the new Boeing 787s -- don't let them pass you by (in 2008)!

This is as appropriate a moment as any to revive this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW-pFoYgaUs

update: I’m alive

thank you president donald trump

i had the fun of flying on one of these this afternoon! i, uh, wasn't thrilled about it. looked like about half the southwest planes at lax were 737 maxes.

had to happen and even if the authorities hadn't grounded them, the operations would have to do (by association, individual leisure travellers and corporate travel programs wouldn't fly any of those airlines at all)

Amazing reporting by @seattletimes on the fatal flaws in the Boeing 737 MAX's flight control system—and the regulatory capture within the FAA to hastily approve it. Essentially, this plane could try to crash itself because of a single faulty sensor.https://t.co/LdnnMhN1Gx pic.twitter.com/Z9Iwnz7YBs

— Reed F. Richardson (@reedfrich) March 18, 2019

This still seems completely extraordinary.

i am not aviation engineer, but "this plane could try to crash itself" seems... bad?

No no, the pilots just needed to be told to switch off that part of the plane if/when it decided to crash itself, and if they didn't know how to do that, it was because they didn't buy the optional part of the safety manuals which explained this. Not at all Boeings fault, really.

do you want to turn off The Medusa Touch suicide pilot option yes/no?

it's incredibly horrifying and i mean horrifying.

boeing seems cool

Ethiopian Airlines and Lion Air didn't pay extra for Boeing's "upgrades" on communications, navigation, and safety features, so Boeing didn't warn them that the planes were prone to sensor malfunctions that would send them crashing into the ground. https://t.co/2Nvka4tNVI

— Ben Taub (@bentaub91) March 21, 2019

On a plane that was prone misreading the angle of attack (and then overcorrecting), Boeing charged extra for the "angle of attack indicator" and the "disagree light"—features which "could have helped the pilots detect any erroneous readings." pic.twitter.com/DclKa8pOYo

— Ben Taub (@bentaub91) March 21, 2019

And don't think for a second that this was a developing world issue. Major U.S. airlines also didn't buy these safety "upgrade" features, as they were not required by the F.A.A. pic.twitter.com/EhR21vuQMD

— Ben Taub (@bentaub91) March 21, 2019

Boeing even charges extra for back-up fire extinguishers, despite the fact that "a single extinguishing system may not be enough to put out flames that spread rapidly through the plane." And you have no way of knowing which safety features your airline has bought. pic.twitter.com/8j4lV51FXM

— Ben Taub (@bentaub91) March 21, 2019

this all stinks of engineering/business management hell. I wonder how the AoA sensors can be so bad. They look pretty "dumb", which usually means they'd be more robust than a wiimote.

i mean call me old-fashioned but i just don't think paid-for downloadable content should be a business model which should be applied to air safety

new board description ^

please don't put the weird EA-hating tantrum videogame lords upset that they have to pay for extra character outfits while also unable to resist doing so on the same level as this issue. this involves some hardware and has better, older analogues.

then again, you may have just been playing off my wiimote comment. apologies.

naw i was totally trying to gamergate boeing

the FAA should drag the gamergate lords away from their current john wick number trailer, call the flight simulator a videogame, and enjoy how they badger boeing into a future clean safety record.

horse armour fine whatever

paid DLC so my plane doesn't crash I draw the line

i am not aviation engineer, but "this plane could try to crash itself" seems... bad?
― i'm w/ tato, super hot AND weird!! (bizarro gazzara), Monday, 18 March 2019 15:31 (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

this is so incredibly fucked

that comment is actually bad because the same system that can crash the plan can potentially save the plane in some situations. it exists for a reason. the auto-pilot, -stabilization, -etc of aircraft is coupled to the evolution of giant aircraft, and you want those systems to exist the same way you want your car to be capable of 100 mph on flat land because that's a much lower speed going up a hill.

The future is crowdfunded/upgradable DLC safety features during the flight booking process.

i had the fun of flying on one of these this afternoon! i, uh, wasn't thrilled about it. looked like about half the southwest planes at lax were 737 maxes.

― circles, Wednesday, March 13, 2019 8:49 PM (one week ago)

probably an 737-800. Can confirm all the SWA 737 MAX flights in/out of LAX were cancelled one week ago.

This and the other comments about sensor triple redundancy in the article best sum up the engineering problems with the plane. The problems are more fundamental than "dumb planes are safer".

As R. John Hansman, a professor of aeronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told me in a March 28 interview,

"As I understand it, at high angles of attack the Nacelles -- which are the tube shaped structures around the fans -- create aerodynamic lift. Because the engines are further forward, the lift tends to push the nose up -- causing the angle of attack to increase further. This reinforces itself and results in a pitch-up tendency which if not corrected can result in a stall. This is called an unstable or divergent condition. It should be noted that many high performance aircraft have this tendency but it is not acceptable in transport category aircraft where there is a requirement that the aircraft is stable and returns to a steady condition if no forces are applied to the controls."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2019/04/02/mit-expert-highlights-divergent-condition-caused-by-737-max-engine-placement

got off a 737-800 a few hours ago and my knees are still feeling it. screw safety, what these things need is 3 more inches of legroom

I feel your pain as a 6'4" guy. Legroom is driven by the airlines' seating configuration, not the manufacturer. Our discomfort is another row or two of ticket revenue. NPR has an article that suggests nothing will change. Would like to see officials load their own families on a 90-second evac trial, and then praise seating arrangements.

Note to self - fly airbus

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20190403/p2g/00m/0bu/002000c

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing-dreamliner-production-problems.html

Not great.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-boeing-737-max-disaster-looks-to-a-software-developer

not great.

Boeing Has So Many Grounded 737 Max Planes Waiting to Be Fixed They're Parking Them in the Employee Parking Lot

In a bit of good news, one company is interested in buying quite a few of them.

Boeing on Tuesday won its first order for 737 Max planes since the jets were grounded worldwide in March after two fatal crashes. The vote of confidence from British Airways’ parent sent shares of the manufacturer sharply higher.

International Consolidated Airlines Group, or IAG, signed a letter of intent at the Paris Air Show to order 200 Boeing 737 Max planes.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/18/british-airways-parent-places-first-new-order-for-boeing-737-max-since-grounding.html

For Seattle ilxors, you can view the parking lot in the jalopnik article from the south park bridge. It’s amazing, maybe 30 of them sitting along the river, iceland air and thai smile and turkish and so many others i don’t recognize

Boeing 737 MAX 8 Likely Grounded for Rest of 2019 After New Concerns Raised

Some of the language in that article is a maybe a little bit hyperbolic.

This is a bit more measured, Boeing still don't come out of it very well at all:

https://theaircurrent.com/aviation-safety/faa-and-boeing-initially-disagreed-on-severity-of-catastrophic-737-max-software-glitch/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/magazine/boeing-737-max-crashes.html

That’s a good read.

Although it doesn’t really offer any solutions- just a very well researched and well written description of the problem. I’m mildly suspicious of the expert graybeards from central casting that he quotes throughout the piece, because it all seems a little one-sided, but then again the Indonesian and Ethiopian crews that are still around to talk are apparently not allowed to.

Boeing pilots' messages on 737 MAX safety raise new questions

https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/news/200/john-barnett-on-why-he-wont-fly-on-a-boeing-787-dreamliner/

What is your own personal practice on flying Boeing aircraft now?

“When I worked on the 747, the 767, the 777 in Everett, those are beautiful planes. And the people there fully understood what it took to build a safe and airworthy aircraft. I hate to throw the entire label over the whole product line. But as far as the 787, I would change flights before I would fly a 787. I’ve told my family — please don’t fly a 787. Fly something else. Try to get a different ticket. I want the people to know what they are riding on.”

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a30470973/boeing-737-max-employees-emails/

I don’t want to read this. I’m just posting it here

"This airplane is designed by clowns, who in turn are supervised by monkeys.”

But the the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee provided excerpts of those messages to Bloomberg News that un-redacted the Indonesian carrier’s name.

“Now friggin Lion Air might need a sim to fly the MAX, and maybe because of their own stupidity. I’m scrambling trying to figure out how to unscrew this now! idiots,” one Boeing employee wrote in June 2017 text messages obtained by the company and released by the House committee.

In response, a Boeing colleague replied: “WHAT THE F%$&!!!! But their sister airline is already flying it!” That was an apparent reference to Malindo Air, the Malaysian-based carrier that was the first to fly the Max commercially.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-14/lion-air-idiots-sought-more-max-training-boeing-thwarted-it

is there anyway to check (in advance of booking) which type of aircraft will be used on your flight? would not fancy going on one of these for say, oooooh, about 10 years?

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/9/22165956/boeing-737-max-flight-brazil-gol-airlines

Gol Airlines told the publication it plans to use the 737 Max in regular service starting later this month, and passengers who don’t want to fly on the plane will be able to exchange their tickets.

all airlines need to do this imo

You can go to FlightAware.com and enter your flight # which will give you a lot of data about that flight; below the flight map you'll see a log of scheduled flights and what aircraft will be used, plus a record of what aircraft were used in previous flights.

Some airlines' websites, e.g. JetBlue's, tell you the aircraft used for each flight when you go there to do your booking. I wouldn't say they're accurate 100% of the time but I think they generally are.

Another 737 gone missing after taking off from jakarta

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing-not-spirit-mis-installed-piece-that-blew-off-alaska-max-9-jet/

The fuselage panel that blew off an Alaska Airlines jet earlier this month was removed for repair then reinstalled improperly by Boeing mechanics on the Renton final assembly line, a person familiar with the details of the work told The Seattle Times.

If verified by the National Transportation Safety Board investigation, this would leave Boeing primarily at fault for the accident, rather than its supplier Spirit AeroSystems, which originally installed the panel into the 737 MAX 9 fuselage in Wichita, Kan.

That panel, a door plug used to seal a hole in the fuselage sometimes used to accommodate an emergency exit, blew out of Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 as it climbed out of Portland on Jan. 5. The hair-raising incident drew fresh and sharp criticism of Boeing’s quality control systems and safety culture, which has been under the microscope since two fatal 737 MAX crashes five years ago.

Last week, a different person — an anonymous whistleblower who appears to have access to Boeing’s manufacturing records of the work done assembling the specific Alaska Airlines jet that suffered the blowout — on an aviation website separately provided many additional details about how the door plug came to be removed and then mis-installed.

is there anyway to check (in advance of booking) which type of aircraft will be used on your flight? would not fancy going on one of these for say, oooooh, about 10 years?

KAYAK Lets Users Filter Out Boeing 737 Max 9 Flights After Door Blows Off Plane

oof