re: The Boeing 737 Max Crisis Is a Leadership Failure

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Oh and frick Boeing for letting the bean counters and cost cutters run the show for too long. That brought this 737 max shite show on their heads.

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Here's an interesting article that goes into the background of the merger that killed Boeing:

The Coming Boeing Bailout?

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The merger sparked a war between the engineers and the bean-counters; as one analyst put it, "Some of the board of directors would rather have spent money on a walk-in humidor for shareholders than on a new plane." The white collar engineers responded to the aggressive cost-cutting and politically motivated design choices with the unthinkable, affiliating with the AFL-CIO and going on strike for the first time in the company’s 56-year history. "We weren't fighting against Boeing," said the union leader. "We were fighting to save Boeing."

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The symptoms of the recent 737 Max events mirror those of an earlier Airbus 330 incident (erroneous Angle of Attack readings). I think it's a software issue. Why it has not been resolved yet is puzzling.

Qantas 72 (Airbus A330-303)

"The aircraft made a sudden uncommanded pitch down maneuver, recording –0.8 g, reaching 8.4 degrees pitch down and rapidly descending 650 feet (200 m). Twenty seconds later, the pilots were able to return the aircraft to the assigned cruise flight level 370. At 12:45:08, the aircraft then made a second uncommanded maneuver of similar nature, this time reaching +0.2 g, 3.5 degrees pitch down and descending 400 feet (120 m), re-establishing level flight 16 seconds later."

Findings
"After detailed forensic analysis of the FDR data, the flight control primary computer (FCPC) software and the air data inertial reference unit (ADIRU), it was determined that the CPU of the ADIRU corrupted the angle of attack (AOA) data. The exact nature was that the ADIRU CPU erroneously relabelled the altitude data word so that the binary data that represented 37,012 (the altitude at the time of the incident) would represent an angle of attack of 50.625 degrees. The FCPC then processed the erroneously high AOA data, triggering the high-AOA protection mode, which sent a command to the electrical flight control system (EFCS) to pitch the nose down."

It's pretty simple.

Boeing redesigned the flight control software to correct high AoA stall performance due to the use of larger engines the airframe was never designed to handle.

Boeing didn't fully document this feature / bug in the aircraft's flight manual and the pilot flying was thus unaware.

Under some fairly ordinary AoA conditions, the software took over flight control authority from the pilot flying, who unaware was not able to overcome.

This behavior is something I'd never, ever expect from Boeing, and similar to the long standing knock against Airbus' approach to flight control automation.

It's criminal, and even U.S. based airline pilots are screaming bloody murder.

Fly by wire is for pussies anyway

They had a mission before and they had a better handle on the contractors.

Now, the inmates are running the asylum.

Boeing is one the most arrogant companies I've ever had dealings with, not at all surprised about their current issues.

Corporate structure and high level engineering make terrible bedfellows. The story of our past 50 years of space...there will be books written.

So is it a buy or sell?

Lack of direction, lack of mission. Constant leadership change which results in no leadership. Also, the internal struggle of human exploration vs. unmanned missions.

Procurement basically outsourcing everything and becoming so lazy that they let contractors run the show.

Constant "mission slip", deadlines move to the right on the timeline.

There's a lot more, but that's some high (low) points.

Thank you

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The only other time this instance occurred was on a previous Lion Air flight that happened to have a 3rd pilot in the cockpit to help figure it out in the mere 30 seconds or so you have to figure it out.

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This is new information to me.