BRING BACK MAC!

The reason for MCAS is the airlines don’t want to dirty their hands by insisting that the pilots they hire can fly and necessarily washing out those who can’t.

For decades, airline management has been pushing the goal of making pilots “system managers” with the intent of eventually making them “system monitors”.

I don’t fly the Max but I’m sure most competent, classically-trained pilots could handle the different flight characteristics of the Max. It’s the other countries who put 200 hour Cadet pilots in airline cockpits that have virtually no real world experience.

This will surely end when hands get slapped and checks get written but I won’t fix the underlying problems in the pilot hiring business.

TC

Fuck Dan Carey but he’s right. It’s absurd that AA doesn’t have a Max sim.

We won’t have Airbus sims either if they don’t stop this full stall training bullshit the FAA foisted on us.

TC

I don’t disagree. Sounds like in both cases, they were zipping along at 300+ knots at low altitude. They never tried to slow down.

When I’m going fast and shit gets weird, the first thing I do is at least slow to 270-280 or even 250. The plane works better there than at 330.

TC

CNN above vs. industry below.  It’s certainly possible that there are multiple issues still in play, but equally likely is that CNN has their head in an oxygen free location and misinterpreted the article below:

https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/accidents-ntsb/faa-finds-further-max-risk/

I'm not sure if this is more BS media work, or the FAA desperately trying to look like it's doing something useful.

I cant defend Boeing's decision to implement that silly MCAS system, or the way the seem to be in a race to the bottom with their management, but the coverage of this in the MSM is ridiculous.

Southwest and United Airlines extend 737 Max cancellations after new flaw found

"Southwest and United Airlines have extended the cancellation of flights using Boeing 737 Max aircraft, following the news that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has discovered a new flaw in the plane’s flight computer.

Southwest Airlines had previously announced it would begin using the 737 Max again starting September 2nd, as long as the plane was re-certified by the FAA. Now, the airline says it won’t start using the plane again until at least October 1st. Some 150 flights will be removed from Southwest’s schedule of 4,000 per day.

United Airlines had previously canceled 737 Max flights through August 3rd. But the company announced Wednesday that it was extending that cancellation through at least September 3rd. United will have to drop between 40 to 45 flights per day in July, and 60 per day in August, according to a statement."

Boeing Needs Up to Three Months to Fix Latest 737 Max Problem

"(Bloomberg) -- Boeing Co. could take as long as three months to fix the latest software glitch on its 737 Max, discovered when a U.S. government pilot doing simulator tests experienced a lag in an emergency response because a computer chip was overwhelmed with data, people familiar with the matter said.

The finding is what prompted Wednesday’s announcement by the Federal Aviation Administration that it had detected a new safety issue on the plane, said a person familiar with the issue. Boeing’s best-selling jet has been grounded since March after suffering two crashes in a five-month span.

The planemaker maintains that a software patch will be sufficient to address the issue. However, the FAA isn’t yet sure whether a more complex and expensive hardware fix will be required, said the person, who wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter and asked not to be identified.

Estimates for how long it will take to address the issue range from a few weeks to three months, the person said Thursday. Another person familiar with the matter said it could take two to three months, but not longer."

Not by having it the same type rating and getting it on the line without have a Max simulator. Only boeing and Air Canada even have a Max simulator.
No pilot from any other airline has ever even flown a Max simulator.

this was all about same type rating and not needing a new sim.

If the FAA has just said that the flight control computer isn't processing commands quickly enough, then this is huge. This is not just a programming glitch. If this needs to be a hardware fix, then this airplane will be grounded for another year easy. Getting flight control computers certified takes a very long time and it sounds like it needs new flight control computers.

And people wonder why I don't like fly-by-wire.

Fuck Fly-by-wire.

Buy Boeing while it's down?

I think the accuracy of that article is suspect. I do know the FAA was worried about pilot workload and recently requested some changes to the software to alleviate that. Maybe some dingbat misinterpreted that. It would be very bad if they managed to overload a processor.

It very well could be, reporters suck on everyday mundane things, even worse on technical things.

I think everybody had that idea from the get go.

Boeing stock never went down much.    Seems like the more bad news, the more it goes up.

I should have sold at $440.

Boeing's 737 Max Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers

"It remains the mystery at the heart of Boeing Co.’s 737 Max crisis: how a company renowned for meticulous design made seemingly basic software mistakes leading to a pair of deadly crashes. Longtime Boeing engineers say the effort was complicated by a push to outsource work to lower-paid contractors.

The Max software -- plagued by issues that could keep the planes grounded months longer after U.S. regulators this week revealed a new flaw -- was developed at a time Boeing was laying off experienced engineers and pressing suppliers to cut costs.

Increasingly, the iconic American planemaker and its subcontractors have relied on temporary workers making as little as $9 an hour to develop and test software, often from countries lacking a deep background in aerospace -- notably India.

In offices across from Seattle’s Boeing Field, recent college graduates employed by the Indian software developer HCL Technologies Ltd. occupied several rows of desks, said Mark Rabin, a former Boeing software engineer who worked in a flight-test group that supported the Max.

The coders from HCL were typically designing to specifications set by Boeing. Still, “it was controversial because it was far less efficient than Boeing engineers just writing the code,” Rabin said. Frequently, he recalled, “it took many rounds going back and forth because the code was not done correctly.”

Well, ain't that some shit.

This does not seem to be a major loss.

Boeing Loses Another 737 MAX Customer

"Tajikistan’s Somon Air has dropped plans to lease a Boeing 737 MAX, blaming uncertainty about the timeline for its re-entry to service and shattered public confidence in the model.

“The MAX has been put on hold,” chief executive Thomas Hallam told me, referring to a contract for a single leased unit that Air Lease Corporation (ALC) had been due to place with Somon this year.

The unit in question was purchased by the lessor, so the lease cancelation will not affect Boeing's orderbook.

However, it illustrates waning confidence in the MAX following two crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that claimed 346 lives and led to a worldwide grounding of the new aircraft type. Boeing is widely perceived to have bungled its response to the crisis by downplaying the severity of problems with its flight control systems and pressuring America’s aviation regulator to keep the model flying even after the second crash.

Although Hallam believes that Boeing will fix the flawed MCAS system that likely caused both crashes, he said senior figures in Tajikistan have voiced concerns about inducting the MAX.

“There's been an order from the board of directors to stop the order,” he confirmed.

“They're just hearing things and none of it’s positive … I am not willing to go forward [with the MAX] until the aircraft is back in operation, until there's some experience – beyond my own personal experience – that can be convincing, so that people [in Tajikistan] will be open to my argument.”"

Southwest CEO Calls Latest Boeing Max Delay ‘Very Disappointing’

"Southwest Airlines Co., the largest operator of the grounded Boeing Co. 737 Max, said the discovery of a new safety issue with the jetliner is extending its absence “well beyond” what was hoped, forcing the carrier to reassess its schedule for the rest of the year.

The latest problem, “unfortunately, is going to delay the timeline for returning the Max to service,” Chief Executive Officer Gary Kelly told employees Monday. “That’s very disappointing.”

The new glitch doesn’t directly involve the flight-control software that was linked to two crashes since October that killed a total of 346 people. Fixing the problem, which Boeing has said can be done with a software patch, could take as much as three months, people familiar with the matter have said.

Southwest has canceled 150 daily flights during the busy summer travel season. On June 27, the carrier extended its Max cancellations through Oct. 1, its second extension in two weeks."

Newly built Boeing 737 Max aircraft are seen in an aerial image Saturday, June 29, 2019 at Boeing's Kelly Field maintenance facility in San Antonio.    Photo: William Luther, Staff Photographer

More from the same photographer:

A lot of money sitting in parking lots. 100 million a copy. When are the layoffs coming to boeing?

The basic problem is at some point in time in the 1990's, software engineering was determined to no longer be considered a profession.

When a profession is no longer considered a profession, all kinds of mayhem can result. Imagine if medicine was no longer considered a profession?

Microsoft, Cisco, HP and the big Silicon Valley companies during the birth of the public Internet are more to blame than anyone else.

Companies like Facebook put the nail in the coffin as far as the work and the Silicon Valley mentality put the nail in the coffin as far as software engineering being a career an adult would actually want to pursue.

Aerospace and defense were immune for a while, but it's apparently affecting them as well. This Boeing thing is the culmination of the insanity.

I'm kind of surprised that the FAA doesn't mandate that at least major customers of a given type of plane should be required to have full featured simulators for training in that type, simulators as good as the manufacturer uses.

If those customers had the same simulators as Boeing uses for testing, then those customers could contribute meaningfully to test programs that would be able to quickly rack up lots of hours testing changes to software and procedures.

I'm kind of surprised Boeing doesn't require that of its major customers, too.  "If you want to buy more than 20 737-9 Maxes, you have to get a Max 9 simulator installed in your training facility as well."

Regulatory capture like a motherfucker.

Finance geeks, what's a $100M plane lease/buy in terms of $/day. Somewhere around $50K/day?

At what point do they stop trying to fix it in software and fix it correctly?

Indian Engineers Call Foul After Being Connected To Boeing 737 Max Failure

"Indian engineers working for HCL Technologies and Cyient are crying foul after a media report connected the Boeing 737 Max failure with the outsourcing of software development to the two firms.

According to a report in late June, the software for the Boeing 737 Max was being developed at the same time Boeing was laying off engineers in an effort to slash costs. Boeing opted to outsource the software development to HCL Tech and Cyient, both based in India.

The implications in the report didn't sit well with engineers in India, with critics quick to point out that India has many aerospace engineers that are extremely competent. Not to mention Boeing has said it didn't tap engineers from HCL or Cyient to develop the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, which has been blamed for the October Lion Air crash and the March Ethiopian Airlines wreck. "

This all started with Phil Condit and Harry Stonecipher at the helm. Under their 'leadership', McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing's money. Soon after, MacDac's management practices, particularly in the commercial division, started to dominate traditional Boeing practices. Profit became king. Prior to this, Boeing was the expert on all of their aircraft systems. After the buyout, they started subbing out entire subsystems to subcontractors in the tradition of Douglas Aircraft. When I worked for a major avionics supplier to both Douglas and Boeing, the difference in subsystem knowledge was huge. Boeing at that time had a deeper understanding of subsystems than the supplier I worked for, and they invented the technology. I had an airline maintenance chief ask me about a subsystem problem on their DC-10s that we weren't responsible for and when I suggested they needed to talk to the Douglas engineers, he told me they did, and Douglas couldn't answer the question! The change after the buyout was fundamental and profound. At the time, I remember airline reps saying that they were willing to pay a premium for Boeing aircraft because they were more reliable and safer than the competition. Boeing is now just another airplane manufacturer. BTW, I retired from Boeing after many years of observing this decay.

To be fair, the majority of airplane accidents are the result of a combination of factors, with human factors usually dominating. The accidents with the 737 Max are no exception except in these cases, it appears that the design issues might be the dominant fault.

Boeing is the sole remaining commercial airframe manufacturer in the US, and has had an impressive history in both defense, space and commercial. It would be a shame to see them suffer significant damage as a result of this tragic situation, and I am hopeful that they will learn from it and make fundamental changes to prevent a recurrence. Keep in mind that even after these tragic accidents, there is no safer form of transportation.

There was a saying in the company at the time and for years after:  MacDac got the company; Boeing got the name.  

*sigh*  Another institution of American exceptionalism intentionally driven into a bridge embankment.

Boeing announces $100 million fund for families of 737 Max crash victims

"Boeing is starting a $100 million fund for the families and communities of the people who died in the two 737 Max crashes since last October. The company says it will partner with local governments and nonprofit organizations, and that the funds will “support education, hardship and living expenses for impacted families, community programs, and economic development in impacted communities.”

The $100 million in funding will be made available over “multiple years,” says Boeing, which generated $101 billion in revenue last year. The company says it will release more information in the “near future.” Boeing also says its employees will be able to make donations to the fund, which the company will match through December 31st, 2019."

All of the past few models have the engines mounted far forward of the wing, but I guess the MAXX takes it to another level. Looks kind of strange and unbalanced.

SPEEA engineer breaks silence on Boeing's MAX 737. Read this letter

"

A senior member of the union representing Boeing’s engineers says Boeing’s cost-cutting culture is to blame for production problems with the 737 MAX and other planes.

Stan Sorscher, a Labor Representative at the Society for Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA) is the author of the letter, offered to the Seattle Times as an opinion piece.

“The cost-cutting culture is the opposite of a culture built on productivity, innovation, safety or quality,” Sorscher writes.

“Boeing’s experience with cost-cutting business culture is apparent," he continues.

"Production problems with the 787, 747-8 and now the 737 Max have cost billions of dollars, put airline customers at risk, and tarnished decades of accumulated goodwill and brand loyalty.”

It’s the first time since the grounding of the Max that a senior figure in Boeing’s engineers union has spoken.

Though investigations into two fatal Max crashes are incomplete, evidence of engineering errors have surfaced – errors that were not discovered in testing. Questions have also been asked about the degree to which Boeing and the Federal Aviation Administration collaborated in certifying the plane as airworthy.

Sorscher, a former Boeing engineer, points to a major change in Boeing’s internal culture in the late 1990s.

Before that time, the company was focused on the performance of its products.

This was the era of the bold bet on the 747, and it was also a time when a low little plane called the 737 got its start. That plane became Boeing’s best-seller and remained so over many iterations.

In the 1990s, according to Sorscher, Boeing put workers at the center of its performance-driven universe. That plane of that era was the 777. It was a time of partnership between workers and executives as they learned together how to produce the plane, and many engineers speak of this period as the most fulfilling in their professional lives.

Among the most glorious moments – Boeing executive Alan Mulally hugging a worker who had helped to solve a problem, getting grease all over his thousand-dollar suit and plainly not caring.

“It would have been career-limiting to withhold negative information from managers” at the time, Sorscher observed.

But that has changed. With the 787 program in the late 1990s, Sorscher says, Boeing reset the playing field. Washington state would have to compete with other jurisdictions, offering tax breaks to secure production lines. Suppliers would have to compete with rivals around the world. Workers would discover their positions were precarious.

The atmosphere inside Boeing changed.

In an interview with KUOW, Sorscher said Boeing engineers receive clear cultural messages that identifying problems is thought of by management as making trouble.

“If the message is “follow the plan” and you watch co-workers who raised an objection and the problem isn't taken seriously or are they're considered troublesome, then that's a cultural message you pick up,” he said.

From a shareholder perspective, Boeing’s approach to its business has been wildly successful. The company is enduring its second worldwide grounding in recent memory.

However, worldwide demand for airplanes is riding a high. And Boeing has diverted cash flow into dividends and share buybacks that have helped boost the company’s stock.

From 2000 to the present, Boeing’s stock price has grown from $44 to $356. The stock hit a peak of $440 just before the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines Max jet last March.

A spokesman for SPEEA confirmed that the union had given Sorscher permission to produce the letter, however he could not say that the union specifically endorsed it.

This story will be updated. KUOW has reached out to Boeing and others for comment.

CORRECTION: The headline and first paragraph have been edited to reflect that the letter is not an official statement from SPEEA.
Read Sorscher's letter to the editor:

Employees come to work to do their jobs. We aren't usually aware of workplace culture, even over the span of years.

We learn culture from our co-workers and managers when they make decisions and demonstrate problem-solving skills. Leadership messages affect thousands of decisions that add up to success or failure of the organization.

For many years, Boeing competed with Airbus and other producers for airline customers based on performance of its products. As a recent news report put it, Boeing now competes for investors with Exxon and Apple.

Boeing rose to the top of the airplane business as an engineering company, focused on performance of its products. Boeing made bold decisions that “bet the company,” and prevailed over competitors.

In the 90s, Boeing business culture turned to employee engagement, process improvement, and productivity – adopting the “quality” business culture that made Japanese manufacturers formidable competitors.

Boeing Faces These 5 EU Demands For 737 Max To Fly Again

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has reportedly sent out a list of criteria that Boeing (BA) needs to address before the agency will approve the 737 Max for flight.

According to the Financial Times and Bloomberg, the 737 Max issues include:

1.  The difficulty pilots could have in turning the plane's manual trim wheel. The wheel isn't used frequently, but it is needed in some emergency situations. The crew of the fatal Ethiopian Air flight struggled with the wheel before the crash.

2.   The unreliability of the 737 Max's angle-of-attack sensors. The sensors push the plane's nose down if it registers a stall. But the sensors are suspected of malfunctioning in both the Lion Air and Ethiopian Air crashes. The Boeing 737 Max's Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) relies on the sensors to work.

3.  The autopilot not disengaging.

4.  Training procedures. The Allied Pilots Association had complained that Boeing's new draft training materials for the 737 Max were "inadequate."

5.  A software issue with a lagging microprocessor. The problem, which could push the plane's nose down and is separate from MCAS, was revealed last week and will delay the 737 Max's return to service in the U.S.

Boeing’s 737 Max loses its first customer as Flyadeal goes to Airbus

"Saudi Arabian budget carrier Flyadeal reversed a commitment to buy as many as 50 Boeing Co. 737 Max jets, becoming the first airline to officially avoid the plane since its grounding following two deadly crashes.

Flyadeal will operate an entirely Airbus SE fleet, the company said Sunday in a statement, buying as many as 50 A320neo-family planes from Boeing’s European rival.

The Airbus order was booked last month at the Paris Air Show by the discounter’s parent, Saudi Arabian Airlines. That announcement had sparked speculation about whether the planes would be allocated to Flyadeal, which said in December it would spend up to $5.9 billion on Boeing Max jets.

“We understand that Flyadeal will not finalize its commitment to the 737 Max at this time given the airline’s schedule requirements,” Boeing said Sunday in an email. “We wish the Flyadeal team well and hope we can support their fleet and operational needs in the future.”

Flyadeal will take delivery starting 2021 of 30 Airbus A320neo aircraft, with an option for a further 20 planes from the A320neo family.

The decision marks a commercial setback for Boeing, which is under pressure to prove the Max is safe and get it flying again after two disasters five months apart killed a combined 346 people. The narrow-body workhorse has been grounded globally since March."

Boeing 737 Max crash: Did foreign pilots have enough training to fly commercial jets?

"In the final, harrowing seconds of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, the pilots tried desperately to keep their Boeing 737 Max aloft.

Nothing worked. Not pulling back on the yoke to try to get the nose up. Not attempting to adjust the trim, the preliminary report on the crash would show. Making matters worse, multiple alarms, clackers and other audible warnings distracted the pair. The jet crashed in March outside Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, killing 157.

The crash laid bare Boeing's shortcomings in having designed an automated flight system that overrode the actions of the flight crew. But it also raised questions about pilot experience — whether mistakes were made in the cockpit and whether foreign airlines require pilots to have enough training. Those questions will be at the fore Monday, when a committee of the United Nations-backed body that sets international standards for air travel is scheduled to take a fresh look at pilot requirements."

Boeing falls behind Airbus in deliveries as 737 MAX crisis bites

"Airbus is on track to overtake Boeing in commercial plane deliveries for 2019 after outpacing its US rival at mid-year following the 737 MAX grounding, according to data released Tuesday.

Boeing, which has halted deliveries of the top-selling plane since mid-March, reported 239 commercial plane deliveries in 2019 through the year's midpoint, down 37 percent from the year-ago period.

Airbus reported 389 deliveries for the same period, up 28 percent from the same period in 2018, according to data on its website.

If the numbers hold throughout the year, Airbus could replace Boeing as the world's largest aircraft maker."


Boeing 737 MAX airplanes are being stored on employee parking lots near Boeing field in Washington state (AFP Photo/STEPHEN BRASHEAR)

Me thinks they better stop building those things for a while.  Boeing really screwed the pooch with this one.  A tweeked 757 would look pretty damn good right now.

United cancels 5,000 more Boeing 737 Max flights through October

"United Airlines has extended its cancellation of Boeing 737 Max flights until at least November 3rd, the company announced on Friday, which will affect 5,000 flights through September and October.

The airline had previously extended cancellations through September 3rd, following the news that the Federal Aviation Administration had discovered a new flaw in the flight software of Boeing’s 737 Max plane — one that was different from the flaw that led to two deadly crashes that claimed 346 lives. Boeing’s CEO recently acknowledged that the company needs more time to fix this new flaw and that the FAA will have to approve the fix before it recertifies the plane.

Southwest Airlines, which uses more 737 Max planes than its US competitors, tells The Verge that it is sticking to its previous plan of reintegrating the plane on October 1st, pending recertification. In the meantime, it is canceling 150 of its 4,000 daily flights. A spokesperson for American Airlines said the company has “nothing to share at this time” about its plans; American Airlines previously canceled 737 Max flights through September 3rd. (Delta Air Lines does not fly the Boeing 737 Max aircraft.)"

Southwest reissues 737 safety cards to allay MAX fears

"A few months ago, not long after the FAA ordered the grounding of all Boeing 737 MAX aircraft, we noted that the seatback safety information cards in Southwest Airlines' 737-800s might be a cause of confusion and concern for some customers because the cards referenced both the 737-800 and the 737 MAX 8.

At the time, Southwest didn't think it would be a problem, but in recent weeks the airline has quietly replaced those safety cards with new ones that only mention the 737-800.

The earlier safety cards were issued before the MAX grounding because the same safety information applied to both aircraft types, Southwest told us at the time. But infrequent travelers who weren't aware of the FAA-ordered grounding might have thought 737 MAX 8 was just another way of referring to a 737-800.

A Southwest official told USA Today this week that the cards were changed "to alleviate any confusion from customers so they know exactly what type of aircraft they are on." A separate new safety card was also printed for the MAX 8, but it obviously won't be seen until that aircraft starts flying again."

[url=https://www.npr.org/2019/07/15/741324231/2-major-airlines-cancel-thousands-of-boeing-max-flights-through-november]2 Major Airlines Cancel Thousands Of Boeing Max Flights Through [into---ed] November[/url]

"With aviation authorities around the world still months away from allowing Boeing's 737 Max planes to fly passengers again, two major airlines are now extending Max flight cancellations into November.

American Airlines announced Monday it is pulling the 737 Max from its schedule through Nov. 2, canceling about 115 flights per day. American reported last week that the Max grounding has already cost the airline $185 million in lost revenue.

United Airlines, the second largest U.S. airline in passenger volume, said Friday it would cancel flights through Nov. 3. That's 2,100 flights in September and another 2,900 flights in October because 14 of its 737 Max jets are grounded."