Retro Button Would Further Automation On the Boeing Max & Everything Else That Seems Sophisticated Beyond the Intelligence of Designers

Yeah that's all pilots need. Half of them are barely able to keep up with the technology they use and you'd add another button that would change the whole configuration of how the plane behaves to control inputs?

You are forgetting that the flawed system was an effort to correct a very real problem with large engines mounted forward of their usual location changing the characteristics and forcing a nose up stall. The real criminal action was to put profit before safety and that is the result of corporate greed and a faulty response to competition.

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I think their problems started when the bean counters took over the company and moved the HQ to Chicago. The company was no longer being run by the e ngineers/pilots who had jet fuel in their veins and who knew what they were looking at when they walked around the manufacturing plant.

Reply to
jfeng

I agree. Boeing sacrificed their reputation in an effort to boost the short-term value of their stock.

Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas, and imported their management culture then managed to alienate their core group of engineers and committed workers. The 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas set in motion the accidents that cost the lives of 350 people.

The same thing is happening in other companies and will likely result in other poor choices and more deaths.

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Designing a high volume plane from scratch is not a trivial undertaking. A lot of modifications are safe, like adding tip winglets. Some like engine size and position, maybe things get more complicated.

But whether the original design or after thought jerry rig proves to be difficult to fully predict in every situation, it's _always_ smart in _any_ industry or product to have over rides so the user has additional last ditch options.

It is curious that there aren't more over rides in consumer products designed in from the git go.

The philosophy of over rides should be a mandatory 3-hour course in every engineering dept. Crowd source

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for every day and not so common over rides as well as a list of places where they are needed but lacking.

Sorry. jerryrig.com has already been taken.

Bret Cahill

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Bret Cahill

You should watch the series Mayday Air Crash Disasters (or something like that) When they attribute crashes to pilot error it is often because the pilots don't understand how the machines they fly are supposed to work.

The 737 Max relied on a single sensor with no redundancy to tell the aircraft attitude, the pilots had no idea that the software could and would take control in the event the computer determined the attitude was too steep. The computer was programmed to reassert itself without the pilots knowledge if the sensor was still giving a nose-up indication, it did this periodically. Pilot input at the controls was ignored while the computer tried to correct what it saw as a steep angle of attack.

You are right about over-ride in the sense that the pilot should be the last and ultimate arbiter of flight surface control - not the machine.

The plane could be aimed at the ground, but as long as the one sensor said it was nose-up, it was still going to force the nose down.

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Many companies have been ruined by the bean counters. They may do a good job of counting, but can not cook with anything. Another thing is hiring some fresh out of college engineers. They do no t understand how things work.

I had an argument with an engineer where I worked. She wanted me to tear into a control valve because of a problem because of a probelm I had already fixed. A regulator up line had went bad. I told her I did not care what her damn old data on the computer said, if the valve is not getting any thing to it, the valve can not control it.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

I think of corporate raiders and other financial vultures like Carl Icahn w hose sole purpose was to use leveraged buyouts to siphon the assets out of a company before the rest of the system realized what had been done and to leave the lenders holding the bag.

Reply to
jfeng

Reminds me of a problem at work. The process is controlled by a computer . The operator put one control valve in manual, but the computer would not let it go but to 20 % closed. There was a sensor that the computer looked at that was bad and the software would not let the valve close, so it over filled a vessel, shut a production line down and cost about $ 100,000 before it could be restarted.

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Ralph Mowery

What was the final nail for the company I worked for was another company bought us out. They did not spend any money on updating or ever overhauling any of the equipment. Just ran it and when it broke, would do the minimum to get it running, even if it ment robbing parts off old equipment that may be needed later. When the plant was almost ready to fall down so the speak, they sold it to another company that did not know how bad of shape the plant was in. During the years it went from over 3000 people to about 300 before it finally shut down.

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Ralph Mowery

It's always interesting to see how degraded/off spec machinery can get and still run.

I put 7,000 km on a chain and cassette in addition to the high mileage alre ady on it when I acquired the MTB. I used WD-40 every few months even thou gh the heat and dust caused it to start squeaking after 3 weeks. Maybe 20% of the time it was lubricated. The performance dropped off slowly enough it was like the frog in boiling water. I never really noticed how bad it h ad gotten. Eventually the chain "stretched" -- actually the pins wear -- s o much that it would skip under any force at all.

When I finally put a new chain and cluster on it was a life altering experi ence. I went 50% faster and further. On the down side I've been afraid to go into the dirt ever since.

Bret Cahill

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Bret Cahill

Shades of grey for over riding the software:

"We do, however, know that Boeing has made one significant change to the MC AS. It has decreased the ?authority? of the system, so that if it is triggered it no longer has sufficient power to override input fro m the pilots and force down the nose, as it did in the two crashes. Many an alysts were surprised that MCAS had that degree of power in the first place ."

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ecessarily over automated or when the additional sophistication is of a min or advantage.

o flying by the seat of your pants or at least something that is less compl icated / more proven technology.

n and sophistication by taking some of the pressure off the designers tryin g to get every unanticipated situation right the first time.

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Bret Cahill

More software problems:

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Bret Cahill

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