Boeing 737 MAX - software wouldn't fix faulty airframe

Chris65536

Joined Nov 11, 2019
270
More reliable than the 747, 737 and the 727.
There's reliable as in "profitable for the owner", and there's reliable as in "doesn't kill all the passengers". I know which one is more important to me! The Sioux City and O'Hare crashes were especially horrible hardware failures of the DC-10.
 

Tonyr1084

Joined Sep 24, 2015
7,853
Both of those failures are due to failure in maintenance. ANY plane with broken parts is in danger of crashing. The MAX did not have any broken parts.

United 232 lost the #2 fan due to the failure to detect a crack in the fan disk.
The O'Hare crash was due to cutting corners in maintenance.
 

Tonyr1084

Joined Sep 24, 2015
7,853
You're absolutely welcome to not miss the DC-10. However, that fan disk was recently inspected, and a developing crack is what grew into the catastrophic failure. It was that "Miss" in the routine maintenance that lead to the accident. Incidentally, many different types of jets had that same engine. I can't say for sure what kind of engine it was but it was a flaw NOT due to MacDonald Douglas but rather (I believe) it was a Prat & Whitney. Could have been a Rolls Royce - I'm not sure which. But it was a common engine in the air at that time.

The location of the engine was critical to the flight characteristics of the jet. It happened to be the one thing nobody ever thought could happen, the total loss of hydraulic fluids and pressure. Unfortunately the grenading of the #2 fan struck all three lines that characteristically had to be in that location. The tail section is a rather small (by comparison) area for hydraulics. Yet it was bad luck that all three lines were severed.
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,086
I didn't mind the DC-10 as an air-frame, when those planes were dumped on the market in the US, other still flew them safely as a passenger jet for years.

Aircraft.dc-10.750pix (1).jpg
 

Tonyr1084

Joined Sep 24, 2015
7,853
The crash in Mexico City was due to pilot error, not following landing instructions and landed on a closed runway, striking construction vehicles, causing the jet to veer into a building.

 

crutschow

Joined Mar 14, 2008
34,285
it was bad luck that all three lines were severed.
But it was not bad luck that they all three lines were located in the same area.
Good safety practice would have been to route them in different areas of the tail section near the engine, since an engine blowing apart should be one thing you try to account for.
 

Tonyr1084

Joined Sep 24, 2015
7,853
We can second guess with hindsight. But if you've watched the 45 minute video (at approximately 26 minutes) you see that all three lines in the tail section DID take different routes. However, since all three are back-ups of each other, they must meet somewhere. It appeared to be the one "Achilles Heel" that got struck. I found the video interesting.
 
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Tonyr1084

Joined Sep 24, 2015
7,853
Aircraft diagrams like that are fairly accurate. And if you saw where the holes were in the Horizontal Stabilizer, it appears to be just about right in that location where all three lines interconnect. Maybe a 1 in 10000 chance of being struck. But it was.

Anyway, I got things to do, so I'll catch y'all later. Keep up the good arguments. It's what forces us to grow.
 

jpanhalt

Joined Jan 18, 2008
11,087
Boeing releases internal e-mails:
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets...on-737-max-calls-them-completely-unacceptable

In one message dated November 2015, which appears to shed light on lobbying methods used when facing demands from regulators, a Boeing employee notes regulators were likely to want simulator training for a particular type of cockpit alert. "We are going to push back very hard on this and will likely need support at the highest levels when it comes time for the final negotiation,'' the employee writes.
E-mails can be like shooting yourself down.
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,086
Boeing releases internal e-mails:
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets...on-737-max-calls-them-completely-unacceptable



E-mails can be like shooting yourself down.
Idiots but not quite the same as intentionally (circumstantial negligence) pulling the trigger on a surface to air missile. I was at the Subic Naval Base during the USS Vincennes (CG-49) Iran air shootdown investigation. The guys in our unit analyzed the systems and operations of all units involved.

That ship then and Iran now are completely at fault for killing those people, that's not the same situation at Boeing.
 
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