Boeing releases internal messages on 737 MAX, calls them 'completely unacceptable'

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Boeing Co (BA.N) on Thursday released hundreds of internal messages that raise serious questions about its development of simulators and the 737 MAX that was grounded in March after two fatal crashes, prompting outrage from U.S. lawmakers.

In an April 2017 exchange of instant messages, two employees expressed complaints about the MAX following references to issues with the plane’s flight management computer. “This airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys,” one unnamed employee wrote.

In one message dated November 2015, which appears to shed light on lobbying methods used when facing demands from regulators, a Boeing employee notes regulators were likely to want simulator training for a particular type of cockpit alert.

“We are going to push back very hard on this and will likely need support at the highest levels when it comes time for the final negotiation,” the employee writes.

The planemaker said some communications “raise questions” about Boeing’s interactions with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in connection with the simulator qualification process.

In releasing redacted versions of what it called “completely unacceptable” communications, Boeing said it was committed to transparency with the regulator.

Unredacted versions of the messages were turned over to the FAA and Congress in December.

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

There is your fault, bad test suite...

(In my most humble ignorant opinion:)

Yep

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!

It doesn't. Backup not on the six LCD displays.

BTW what would you rather have, a blank display making it obvious to the pilot to look at the backup flight instruments, or a display either frozen or giving false indications? Ideal for such would be a big IN-OP on the display. Presumably you do want the display to check for obvious bad data and notify the pilot in some fashion.

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.

Then you might not want to fly at all

Commercial jet airliners are far from immune to software bugs. Infamously, Boeing's 787 Dreamliner needed power cycling every 248 days to prevent the aircraft's electronics from powering down in flight, while Airbus' A350 was struck by a similar bug requiring a power cycle every 149 hours to prevent avionics systems from partially or even totally failing to work.

Seems they all have issues, just the press and some setizens are all over one builder.

<ed>Looked up the US airports on the list. I'm not sure I would want to land a 737 at a couple of them. A couple don't have Jet fuel available. One doesn't have an instrument approach. One is not attended. A couple don't list any jet operations and that would include down to tiny 6 seat jobs. None of them has scheduled jet air carrier operations. I think I saw that at least one runway wouldn't support the weight of a 737.

Not saying the bug isn't real, it seems however to not be a bug that will ever affect an Airline absent some major airborne emergency. Biz jet use, possibly.

“This airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys,” one unnamed employee wrote.

In one message dated November 2015, which appears to shed light on lobbying methods used when facing demands from regulators, a Boeing employee notes regulators were likely to want simulator training for a particular type of cockpit alert.
“We are going to push back very hard on this and will likely need support at the highest levels when it comes time for the final negotiation,” the employee writes

"I want to stress the importance of holding firm that there will not be any type of simulator training required to transition from NG to Max," Boeing's 737 chief technical pilot at the time, Mark Forkner, said in a March 2017 email.
"Boeing will not allow that to happen. We'll go face to face with any regulator who tries to make that a requirement."

... BTW what would you rather have, a blank display making it obvious to the pilot to look at the backup flight instruments, or a display either frozen or giving false indications? Ideal for such would be a big IN-OP on the display. Presumably you do want the display to check for obvious bad data and notify the pilot in some fashion...

Very simply, the avionics display system should degrade gracefully if some functionality is no longer available due to a bug or whatever failure. For example for the heading display fail, yes indeed that should go blank or display 'fault' or some such. However, a fault such as that should not blank the entire display for all other instruments also!

The displays going all blank suggests that 'whatever bug' was not gracefully "trapped" to be then sensibly handled in a trap routine. Instead it looks like the system software was just left to crash or 'hang'.

And we all know the story for not including sanity checks for the input data, such as was the deadly case with MCAS...


All in our only one world,
Martin

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Is this yet another example of the disconnect suffered with greedy outsourcing?

Might the subsequent consequences for this outsourcing possibly have played a deadly part of the MAX story?


YouTube: Boeing Max 8 Training - Prof Simon



All in our only one world,
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
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Prof Simon

Professor Simon wrote:

"I'm NOT a professor, its just a nickname"

Professor Simon wrote:

"I'm NOT a professor, its just a nickname"

Now, more usefully comment on the content please?


All in our only one world,
Martin

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Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
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This presentation gives the clearest summary of the Boeing 737 MAX disaster that I've seen so far.

Clear compulsive must-see viewing:


36C3 - Boeing 737MAX: Automated Crashes

Underestimating the dangers of designing a protection system

Everybody knows about the Boeing 737 MAX crashes and the type's continued grounding. I will try to give some technical background information on the causes of the crash, technical, sociological and organisational, covering pilot proficiency, botched maintenance, system design and risk assessment, as well as a deeply flawed certification processes...



All in our only one world,
Martin

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Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
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Think Boeing needs to feed the goat.

A new item in the NYT, How Boeing’s Responsibility in a Deadly Crash ‘Got Buried’, where most of the blame was put on the pilots, who failed to react correctly to a flood of alarms.
Sounds familiar to me, the plane was a 737 NG.

After a Boeing 737 crashed near Amsterdam more than a decade ago, the Dutch investigators focused blame on the pilots for failing to react properly when an automated system malfunctioned and caused the plane to plummet into a field, killing nine people.

The fault was hardly the crew’s alone, however. Decisions by Boeing, including risky design choices and faulty safety assessments, also contributed to the accident on the Turkish Airlines flight. But the Dutch Safety Board either excluded or played down criticisms of the manufacturer in its final report after pushback from a team of Americans that included Boeing and federal safety officials, documents and interviews show.

A new item in the NYT, How Boeing’s Responsibility in a Deadly Crash ‘Got Buried’, where most of the blame was put on the pilots, who failed to react correctly to a flood of alarms.
Sounds familiar to me, the plane was a 737 NG.

After a Boeing 737 crashed near Amsterdam more than a decade ago, the Dutch investigators focused blame on the pilots for failing to react properly when an automated system malfunctioned and caused the plane to plummet into a field, killing nine people.

The fault was hardly the crew’s alone, however. Decisions by Boeing, including risky design choices and faulty safety assessments, also contributed to the accident on the Turkish Airlines flight. But the Dutch Safety Board either excluded or played down criticisms of the manufacturer in its final report after pushback from a team of Americans that included Boeing and federal safety officials, documents and interviews show.

Thanks for that.

My most humble and personal opinion from reading that is: Incredible and damning!

... Dr. Woods said in an interview, “I was appalled.”

“This is such of a failure of responsibility,” he said. “We’re not supposed to let this happen.”


The parallels to the two recent catastrophes are too similar to ignore... And yet that report from 2009 was 'buried' and appears to have been wilfully ignored...

Damning.


All in our only one world,
Martin

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While we were on that outage, this Airlines scour the world for scarce 737 MAX simulatorscame to my attention.

MONTREAL/SYDNEY/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Airlines are scrambling to book time in 737 MAX training facilities as far afield as Fiji, Iceland and Panama, operators said, after Boeing Co recommended pilots be trained in one of the few simulators replicating the latest model.

That means thousands of pilots from more than 54 airlines need to squeeze into about three dozen 737 MAX simulators around the world before they can fly the plane.

“Boeing is recommending that all 737 MAX pilots undergo training in a 737 MAX simulator prior to flying the aircraft in commercial service,” the company told Reuters on Tuesday evening, the first confirmation of its new policy.

On Jan. 7, the company had recommended using a simulator but did not specify what type.

The 737 MAX has been grounded since March 2019 after two fatal crashes and cannot return to service until regulators approve software changes and training plans.

The estimated 34 737 MAX simulators in service, produced separately by CAE Inc and Textron Inc’s simulator and training division TRU, are less than a quarter of the number of older 737 NG simulators certified by U.S. and European regulators.

“I think that what a shortage of simulators will mean is the fleet of MAXes will start flying more slowly than what the airlines would like,” said Gudmundur Orn Gunnarsson, managing director of TRU Flight Training Iceland, a joint venture between Icelandair and Textron’s simulator and training division.

“In the beginning it was said that simulator training would not be needed,” he said. “This changes it totally.”

Didn't Boeing originally say that the reason specific 737Max simulator training wasn't required because that would mean the Max couldn't be part of the 737 series.

Boeing 777X test flight! - What to look for.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aESI366S710

An incredulous result:


Victims' families slam report into 737 Max crashes

... However, the expert panel found little to criticise in the process that had cleared the aircraft to fly[!]

The panel was set up in April last year by the Secretary of transportation, Elaine Chao. It was chaired by Lee Moak, a former president of the Air Line Pilots Association and Darren McDew, a former Air Force commander.

The report said the panel "found the FAA's overall certification system to be effective" - although it added that "reforms must be adopted to help our extremely safe aviation system become even better at identifying and mitigating risk". It also endorsed the system of delegating certification work to Boeing itself, calling it "an appropriate and effective tool for conducting aircraft certification". It went on to say the system was "solidly established, well controlled, and promotes safety through effective oversight".

The review did set out a list of improvements it said should be made to the certification system...

... "It's a shock that there were minimal and feeble suggestions for change despite the magnitude of loss as a result of the current systems," his daughter, Zipporah Kuria, said.

"Boeing has been extremely untrustworthy, deceitful and profit-driven. As families who have paid the price for that, we hope that the FAA would look to attain a higher level of safety," she said. "Following this report would mean that the FAA's level of safety would remain the same, which has already dearly cost us, as victim families, so much - not once but twice".

That view was shared by Michael Stumo, whose daughter Samya was also on the Ethiopian plane. He told the Associated Press the report endorsed self-regulation by Boeing. "This report is written as if by pre-crash industry lobbyists defending the current certification system," he said...



All very suspicious and suspect. All regardless of the demonstrated reality! Who are they trying to fool and kill?

Note that reality has demonstrated the fatal reality...

Are there any laws to kill such a dangerously misleading 'report'?


All only in the USA?

All on our only one planet,
Martin

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An incredulous result:

Who is president and how is he treating - regulating - other areas such as the environment, financial and consumer sectors? Why would you expect anything different?

Boeing 777X: World’s largest twin-engine jet completes first flight

And here's some very good and very disturbing comments about the evolution and provenance of that delayed first flight:


I Would Never Fly Boeing’s New 777X wrote:

... The Boeing 777-9X is the next generation model in the 26-year-old 777 lineup. The 777X features a larger fuselage with a wider cabin for extra seating capacity. It’s also updated with composite material wings, folding wingtips, and new GE9X engines...

... But the latest model has been significantly redesigned and tested by the same Boeing, with the same corporate culture that gave us the 737 MAX.

And the way Boeing handled setbacks during the development of the new 777 should make any airline passenger think twice about flying on one. It’s the same pattern of rushing the product to market and covering up information that preceded the MAX disaster...

And I certainly ain't flying anything Boeing for a year or two until all the safety dust has settled...

All in our only one world,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Boeing Expects 737 Max Costs Will Surpass $18 Billion

NYT - Boeing said on Wednesday that the costs associated with the grounding of the 737 Max were likely to surpass $18 billion, a significant increase over earlier forecasts.

The new estimate, announced during Boeing’s quarterly earnings report, is the company’s most recent approximation of just how expensive it will be to return the Max to service, compensate airline customers and restart the shuttered 737 factory.

Boeing continues to grapple with the fallout from the crashes of two Max jets in 2018 and 2019, which killed 346 people, leading to the worldwide grounding of the plane in March. In addition to the rising costs, the company is contending with a new chief executive, the temporary shutdown of the 737 factory and a range of challenges in other parts of the business.

Boeing said on Wednesday that the costs associated with shutting down and restarting the factory would amount to some $4 billion. The decision to temporarily halt production of the Max was made only last month, and Boeing had not previously given guidance on what the move would cost.

The company also said that the cost of compensating airlines that had lost sales as a result of the grounding of the Max was now expected to reach $8.3 billion, up from a previous estimate of $5.6 billion. That figure represents a mixture of cash payments to airlines and discounts on future sales.

And Boeing said that as a result of the grounding, which has lasted nearly a year now, it expected the overall cost to produce the 737 Max to rise to $6.3 billion in the years ahead, up from an earlier estimate of $3.6 billion.

In total, the anticipated costs now equal more than $18.6 billion, or nearly 20 percent of Boeing’s annual sales before the Max was grounded.

Also,

Boeing also said it would incur a charge of $410 million as a result of its botched rocket launch late last year, when a space capsule it designed for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration failed to reach the correct orbit.

If you can't get to the NYT story, there is an AP version, Grounded jet sends Boeing to first annual loss in 2 decades

Boeing, an icon of American manufacturing, suffered its first annual financial loss in more than two decades while the cost of fixing its marquee aircraft after two deadly crashes soared to more than $18 billion.

In March 2010, the estimated cost to re-engine the 737 according to Mike Bair, Boeing Commercial Airplanes' vice president of business strategy & marketing, would be $2–3 billion including the CFM engine development. During Boeing's Q2 2011 earnings call, former CFO James Bell said the development cost for the airframe only would be 10–15% of the cost of a new program estimated at $10–12 billion at the time.

A new design to replace the 737 series was mentioned in 2014 for 2030 - 63 years after its 1st flight.
As already stated:
Short term gains
Long term pain.