737 max update...
 

Copied from the Bloomberg... guess we’ll learn more tomorrow


Boeing is considering either halting or further cutting production of the 737 MAX amid uncertainty over the airplane’s return to service, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Decision could be disclosed as soon as Monday; the company’s board is meeting in Chicago starting Sunday
Boeing management increasingly sees pausing production as the most viable option; a decision hadn’t been made as of early Sunday, and production changes are not certain

Stopping production seems like the worst possible option and I’d guess that’s why they haven’t done it yet. To idle the supply chain, when most of the production of subassemblies is performed by subcontractors, is risky. The ripple will be staggering as the subcontractors attempt to hold on as long as possible, then may have to idle their workforce, etc. To be fair, stopping production will be easy, restarting it will be the trick. I wonder if this would mark the end of the guppy?

Seriously? the end? You better hope not. If it is, the worlds airlines will be short about 6 thousand jets in the next 10 years. Airbus just cant flip a switch and start building over 100 A320s each month next Tuesday.

This is why Airbus said this grounding hasn't been helping them.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/17/airb...ts-no-one.html

This is in jest, right? The 737 is a cash cow. Not to mention they’ve got 500 of them undelivered and ready to go. This is just another albeit costly, setback. I agree however, it will be certainly crippling to the subcontractors who will have no choice but to halt their supply chain indefinitely. During the holidays no less.

Seems like the next plausible card to fall would be the replacing of the CEO.

The issue is ramp space. They have been turning these out like the sorcerer’s apprentice, and have filled up available ramp space and even overflowed into employee parking lots at the factory.

They are getting gridlocked with produced but undeliverable aircraft.

https://youtu.be/hwejf6Yb3tA

Ramp space?

The issue is working capital. Airlines pay 90% of the price upon delivery. No delivery - no cash. But Noeing has to pay their suppliers. That can only go in for so long.

All of this may just be a ploy to pressure the FAA.

Once jobs are under threat people in DC will be making phone calls to the FAA.

If you don’t have room to put completed aircraft anyway your inability to afford the parts to assemble more becomes secondary.

And you don’t have to pay your workers if you lay them off. Better yet, the government will pay them, putting political pressure on the FAA to speed things up...

How about use as temporary homeless shelters?

How about hooking them all together on the power grid and competing with PG&E?

The aircraft are flyable and get a ferry permit to fly them outta Renton. I’m not buying parking space as a limiting factor.

They can, and have, been able to fly them anywhere for storage. But, ya shut down the supply chain & problems are just beginning. Restarting the line will prove to be much much more difficult.

This is the longest grounding in US history. Is there a viable fix?

https://airwaysmag.com/airlines/a-re...et-groundings/

Yeah, a brand new airplane. When you need a kick stand and some computer wizardry because your airplane has been stretched beyond the limits of aerodynamic stability, and not falling on its ass at the gate, you’ve gone too far.

In the 4 day sim test they said all pilots recovered successfully but several crews went for the wrong checklist. Whose fault is that? Now EASA wants checklists and procedures changed. This is getting ridiculous.

I wonder if Airbus will over-take Boeing as a result of the grounding and the delay in recertification?

I didn't think it would take this long to get a "perfectly good airplane" up and flying again. I guess there were more issues to sort out than simply a software update?? If the aircraft was so awesome it would have been up and flying pretty quick.

Boeing's failure to get a true 757 replacement up is really the problem. I guess it was all about catering to the demands of SWA.

As I hear it told, SWA wanted a bigger-badder 737, on par with 757 performance, but it needed to be a 737 for common type rating requirements.

I would have loved to see a 757 replacement from Boeing. I really think Airbus pushes their products and they will be in a good position for the next 20 years.

^^^^^^THIS^^^^^^

Boeing created the MAX for American after they placed an all Airbus narrowbody order.

SWA has about 300 orders out of about 5000 total.

We are officially at the beginning of the news cycle in which “stuff gets done”. If regulatory hurdles/signatures need to be overcome/stamped, between now and 2 January will be the time in which this will happen. I could/have been wrong on this but my gut tells me the FAA and Boeing are not as far apart as recent articles would have us think. I don’t see the return to service being moved to the right past April at this point. I’ll humbly eat my hat (after April 15 when it stays at home most of the time anyway...) if I’m wrong.

Truth. It’s all fun and games till congressmen realize their seat (wallet) hangs in the voter balance. If congress wanted to they could direct more funds and resources to get the max back in the air...but they haven’t..yet.

And, just like that, Boeing 737 production will halt in Jan...

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/16/boei...acebook%7Cmain

I’m not sure many taxpayers want to subsidize fixing boeing’s screwup and fund the MAX RTS.

I think you’re greatly overestimating how closely tax payers monitor how their money is spent.

No kidding.

“U.S. corporations spent a record amount buying back their own shares last year, using 2017′s tax-cut windfall to reward shareholders rather than to invest or expand their businesses.

Companies in the S&P 500 spent $806 billion on stock buybacks in 2018, blowing away the previous record of nearly $590 billion set in 2007.”

Just curious, anyone remember the hardover rudder problems in the -200 and -300 and the crashes attributed to it? In the aftermath, the airplane wasn't grounded, and the fixes were training, and new servos to be installed by a specified date.

What changed? In my opinion, Trump, Facebook, Twitter, political correctness.

That is a gross mischaracterization of what happened, and factually inaccurate on so many levels.

I decent interview with an AA pilot that is working the Max issue. It's a 4 minute radio segment.

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/15/78819...boeing-737-max

Well, since you said the "C" word..."congress."....Lets put the max exclusively in DCA when it returns to service. That way we can give congress a chance to weigh in on it and see how they feel about it.

Boeing really screwed the max up bad. If they had manufactured the plane with “the fix” already in place none of this would have ever happened. Once approved to return to service, the max will prove to be a reliable and efficient aircraft that generates the airlines plenty of money (even though it’s still just an overly stretched ancient design). There will be some consumer skepticism at first, but the airlines will have a big sale on summer travel and the allure of cheap tickets will win out. Five years from now the vast majority of our NB lift will be on the max and the consumers will have long since regained confidence and forgotten all about this.

How’s that?

Even after the second Ethiopian crash, DOT Sec Elaine Chao and her staff flew a SWA MAX8 from AUS-DCA, in yet another protective overdrive mode to show the world they thought the plane is just fine. The same way her predecessor in the 90s (Frederic Pena) stood at the Valujet crash site in the Everglades and stated, “I’ve flown on Valujet, Valujet is a safe airline, as is our entire aviation system.” Literally standing on top of the crash site.

Make no mistake, the MAX grounding by the FAA was because of world wide pressure from other regulatory authorities, and how the FAA should not be the lone wolf still allowing the MAX to fly.

“The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.” — Ronald Reagan

“I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” — Grover Norquist

This was a regulatory failure. But when you’ve got these guiding principles in the DNA of the government then bad will happen as a cost of “freedom” from regulation. And so many other freedoms: freedom from medical insurance, freedom from pensions, freedom from living wages.

It’s why we have, and need, unions. Oh. They’re freeing us from those too.

Amazing how all of this could have been avoided even without “the fix” if Boeing had just included a second AOA sensor with a miscompare feature in the standard cost of the aircraft. What gross misjudgment about additional profits on optional features.

The MCAS code would have still been “bad”, but the AOA miscompare would have saved the day, and a fix implemented without the whole fleet being grounded for an entire year, along with a complete loss of confidence in Boeing.

Do some research on the matter, in particular the European crew that saved the airplane which allowed the NTSB to figure out exactly what the fault was.

737 max update...
 

WTF are you even talking about?!?

Eastwind not European... auto correct.

Like I said... your post was factually inaccurate especially when talking politics. No cause could ever be determined for the USair and United crashes. Training changes was grasping at straws. It wasn’t until the Eastwind crew could be interviewed was the NTSB able to determine an inherent flaw in the PCU that could lead to rudder reversal.

Completely different situation, and by the FAAs own admission after the Lion Air crash they new more would come. Trump and political correctness had zero to do with grounding of the Max. If anything politics kept it flying to long, or worse turned it loose on the public. There’s a clear distinction from gross neglect, and what happened back in the 90’s

History repeats itself, again. American 191, the DC-10-10 disaster at ORD in May of 1979. The stick shaker came as standard equipment on the Captain’s control column only. The FO side was optional equipment. American didn’t buy the option. The Captain side lost power as a result of the No. 1 engine separation at rotation. There was no warning of the uncommanded slat retraction on the left side and no subsequent stick shaker activation. Had the nose been lowered in reaction to a stall warning, the aircraft could have been saved based on numerous simulator tests. As it was, the FO was the flying pilot on AA 191 and otherwise flew a by the book V1 cut. Stick shakers on both sides were mandated afterwards. It wouldn’t surprise me if a single engineer that worked on MCAS was even old enough to have ever heard of AA 191.

I think his point is that even after the NTSB and FAA determined that the rudder PCU had caused two catastrophic mishaps (and perhaps others abroad) and nearly another, they didn’t ground the 737. They mandated training and new PCU’s for all 737’s, but the deadline was three and a half years from the conclusion of the investigation. (March 1999 to November 2002)

That would have been like telling Boeing to come up with updated training for the MAX and setting a deadline for new software/hardware three years from now. It’s a very similar situation and it has been handled very differently.

737 max update...
 

Now we’re talking...


https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/...ts/AAR9901.pdf

Good reference in this report. Notice how long the investigation took place. I don’t recall any 737 groundings.

Peacock nailed it.

It’s been a long time, but as I recall the manual said that with slats disagree, all computed speeds, including ALPHA could not be relied on. Shaker may not have worked.

Got me curious so I looked it up. The loss of the No.1 gen bus took out power to the lone stick shaker motor, the left stall warning computer and the slat disagree indication. The left and right stall warning computers did not compare information by design anyway. Good memory there. The accident report dinged the stall warning system for overall lack of redundancy. Lack of data comparison between sensors / computers being highlighted. And here we are 40 years later.