737 Max

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It was said electronic engineers shouldn't believe themselves experts of aero engineering. Many projects I work on need just general engineering. Most engineers I know work very well in new engineering areas. Not because they want to, they have to. Mechanical engineers never will understand an engineer who never got their hands dirty. They don't mind that you don't know, they mind that you wont learn. As my old boss said. He worked down a hole at Christmas, in water to 1 micron and no one would allow less than 100% sucess.

I am quite sure many electronic engineer can fix their cars if they have to and there are enough chemical/material engineers on this site (remember Sy?) who are pretty adept at electronics. That is not the kind of general engineering knowledge I was talking about. That said, I certainly won't be calling any engineers if I need brain surgery anytime soon.

I spoke about solving very difficult ('wicked') problems that lie across knowledge domains. An entirely different issue.

Take a look here https://dcc.ligo.org/public/0151/T1800133/004/T1800133-instrument-science-white-v4.pdf
 
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It couldn't but there were a number of people trying to roll the blame onto the pilots despite it obviously lying with Boeing and the FAA at least since the second crash.

Whole thing is very distasteful.
Hope the reports can help bring some modicum of closure to the families impacted by this tragic scenario, must be very hard for a lot of people.
 
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That it’s taken this long to get the 737 MAX airworthy is an indication of just how flawed the airplane was to begin with.

I would hope Boeing and Airbus would be going through every craft in their fleets to tease out any and all potential problems.

Clearly, when it comes to managing safety critical products that potentially can cause multiple deaths in the event of a malfunction, there has to be a separation of powers between management and engineering. ‘If it ain’t ready, it ain’t flying’ should be the new mantra and it’s the engineering folk that should do the final sign - off and to hell with the stock market jockeys. Period.
 
That it’s taken this long to get the 737 MAX airworthy is an indication of just how flawed the airplane was to begin with.

I would hope Boeing and Airbus would be going through every craft in their fleets to tease out any and all potential problems

I think it's like everything else today. Products are made to the absolute lowest quality possible that they can get away with. Consumers are stupid and will continue to pay up for substandard garbage because it's all there is.

I have often thought that it would be disastrous if airplane design went the same way as automobile design. Well here we are.
 
The main take away from this whole sorry saga is that self-policing doesn't work.

The over-seeing authority can not be allowed to palm decisions off to the management of the company whose product it is supposed to regulate.

As for within the company management should be close, physically and in terms of communication and both must be able to veto decisions of the other.
 
That it’s taken this long to get the 737 MAX airworthy is an indication of just how flawed the airplane was to begin with.

I would hope Boeing and Airbus would be going through every craft in their fleets to tease out any and all potential problems.

Clearly, when it comes to managing safety critical products that potentially can cause multiple deaths in the event of a malfunction, there has to be a separation of powers between management and engineering. ‘If it ain’t ready, it ain’t flying’ should be the new mantra and it’s the engineering folk that should do the final sign - off and to hell with the stock market jockeys. Period.

To augment, the organizational failures of Challenger provide additional reasons on why it shouldn't only be the engineers that are whistle blowers, as a series of higher up engineers ignored (I'm being generous) the 5 engineers who objected. An external group that has no dog in the fight is really what's needed, which is ostensibly what FAA safety review *should* have been.

Lots of layers to unpeel here. We are all human.
 
An external group that has no dog in the fight is really what's needed, which is ostensibly what FAA safety review *should* have been.

A major objective for Boeing was to bring the Max to market without requiring retraining for certification. This would have lengthened time to market and increased production costs.

I think it's likely that training (or even pilot awareness of the system ) could have averted these tragedies. Remember, the trim system that caused the pilots to lose control was really just a band aid to compensate for moving the engines on the chassis, and using lighter engines.

The fact that the FAA missed all this does not inspire confidence in me. And had Boeing done the right thing and ponied up for training, then these incidents wouldn't have happened. (Or how about if they didn't bring a patchwork product dependent on a big band aid to the market in the first place?)
 
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It must be an independent organization that signs these things off ie the FAA.

But, internally, from what I’ve read, the ‘standards’ in Boeing were increasingly set by the management board to underpin stock valuations ie ‘good is good enough’ mentality.

So indeed there were two major fault lines: 1. money grubbers overriding engineering concerns and 2. Lack of FAA oversight
 
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