Moderator: Peak Moderation
Cross posted with this thread:Jet Airways presently has 217 aircraft of various models on order from Boeing. How many are going to be paid for and will be delivered remains an interesting question and raises even more questions about the feasibility of the maxi-orders placed by many other Asian airlines with vulnerable financials .
And while the historical data were dismal at best, missing across the board, what was even more troubling is that while analysts were hoping for some much needed guidance, they won't get it as Boeing suspended its annual forecast, stating that new guidance would be issued at "a future date", which as Bloomberg said was "an expected but nonetheless startling decision that underscores the magnitude of its current crisis."
and...The crashes of the two 737 MAX revealed a number of problems with the design of the MCAS system. Several additional issues with the plane were since revealed. There may be other problems with its 737 MAX that no one yet knows of. The rather casual FAA certification of the type was clearly not justified.
But the problems described above are 737 NG problems. The 380 or so existing 737 MAX are currently grounded. But some 7,000 737 NG fly about every day. The record provides that it is a relatively safe airplane. But a runaway stabilizer is a well known electrical malfunction that could by chance happen on any of those flights.
Simulator sessions demonstrate (video) that a runaway stabilizer incident on a 737 NG can no longer be overcome by the procedures that current Boeing manuals describe.
It is pure luck that no NG crash has yet been caused by a runaway stabilizer incident. It is quite astonishing that these issues only now become evident. The 737 NG was certified by the FAA in 1997. Why is the FAA only now looking into this?
Moon of Alabama: Boeing's Software Fix for the 737 Max Problem Overwhelms the Plane's ComputerFlight control computer run special operation systems with minimal overhead. They are programmed in highly efficient programming languages. The software design and implementation follows a very strict process using specialized tools (see Green Hills' products for examples). All these are much better than what I used during my programming times.
Programs written for flight control purposes are already highly optimized. To further optimize them 'by hand' would break the regulated process that production of such software requires.
Boeing says that it can again fix the software to avoid the problem the FAA just found. It is doubtful that this will be possible. The software load is already right at the border, if not above the physical capabilities of the current flight control computers. The optimization potential of the software is likely minimal.
MCAS was a band aid. Due to the new engine position the 737 MAX version had changed its behavior compared to the older 737 types even though it still used the older types' certification. MCAS was supposed to correct that. The software fix for MCAS is another band aid on top of it. The fix for the software fix that Boeing now promises to solve the problem the FAA pilot found, is the third band aid over the same wound. It is doubtful that it will stop the bleeding.
The flight control computers the 737 MAX and NG use were developed in the early to mid 1990s. There are no off-the-shelf solutions for higher performance.
Even if Boeing does survive this, it will never be the same behemoth as we currently know it.Today’s plunge came after a flurry of disclosures and leaks in the morning about Boeing, including:
•Sources said that Boeing is planning to draw down entirely and much quicker than expected its new credit facility of $13.825 billion as early as Friday, apparently worried that banks might freeze the credit facility later, and banks did during the Financial Crisis.
•Boeing disclosed that it had negative net orders of -28 aircraft for the first two months of 2020, with cancellations of the 737 MAX exceeding orders for all models;