Eco Madness: Cause of 737max Crashes?

"Devine: Eco madness may be reason for disastrous Boeing 737 MAX safety issues"

If one were to throw this possible explanation in with all the known management, design, process, and certification errors and problems revealed by local press here in Boeing's front yard, and made a ranked list or Pareto chart of their seriousness, I don't believe this 'eco madness' theory would appear on the first page. There were plenty of very fundamental blunders by Boeing, its AOA sensor supplier-servicer (which just lost its aviation certificate, effectively a business death penalty), and the FAA.

But after looking at the other article links served up to me on the same web page, I get a certain 'understanding' where this opinion writer is trying to come from.

 

Hummmm, perhaps we can convince her that vaccines are an ECO plot so her followers will become anti-vaxxers. Perhaps all modern medicine practices too. Then like Ayn Rand, smoking is an anti-ECO stand.

Bob Wilson

 

I did not know about AoA sensor supplier hitting the skids. That is useful knowledge.

 

A bit of memory failure on my part, a review shows that this is just the supplier that repaired and supplied the second-hand sensor put on the Lion Air craft. Oct. 25 local news (updated since I first read it): FAA shuts down Florida repair firm that supplied faulty Lion Air sensor on Boeing 737 MAX

"The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has shut down Xtra Aerospace of Miramar, Fla., the company that supplied a faulty sensor to Lion Air that triggered the deadly 2018 crash of a 737 MAX, ... The regulator’s revocation of Xtra’s aviation repair station certificate, announced Friday, means Xtra is out of business."

"Clarification: An earlier version of this story said Xtra Aerospace failed to do “an extra check” of the AOA sensor calibration. The report says the mis-calibration of the AOA sensor could have been caused by a switch in the wrong position on the test equipment at Xtra Aerospace — and that Xtra did not provide the required written instructions for how to correctly use the equipment."

A different source suggests that the original (not re-worked) AOA sensors likely came from Collins Aerospace, apologies for any unintended impugning of them:
Boeing 737 - program supplier guide

The most complete B737 MAX local news collection is here: Boeing 737 MAX | The Seattle Times

 

The A220 was designed as an IMO misguided last-ditch effort of Bombardier to remain a relevant player in the jetliner industry. Bombardier had limited in-house expertise in clean sheet design, as their only lineup of passenger jets had been essentially derived from Canadair's Challenger biz jet. Having tortured the CS100 (now A220) for I think 10 years (?) and spent 2-3 times more billions than planned, Bombardier still couldn't write more than three hundred firm contracts. If I remember correctly, Bombardier tried offering Delta a 70% discount off the catalog price, which is below the manufacturing cost ... long story short - the A220 program may end up unable to turn profit, just like the A380.

And this is even not considering potential additional risks and uncertainties, coming from the composite materials parts.

Also, this doesn't help either: Software link suspected in Airbus A220 engine blowouts - Business Insider.

I sure hope Boeing has done all the necessary testing, emulating many years of service in various conditions.

 

Unprofitable for the manufacturer vs. unsafe for the occupants...
Bombardier has limited in-house design & engineering; Boeing just farms theirs out to a Russian company they bought.

The theme I'm picking up is that air transportation is so tightly ingrained in the business of the world that nobody can be bothered to actually do it correctly.

It's bad enough that the operators (airlines) are depending on their "express" short-haul contract operators to fly 40% of the total schedule on a much smaller slice of revenue, trapped under crap contracts. I've seen that firsthand and it's somewhere between disappointing and shameful.

I don't like finding out that the people building the planes themselves are not just phoning it in, but they're actively competing to see who can care the least while cashing out the hardest.

 

More Boeing Eco-madness:

1.) Boeing comes up with a clever plan to save money by firing a thousand highly overpaid quality control inspectors, says they'll just build planes that don't need inspecting, because they will carefully not build in any problems:

Boeing overhauls quality controls: more high-tech tracking but fewer inspectors | The Seattle Times

2.) Boeing aircraft grounded before they even leave the plant, 'cause random trash keeps getting built into sensitive areas of the planes:

Boeing finds debris in wing fuel tanks of undelivered 737 MAXs, orders inspections | The Seattle Times

I await Ms. Devines explanation for how this is all a "green madness" problem and has nothing to do with management.

 

The problem with computerized systems is the programming. Wrongly programmed or not programmed to detect specific defects, a computer will continue over and over again to perform it's program even when the assembled units are defective. That's what leads to massive recalls in the automobile industry. A well trained human eye can readily spot defects that the computer might likely overlook, before a large number of defective units are assembled.

The failure to clean debris and foreign objects from the airplanes produced reminds me of the ratchet wrench and socket found in the Apollo 204 command module after the fire.

 

I see Boeing is going with the "It's not a bug, it's a feature!" approach.

 

Note that this article predates the second MAX disaster and subsequent grounding, so things may have change since.

Back in my original career, it was drilled in that quality-by-inspection is expensive but doesn't actually work particularly well. It is better to design the quality into the product and the manufacturing process, reducing human error from the start.

Done right, it produces both higher quality, and lower overall product cost after including rework and warranty costs. But simply following bean counter edicts doesn't cause it to be done right.

 

there's no qc like wd himself.

 

Instead of designing a fully integrated aircraft. Boeing tacked on larger engines on an old airframe and moved them forward of and up over the wings to avoid even a new landing gear. The action totally changes the flight dynamic relationship of the center of mass and the center of pressure of the aircraft, while informing the crew that it still flew like a standard 737.

It might be likely that the 737max may never fly again.

 

It will certainly lose numerous of its intended cost-saving commonality benefits in sharing prior 737 certifications and pilot training, now being forced into needing to earn its own. I'm not so sure this will doom the product, though I haven't been reading all the stories out there.

It entered service with some eye-popping deficiencies in its flight controls, requiring major architectural changes. But the deep dives and wringing out processes, rooting out a wide range of issues unrelated to this immediate set, look to be advancing the whole field, to the benefit of the whole industry.

 

They didn't want to sell it as a fully integrated new design. They wanted to sell it as a minor reworking of the existing design. They had reasons for this. They didn't want to certify a whole new aircraft and they didn't want pilots to have to qualify on a whole new aircraft. There are advantages to this. They would spend less proving they met various safety standards and almost every existing Boeing rated pilot could quickly and easily qualify for this <S>new</S>, lightly reworked model. Unfortunately their attempt to save pennies overwhelmed their desire to make great airplanes.

The bit with not stretching the landing gear is more complicated than it might seem. You have openings inside either the wings or the body that the gear folds up into. If you try to make this opening longer, (To hold longer gear) you discover that there are all kinds of pipes, wires, and structural bits that pass by on every side of the existing openings. If you go to move *those* bits out of the way you find that there are *more* important bits of plumbing that have to be moved to make room for the first set of bits. If you are unlucky you start to get involved with things like pressure bulkheads and fuel tanks, which nobody really wants to cut into.

If you try to come up with a clever telescoping leg, it first becomes fatter, which means now you need a wider opening, and then you find that you have increased the mechanical complexity (and thus the chances of failure) of a critical component. Nope, it's simpler to hang the engine someplace else and just not screw around with the gear. Landing gear mods might cost money.

 

FOD for thought:

Debris Found in Undelivered 737MAx FUEL TANKS - PPRuNe Forums

 

The current grounding and halt of MAX deliveries is now turning into a benefit for numerous airlines, and the carrier industry as a whole:

"He [air industry conference speaker Morris] declared the industry’s 10-year growth cycle over. For airlines, he said, the fact that Boeing’s 737 MAX is grounded “is a virtue right now” because the world’s airplane fleet capacity has to shrink in the months ahead.

Boeing’s managing director for marketing, Darren Hulst, described how the epidemic has curtailed air traffic in China and Asia. On Jan. 6, he said, more than 3,250 flights originating in China connected more than 850 city pairs worldwide; . On Feb. 21, less than seven weeks later, only about 700 such flights took off, connecting 240 city pairs. ..."

Though it appears likely that this grounding will still continue somewhat beyond this current health crisis. And the current 'benefit' is unevenly distributed, some carriers with many MAX orders are still hurting from their reduced capacity.

 

Small favors

 

What's a 737 MAX?

 

it’s a symbol of USA becoming a third world country.