Great Scott!

Unless this guy is really a night owl, it sure looks like he was on the East Coast or Central TZ in the USA to me.

I know the normal hacker hours are centered on the dead of night, but the plots would put that habit in the middle of the Atlantic ocean.

IMHO - Somebody working "normal" hours, even shifted to afternoon evening, sure looks like East Coast or Central Time Zones to me.

Actually.. The whole discussion before was about the NEXT count, for which there are no ballots cast yet. You need to F'n learn to read.

The whole process needs to be tightened up a bit for the next election so we don't go through this mess again. Like what happened in FL after Bush squeaked by Gore and the hanging chad thing. They tossed those old punch card system pretty fast after that.

Wow, how do you get that from the 2nd amendment? Specifically the "shall not be infringed" part.

Now the courts HAVE held that you can have "reasonable regulations" over the ownership, carrying and use of fire arms, but the test of what's reasonable and what's not is a pretty big lift for most rules. I believe this requires meeting the "Strict Test", which basically means the regulation must have an absolutely clear purpose that can be accomplished by no other means.

So it's hard to argue that preventing "concealed carry" without a license, where the license is not required to be issued to qualified persons (i.e. has a "Shall issue" basis in law) unless there is a given legal issue to deny a license (like you are a felon, mental patient etc.) is constitutional.

So I disagree with you. The 2nd amendment generally is interpreted to give one the right to carry (concealed or not) and local governments have infringed on that right with their conceal carry regulations which are subject to some pretty strict justification conditions because they are infringing on the 2nd amendment. IMHO - I think many firearm rules and local regulations have over-stepped their justifications. The courts have been striking down many of the conceal carry laws where local regulations totally prohibit it. See Heller V DC - and McDonald V Chicago for what I mean.

I am no "Boeing Apologist" here. I am a realist.

I don't defend Boeing's mistakes, and they made mistakes here, no question. They face civil liability for their actions and mistakes, which is how it should be. What I am saying is that it wasn't intentional or foreseeable. Boeing wasn't cutting corners or being negligent in this issue, but a system problem cropped up anyway. This whole episode is a classic "normal accident" which becomes more and more likely as the complexity of the system increases. ,

This is not the first such issue with the 737 you know. They had a serious problem with rudder controls back in the day and lost a couple of planeloads of passengers before they figured it out. That too was an unforeseen design problem too that had to do with varying temperatures of hydraulic fluid at different phases of flight, causing an uncommanded full deflection of the rudder. It killed two or three planeloads before they figured out what was going on and fixed it.

"Normal accidents" happen, despite your best efforts to avoid them. Apollo 13 and the two Shuttle accidents were examples of this, so was the financial crash of 2000, where the system got too complex for people to properly gauge risk and stupid decisions got made that unknowingly caused grave damage.

Complexity also leads to problems and costs. Just because a system is built "fool proof" doesn't mean the world won't produce a better fool.

One of the unfortunate truism of the world is that the more complex you make something, the more unforeseen issues that can lurk in your design.

In aircraft automation, human factors engineers have to understand that Automation lowers pilot workload, until something goes wrong, then automation greatly increases it. So automation helps when things are going great, but when things start going wrong, Automation hinders.

It's called the "Swiss Cheese model" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Put as many layers of checks as you can between your assembly and disaster, because, stuff happens.

I should think the reason they don't do that to be obvious. Thursters often use some pretty dangerous propellants and for the safety of the ground crew you don't want to have this stuff just blowing around.

However, you are on the right track. Somebody needs to VERIFY the assembly is correct and functional after it's assembled. Where I don't think you can do a full functional test, you should be able to verify the wiring at least.

That may fix the final assembly errors, but it doesn't eliminate the human error problem.

What you *really* need is VERIFICATION. When there is a possible human error involved, such actions need to be verified correct by another independent process. Where was that? Where was the - "it's hooked up, now verify that it works as expected" step?

This is a process problem, not a design issue. Just changing connectors won't help if you don't verify the correct wires get connected to the different connectors somehow. You have to have to verify all mission critical things being assembled.

File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match..

That's your *opinion* not fact.

Granted, my position is *opinion* too, but that's just because neither you nor I are working for Boing on the Max or for the FAA overseeing Boing's processes.

This episode has all the hallmarks of a "system accident" or "normal accident" if you prefer. This isn't malfeasance on anybody's part, it is the nature of the human condition where we have limited capacity to know all the details and consider all the possible interactions. System Accidents look so preventable in hindsight, "well gee, any fool can see that would be an issue" is a common description of such events. But the truth is that it's far from obvious at the time.

I urge you to reconsider, the folks at Boeing and the FAA are NOT generally bad people or negligent in the performance of their duties. It is unfair of you to judge them harshly in this unless you can point to specific people and their actions. Otherwise, you are just bashing the faceless and nameless because it makes you feel better and that doesn't fix anything.

I didn't say "pilot error" at all, I said the pilots were not trained properly. There is a difference. Pilot error is when the pilot goes off script or does something they've been trained not to do or is inconsistent with proper flying techniques. When there is a pilot training issue, the pilots have never been told what to do, haven't practiced or been tested on the correct procedure. When they've not been trained on the proper response, it's a training issue.

In this case, it clearly was a training issue. Pilots were not told about or trained on the MCAS or how to recover from its possible misbehavior. When you have a training issue, you get inconsistent pilot performance, as we have here, where 2/3rds of the crews couldn't deal with the problem. This is a classic symptom of a training issue, where some crews can and others cannot deal with a problem.

Boeing has fixed this oversight. The training for the 737 now includes a discussion of the MCAS, new memory items for dealing with stab trim issues, and a demonstration of these new procedures in the simulator.

What a steaming pile of misinformation you have there.

The MCAS does not take control of the aircraft away from the pilots. It takes about 10 seconds to disable the MCAS if you know what you are doing, and in fact the Lion Air aircraft experienced this SAME malfunction on a previous flight and one of the pilots actually dealt with the problem and safely landed from the very same malfunctioning AOA sensor. Yes the MCAS can, if you leave it on too long, mess with the trim and make the aircraft uncontrollable if the pilot doesn't deal with the situation correctly and soon enough, but we are talking about time frames measured in min, not seconds. However, there are a LOT of things that fall in this category that pilots must know how to deal with, so a malfunctioning AOA sensor causing an MCAS run away trim problem isn't some how unique.

The *problem* was that the MCAS was added to the mix late, pilots were not trained on what it was, what it did, why it did it and how to deal with the possible malfunction of the MCAS system. The issue is not just the use of only one sensor, that was a contributing factor, it was that this system was there in the first place and flight crews where not trained. The REASON for this, as unsatisfying as it sounds, was that the design change came too late in the process to make it into the pilot's manual so no training was developed for it, so no pilots got trained on it. Then the problem crops up three times and two out of three flight crews don't manage to figure out what to do. This isn't right, but it's the classic "normal accident" that seem so easy to see in hindsight.

So yes, this was a series of mistakes that nobody understood at the time that in hindsight seem very obvious. It's a classic "Normal Accident" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

And the ECAS system in the 320 has *caused* accidents too.. but we digress.

Look, the thing I'm trying to say is that apparently there are valid reasons why the FAA did this. Often the FAA has to weigh the financial costs against the risks and they are supposed to be the party not motivated by profit who referees this whole process. IF you don't like the FAA's choice, blame them, but there ARE considerations here beyond just the cost. Just having equipment on the aircraft does nothing for safety unless you have experienced people USING this stuff correctly.

Strangely enough, the MCAS illustrates what I'm saying, both of the crashed aircraft where fully flyable with a failed AOA sensor, but the pilots didn't know how to diagnose and deal with the MCAS issue. The MCAS was basically a envelope protection device and it killed two planeloads of people. There are a LOT of very skilled pilots, crews and mechanics who know the 737 well as it is currently designed and have decades of operational experience with this aircraft's design. You don't throw all that experience away without accepting a new set of risks caused by inexperience both in the flight crews and the people maintaining the aircraft.

So, sure, it's easy to critique past design decisions or second guess regulators AFTER the fact, but it's not fair. Nobody was cutting corners willy nilly, they had to do the proper risk management and work with the regulators to get something that everybody could agree with. This is what Boeing did and what the FAA approved. Neither of your suggested system improvements where deemed necessary for a safe aircraft and the 737's operational history (even with the two recent crashes) is pretty good considering. So I don't agree with you (or the Seattle times for that matter). The 737 MAX is going to be sufficiently safe when it returns to the skies in December.

The reasons for the 737 Max still exist and their are a number of less than obvious financial reasons for the airlines to take delivery.

Now the COVID thing is going to be a damper on the industry for awhile, but I don't think that's going to be all that long lasting. However, that accounts for the short term slump, well that and the grounding, which has prevented Boeing from delivering already completed aircraft. This will slowly change as the world returns to flying and the reasons the airlines where ordering these things will remain. The orders may not return in force, but the airlines will be buying 737's for another decade or so, to improve efficiency, revitalize their fleets without having to abruptly change logisticts. A number of airlines already have 737's, have a stock of parts, trained pilots, mechanics and ground crews experienced with the 737. It's hard to underestimate the impact of the logistics costs of staying with the "same" aircraft type as long as you can. But let's be honest, the MAX has been pushed about as far as Boeing can push it and the 50 year old design is not going to continue very much longer.

The 737 was already on the downward slide giving up market share to the Airbus 320 BEFORE the grounding. The MAX was a stop gap to start with, a way to make a bit more money on the old design while Boeing contemplated when to move to a clean sheet design. The writing is on the wall for the 737 and this latest episode may hasten Boeing's development of an all new aircraft in the same class, but right now, Boeing is bleeding cash and really cannot afford an expensive R&D program to develop the 737's replacement. I suspect they will be looking to start this over the next few years, but right now they need to clear the books of all the 737 inventory, get the assembly line back running to fulfill the orders sitting in the queue and get back into a positive cash flow situation before they can contemplate such a program. However, when they do, I'd expect them to do some really great things and claw back at least a portion of the market they lost to the 320.

But I say all this to point out that the demise of the 737 just isn't here yet. Now if they go crash a few more of them for the same problem (which isn't likely at all) I suppose that could change, but Boeing has a lot more 737's to sell over the next few decades. Yea, COVID and the accidents may hasten the demise of the aircraft type by a few years, but it's certainly wasn't dealt a mortal blow by all this.

By the way, Trump has zero to do with this whole thing anyway. The certification of the 737 took place under a previous administration and it's return to flight will likely take place under another and if you think he's got the time or inclination to dabble in the fine points of FAA type certifications, I think you have way to high of an opinion about how much he can actually do.