Thanks for that.

I just wonder if there are any checks or reporting for when fuel cold soaking has been a problem and/or has required pilot action to avoid flight problems?

Do other aircraft suffer that same type of icing as the thinned-out Boeing 737 wings?


Thanks,
Martin

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Do other aircraft suffer that same type of icing as the thinned-out Boeing 737 wings?

All aircraft suffer from it which is why they are fitted with Ice protection systems. ;-)

Cheers.

Really, Boeing expected a near instant diagnosis and immediate response (sub-three-seconds?!) from any/all long-haul pilots for this latest 'oversight'?!!


It’s Not Just Software: New Safety Risks Under Scrutiny on Boeing’s 737 Max

... Using that new set of assumptions about pilot reactions, Boeing discovered that if two wire bundles placed close together toward the rear of the plane caused an electrical short, it could lead to a catastrophic accident. The wiring connects to the motor that controls the stabilizer, the horizontal fin on a plane’s tail, sending signals from the flight control computer that can push the nose down or lift it up.

If pilots did not recognize the problem and quickly take appropriate action, the plane could go into a nose dive, the senior Boeing engineer said. Under those circumstances, a short could bring a plane down in the same way that the MCAS software did on both doomed flights, forcing the stabilizer’s motor to run uncontrollably...

Also...

... While assembling the Max, workers at Boeing’s Renton, Wash., factory had ground down the outer shell of a panel that sits atop the engine housing in an effort to ensure a better fit into the plane. In doing so, they inadvertently removed the coating that insulates the panel from a lightning strike, taking away a crucial protection for the fuel tank and fuel lines...



All a gamble of safety vs profits and haste?...

All in our only one world,
Martin

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Do other aircraft suffer that same type of icing as the thinned-out Boeing 737 wings?

All aircraft suffer from it which is why they are fitted with Ice protection systems. ;-)

Cheers.

Nope. Different causes of icing...


For the Boeing 737, the wings were redesigned to be 'thinner' for greater efficiency. A side effect of that with the fuel tanks arrangement is that cold-soaked fuel remaining in the tanks can chill the wings enough to induce widely spread icing for weather conditions where icing would not be expected... Especially critically when descending to come in to land...

Are there other planes that suffer the same effect?

And for what consequences??


Edit: Do Boeing specially protect against icing caused by the fuel tanks??

All in our only on world,
Martin

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While assembling the Max, workers at Boeing’s Renton, Wash., factory had ground down the outer shell of a panel that sits atop the engine housing in an effort to ensure a better fit into the plane. In doing so, they inadvertently removed the coating that insulates the panel from a lightning strike, taking away a crucial protection for the fuel tank and fuel lines

Huh?! A lightning bolt travels through miles of air, one of the best insulators around. Some coating is supposed to do a better job? Sounds like someone got the story wrong or is omitting many details.

Do other aircraft suffer that same type of icing as the thinned-out Boeing 737 wings?

All aircraft suffer from it which is why they are fitted with Ice protection systems. ;-)

Cheers.

Nope. Different causes of icing...

Cause matters not, ice on an airflow surface is ice on an airflow surface.

All aircraft - operating at high flight levels - have some cold soaking issue and all of them have to deal with it. All of them will have the windshield ice over unless heaters are turned on. Most have the same wing issue as the 737, to different degrees of severity. Exception for aircraft operating well above the speed of sound as there may be wing heating due to the drag.

Thanks for that.

I just wonder if there are any checks or reporting for when fuel cold soaking has been a problem and/or has required pilot action to avoid flight problems?

Do other aircraft suffer that same type of icing as the thinned-out Boeing 737 wings?


Thanks,
Martin

Yes & yes
There are external temperature sensors on all large aircraft and many small ones, along with fuel temperature sensors. The manufacturers state in the operating manuals restrictions on the lowest permissible temperature during flight, and the precautions required to prevent icing. A lot of the understanding came out from the military and the BA crash I mentioned above.
Just about every current airliner has similar marked out regions on the wing for exactly the same reason. With the wing structure Airbus use I would expect them to be even more sensitive than Boeing and so have much larger no-ice regions.

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Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Maybe this search link will help Martin educate himself more with the problems of icing and how it effects all planes. ;-)

Cheers.

Thanks for a good answer and good to know.


Fly safe!
Martin

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Yes it is. It will be interesting to see the cause, not for morbid reasons but because it is Boeing.

Meanwhile, nice to see some firms show their staff that they think well of them. As usual, I see from the comments that follow the story, that many fail to comprehend what is being said. The one off payment is additional to their 10% share of the profits.
Nice one Greggs

Yes it is. It will be interesting to see the cause, not for morbid reasons but because it is Boeing.

The sad loss of the Ukrainian flight PS752 Tehran-Kyiv has a dedicated thread:

Flight PS752 Tehran-Kyiv


All in our only one world,
Martin

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This is another Boeing bad that scarily suggests a common-mode software fault that simply should not happen:


Blackout Bug: Boeing 737 cockpit screens go blank if pilots land on specific runways

Odd thing haunts Next Generation airliner family (not the infamous Max)

Boeing's 737 Next Generation airliners have been struck by a peculiar software flaw that blanks the airliners' cockpit screens if pilots dare attempt a westwards landing at specific airports...


So, really! The avionics display systems are not a critical requirement?!!

For that blunder to get missed suggests other horror stories in the code that is the same code on both the primary and backup systems...

So how did that pass the design and test?...


(I'll guess the source problem is a divide by zero or an infinity for a trig function... Such problems are well known and must always be guarded against. How so not here?!)

All in our only one world,
Martin

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I would suggest an Imaginary number, "i" or "j" (-1^0.5) problem.

Many airports have Runways 270 degrees. Only 7 worldwide are affected. Note all of the affected airports are on the America's landmass. I haven't looked up the lat/lon for the airports but I suspect that if you do you will find some similarities. Also runway headings are magnetic compass headings, not true north. I suspect some combination of lat/lon/mag deviation along with 270 degrees. Someone missed a divide by zero check, or it is in the wrong place, or someone inserted malicious code.

Also runway headings are magnetic compass headings, not true north.

I did not know that. Interesting, up here in Washington State the declination moves annually by a couple of degrees. that would mean the heading changes at SeaTac three or four time a year here. We are in one of the worst places for it.

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...

Also runway headings are magnetic compass headings, not true north.

I did not know that. Interesting, up here in Washington State the declination moves annually by a couple of degrees. that would mean the heading changes at SeaTac three or four time a year here. We are in one of the worst places for it.

One of the reasons aeronautical charts are only good for 28 days.

Also runway headings are magnetic compass headings, not true north.

I did not know that. Interesting, up here in Washington State the declination moves annually by a couple of degrees. that would mean the heading changes at SeaTac three or four time a year here. We are in one of the worst places for it.

Yep, the runway numbers get repainted as the magnetic heading drifts...

All on our only one world,
Martin

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... Someone missed a divide by zero check, or it is in the wrong place, or someone inserted malicious code.

Worse than that:

• The same software failed in exactly the same way on both the primary and backup systems;
  
• The failure wasn't found in testing/certification;
  
• That software/architecture is fragile/vulnerable to total failure from a bug/failure in a single software function!
  
• Ergo, the architecture is critically fragile and fails to degrade gracefully for even a trivial fault;
  
• This is for real, live, on an in service flying passenger airliner!
  

There is some dangerously bad design there. Hell, this isn't supposed to be MS Windows silliness here!!

Are there similar 'sloppy shortcuts' dangerously at play in further systems?...


All in our only one world,
Martin

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* The failure wasn't found in testing/certification;

There is your fault, bad test suite.

No matter how many eyeballs look at code, finding errors is only as good as the best set of rested eyeballs.

Might look at NBS Special Publication 500-75 "Validation, Verification and Testing of Computer Software"

* The failure wasn't found in testing/certification;

There is your fault, bad test suite...

(In my most humble ignorant opinion:)

There is also faulty design there.

A bug such as that should not bring down the entire system and leave the pilots with no avionics displays.

And the backup system should not suffer the same outage!


All very worrying...

I certainly ain't flying on Boeing until a very good confidence interval after all the silliness dust has settled without further 'incident' for a year or two.

All in our only one world,
Martin

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