Boeing at X-Roads?

[remi]

Originally Posted by MechEngr

I doubt that any additional time would have uncovered MCAS until an AoA sensor got the vane clipped off. More telling was that the subcontractor that was building the sensors which Boeing and Lion Air used had not been using a sufficient QA/QC process to ensure that miscalibration could never occur, added on the oddity that there was no post-installation confirmation step required of the maintainers to ensure the calibration on the plane was correct - a quality escape of itself. I never heard if the FAA shut down that company for a full investigation of all their work and procedures as they should have done.

That was the early warning the FAA should have taken, that subcontractors and repair work weren't properly managed.

Anyone who knew that one AoA sensor was a single point of failure for a system with full trim authority, and had the ability to authorize a design change for at least single redundancy, should have been tried for manslaughter. Period. The design plainly violates every aviation safety practice and norm in existence for decades.

The details of how MCAS crashed two aircraft are completely unimportant relative to the deliberately and literally fatally flawed design.

[remi]

Originally Posted by MechEngr

They had 30+ years to understand the effect of a false stall warning. No one inside or outside the company spotted that problem. No one considered that no one had made a useful definition of "runaway trim" in those same 30+ years, even though the switches provided to deal with it were there the entire time. 100 years would not have been enough to notice that pilots might not recognize runaway trim and would not realize what a false stall warning was like. We know that because Airbus was unable to communicate a similar problem with the pilots of AF447.

The pilots of AF 447 had minutes, and the tendency of high altitude flights to get close to the "coffin corner" of stall vs buffet should be known to any competent commercial pilot. I can understand that the situation might have been confusing to the pilots, but that amount of confusion is incompetence and/or ineffective training. Meanwhile, the effect of MCAS down trim was so strong that after 10 or so seconds it was impossible to recover with the trim wheels (once auto trim was disabled) due to increased airspeed and resulting increased control surface forces.

Recognition of high altitude stall, even with some misleading instrument indications (which in this case were temporary), is pretty basic. Meanwhile, MCAS was designed to be a lethal trap for unlucky pilots.

One thing I wonder, though, is whether there is a prominent visual indication of conflicting pilot control inputs on Airbus aircraft. That potentially could have helped with AF 447.

In IBM, when IBM meant something, they used to have a group called the Black Team. This was a core of independent reviewers with significant experience that was given the freedom to go where they wanted and investigate what they wanted. A bit like the Spanish Inquisition, but less physical torture. They questioned fundamental assumptions, examined processes, and ran roughshod over the unprepared. In the initial rise of Microsoft, Bill Gates performed that function with the OS and the applications teams. It requires people who are smart enough to do the entire design job, but simply don't have the hours to do so. The clear mission isn't to tear people to bits, but to make the product as perfect as possible. Passing an audit was seen as a positive accomplishment.

Speaking of the coffin corner, that's where Boeing has put itself. It can't afford proper quality practices any longer, and it can't build deliverable aircraft without them. Commercial aviation isn't like military where if you're 10 years late and 3x over budget you're doing okay. At worst your program gets canceled and you're still in the defense business bidding on more future failures.

[GlobalNav]

Originally Posted by tdracer

A longer, more thorough review and vetting of the design may have pointed out the flaw in using a single sensor. The problem with MCAS was that in the rush to get things certified, no one considered the impact of a cascade of warnings and faults associated with a bad AoA sensor - overwhelming the flight crew and resulting in them failing to appreciate what was happening with the stab trim.

I also suspect that the safety assessment did not keep up with incremental changes of MCAS design and control authority. Coupled with the intent to keep changes under the radar and out of the required pilot training.

[safetypee]

Global, et al. From EASA EPAS Vol III 2024 edition.


Higher-risk safety issues in the EU aviation system:

• Insufficient consideration of flight crew human factors in Functional Hazard Assessments
• Insufficient consideration of flight crew human factors in the continued airworthiness process of the type design
• Lack of focus on risk-based decision making in complex systems
• Outdated certification bases established for major changes to type certificates

[tdracer]

Originally Posted by Big Pistons Forever

I hear what you are saying but ultimately it is Boeing’s choice as to how much resources they want to assign to fix the identified system problems. The resources assigned will largely drive the timeline. The problem is the fairly massive upfront cost of an all hands on deck, let’s make this right ! approach would impair short term profitability which impact C suite bonuses, so we know that will never happen.

It's far from that simple. While a shortage of resources will delay a program, adding resources is far from an assurance that you can do it faster. Boeing applied a massive amount of resources to the 787 program, yet the program was beset by massive delays. Instead, it fed the creation of unproductive processes and overhead that hurt far more than they helped (something that became painfully apparent when they applied those same processes and overhead to the 767-2C/KC-46 program). I was on the 747-8 program at the time, and we were seriously starved of resources compared to 787 - as a result we figured out how to do things more efficiently with less people - and despite the program being launched years later, we actually certified and delivered before the first 787.
The comparison often made is that it takes ~9 months for a woman to produce a baby - and you're not going to quicken that by adding more women (i.e. resources) - it'll still take ~9 months with 9 women. It simply takes time to do things right.

[remi]

Originally Posted by tdracer

It's far from that simple. While a shortage of resources will delay a program, adding resources is far from an assurance that you can do it faster. Boeing applied a massive amount of resources to the 787 program, yet the program was beset by massive delays. Instead, it fed the creation of unproductive processes and overhead that hurt far more than they helped (something that became painfully apparent when they applied those same processes and overhead to the 767-2C/KC-46 program). I was on the 747-8 program at the time, and we were seriously starved of resources compared to 787 - as a result we figured out how to do things more efficiently with less people - and despite the program being launched years later, we actually certified and delivered before the first 787.
The comparison often made is that it takes ~9 months for a woman to produce a baby - and you're not going to quicken that by adding more women (i.e. resources) - it'll still take ~9 months with 9 women. It simply takes time to do things right.

"The Mythical Man-Month" -- Fred Brooks

https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~weimerw/...-man-month.pdf

This is a software engineering book, but is relevant to many engineering endeavors. Here for example:

The Man-Month
The second fallacious thought mode is expressed in the very unit
of effort used in estimating and scheduling: the man-month. Cost
does indeed vary as the product of the number of men and the
number of months. Progress does not. Hence the man-month as a unit
for measuring the size of a job is a dangerous and deceptive myth. It
implies that men and months are interchangeable.
Men and months are interchangeable commodities only when
a task can be partitioned among many workers with no communica-
tion among them (Fig. 2.1). This is true of reaping wheat or picking
cotton; it is not even approximately true of systems programming.

[Big Pistons Forever]

Originally Posted by tdracer

It's far from that simple. While a shortage of resources will delay a program, adding resources is far from an assurance that you can do it faster. Boeing applied a massive amount of resources to the 787 program, yet the program was beset by massive delays. Instead, it fed the creation of unproductive processes and overhead that hurt far more than they helped (something that became painfully apparent when they applied those same processes and overhead to the 767-2C/KC-46 program). I was on the 747-8 program at the time, and we were seriously starved of resources compared to 787 - as a result we figured out how to do things more efficiently with less people - and despite the program being launched years later, we actually certified and delivered before the first 787.
The comparison often made is that it takes ~9 months for a woman to produce a baby - and you're not going to quicken that by adding more women (i.e. resources) - it'll still take ~9 months with 9 women. It simply takes time to do things right.

I would argue that the resources initially assigned to the 787 were woefully inadequate. The distributed production process was selected because it allowed Boeing to get ride of many (most) of those pesky expensive engineers that were always pushing back. After it utterly failed Boeing was forced to spend huge amounts trying to un-Fu*k the program.
This is classic when accountants are running companies. There is never time or money to do the job right, but they always seem to find the time and money to do the job over (badly).

For the last 20 years Boeing always chose the cheapest, nastiest, quickest way to fix issues only after they were backed into a corner.

I get I am tilting at a windmill, but wouldn’t it be nice if Boeing decided it was going to be different going forward, and they were demonstrably going to put their money where their mouth is,

[tdracer]

Originally Posted by Big Pistons Forever

I would argue that the resources initially assigned to the 787 were woefully inadequate. The distributed production process was selected because it allowed Boeing to get ride of many (most) of those pesky expensive engineers that were always pushing back. After it utterly failed Boeing was forced to spend huge amounts trying to un-Fu*k the program.
This is classic when accountants are running companies. There is never time or money to do the job right, but they always seem to find the time and money to do the job over (badly).

I was there - production was distributed, but not much of the engineering. The 787 engineering staff was initially larger than the 777 (and grew from there). The problem wasn't the number of engineers on the program, the problem was how they were used.
The 787 Propulsion group - for two engines - was nearly twice the size of what we had during the 777 development, and that was for three engine types. A huge part of the problem was the 787 insistence to do everything 'fresh' - repeatedly re-inventing the wheel in the process while ignoring five decades of 'lessons learned' on previous programs (and in the process repeating most of the mistakes that had been made on previous programs).

[Big Pistons Forever]

tdracer.

You were there and I was not so I defer to your knowledge. Given what you know how does Boeing un-fu*k the MAX program ?

[tdracer]

Originally Posted by Big Pistons Forever

tdracer.

You were there and I was not so I defer to your knowledge. Given what you know how does Boeing un-fu*k the MAX program ?

Fire the entire executive board 'for cause' due to malfeasance - no compensation or 'golden parachutes'. Bring in new people who know the commercial aircraft business. Let it be known that any future lapses of due process will result in more heads rolling.
Back in the early 70's, people who survived told me that the company was technically bankrupt, but the banks knew that the people running Boeing lived the business and knew how to build airplanes - the bankers didn't. So the let them work it out. Ten years later we had the highly successful 757/767 programs.
The people currently in charge know banking, not how to build aircraft. That needs to change.

[MechEngr]

Present board, names removed, just where they are from:
Chairman and CEO, Amgen Inc.
President and CEO, The Boeing Company
Former U.S. Chairman and CEO, KPMG
Chairman and CEO, Carrier Global Corporation
Chairman, President and CEO, Duke Energy Corporation
Former United Airlines Pilot; Former Inspector General, U.S. Air Force
Former Executive Vice President and CFO, United Technologies Corporation
Former President and CEO, GE Aviation; Former Vice Chair, General Electric Company
Chair of the Board; Former Chairman and CEO, Continental Airlines, Inc.
Former CEO, Qualcomm Incorporated
31st Chief of Naval Operations, U.S. Navy; Former Director of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, U.S. Navy
Chairman and CEO, SUEZ SA
Former Chairman, President and CEO, Aetna Inc.

For many of these I feel particularly disappointed at their allowing the failure with Spirit production and Boeing acceptance to last more than even a few months.

I would have to look more, but the Qualcomm guy should understand getting production done correctly. Things have to be right on the nanometer scale to even function and flawed components detected and rejected by rigorous testing before they get to end customers.

[WillowRun 6-3]

Fire the Board of Directors . . . alright, I'll take that as a serious argument.

A shareholders derivative lawsuit resulting in a new Board? A proxy fight launched on behalf of a slate of activist directors? I mean, it's obvious that the Board is the highest authority in the corporate entity - who is it, exactly, who would have authority legally to "fire the Board"?

There are perhaps components of (what in the 1960s, student radical political ideology referred to as) the "power structure" situated in holders of the corporate debt, lines of credit, and insurance. Get all these entities on the same page and led by the same principals? Unprecedented and unlikely to be accomplished.

The CEO is scheduled to be interviewed on CNBC's morning program today at 0900 ET (I realize this post won't age well on this point!). Guidance for 2025 and 2026 has been neither withdrawn nor confirmed. I hope the interviewer (whose regualar scope of coverage is aviation and cars) asks whether CEO sees the production issues on one hand, and the smash-up with certifications pending now, as two manifestations of the same issue. Don't hold your breath for massively insightful mea culpas, of course.

I'll go out on a limb here. Nothing about treating the crisis at Boeing and the decline of Boeing as if they were grist for Struggle Sessions during the Cultural Revolution would be in the national interest or beneficial to the aviation and aerospace sectors of the world economy, or the American economy, or do one iota of good. (Look them up if Struggle Sessions and the Cultural Revolution aren't familiar.) So where does the answer lurk?

Perhaps a proxy initiative to replace the Board. Of course, getting an Engineeering Excellence --and-- Banish the BeanCounters slate of Directors together, and waging the proxy fight, not easy, not even an easy choice to initiate. Got better ideas? - and this doesn't count stuff about 'let it die, break it up, too late to save the once great Boeing.'

[EDLB]

"who would have authority legally to "fire the Board"?"
Easy. The shareholders.
However that are usually institutional investors (Vanguard etc.) with no knowledge about building planes. The the next feedback loop will be filing bankrupt. I am sure that some tax dollars will be wasted to avoid this.

[Peter Fanelli]

Originally Posted by TURIN

You beat me to it.
In addition the Boeing Starliner space capsule is a mess. Years behind schedule. Paid for by the public purse.

Starliner is being built for NASA which is a government organization funded by taxpayer dollars.
So who else would you have pay for it? Or do you expect Boeing to pay for it and give it to the government?
Personally I'd rather see my tax dollars go to that than into the Ukraine war money skimming operation for funding politician's retirements.

[JohnDixson]

Re ME’s post 151: Is it interesting to contrast the recent Boeing Chief Executive background with that of Guillaume Faury at Airbus. Would the MCAS mess would have passed muster at Airbus?

[Maninthebar]

Originally Posted by EDLB

"who would have authority legally to "fire the Board"?"
Easy. The shareholders.
However that are usually institutional investors (Vanguard etc.) with no knowledge about building planes. The the next feedback loop will be filing bankrupt. I am sure that some tax dollars will be wasted to avoid this.

Firing the Board is the least likely course for shareholdrs. Even firing the CEO is HIGHLY unsusual.

Why?

To do so will almost certainly destroy shareholder value without ANY guarantee of solving the problem. A company has to be in major difficulties for this to even be contemplated, and major shareholders have to both act in concert AND have a replacement (or replacements) in place. Even a whiff of plannnig forsuch actons will tank share values.

Not going to happen.

[20driver]

" contrast the recent Boeing Chief Executive background with that of Guillaume Faury at Airbus."
Faury had quite the engineers resume. Notice is served time as a test flight engineer.
Reminds me of the quote attributed to Sirkorsky :
In those early days, the Chief Engineer was almost always the Chief Pilot as well.This had the automatic result of eliminating poor engineering very early in aviation."
Seems to apply to the CEO as well.
Hard to imagine anyone would pull the MCAS bait and switch on his watch.
Still Airbus is not without some serious clangers.

[SRMman]

Boeing chief admits 'serious challenge' ahead

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68157266

Here we go.

[WHBM]

I don't get how the 737-MAX7 can be delayed because the nacelle is out of current certification parameters, and this has to be redesigned before certification as a new variant, whereas the 737-MAX10 is expected to be certified by the end of 2024, yet it apparently has the same nacelle. Where am I wrong ?

[grizzled]

A former Boeing senior manager and a former engineer at Boeing and at the FAA provide damning comments to the Los Angeles Times:

https://www.latimes.com/california/s...-panel-blowout