hobbsyoyo
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I have a suspicion that various 3-letter agencies knew about this in real time. Did the article go into that?
Edit: It did; they did know instantly.
The thread for space cadets!
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Edit: It did; they did know instantly.
Yup.
A meteor impact is a single flash of light.
A nuke going off is a double flash of light.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_Incident
tjs282
Stone \ Cold / Fish
Is it just me who finds it hilarious that nuclear explosions are detected by a 'bhangmeter'?
Thorgalaeg
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In fact Boeing and Airbus have been even by about a decade or more with a slight advantage for Airbus in number of orders and a slight advantage for Boeing in number of deliveries mostly due to A380 issues and cancellations ( juggernauts don't fit airlines post-crisis cheapo philosophy, excepting Emirates that has lots of money to buy the most luxurious toys).
The question is if this scandal will make airlines cancel its 737 Max orders (which makes for most of current Boeing orders) and order A320neo instead, with Boeing definitely falling behind Airbus. And if that happens, will Airbus be able to double its production in time, or will a third player appear, maybe a Chinese third player?
EnglishEdward
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A most enlightening post.
Another instance of astounding arrogance by software engineers thinking that pilots are incompetent and
cannot be trained to fly the new version of the 737 with the more forward located engines, so we will just
add a few lines of code to pretend that it is the old plane, and we won't bother to tell them about it.
If the piloting community had been told and had the opportunity to work through scenarios with the developers,
the flaws (which are so damned obvious even I can understand them) would no doubt have been quickly found out.
hobbsyoyo
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I doubt that was a FSW (flight software) call to make in the first place. This all sounds like management BS, trying to cut corners at all cost. Notice even within the FAA, it was the managers that were pushing their engineers to give Boeing more control of the process.
I also have a lot of FSW friends and the consensus has been that they are glad they don't work on manned systems because a tragedy like this would make them contemplate suicide. I would not be so quick to heap scorn on people just trying to do their job, especially when we have evidence that calls were being made at high levels.
I also have a lot of FSW friends and the consensus has been that they are glad they don't work on manned systems because a tragedy like this would make them contemplate suicide. I would not be so quick to heap scorn on people just trying to do their job, especially when we have evidence that calls were being made at high levels.
EnglishEdward
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Well I suppose that the person at the bottom of the stack who did the base coding can reasonably expect the
management to undertake proper trials and it is possible that the requirement specification was faulty, so they
need not rush to jump off the cliff, but I consider the software community and its various managers responsible.
management to undertake proper trials and it is possible that the requirement specification was faulty, so they
need not rush to jump off the cliff, but I consider the software community and its various managers responsible.
The backlog for Airbus 320 series is so long that it will take them years to deliver a plane if you order one now. If you have ordered a 737 and cancel that order, you will be without a new plane in the near future. So if you need that plane, you have no choice but to hold on to your order. All of this does make it easier for a Chinese player to enter the market, but this will take a few years as well.
There will be cancelled orders, but most of them will likely be airlines that have decided that they may have ordered too many planes and now use this opportunity to get rid of those.
Obviously, all this changes in case the grounding isn't lifted soon or further crashes.
I very much doubt that this was in any way a decision of the software engineers. It was probably decided very high up that "it flies just like a 737 - no additional training required" was an essential marketable feature of the new design. After the aerospace engineers said they couldn't do it, the software engineers were probably told to do it. And without proof that it was impossible, there was probably not much they could have put up as resistance. If upper management believes that you can turn crap into gold with software (and keep mumbling "AI"), the software developer only has two options: Run away or try it and hope nobody gets hurt.
hobbsyoyo
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And the classification for the safety level of the system also seems like classic management BS to me. The engineers likely would have known what the hazard rating needed to be and would have been overruled by management as a proper rating (i.e. worse rating) would have increased FAA scrutiny exponentially. I don't want to absolve anyone of blame but all of this fits a pretty typical pattern for management interference with technical decisions for non-technical reasons.
hobbsyoyo
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And to counter "why didn't someone whistleblow?" - that's always easier said than done. In particular, if you are an individual contributor (i.e. programmer), you may have misgivings about some decisions but likely won't have a high enough vantage point to see the whole pattern of behavior to know there are systemic problems. Typically only your managers and systems engineers will have that vantage and the former will be disinclined to self-report for obvious reasons. There may well have been whistleblowers though, I don't know.
Lexicus
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I get the impression that commercial airliner manufacturing industry has enough concentration of market power to make a few CEOs able to effectively blacklist people too. A powerful incentive not to blow the whistle.
hobbsyoyo
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I have been told by a CEO to my face that there is such a small number of true decision makers in this industry that if you piss off one, you will never work in it again. I think he was partially bluffing/bragging but I did not think he was lying either.
Is that percentage wise, or just that there is a hell of a lot of them out there, and many of them remained in service until they were pretty old individuals?
By average number of flight hours per crash.
Thorgalaeg
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Trying to extract conclusions about model safety through simple crash statistic is risky at best and not useful at all at worst. Number of crashes are too few and causes are to many, and most crashes have nothing to do with the aircraft itself, human factor being the cause. it is needed to study case by case.
hobbsyoyo
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The day before the Lion Air crash, there was an identical incident that nearly ended in disaster. An off-duty pilot who happened to be aboard rushed to the cockpit and was able to diagnose the faulty sensor/faulty MCAS system and was able to show the pilots how to turn it off and save the aircraft.
Whoa!
There was a 3rd incident?
I'm really wondering how many planes experienced this.
hobbsyoyo
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The Israeli lunar lander executed its final translunar injection burn yesterday. It should reach the moon in a weeks time, give or take. Then it will have to brake into orbit and prepare to land.
The lander has been dealing with star tracker issues and flight computer upsets due to radiation. They thought the cruise to the moon was going to be the easy part of the mission; I hope the rest goes more smoothly.
The lander has been dealing with star tracker issues and flight computer upsets due to radiation. They thought the cruise to the moon was going to be the easy part of the mission; I hope the rest goes more smoothly.
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