planes. So they are essentially Boeing employees on the Boeing payroll do the FAAs job.

This is verified by several articles this week which blame past and present cutbacks to the FAA budgetary woes.

As investigators determine if the Boeing 737 MAX’s flight control system caused the crashes of the Lion Air flight in October 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 last week, a new report states that the Federal Aviation Administration hurried along the plane’s approval process, allowing Boeing to tackle key aspects of the regulation procedure themselves.

According to the Seattle Times , the FAA has made a habit of delegating parts of the regulation process to Boeing due to cuts in funding. For the 737 MAX, FAA managers reportedly pressured the agency’s safety engineers to hand over safety assessments to Boeing itself, and to greenlight the company’s findings. Remarkably, the paper was working on the report prior to the crash of the Ethiopian Airlines flight, which killed all 157 occupants on board: “Both Boeing and the FAA were informed of the specifics of this story and were asked for responses 11 days ago, before the second crash of a 737 MAX last Sunday.”

In 2015, Boeing reportedly pushed to expedite the 737 MAX’s approval in order to compete with the comparable Airbus A320neo, which had hit the market nine months ahead of Boeing’s newest 737 model. Several FAA employees told the Seattle Times that their managers asked them to hurry-up the process, and hand over more work to Boeing. “There was constant pressure to re-evaluate our initial decisions,” said one former FAA safety engineer. “Review was rushed to reach certain certification dates.”

Much of Boeing’s self-certification concerned the 737 MAX’s flight control program, the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS). The FAA reportedly allowed Boeing to handle the safety analysis on the MCAS, and the report the company handed over – which certified the plane as flight-ready – had several flaws.

According to the Seattle Times , the safety assessments “understated the power of the [MCAS],” which could move the plane’s tail “four times farther than was stated in the initial safety analysis.” The extra power was necessary because the MAX’s large engines were placed farther forward on the wing. However, the system “failed to account” for how it could “reset itself each time a pilot responded.” On the Lion Air flight, black box data suggests that each time the captain pulled the plane’s nose up, the “MCAS kicked in … to push the nose down again,” causing the plane to crash into the Java Sea 12 minutes after takeoff.

To help get the 737 MAX into the air more quickly, Boeing reportedly decided that its pilots would not need a full round of training on the MCAS system. According to the Seattle Times , it wasn’t even mentioned in their flight manuals. Dennis Tajer, a spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association at American Airlines, told the paper that his training on the 737 MAX was made up of a one-hour session on an iPad that did not have simulator training. By cutting down on pilot instruction, Boeing was able to cut significant costs for the airlines that bought the plane. The Boeing site promised prospective buyers that “as you build your 737 MAX fleet, millions of dollars will be saved because of its commonality” with the prior 737 generation.

With the 737 MAX grounded by the FAA, its own safety engineers believe that the agency must re-work the delegation process that allowed Boeing to self-regulate the development of its own plane. “We need to make sure the FAA is much more engaged in failure assessments and the assumptions that go into them,” an FAA safety engineer told the Seattle Times .” Meanwhile, the FAA has required Boeing to overhaul the MCAS software “no later than April.”

Boeing will be paying out large settlements over this boondoggle.

 
 
 
Bob Nelson
Professor Guide
8.1  Bob Nelson  replied to  Split Personality @8    5 years ago

There's been nothing from Airbus, but.............

 
 
 
Split Personality
Professor Guide
8.1.1  seeder  Split Personality  replied to  Bob Nelson @8.1    5 years ago

Interesting that at least part of the issue with Boeing is that the new larger engines on the 737 are almost "too powerful", hence the MCAS overrides.

Exacerbating the issues for Boeing are Rolls Royce engines in the 787 which have  a turbo fan failure issue  as described here, while at the same time Airbus is having such problems with Pratt & Whitney GTF engines that a hundred engineless planes are sitting finished at factories.

Meanwhile the smaller LEAP engine which powers the rest of the Airbus A320s and the Boeing 737 Max planes are 6 months behind.

BIG problems for both companies

which no doubt contributed to rushing the MCAS certification without sufficient testing or training.

 
 
 
Bob Nelson
Professor Guide
8.1.2  Bob Nelson  replied to  Split Personality @8.1.1    5 years ago

Better and better ...

 
 
 
Perrie Halpern R.A.
Professor Principal
8.2  Perrie Halpern R.A.  replied to  Split Personality @8    5 years ago
Boeing will be paying out large settlements over this boondoggle.

I think you may be right about that.

 
 
 
Split Personality
Professor Guide
8.2.1  seeder  Split Personality  replied to  Perrie Halpern R.A. @8.2    5 years ago

If divorces don't count,

I have been accused of being right almost all of the time, except for the time I thought I was wrong, when after a few days, it turned out that I was indeed right.

I went to a school exactly like Covington for Catholic boys whose parents worked 2 jobs so they could afford to send their

sons with big brains to a name brand school which automatically made them legacy students for the affiliated College/University

which also agreed to seal all of our grades  for grades 9 through 16 ( without a threat from any outside council, but to protect their own reputation)

and bury the incident where a teacher tried to smack the smirk off my face for reasons I cannot discuss, but the whole student body was impressed and cheered me on...

 
 

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