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Boeing 737 exposee

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IainB:
@holt: Just watched that videoTWA Flight 800 Remastered Re-creation today. Hadn't seen it before. Was a very interesting documentary/reconstruction - including the physical reconstruction of the aircraft from the assemblage of the recovered scattered airplane debris located and salvaged from the ocean floor covering a wide area after it had progressively blown to bits and fragmented along its flight path. Really smart investigation - though interestingly based on the initial and false premise that it was an on-board bomb that had caused the explosion. Closed all the gaps. Thanks for posting.  :Thmbsup:

Interesting too that the FBI left that case as Suspended and Active status, rather than Closed. That means it doesn't necessarily prohibit the introduction of new information/investigation at some future point.

Did they ever do something similar for 911, to close the gaps? I don't recall. Presumably there would have been all the aircraft debris from two aircraft there, all easily located within a small radius around Ground Zero.

IainB:
On the subject of the Boeing 737 MAX apparently murderously effective collusion of corporate/government chicanery, there seem to be two quite separate aspects to distinguish:

* The failure to maintain relevant engineering quality/safety standards in the aircraft construction.
* The software developed for the MACS, which was apparently not fit-for-purpose by a long shot.
In both cases, the motive seems to be profit - cost-containment/reduction - and with a total (psychopathic) disregard for the entirely predictable risks to life that this would necessarily entail as night follows day. It's deliberate - more than just incompetence or negligence.

I was reminded of this today when I happened to be browsing "great engineering mistakes" on duckduckgo and saw this:
Most people, when buying an airline ticket go for the cheapest available flight. Few consider the safety record of the airline. So it takes government or other regulatory intervention to enforce safety standards. The same applies in other sectors. Seat belts are now mandatory on UK coaches. Prior to this becoming a legal requirement, few coach operators fitted them because customers weren’t interested in paying a bit more to travel in a coach fitted with them. Yet, they are known to save lives.
 - Comment by Chris Chris Nabavi, 5th May 2010 at 1:28 pm at Engineering’s Ten Biggest Mistakes

--- End quote ---

So I went and re-read the article Mish: Boeing 737 Max Unsafe To Fly, New Scathing Report By Pilot, Software Designer. That was mostly about a software engineering mistake in attempting to compensate/conceal a fundamental design failure in the updated aircraft.

These bits jumped out at me:
Design shortcuts meant to make a new plane seem like an old, familiar one are to blame.
This was all about saving money. Boeing and the FAA pretend the 737-Max is the same aircraft as the original 737 that flew in 1967, over 50 years ago.
--- End quote ---
Boeing cut corners to save money. Cutting corners works until it fails spectacularly.
--- End quote ---
It all comes down to money, and in this case, MCAS was the way for both Boeing and its customers to keep the money flowing in the right direction. The necessity to insist that the 737 Max was no different in flying characteristics, no different in systems, from any other 737 was the key to the 737 Max’s fleet fungibility. That’s probably also the reason why the documentation about the MCAS system was kept on the down-low.

Put in a change with too much visibility, particularly a change to the aircraft’s operating handbook or to pilot training, and someone—probably a pilot—would have piped up and said, “Hey. This doesn’t look like a 737 anymore.” And then the money would flow the wrong way.
--- End quote ---
So Boeing produced a dynamically unstable airframe, the 737 Max. That is big strike No. 1. Boeing then tried to mask the 737’s dynamic instability with a software system. Big strike No. 2. Finally, the software relied on systems known for their propensity to fail (angle-of-attack indicators) and did not appear to include even rudimentary provisions to cross-check the outputs of the angle-of-attack sensor against other sensors, or even the other angle-of-attack sensor. Big strike No. 3.

None of the above should have passed muster. It is likely that MCAS, originally added in the spirit of increasing safety, has now killed more people than it could have ever saved. It doesn’t need to be “fixed” with more complexity, more software. It needs to be removed altogether.
--- End quote ---

There's presumably a warning note to software developers about professional liability/culpability implicit in that...

holt:
The Boeing 787: Broken Dreams l Al Jazeera Investigations

IainB:
@holt:
EDIT 2020-01-09: Just pointing out that the above video is a repeat from the post you made earlier:
Another whistle-blower exposee, reporting shabby workmanship, about a completely different airliner, also manufactured by Boeing, the company whose aircraft never crash, they just go 'boeing-boeing':
Boeing 787 Broken Dreams
"Our journalism reveals the deeply-held safety concerns of current and former Boeing engineers, who in some cases fear to fly on the 787, the plane they build. We uncover allegations of on-the-job drug use, quality control problems and poor workmanship."
-holt (April 13, 2019, 06:22 PM)
--- End quote ---

@holt: [Regarding that video.] Yup. A while back, I met an engineer (retired ex Boeing, at a conference in Australia) who wished to remain anonymous, but said that the Dreamliner design was aerodynamically very sound - including the performance of carbon fibre in construction - but that Boing had effectively ensured that their incompetence and disregard for engineering build quality, safety and compliance, coupled with an emasculated and now servile FAA puppet, would kill the plane - which it did - what a surprise (NOT). He said, from an engineering perspective, it was predictable, but the management seemed to be blinded by greed and a seemingly psychopathic disregard for the safety of others.
He also said that the Al Jazeera video made a good point about the trouble seeming to stem from the point in 1997 when MacDonnel Douglas and Boeing merged. After that point, he reckoned, there was an increasing statistical probability that each new Boeing product could be a potential death-trap, and time seems to have shown that to be the case.
The engineer advised me to avoid Boeing planes, for my own safety. I still use flight insurance, but I won't fly on a Boeing aircraft now and I won't book flights for my family members on them either. I'd rather have a living wife, son, or daughter than a fat paycheck as compensation for their loss of life.

holt:
"You can fool all of the passengers some of the time, and some of the passengers all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the passengers all of the time." -Abraham William Boeing

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