irrational fear of flying

[jclay]

I'll repeat: This is what happens when we allow our regulatory agencies to be compromised and are foolish enough to allow any sort of self policing by industry. Neutering, via budget cuts, privatization and general vilification of our regulatory bodies shifted into high gear with Reagan who, much like Trump, depreciated the need for them. He, more than anybody I can think of, undermined the public consensus for the need of robust government regulation of industry. If Boeing had not been granted broad self certification capabilities and if the FAA hadn't been hollowed out by decades of corrosion via political dereliction of duty these tragedies would not have occurred. Note I didn't say accident; that was intentional. These aren't accidents but are the predictable outcome of choices that have been made....just as deaths from texting drivers are due to our unwillingness to have and enforce severe penalties for vehicular homicide as well as for failing to use technology that would disable drivers-seat cell phone operation when in a moving vehicle.

[Scott G.]

This whole sad saga has changed my opinion about one of the few corporations I had any modicum of respect for. Methinks this will end in criminal prosecution.

I hope not, I want the problems found, not the promotion of CYA and never write anything in emails culture.
Other countries criminalize air accident investigations, somebody goes to jail, and airplane issue gets lost.

[Saab2000]

We’ll see what happens. I hope it gets sorted. I enjoyed flying the MAX8. Balanced handling. Quieter front office. Stiff, yet compliant, as they say.

My employer has many parked in the desert at the moment and many, many more on order. The jobs of tens (hundreds) of thousands of people depend on Boeing getting this right.

[rwsaunders]

I read about this book while on a plane reading Mondial 006.

How to Land a Plane - Mark Vanhoenacker - Google Books

[jclay]

One nice thing about doing this:
image.jpg
is having nothing better to do than read something you've wanted to read but weren't quite motivated enough to actually wade through; in this case The Mueller Report.

Passing through page 50. Wow. And sitting here in Atlanta, getting to San Francisco will give me a lot of time to keep on going.

[theflashunc]

I hope not, I want the problems found, not the promotion of CYA and never write anything in emails culture.
Other countries criminalize air accident investigations, somebody goes to jail, and airplane issue gets lost.

To what end then? Several hundred people are dead due to what appears to be pretty thorough CYA'ing that the problem even existed to begin with. Any basic sense of justice would indicate that at minimum there are specific individuals at Boeing, the corporate entity as a whole, or folks in the FAA that bear criminal responsibility for this.

[j44ke]

Boeing just looks worse and worse. And the FAA doesn't look great.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local...=.a7f08760ec31

Plus another problem, which is confusingly described in this article (at least to me,) because it sounds like a similar scenario but is described as being different and/or new. Not good in either direction.

Boeing’s 737 Max Suffers Setback in Flight Simulator Test - The New York Times

[jclay]

To what end then? Several hundred people are dead due to what appears to be pretty thorough CYA'ing that the problem even existed to begin with. Any basic sense of justice would indicate that at minimum there are specific individuals at Boeing, the corporate entity as a whole, or folks in the FAA that bear criminal responsibility for this.

Congress and some presidents do as well. I'm not sure which edition but at least one is part of the root cause. Same with the financial implosion; it was the predictable outcome of repealing the Glass Steagal Act and associated financial sector regulations, and we seem to have learned nothing from it. We have been selling off effective government for a long time, have become a country of kleptocrats and crony capitalists, and show no evidence of remediation.

[SteveP]

Not going away.

Boeing’s Dreamliner Plant Is Said to Face Federal Inquiry - The New York Times

[rwsaunders]

On an unrelated note...a bunch of teens in South Africa built a plane in 10 days...

South African teens: 'How we built a plane in 10 days' South African teens: 'How we built a plane in 1 days' - BBC News

[SteveP]

More about Boeing.

Big by Matt Stoller

No good news here for Boeing.

[GrantM]

More about Boeing.

Big by Matt Stoller

No good news here for Boeing.

interesting read.

"How did Boeing make miracles in civilian aircraft? In short, the the civilian engineers were in charge.
And it fell apart because the company, due to a merger, killed its engineering-first culture."


I think some of the engineers at HP probably feel the same way.

-g

[SteveP]

As noted by Stoller...
Boeing will end up needing a giant government bailout due to incompetent management.
Watch it happen.

They are still building these planes, right?
parking them in a giant parking lot somewhere?
Software will fix it?
Airlines will take them?
Customers will fly in them?

[Scott G.]

Commercial airliners are either Airbus or Boeing, so the airlines will take them.
Boeing sold 200 Max at the Paris Airshow a few weeks ago.
No bailout needed, airlines don't want a monopoly supplier.
Airbus are just as software controlled as Boeing,
they have different approach to control laws, is all.

[Saab2000]

I would imagine the MAX is going through an ultra thorough, line-by-line code review of all flight control systems. Boeing is known to outsource a lot, in part to incentivize customer nations to support the programs and purchase Boeing products, and this is undoubtedly under extreme scrutiny at the moment.

It's not as though other airliners didn't have problems, also resulting in many deaths. Look at the past history of all the great jetliners, including 707s and DC-8s and DC-10s and even the 747. They all had crashes that could be traced to engineering imperfection.

The difference is the 24/7 news exposure and internet social media (including cycling chat forums that veer off-topic) that didn't exist in the 1970s, when airline crashes seemed to be a semi-regular occurrence.

I'm hopeful that the review of the MAX8 and other variants is extremely thorough and the airplane is re-certified and safe.

[SteveP]

Saab,
you are right about some of that but rarely have 2 almost new airliners crashed within months killing hundreds of people from essentially the same problem and this problem apparently afflicts every one of these planes due to half assed design execution.

Those planes have been off line now for 8 months?
I cannot imagine what the airlines are demanding in compensation... you probably can. Must be a big number though ... never mind the adjustments being made to sell more of these things.

[j44ke]

I don’t remember any crash that has grounded this new a plane for this long. The plane is basically not airworthy and after discovering the second problem, I doubt anyone at Boeing can say with complete certainty that they’ve found all the problems. Really, given the record of their corporate behavior leading up to now, I don’t know why they would be allowed to sell any new planes until current planes are fixed and certified. Because the new planes will be presumed fixed upon delivery? More like a two for one sale to keep damages suits from customers at bay.

[Scott G.]

For a design flaw example requiring major hardware redesign, see the DH106 Comet l,
3 structural failure crashes in 12 months.
Famous at the time, there is even a book/movie based on it "No Highway in the Sky"
Comet variants were in service for 60 years.


de Havilland Comet - Wikipedia

[Saab2000]

I don’t remember any crash that has grounded this new a plane for this long. The plane is basically not airworthy and after discovering the second problem, I doubt anyone at Boeing can say with complete certainty that they’ve found all the problems. Really, given the record of their corporate behavior leading up to now, I don’t know why they would be allowed to sell any new planes until current planes are fixed and certified. Because the new planes will be presumed fixed upon delivery? More like a two for one sale to keep damages suits from customers at bay.

By this logic, Specialized shouldn't be allowed to sell any bikes because they recently had a recall in their Future Shock headset shock absorbers. After all, everything they sell has two wheels, therefore by default because they are Specialized, they should be banned from sale until the Future Shock issue is resolved.

Unless I'm mistaken, only one person here (me) has actually operated the MAX8. And I'm no expert. So a few scribes whose training is as a journalist, are hardly qualified to declare an airplane airworthy or not. I'll wait for actual experts to say it's ready.

One need look no further than the 727 or DC-10 or the Comet to realize there were significant jetliners that had design flaws that were rectified and returned to long, safe service lives. The length of the grounding of the 737-MAXx series is due to the intense scrutiny of today's media environment, something that didn't exist a couple decades ago.

I'm willing to wait. And when the experts declare it safe I'll climb back in and fly one without hesitation.

[bcm119]

The media factor is apparently pretty significant in how this issue is being perceived. The media is getting worse every day by focusing on doom and gloom to generate clicks. Just a few days ago there was a headline by NPR (they're not immune) that went something like "Quake early warning system fails in Southern California". The headline was blatantly false: the early warning system worked exactly as designed, but the quake's magnitude and distance from the LA metro area was below the threshold for triggering a warning. Last I checked no one was even injured in LA from the quakes.