Boeing's ousted CEO departs with $62 million, even without severance pay

[homersapien 11,366]

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/boeing-s-ousted-ceo-departs-62-million-even-without-severance-n1114061

"........In addition to the $62 million in compensation and pension benefits, Muilenburg holds stock options that vested in 2013, Boeing said. They would be worth $18.5 million at the closing price on Friday....."

[DKW 86 7,419]

9 hours ago, homersapien said:

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/boeing-s-ousted-ceo-departs-62-million-even-without-severance-n1114061

"........In addition to the $62 million in compensation and pension benefits, Muilenburg holds stock options that vested in 2013, Boeing said. They would be worth $18.5 million at the closing price on Friday....."

I posted this on FB. Do we all realize that there are people DEAD because of how bad this schmuck is at his job?
That is blood money, pure and simple.

I got a thumbsdown for that? lmbo...

[homersapien 11,366]

My understanding of Boeing's (Muilenburg's) decision to produce the 737 MAX was to avoid the cost of producing a completely new air frame to compete with Airbus, who had an all new design.

The problem was adding the upgraded engines affected the airframe dynamics of the 737 in a negative way.  The software "fix" was a work-around for a fundamental problem that was created by Boeing's effort to avoid the costs of developing an all new plane.

I agree.  It's blood money.

[DKW 86 7,419]

27 minutes ago, homersapien said:

My understanding of Boeing's (Muilenburg's) decision to produce the 737 MAX was to avoid the cost of producing a completely new air frame to compete with Airbus, who had all new design.

The problem was adding the upgraded engines affected the airframe dynamics of the 737 in a negative way.  The software "fix" was a work-around for a fundamental problem that was created by Boeing's effort to avoid the costs of developing an all new plane.

I agree.  It's blood money.

All they had to do was take some more time and they would have gotten the software glitch out. Funny, for a little bit more time they could have saved all this and already gotten the engine issues fixed. All this so they could rush a plane into service slightly faster...

[I_M4_AU 7,801]

27 minutes ago, homersapien said:

My understanding of Boeing's (Muilenburg's) decision to produce the 737 MAX was to avoid the cost of producing a completely new air frame to compete with Airbus, who had all new design.

The problem was adding the upgraded engines affected the airframe dynamics of the 737 in a negative way.  The software "fix" was a work-around for a fundamental problem that was created by Boeing's effort to avoid the costs of developing an all new plane.

I agree.  It's blood money.

Very close, Homer.  Airbus had been producing the A320 family of aircraft for a long time.  They upgraded their product to introduce the “Neo” which had design improvements to reduce fuel consumption and was eating Boeing up.  Boeing had to respond and rushed the B737 MAX into production.  Airbus has had fly-by-wire aircraft for a long time and had gone through several software changes to improve their product and Boeing was relatively new to this concept in commercial jets.

Any aircraft that has engines under the wing, on a swept wing jet, has a pitch up moment that can be handled, but it can startle pilots if they are not ready for it.  This usually happens when an aircraft is at low power and the pilot increases thrust quickly as happens during a go-around.  It has been such a problem airlines had changed the way they instruct stall recovery after 30 some odd years of just powering out of the stall.  To get the fuel consumption better Boeing did change the engines, but more importantly, they moved the engines forward that exasperated the pitch moment problem.  To counter this Boeing a introduced a new restriction to their software that only (supposedly) would be activated when it sensed certain parameters were met when the thrust was increased.  Boeing decided to “train by memo” to tell the pilots of this new software update and put their product out without proper training.

Cost was definitely the reason this B737 was rushed into service and I’m sure many employees raised concern, but were not listened to.  It’s just not right to “profit” from decisions that were so economically driven.

[homersapien 11,366]

9 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

All they had to do was take some more time and they would have gotten the software glitch out. Funny, for a little bit more time they could have saved all this and already gotten the engine issues fixed. All this so they could rush a plane into service slightly faster...

I see it a little differently. 

IMO you don't address basic dynamic problems on an airframe with software meant to auto-correct the controls when that problem occurs. That's a patchwork work-around to address a basic problem with the dynamics of an airframe that was not designed for those engines as located on the airframe.

The real solution in this case is a new airframe.

I realize that some airframe designs require computers to work but those designs are military purposed and deliberately designed to work at the "edge" of control, unlike airliners.

[homersapien 11,366]

2 hours ago, I_M4_AU said:

Very close, Homer.  Airbus had been producing the A320 family of aircraft for a long time.  They upgraded their product to introduce the “Neo” which had design improvements to reduce fuel consumption and was eating Boeing up.  Boeing had to respond and rushed the B737 MAX into production.  Airbus has had fly-by-wire aircraft for a long time and had gone through several software changes to improve their product and Boeing was relatively new to this concept in commercial jets.

Any aircraft that has engines under the wing, on a swept wing jet, has a pitch up moment that can be handled, but it can startle pilots if they are not ready for it.  This usually happens when an aircraft is at low power and the pilot increases thrust quickly as happens during a go-around.  It has been such a problem airlines had changed the way they instruct stall recovery after 30 some odd years of just powering out of the stall.  To get the fuel consumption better Boeing did change the engines, but more importantly, they moved the engines forward that exasperated the pitch moment problem.  To counter this Boeing a introduced a new restriction to their software that only (supposedly) would be activated when it sensed certain parameters were met when the thrust was increased.  Boeing decided to “train by memo” to tell the pilots of this new software update and put their product out without proper training.

Cost was definitely the reason this B737 was rushed into service and I’m sure many employees raised concern, but were not listened to.  It’s just not right to “profit” from decisions that were so economically driven.

I realize the distinction likely gets fuzzy in practice, but I don't equate "fly by wire" with a computer overriding manual control imputs and/or imposing the correct control inputs.

But I am certainly no expert.

 

[I_M4_AU 7,801]

3 hours ago, homersapien said:

I realize the distinction likely gets fuzzy in practice, but I don't equate "fly by wire" with a computer overriding manual control imputs and/or imposing the correct control inputs.

But I am certainly no expert.

 

The reason manufacturers have been going to “fly by wire” aircraft is the weight savings which equals fuel savings.  The computers drive the controls to keep the aircraft in a stable state (if no input by the pilot the aircraft is 1g).  The computers only limit control inputs is to protect the aircraft from exceeding aircraft parameters (to save itself).  Airline aircraft can not withstand the g forces a military aircraft go through, again for weight purposes.

Pilots have a tendency to believe the aircraft is doing what it is suppose to do, when they realize it is not, sometimes it is too late as in the two B737 crashes.  The Lion Air crash was interesting as the pilots turned off the MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System)  and regained control of the aircraft, only to re-engage the MCAS and that system reactivated and they lost control a second time.    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/boeing_two_deadly_crashes

In the Lion Air crash there was a bad sensor feeding the computers erroneous information.  Boeing has changed the software to allow the pilots to be able to over-ride the MCAS by manual control.

Boeing has developed an MCAS software update to provide additional layers of protection if the AOA sensors provide erroneous data. The software has been put through hundreds of hours of analysis, laboratory testing, verification in a simulator and numerous test flights. Before it is finalized, the software will be validated during in-flight certification tests with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) representatives.

The additional layers of protection that are being proposed include:

• Flight control system will now compare inputs from both AOA sensors. If the sensors disagree by 5.5 degrees or more with the flaps retracted, MCAS will not activate. An indicator on the flight deck display will alert the pilots.
• If MCAS is activated in non-normal conditions, it will only provide one input for each elevated AOA event. There are no known or envisioned failure conditions where MCAS will provide multiple inputs.
• MCAS can never command more stabilizer input than can be counteracted by the flight crew pulling back on the column. The pilots will continue to always have the ability to override MCAS and manually control the airplane.

These updates are expected to reduce the crew's workload in non-normal flight situations and prevent erroneous data from causing MCAS activation.

https://www.boeing.com/commercial/737max/737-max-software-updates.page

Just reading the corrections and reading what happened to the Lion Air Crew, you can see the MCAS had some unforeseen flaws that made it into service.  A lot of things missed during the development stage. 

 

[DKW 86 7,419]

8 hours ago, I_M4_AU said:

Boeing has developed an MCAS software update to provide additional layers of protection if the AOA sensors provide erroneous data. The software has been put through hundreds of hours of analysis, laboratory testing, verification in a simulator and numerous test flights. Before it is finalized, the software will be validated during in-flight certification tests with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) representatives.

The additional layers of protection that are being proposed include:

• Flight control system will now compare inputs from both AOA sensors. If the sensors disagree by 5.5 degrees or more with the flaps retracted, MCAS will not activate. An indicator on the flight deck display will alert the pilots.
• If MCAS is activated in non-normal conditions, it will only provide one input for each elevated AOA event. There are no known or envisioned failure conditions where MCAS will provide multiple inputs.
• MCAS can never command more stabilizer input than can be counteracted by the flight crew pulling back on the column. The pilots will continue to always have the ability to override MCAS and manually control the airplane.

These updates are expected to reduce the crew's workload in non-normal flight situations and prevent erroneous data from causing MCAS activation.

https://www.boeing.com/commercial/737max/737-max-software-updates.page

Just reading the corrections and reading what happened to the Lion Air Crew, you can see the MCAS had some unforeseen flaws that made it into service.  A lot of things missed during the development stage. 

1) It was already finalized before they rolled it out. The author means the second iteration. The first iteration was finalized, blessed, certified, and killed people. 
2) That is why you dont rush it into service and you test test and re test. 

[DKW 86 7,419]

Boeing’s 737 Max Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers

It remains the mystery at the heart of Boeing Co.’s 737 Max crisis: how a company renowned for meticulous design made seemingly basic software mistakes leading to a pair of deadly crashes. Longtime Boeing engineers say the effort was complicated by a push to outsource work to lower-paid contractors.

 

 

The Max software -- plagued by issues that could keep the planes grounded months longer after U.S. regulators this week revealed a new flaw -- was developed at a time Boeing was laying off experienced engineers and pressing suppliers to cut costs.

 

 

Increasingly, the iconic American planemaker and its subcontractors have relied on temporary workers making as little as $9 an hour to develop and test software, often from countries lacking a deep background in aerospace -- notably India.

 

 

Boeing 737 Max prepares for take off during testing in 2016.

Photographer: Mike Kane/Bloomberg

Related: Pilots Flagged Software Problems on Boeing Jets Besides Max

 

 

In offices across from Seattle’s Boeing Field, recent college graduates employed by the Indian software developer HCL Technologies Ltd. occupied several rows of desks, said Mark Rabin, a former Boeing software engineer who worked in a flight-test group that supported the Max.

The coders from HCL were typically designing to specifications set by Boeing. Still, “it was controversial because it was far less efficient than Boeing engineers just writing the code,” Rabin said. Frequently, he recalled, “it took many rounds going back and forth because the code was not done correctly.”

Boeing’s cultivation of Indian companies appeared to pay other dividends. In recent years, it has won several orders for Indian military and commercial aircraft, such as a $22 billion one in January 2017 to supply SpiceJet Ltd. That order included 100 737-Max 8 jets and represented Boeing’s largest order ever from an Indian airline, a coup in a country dominated by Airbus.

Based on resumes posted on social media, HCL engineers helped develop and test the Max’s flight-display software, while employees from another Indian company, Cyient Ltd., handled software for flight-test equipment.

Costly Delay

In one post, an HCL employee summarized his duties with a reference to the now-infamous model, which started flight tests in January 2016: “Provided quick workaround to resolve production issue which resulted in not delaying flight test of 737-Max (delay in each flight test will cost very big amount for Boeing).”

Boeing said the company did not rely on engineers from HCL and Cyient for the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, which has been linked to the Lion Air crash last October and the Ethiopian Airlines disaster in March. The Chicago-based planemaker also said it didn’t rely on either firm for another software issue disclosed after the crashes: a cockpit warning light that wasn’t working for most buyers.

“Boeing has many decades of experience working with supplier/partners around the world,” a company spokesman said. “Our primary focus is on always ensuring that our products and services are safe, of the highest quality and comply with all applicable regulations.”

In a statement, HCL said it “has a strong and long-standing business relationship with The Boeing Company, and we take pride in the work we do for all our customers. However, HCL does not comment on specific work we do for our customers. HCL is not associated with any ongoing issues with 737 Max.”

Recent simulator tests by the Federal Aviation Administration suggest the software issues on Boeing’s best-selling model run deeper. The company’s shares fell this week after the regulator found a further problem with a computer chip that experienced a lag in emergency response when it was overwhelmed with data.

Engineers who worked on the Max, which Boeing began developing eight years ago to match a rival Airbus SE plane, have complained of pressure from managers to limit changes that might introduce extra time or cost.

“Boeing was doing all kinds of things, everything you can imagine, to reduce cost, including moving work from Puget Sound, because we’d become very expensive here,” said Rick Ludtke, a former Boeing flight controls engineer laid off in 2017. “All that’s very understandable if you think of it from a business perspective. Slowly over time it appears that’s eroded the ability for Puget Sound designers to design.”

Rabin, the former software engineer, recalled one manager saying at an all-hands meeting that Boeing didn’t need senior engineers because its products were mature. “I was shocked that in a room full of a couple hundred mostly senior engineers we were being told that we weren’t needed,” said Rabin, who was laid off in 2015.

 

 

 

Boeing 737 Max Timeline

 

 

 

Boeing could take three more months to fix the latest software glitch on the 737 Max, its best-selling model.

(Source: TicToc)

The typical jetliner has millions of parts -- and millions of lines of code -- and Boeing has long turned over large portions of the work to suppliers who follow its detailed design blueprints.

Starting with the 787 Dreamliner, launched in 2004, it sought to increase profits by instead providing high-level specifications and then asking suppliers to design more parts themselves. The thinking was “they’re the experts, you see, and they will take care of all of this stuff for us,” said Frank McCormick, a former Boeing flight-controls software engineer who later worked as a consultant to regulators and manufacturers. “This was just nonsense.”

Sales are another reason to send the work overseas. In exchange for an $11 billion order in 2005 from Air India, Boeing promised to invest $1.7 billion in Indian companies. That was a boon for HCL and other software developers from India, such as Cyient, whose engineers were widely used in computer-services industries but not yet prominent in aerospace.

Rockwell Collins, which makes cockpit electronics, had been among the first aerospace companies to source significant work in India in 2000, when HCL began testing software there for the Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based company. By 2010, HCL employed more than 400 people at design, development and verification centers for Rockwell Collins in Chennai and Bangalore.

That same year, Boeing opened what it called a “center of excellence” with HCL in Chennai, saying the companies would partner “to create software critical for flight test.” In 2011, Boeing named Cyient, then known as Infotech, to a list of its “suppliers of the year” for design, stress analysis and software engineering on the 787 and the 747-8 at another center in Hyderabad.

The Boeing rival also relies in part on offshore engineers. In addition to supporting sales, the planemakers say global design teams add efficiency as they work around the clock. But outsourcing has long been a sore point for some Boeing engineers, who, in addition to fearing job losses say it has led to communications issues and mistakes.

Moscow Mistakes

Boeing has also expanded a design center in Moscow. At a meeting with a chief 787 engineer in 2008, one staffer complained about sending drawings back to a team in Russia 18 times before they understood that the smoke detectors needed to be connected to the electrical system, said Cynthia Cole, a former Boeing engineer who headed the engineers’ union from 2006 to 2010.

“Engineering started becoming a commodity,” said Vance Hilderman, who co-founded a company called TekSci that supplied aerospace contract engineers and began losing work to overseas competitors in the early 2000s.

U.S.-based avionics companies in particular moved aggressively, shifting more than 30% of their software engineering offshore versus 10% for European-based firms in recent years, said Hilderman, an avionics safety consultant with three decades of experience whose recent clients include most of the major Boeing suppliers.

With a strong dollar, a big part of the attraction was price. Engineers in India made around $5 an hour; it’s now $9 or $10, compared with $35 to $40 for those in the U.S. on an H1B visa, he said. But he’d tell clients the cheaper hourly wage equated to more like $80 because of the need for supervision, and he said his firm won back some business to fix mistakes.

HCL, once known as Hindustan Computers, was founded in 1976 by billionaire Shiv Nadar and now has more than $8.6 billion in annual sales. With 18,000 employees in the U.S. and 15,000 in Europe, HCL is a global company and has deep expertise in computing, said Sukamal Banerjee, a vice president. It has won business from Boeing on that basis, not on price, he said: “We came from a strong R&D background.”

Still, for the 787, HCL gave Boeing a remarkable price – free, according to Sam Swaro, an associate vice president who pitched HCL’s services at a San Diego conference sponsored by Avionics International magazine in June. He said the company took no up-front payments on the 787 and only started collecting payments based on sales years later, an “innovative business model” he offered to extend to others in the industry.

The 787 entered service three years late and billions of dollars over budget in 2011, in part because of confusion introduced by the outsourcing strategy. Under Dennis Muilenburg, a longtime Boeing engineer who became chief executive in 2015, the company has said that it planned to bring more work back in-house for its newest planes.

Engineer Backwater

The Max became Boeing’s top seller soon after it was offered in 2011. But for ambitious engineers, it was something of a “backwater,” said Peter Lemme, who designed the 767’s automated flight controls and is now a consultant. The Max was an update of a 50-year-old design, and the changes needed to be limited enough that Boeing could produce the new planes like cookie cutters, with few changes for either the assembly line or airlines. “As an engineer that’s not the greatest job,” he said.

Rockwell Collins, now a unit of United Technologies Corp., won the Max contract for cockpit displays, and it has relied in part on HCL engineers in India, Iowa and the Seattle area. A United Technologies spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Boeing 737 Max airplanes at the company’s manufacturing facility in Renton, Washington.

Photographer: David Ryder/Bloomberg

Contract engineers from Cyient helped test flight test equipment. Charles LoveJoy, a former flight-test instrumentation design engineer at the company, said engineers in the U.S. would review drawings done overnight in India every morning at 7:30 a.m. “We did have our challenges with the India team,” he said. “They met the requirements, per se, but you could do it better.”

Multiple investigations – including a Justice Department criminal probe – are trying to unravel how and when critical decisions were made about the Max’s software. During the crashes of Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines planes that killed 346 people, investigators suspect, the MCAS system pushed the planes into uncontrollable dives because of bad data from a single sensor.

That design violated basic principles of redundancy for generations of Boeing engineers, and the company apparently never tested to see how the software would respond, Lemme said. “It was a stunning fail,” he said. “A lot of people should have thought of this problem – not one person – and asked about it.”

Boeing also has disclosed that it learned soon after Max deliveries began in 2017 that a warning light that might have alerted crews to the issue with the sensor wasn’t installed correctly in the flight-display software. A Boeing statement in May, explaining why the company didn’t inform regulators at the time, said engineers had determined it wasn’t a safety issue.

“Senior company leadership,” the statement added, “was not involved in the review.”

[I_M4_AU 7,801]

8 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

1) It was already finalized before they rolled it out. The author means the second iteration. The first iteration was finalized, blessed, certified, and killed people. 
2) That is why you dont rush it into service and you test test and re test. 

To clarify, the article I posted was from Boeing and was what they changed to “solve” the problem.  So now, they are going to finalize the update (again) before being put into service. Looking at the Lion Air crash and what they changed, you can determine how screwed up the process was, and yes, I agree it was rushed in to service.

Quoting Boeing’s articles is their spin.  Before Boeing went to Fly-by-Wire technology they poo-poo’d Airbus’ entry into that technology.  The saying was “if it ain’t Boeing, I ain’t going”.  Manufacturers will alway protect their product to the public.  Back then Boeing and Airbus took a totally different view of investigating accidents.  The very first thing Boeing would do is blame the pilots and then, after all the publicity calms down, they would fix the hardware that caused the problem.  Airbus, on the other hand, would first blame the pilots and change the software.

8 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

That design violated basic principles of redundancy for generations of Boeing engineers, and the company apparently never tested to see how the software would respond, Lemme said. “It was a stunning fail,” he said. “A lot of people should have thought of this problem – not one person – and asked about it.”

This is the bottom line. The redundancy has been (and should always be) the standard.  Here it appears that the MCAS just looked at any one of the AOA sensors instead of comparing the three that are installed and didn’t warn the crew when it was activated (speculation).  If the B737 MAX ever makes it back into service there will be heighten awareness in procedures and training of the crews of this scenario. 

 

9 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

“Senior company leadership,” the statement added, “was not involved in the review.”

This statement is blaming the lowest common denominator. Sh!t truly does runs down hill.

[homersapien 11,366]

20 hours ago, I_M4_AU said:

The reason manufacturers have been going to “fly by wire” aircraft is the weight savings which equals fuel savings.  The computers drive the controls to keep the aircraft in a stable state (if no input by the pilot the aircraft is 1g).  The computers only limit control inputs is to protect the aircraft from exceeding aircraft parameters (to save itself).  Airline aircraft can not withstand the g forces a military aircraft go through, again for weight purposes.

Pilots have a tendency to believe the aircraft is doing what it is suppose to do, when they realize it is not, sometimes it is too late as in the two B737 crashes.  The Lion Air crash was interesting as the pilots turned off the MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System)  and regained control of the aircraft, only to re-engage the MCAS and that system reactivated and they lost control a second time.    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/boeing_two_deadly_crashes

In the Lion Air crash there was a bad sensor feeding the computers erroneous information.  Boeing has changed the software to allow the pilots to be able to over-ride the MCAS by manual control.

Boeing has developed an MCAS software update to provide additional layers of protection if the AOA sensors provide erroneous data. The software has been put through hundreds of hours of analysis, laboratory testing, verification in a simulator and numerous test flights. Before it is finalized, the software will be validated during in-flight certification tests with Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) representatives.

The additional layers of protection that are being proposed include:

• Flight control system will now compare inputs from both AOA sensors. If the sensors disagree by 5.5 degrees or more with the flaps retracted, MCAS will not activate. An indicator on the flight deck display will alert the pilots.
• If MCAS is activated in non-normal conditions, it will only provide one input for each elevated AOA event. There are no known or envisioned failure conditions where MCAS will provide multiple inputs.
• MCAS can never command more stabilizer input than can be counteracted by the flight crew pulling back on the column. The pilots will continue to always have the ability to override MCAS and manually control the airplane.

These updates are expected to reduce the crew's workload in non-normal flight situations and prevent erroneous data from causing MCAS activation.

https://www.boeing.com/commercial/737max/737-max-software-updates.page

Just reading the corrections and reading what happened to the Lion Air Crew, you can see the MCAS had some unforeseen flaws that made it into service.  A lot of things missed during the development stage. 

 

Thanks for that explanation of computer controls in a "fly by wire" system! 

(I had planned to start a thread on this subject after reading an article on why and what went wrong.  I figured there were people on this forum who knew this sort of stuff, but I couldn't find the original article and forgot about it - until I saw the story about the CEO's golden parachute.)

My original point was the compromised airframe dynamics of the (50 year old) 737 - when combined by the modified engine arrangement - were too severe to be addressed by a "MCAS" system in the first place (as the results indicated).  

Philosophically, I feel the same regarding the use of the improved "MCAS" system. 

It seems to me MCAS is appropriate to avoid exceeding acceptable control parameters in a basically sound or stable airplane, but not as a fix or workaround for inherent (design-based) instability issues, at least for passenger airliners. (Again, in military designs, such instability issues may come with important advantages which justify the risk.)

In my (layman's) opinion, the 737MAX is clearly a case where a completely new airframe design was indicated. 

That may be an overly simplistic point of view, but complexity comes with it's own inherent risk.

 

[I_M4_AU 7,801]

13 minutes ago, homersapien said:

Thanks for that explanation of computer controls in a "fly by wire" system! 

(I had planned to start a thread on this subject after reading an article on why and what when wrong.  I figured there were people on this forum who knew this sort of stuff, but I couldn't find the original article and forgot about it - until I saw the story about the CEO's golden parachute.)

My original point was the compromised airframe dynamics of the (50 year old) 737 when combined by the modified engine arrangement, were too severe to be addressed by a "MCAS" system in the first place (as the results indicated).  

Philosophically, I feel the same regarding the use of the improved "MCAS" system. 

It seems to me MCAS is appropriate to avoid exceeding acceptable control parameters in a basically sound or stable airplane, but not as a fix or workaround for inherent (design-based) instability issues, at least for passenger airliners. (Again, in military designs, such instability issues may come with important advantages which justify the risk.)

In my (layman's) opinion, the 737MAX is clearly a case where a completely new airframe design was indicated. 

That may be an overly simplistic point of view, but complexity comes with it's own inherent risk.

 

Manufacturers have been doing this for years. The original B737 (seating of 100 pax) was known as a FLUF (Fat Little Ugly F***ker) and the story goes, on a takeoff one pilot that observed the takeoff said over ATC, “nice punt”.  That thing has been stretched so many times, but has maintained it’s status as the most produced Airliner in the world.  The reason, as you point out, is cost.  It is extremely expensive to bring on a new model.  

One of the hidden costs are pilot training, if it is the “same” aircraft there is no need for separate training cost and this is a big selling point.  Airbus brought out the A319, A320 and A321 and one of it’s selling points was pilot training.  If you then buy the A330 the training footprint is reduced because of how close these aircraft are in philosophies.  The A321 has been stretched to the point that there is concern, every time it lands, it could have a tail strike.

Look at this Beech 1900D and what engineers had to do to make it stable enough to fly.  It must have had some instability in the tail section because is was stretched.  I used to be taxing out and look at those saying, I’m glad I don’t have to fly that thing.

The FAA bought off on the MCAS and I’m sure during testing the issue of bad sensors did not come up.  That was in the engineering of the system that didn’t follow basic redundancy rules as pointed out by DKW’s article.  Someone should have thought of this while they were developing the software.  It went horribly wrong.  The FAA will never be blamed for their lack of oversight as government agencies take no responsibility, but they are feeling the heat internally and will be extremely cautious if and when they approve the software fix.

To your original point, that is the responsibility of upper management on recommendations from their staff.  I don’t know if it was ever brought up to create a new model, but it didn’t go far if it was brought up.  Some mid level manager will be fired while the upper management will dodge the bullet.

In hindsight, they should have designed a new model.

[Brad_ATX 13,654]

Just popping in to say this has been the most interesting and informative thread in a long while here.  Kudos.

[bigbird 60,506]

2 hours ago, Brad_ATX said:

Just popping in to say this has been the most interesting and informative thread in a long while here.  Kudos.

And cordial

[Grumps 3,704]

On 1/14/2020 at 4:53 PM, bigbird said:

And cordial

I can fix that:

[I_M4_AU 7,801]

12 hours ago, Grumps said:

I can fix that:

I have to disagree here, I flew that aircraft and it was one of the most stable aircraft I flew.  It is not controversial at ......oh wait....you’re talking about the paint scheme......never mind.