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Boeing at X-Roads?

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Old 31st Jan 2024, 16:56
  #161 (permalink)  
 
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Originally Posted by MechEngr
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.
You could make the opposite case easily: For him a subtle flaw in the production process reduces yield and hence money, so it is investigated by QC (while the line keeps running).
Boeing needs a yield of unity.
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Old 31st Jan 2024, 17:32
  #162 (permalink)  
 
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Originally Posted by TehDehZeh
You could make the opposite case easily: For him a subtle flaw in the production process reduces yield and hence money, so it is investigated by QC (while the line keeps running).
Boeing needs a yield of unity.
Making anything at the nanometer scale without any flaws is impossible. So the case remains - be able to 100% detect all flaws and reject the parts that don't perform correctly. I'd say that catching missing hardware is far easier than finding a trace that is 1nm too narrow or was spoiled by a 2nm fleck of contamination. A single microprocessor chip currently made has more features than there are mechanical parts in a commercial airliner. They make millions of those chips at a cost of a few cents to a few dollars each. The current Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 has around 5.3 billion transistors.

Machine vision can easily detect missing hardware and can detect missing torque stripe that should be applied to correctly tightened and torque-inspected hardware. That is the sort of automation Qualcomm uses to verify their product. Similar techniques are used throughout the electronics industry.
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Old 31st Jan 2024, 18:31
  #163 (permalink)  
 
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Originally Posted by 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?
To begin with, it wouldn’t have been needed.
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Old 31st Jan 2024, 18:47
  #164 (permalink)  
 
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Originally Posted by MechEngr
I'd say that catching missing hardware is far easier than finding a trace that is 1nm too narrow or was spoiled by a 2nm fleck of contamination.
Not at all the point. The point is that Qualcomm can afford to discard a certain quantity of their production (regardless of whether they understand why the specific chip does not work to spec) and it only affects the bean counters, while for Boeing a single such event produces anything between a long thread in this forum and a lot of dead people.
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Old 31st Jan 2024, 18:50
  #165 (permalink)  
 
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Let me put it differently: Qualcomm doesn't need to check whether the four bolts are in place. If their plane crashes they take one of the other 4000 from the same wafer.

edit: Or maybe like this: The mission target of Qualcomm QC is the efficiency of the production process. The mission target of Boeing QC is (presumably) the airworthiness of every single airframe.

edit2: Mapped on to Boeing we would also need them to benchmark each plane that leaves the factory and then bin it into various performance levels, so when you buy the 737 base model you know that that particular airframe could have been the 737-XT-Ultra, but something rattles a bit too much, so they derated it.
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Old 1st Feb 2024, 02:25
  #166 (permalink)  
 
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Fear not, the latest version is good to go.



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Old 1st Feb 2024, 03:16
  #167 (permalink)  
 
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Mentour Pilot has a very good analysis of the quality problems Boeing is facing and needs to solve. Worth a watch.

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Old 1st Feb 2024, 03:29
  #168 (permalink)  
 
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Originally Posted by GlobalNav
To begin with, it wouldn’t have been needed.
Worse behaving/more confusing systems than MCAS have made their way into Airbus aircraft, and the phenomenon of pilots being completely confused by their aircraft's behavior is much more a characteristic of Airbus pilots.

There is a famous fatal Airbus incident with frozen AoA sensors involving an extraordinarily experienced and knowledgeable pilot. There is also a famous event involving glitched ADIRUs that miraculously did not result in a plane load of passengers in a smoking hole. There's AF447. There's AF296Q.

Disregarding pilot error, other human behavior, and weather, Boeing aircraft, at least until MCAS, have an accident history biased toward hardware failure. The Airbus bias is toward pilots losing situational awareness due to a lack of understanding of their aircraft automation and/or difficult to understand presentation of information.
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Old 1st Feb 2024, 05:30
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Originally Posted by remi
.
Disregarding pilot error, other human behavior, and weather, Boeing aircraft, at least until MCAS, have an accident history biased toward hardware failure. The Airbus bias is toward pilots losing situational awareness due to a lack of understanding of their aircraft automation and/or difficult to understand presentation of information.
This is my impression as well. It's just that Airbus improved since then, but Boeing"s trend seems to be the opposite way. This is the worrying part if true.

Are there statistics about the AD"s and their seriousness for the B737 and A320 family?
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Old 1st Feb 2024, 18:20
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Originally Posted by waito
This is my impression as well. It's just that Airbus improved since then, but Boeing"s trend seems to be the opposite way. This is the worrying part if true.

Are there statistics about the AD"s and their seriousness for the B737 and A320 family?
If someone was so inclined, the relevant AD's are all on the FAA website (I haven't been there for a while, but IIRC - being a government website - navigating to the appropriate page(s) is a bit tricky).
Seriousness is a different question - AD's get created for a whole variety of faults, some far more serious than others. At best, coming up with some sort of scale for 'seriousness' would be highly subjective.
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Old 2nd Feb 2024, 15:26
  #171 (permalink)  
 
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Congressional inquiry, continuing.

Letter to FAA Admin. Whitaker listing specific inquiries. Issued and signed by both Chairs (Committee and Aviation Subcomm.) and both Ranking Members of House Transportation and Infrastructure.

Link to House Commitee webpage:
https://transportation.house.gov/com...82927-71714618
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Old 2nd Feb 2024, 17:11
  #172 (permalink)  
 
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Originally Posted by WillowRun 6-3
Congressional inquiry, continuing.

Letter to FAA Admin. Whitaker listing specific inquiries. Issued and signed by both Chairs (Committee and Aviation Subcomm.) and both Ranking Members of House Transportation and Infrastructure.

Link to House Commitee webpage:
https://transportation.house.gov/com...82927-71714618
Oh, interesting to hear the response to these questions, The testimony will happen in a few days.
Many thanks W-R
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Old 2nd Feb 2024, 18:19
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Originally Posted by RickNRoll
Isn't GE where they got the bad culture from?
Winner winner chicken dinner. Harry Stonecipher, James McNerney, Dave Calhoun were all former GE CEO Jack Welch disciples.
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Old 3rd Feb 2024, 05:43
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From a Washington Post article, according to the neighbor thread covering the Alaska Air incident:

“A lot of angst out there in the populace,” said Kathleen Bangs, a former commercial airline pilot and spokesperson for the flight tracking site FlightAware. She said the site is seeing an interest in people searching types of aircraft, and Max 9 planes in particular. Travel booking site Kayak said usage of its 737 Max filter on flight searches increased 15-fold after the Alaska Airlines incident.
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Old 3rd Feb 2024, 07:19
  #175 (permalink)  
 
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Originally Posted by tdracer
If someone was so inclined, the relevant AD's are all on the FAA website (I haven't been there for a while, but IIRC - being a government website - navigating to the appropriate page(s) is a bit tricky).
Seriousness is a different question - AD's get created for a whole variety of faults, some far more serious than others. At best, coming up with some sort of scale for 'seriousness' would be highly subjective.
Allright, took a look. Not too difficult to find AD's and EAD's, nice filter options.

Before I dive deeper: Will the count of results be lower for Airbus, because the main source for that would be EASA? Or will I find all of EASA's Directives reflected at FAA as well?

see my next post

Last edited by waito; 3rd Feb 2024 at 08:49.
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Old 3rd Feb 2024, 07:42
  #176 (permalink)  
 
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There is an interesting chat with Jon Ostrower in the latest FR24 Avtalk. (Starts at 22 minutes)

AvTalk Episode 253: Time traveling with Taylor Swift and turtles | Flightradar24 Blog
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Old 3rd Feb 2024, 07:52
  #177 (permalink)  
 
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On a side note. I am fully aware of the difference between building ships and aircrafts.
Ships are one offs or built in small series and can take years to complete, aircrafts are massproduced on "conveoyr belts" and finished in days, weeks, months?
Any shipowner that I have worked for, when ordereing a new ship would early on appoint an Inspector who would be technically responsible for that ship during the whole building process, and after, but shore based.
As soon as building starts, the Inspector, and depending on type of ship, the Captain, Chief Officer/Engineer and the Electrician would be on-site following the whole process.
The Classification Society would also have specialists within each field present to ensure that all their Rules are followed.
Other regulators would also do checks during the process, particularly on SLF carriers.
After sea trials, you accepted the ship as built, certain guarantees still in force.
Impossible in the Aviation industri, but that's how we did it.
Per


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Old 3rd Feb 2024, 07:54
  #178 (permalink)  
 
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Originally Posted by waito
Allright, took a look. Not too difficult to find AD's and EAD's, nice filter options.

Before I dive deeper: Will the count of results be lower for Airbus, because the main source for that would be EASA? Or will I find all of EASA's Directives reflected at FAA as well?
I also visited EASA website, very difficult there to dive for EAD's. Here's the results of both administrations:

FAA Filter Criteria for EAD's:
Status= Current, Pending, Historical
Make=The Boeing Company
Model: any from -600 on, excluding the 700C

EASA Filter Criteria for Safety Publications:
type=EAD
make=Airbus S.A.S
Models: any selectable A320 family, from A318-111 up to A321-272NX

EAD for 737-600 ... -9






EAD for A318...321:



Note, there could be a cut in the EASA list in that there's no document before 2005, while FAA lists 7 more EAD's before 2005.
That gives us 10 Boeing EAD and 8 Airbus EAD. since 2005.

(Edit:
lines with similar heights to give comparable optical proportions between the two tables
added Airbus EAD headlines from PDF document where missing)

Last edited by waito; 3rd Feb 2024 at 08:57. Reason: added details, format for better proportions
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Old 3rd Feb 2024, 22:57
  #179 (permalink)  
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For those of you raising the Qualcomm comparison and examining it: which products do they produce that have to do with airworthiness?
In other words, they as a company surely want a robust Quality effort, but when their products do not perform, what is the consequence?
A flaming wreck, or something else? With Honda or BMW, it's a car on the side of the road that won't run.
(It's been interesting watching the discussion, thank you all for your contributions).
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Old 3rd Feb 2024, 23:32
  #180 (permalink)  
 
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Originally Posted by T28B
For those of you raising the Qualcomm comparison and examining it: which products do they produce that have to do with airworthiness?
In other words, they as a company surely want a robust Quality effort, but when their products do not perform, what is the consequence?
A flaming wreck, or something else? With Honda or BMW, it's a car on the side of the road that won't run.
(It's been interesting watching the discussion, thank you all for your contributions).
With a VW bus, it's a fire by the side of the freeway. They're all burned now though.

A friend of mine was riding his Ducati in fast rush hour traffic when the electrical system and thus the entire bike went dead. He wound up straddling the k-rail until a cop ran a traffic break.

Last edited by remi; 4th Feb 2024 at 18:52.
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