Boeing Faces Doubtful Airline Chiefs in Mission to Restore Faith

[brooklynite]

Source: Bloomberg

After two fatal crashes in five months involving its best-selling 737 Max jet, Boeing Co. sent a team to reassure airline bosses of its focus on safety at their annual gathering in Seoul. They faced a tough crowd.

The International Air Transport Association event began Sunday with an opening ceremony in which sobering news reports on the disasters were beamed onto super-sized screens as the industry group’s head, Alexandre de Juniac, warned that the plane-approval process is damaged and the industry under scrutiny.

Doubts about a speedy resolution to the Max crisis hang over the two-day meeting, aviation’s biggest gathering since the second crash in Ethiopia in March and a key annual forum for top-level discussions. Airline chiefs said Boeing must convince regulators worldwide of the 737’s safety, not just the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, if it’s to restore faith in the model.

“Unless they get all regulators on board, irrespective of how good or how well they think they’ve fixed the aircraft, it’s not going to work,” Emirates President Tim Clark said in an interview at the gathering. “It’s done enormous damage to the industry, and they have a responsibility to make that good.”



Read more: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2019-06-02/boeing-faces-doubtful-airline-chiefs-in-mission-to-restore-faith

[safeinOhio]

1. We cut corners to insure Share holder's value....

or, we fucked up doing it.

[democratisphere]

2. I wouldn't trust the word of any Boeing executive.

Corporate greedmongers and psychopaths.

[RedParrot]

3. Buy Airbus

Boeing put profits ahead of safety.

[cos dem]

6. Got news for you. Airbus does the same thing.

Airbus has had concerning design decisions in the past. They had an early crash of the 320 that was due to a similar over-reliance on automation.

The actual answer is a robust, high-integrity, independent, and government-sponsored regulator. Our FAA and NTSB are largely responsible for getting us to the extremely low fatality rate that we're used to. But, complacency and active sabotage by "anti-government" types (see the movie "Sully" for an example) have allowed these organizations to get pushed around by Boeing, Airbus, and all of the other manufacturers.

[Midnightwalk]

4. There was a bug and we fixed it is a lousy

Explanation for two back to back failures in what should have been a fault tolerant system. The last i read, the FAA was still talking about inadequate training for those foreign pilots. On a plane that was artificially required to not need additional training.

From everything i have read they haven’t taken any action to correct the issues that led to they multiple design, certification and testing failures that led to the crashes. We fixed a bug misses the point completely.

[cos dem]

7. It is an area that could use some reforms.

Planes are certified by their "type", which is a document describing in official terms what the airplane is. For larger aircraft, the pilot is required to obtain a "type rating" which trains the pilot on all of the special ways in which an airplane of that type must be flown. So, as long as the aircraft conforms to the type certificate, theoretically no further training is required.

This leads to the manufacturers and airlines to buy new aircraft that conform to the old type certificate, as it means the pilots don't have to be retrained. Southwest is a perfect example of this, in that they are flying planes that use the same certificate as the 737s they were flying when the company was formed (ignoring the 727s that Southwest was flying at the very beginning).

It's an all-or-nothing situation. Either the plane conforms to the type certificate exactly, and no training is required, or it requires a completely new type certificate, and all pilots will need to obtain a new type rating. So, we can bash Boeing, but the reality is we're in this situation because the airlines want this as well (to avoid the retraining issue), and are pushed into the current situation due to the all-or-nothing nature of the type cert.

The idea that type certificates would have a life across many generations of aircraft was likely not considered when the system was established in the first place. Something like a sub-type might work as an enhancement, where the training to fly a modified aircraft is much less involved than a full type rating. Pilots are training all the time anyway, so it seems feasible that simply allowing for a training session on "here's what you need to know about this new aircraft" could easily be incorporated into the training cycle.

[Midnightwalk]

10. I like your idea

Maybe with some minimum required new training on new models to make the it easier to do technology upgrades. Seems like it could give the engineers a wider range of options for solving issues.

It still bothers me that MCAS had that range of control over the elevators without redundancy in the angle of attack sensors and the glossing over of self certification. The FAA’s public statements don’t give me confidence those underlying issues will be addressed.

I’ll add that aviation is not my field so apologies if I have anything wrong. Corrections welcome.

I would still get on a flight without much trepidation but quality issues can take a long time to show in end results.

[Sneederbunk]

5. All the King's horses and all the King's men.

[Turbineguy]

8. Part of their problem

is the Trump FAA, which nobody is going to trust.

[Wellstone ruled]

9. Let's be honest about how Contractiong works.

It is a closed loop of personal associations and life aquaintance's. It is who you know and not what you know when it comes to Aero- Space and it's related Industries. Same for any Military related Contracts.

And it starts at the top of the food chain and perks all way down to the shop floor. A story for another day.