This generation of 737 seems cursed. The MCAS scandal (and it was a scandal), just before the new year there were warnings to operators to check for loose nuts and now this.
Boeing are not having a good time.
There never should have been a “this generation” of 737, at least not how it was designed. It basically should have been an entirely new designation but they kept trying to shoehorn upgrades into it so pilots wouldn’t have to get recertified.
I entirely agree, But I also kinda understand it. Without the new engines they could not compete with the A32x product line. But they wouldn’t fit without the tricks they pulled. It should have been a new airframe designed to take those engines.
That re-design and certification would take too long though, and they’d lose huge market share to airbus.
Now, I say I understand their actions, this does not mean I agree with them!
Well, that’s on Boeing as well. They slacked off in the R&D department for too long and allowed Airbus to one-up them. Then they tried some convoluted way to play catch up and failed epically…
Look up documentaries about Boeing and their culture after the MD merger.
The Boeing MCAS story and the fact they were not held accountable at all terrifies me. Not the idea of the augmentation, I kinda understand they needed to fit bigger engines onto their existing frame until they can make and certify a new one. It’s not a good solution, but I can understand the business thinking behind it.
Here’s where it goes wrong for me.
- Not documenting the MCAS system, in order to cheat the system to not require recertification for the plane. Adding a system that can make trim changes without informing the pilots and that there isn’t a documented way to override was an accident waiting to happen.
- Worse to me, is the fact that while the aircraft has two AoA sensors, the MCAS system only takes input from one of them. This is terrifying. There’s no way the software can know the inputs could be wrong. So the software would effectively try to kill people all the while thinking it’s actually doing you a favour.
It was a debacle that should have been investigated further. Now, it’s not fair (although it probably is) to compare Boeing putting their toes into more flight automation against airbus. But the modern airbus jets use multiple sensor sources, and when there is a disagreement, they will reduce flight protections and inform the pilots about it, pilots that will be trained on the various flight modes that can come out of this. Just using one sensor was just a crazy decision, and I bet it was based on cost.
What’s going on now though is more a general QC/QA situation. Where I think it overlaps with the MCAS situation is that both the lack of redundancy in MCAS sensor input and the lack of QC in general just reeks of ruthless cost-cutting.
