> Airbus overtook Boeing as the world’s biggest plane maker in 2019 following the second crash of the 737 MAX that led to a global grounding and subsequent pause in production of the Boeing jet.
I’m not sure if these are connected but I wouldn’t be surprised if they are. Airlines are losing millions of dollars due to grounding their fleet and the fact that it’s happened again cannot help.
The only thing keeping Boeing in the game right now is likely the fact that Airbus is sold out for over a decade.
Airlines with Airbus fleets are dealing with lengthy periods of unavailability due to issues with the Pratt & Whitney engines that power ~60% of A320neos and all A220s[1]. My understanding is that the airlines have agreements where P&W will eventually compensate them for this, but Airbus fleets haven't been without headaches.
A company I use often, Wizz Air, had/has to regularly ground these planes. It’s always a safe bet to book seats at the front of the plane to be sure that your seat doesn’t magically disappear when you are at the gate (happened last Easter when they sold seats for a 180 seats plane but had to ground it and sent a smaller one last minute). The only silver lining here is that they caught the problems before any plane actually crashed because of them
At least their planes don't fall out of the sky, because some morons cheaped out on the software and they don't have to get special inspections every other week because Boeing forgot to put a bolt in the Rudder, Door etc...
> Civil aviation is beer money to Boeing. They make the brunt of the money in military. That’s also where the margins are
You haven't been keeping track I presume. Boeing is bleeding money on recent military contracts like the Air Force One Replacement or the KC-46, because they're on a fixed price structure and Boeing drastically underestimated the costs involved.
So much so that for the replacement of the NEACP ("Doomsday Planes") Boeing withdrew from bidding because they refuse to get into another fixed price military programme, knowing they can't predict costs for shit and will lose a lot of money. They're only interested in costs+ contracts, which nobody seems to be willing to give them.
This is completely false. For 2022 fiscal year revenue in commercial was $25B vs $23B for defense and losses in commercial were $2.3B vs $3.5B for defense.
That's less true than it used to be, due to the unofficial end of cost plus. And Boeing is getting to be a bit of a red flag in procurement circles.
More or less all capital-B Boeing programs in the DoD side are - at best - unwell, but "terminally ill" is also making a showing. KC46, SLS, CST-100. There was also the AH-64D/E fictional upgrade kit and bad/counterfeit parts, something repeated on the CH-47 retrofits[1] . . honestly, peel back the skin on a successful Boeing program and odds are you'll see a non-Boeing organization or its remnants (or Phantom Works, or some other little island of competence that's somehow avoided the All Seeing Eye). And this is just the surface stuff.
BDS never recovered from the end of cost plus' Glory Days of the GWoT. Fixed price broke a lot of BDS, because no one really has any idea what anything costs, or even how long it takes to do a thing. Sometimes I wonder just how much is left in the core of the org.
My first memory of working with Boeing was from 2010, when a government encryption requirement led me down a long and tortured road that ended with me training an entire Boeing team on what PGP was (we still ended up handling virtually all of that in-house, at cost to Boeing, because it took eight months to get an answer to virtually any question, as both call and response filtered through two dozen levels of management emails). More recently the USAF tossed Boeing a softball project to glue wings and a GPS kit to Mk82 iron bombs, but Boeing couldn't figure it out - they had to subcon the job to Kratos (this was in the news, but was also confirmed anecdotally). Similar thing with "avionics updates" for <redacted> - the "update" was just a request that an accurate pinout diagram be sent with the documentation. Again, core Boeing just couldn't manage that without subconning it out; they literally did not know the pin #s on a standard ARINC connector that they were themselves using. Pretty close to an aerospace company needing a subcontractor to explain what the Bernoulli Principle is.
I do hope I am wrong about B. It's quite possible I've just had really bad luck when it comes to the division I deal with. But sometimes . . sometimes you wonder, "What . . what if the whole org is like that?"
[1] That's a huge theme across multiple BDS divisions and programs, from UAS to F-15 and Super Hornet. I suspect it's also why BGS appears to be made of money.
I don't get it. If civil aviation is beer money why build the 747, the most iconic passenger plane to be every built, only surpassed perhaps by the Concorde. Something has changed at Boeing in the last couple of decades, that has changed the trajectory of Boeing leadership leading to quality issues.
And they've been shook real bad in the aerospace market with ULA. So bad, it's pretty much a given that Boeing is getting out of the market and selling to Amazon.
If Boeing’s civilian jets are falling from the skies, I wonder what will happen to its military ones in the coming conflict with China.
And if anything nuclear is manufactured to the same quality standards as the 737 Max, then… woe is us…
Boeing is toast, both in civil aviation and in the military. They gutted the engineering expertise that would have been needed to be successful. And now they just can't fix it.
If Boeing concedes the civilian market, the likes of SpaceX could just spin out an aircraft or jet engine business and compete quite well.
How about some engines made with those fancy alloys they've got? Or just a willingness to do an awesome design without all the baggage or need for short term profit.
>On 28 April 2016, Bombardier Aerospace, a division of Bombardier Inc., recorded a firm order from Delta Air Lines for 75 CSeries CS100s plus 50 options. On 27 April 2017, The Boeing Company filed a petition for dumping them at $19.6m each, below their $33.2m production cost.
>On 26 September, after lobbying by Boeing, the US Department of Commerce (DoC) alleged subsidies of 220% and intended to collect deposits accordingly, plus a preliminary 80% anti-dumping duty, resulting in a duty of 300%. The DoC announced its final ruling, a total duty of 292%, on 20 December, hailing it as an affirmation of the "America First" policy.
>In October 2017, as a direct result of the tariffs and mounting financial issues, Bombardier was forced by the American government into an agreement to relinquish 50.01% of its stake in the CSeries program to Airbus for a token CAD$1, and would produce CSeries aircraft in the United States.
>In 2020, amid mounting debts, Bombardier sold its remaining A220 stake to Airbus and exited the commercial plane business.
Delivery slot allocation is bit more complex than deviding order book by monthly deliveries. Also, custumers cancel orders, freeing up delivery slots for other airlines.
The A320 order book is approaching ten years so, and wont decrease with sales exceeding deliveries.
That and switching costs. I'm no expert but I've noticed airlines tend to keep their fleets to as few variants of plane as possible. Makes sense thinking about maintenance etc. Have to imagine introducing an entire new manufacturer would add significant complication.
Airbus has a significant edge there because they have very uniform FBW cockpits and a very good cross-crew qualification program: it takes two weeks to train from an A320 rating to an A380 (it's by far the longuest CCQ).
This is the whole reason for the 737 Max debacle. They tried to keep the controls the same so pilots wouldn’t need retraining, even though the plane was very different. They tried to paper over the differences in software. And hundreds died.
I'd assume a contributing factor is all the defense contracts Boeing has. Not sure how the percentages work out, but guaranteed orders of military equipment have to have high margin.
Or for airlines like Southwest that have an exclusive contract with Boeing and would require an enormous cost and effort to introduce any other manufacturer.
Not only does Southwest exclusively fly Boeing aircraft, they exclusively fly 737s, which enables their unusual routing style. Essentially every pilot and crew at Southwest can fly any aircraft the company has for them.
Presumably this gives Boeing a strong incentive to keep making new 737s that push the engineering envelope, instead of making a new narrowbody aircraft.
Its funny, back when I want to college I had a CS professor who referred to himself as "an otherwise reputable computer scientist who sometimes gets on Airbus airplanes".
That was in reference to the difference in philosophy between Boeing and Airbus about whether the pilot or the plane's computer should get the final say in emergency situations, with Boeing letting the pilot override the plane and Airbus having some protections that won't allow the pilot to do something dangerous (I'm sure I'm oversimplifying or misconstruing details, I'm not a pilot or aviation engineer and it's been a couple of decades since I heard this particular rant).
With the last few years of Boeing's misadventures I wonder what he'd call himself today, "an otherwise reputable computer scientist who sometimes gets on modern jetliners"?
The way it works for the Airbus is that the pilot controls the plane, but there are safety parameters that determine what the controls do.
Consider it like a modern car with engine management software. If you floor the accelerator all at once from a low rpm in a very old car, the engine will stumble, if you do it in a modern car the engine management software will inject the maximum amount of fuel that can be burned and not too much, getting you maximum acceleration.
The same applies for the way Airbus controls work. Let's say you want the maximum climb (for example due to wind shear on landing), in the Airbus you push the throttles all the way forward, and pull the stick all the way back. The computer will figure out not to pitch you up further than the plan can handle.
The same manoeuvre in a Boeing means you press the TO/GA switch twice for maximum power (because the engines are computer controlled here as well) but then you pull back on the yoke up to stick shaker activation (stall warning) and manually try to pitch just below the maximum. There is no safeguard stopping you from pulling too far and stalling the airplane. Every pilot can do that, small training aircraft that everyone learns this in don't have any protections either. But the accuracy won't be as good as what the Airbus computers can do and it requires paying more attention.
Now in an emergency, systems failures, the Airbus will downgrade to how the Boeing works. Full back stick will be an unlimited pitch-up and the pilots need to manually figure out what the maximum is.
>Now in an emergency, systems failures, the Airbus will downgrade to how the Boeing works. Full back stick will be an unlimited pitch-up and the pilots need to manually figure out what the maximum is.
You're referring to Alternate Law and the more extreme version, Direct Law. One note is that it's not always an emergency that can cause this. If important sensors like AOA or airspeed disagree (for example, due to a temporarily-frozen pitot tube), that will also reduce to alternate or direct depending on the situation.
Unfortunately this can bite pilots badly if they either don't notice or don't understand the new situation quickly enough. There have been one or two crashes attributed to this over the years. [See Air France 447]
There's a bigger difference, as I understand it, which is where airbus generally considers the pilot as managing a complex machine with a lot of automation (even without autopilots), and the inputs and controls reflect that, being a bit more abstract. Boeing basically tries to make every plane they make fly like a cessna, using the same basic controls but always adapting the interface to the same thing, even if that abstraction is leaky. There's upsides and downsides to it, but MCAS is one example of boeing's philosophy going wrong (in part exacerbated by trying to conserve the type rating and avoiding pilot retraining).
Airbus has 3 flight computers (1 PRIM and two SECs) for fly by wire - they run same software with voting deciding outcomes of commands that comes from the pilot to the flight surfaces.
The unit not matching the others are marked as suspect and removed from flight operations-the switch out is not done by software but hard cutover system using relays.
I think they’re talking about the pilot being able to apply inputs that might otherwise be considered dangerous by the flight control computers.
So in an emergency a Boeing may allow the pilots to make an input that may overstress the airframe but save the lives of the passengers. Whereas the Airbus computer would override the pilot’s decision and not allow it.
> Airbus has 3 flight computers (1 PRIM and two SECs) for fly by wire - they run same software with voting deciding outcomes of commands that comes from the pilot to the flight surfaces.
So a software bug could doom the plane?
IIRC, some other flight-control voting system have 3 computers, but one runs software developed independently from the others.
> Boeing letting the pilot override the plane and Airbus ... won't allow
I still think it is basically true (MCAS notwithstanding).
For Boeing:
The design philosophy is: "to inform the pilot that the command being given would put the aircraft outside of its normal operating envelope, but the ability to do so is not precluded."
What you have in mind for the Airbus crash is what the captain claimed, but it was not true. The engines responded normally and started to spool up to maximum power, but that takes time for older jet engines coming from idle.
The crew then pulled as far back as the stick would go, and the computer put the aircraft at it's maximum possible pitch-up. Unfortunately that wasn't enough to clear the trees they were flying into. More details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296Q
A 737 in the same situation would have similar engine challenges. But the crew would have stalled it instead of the Airbus computer avoiding the stall. That would have most likely been a more severe crash than what happened here.
The very first A320 demonstration flight _and_ one of the first A330 flights both crashed and killed multiple people due to issues with the autopilot programming. The whole “if it’s not Boeing, I’m not going” thing was because of distrust around the fly-by-wire system that Airbus used.
I guess all big companies eventually succumb to this fate. It sucks.
AF296 crashed because the pilot selected TOGA too late for the engines to spool up in time, and was completely unprepared. There was no issue with the FCS, nor the autopilot which was disengaged.
For Airbus Industrie 129, it seems that the FCS was not the root cause of the issue, but I don't know a lot about this flight.
Yeah older pilots distrusted the Airbus design and joystick controls. They preferred Boeing's direct cable-and-pully design. But many of them are retired now, younger pilots probably don't have such strong opinions. They also like airplanes where the doors don't blow out in flight.
I had a prof too (formal methods?) who opened with "Ladies and gentlemen, if you follow my lecture series, you will never fly model x of brand y aircraft again.
I don't disagree with that but Airbus planes have also had their fair shares of issues: from frozen sensors sending planes into both the Atlantic and the Mediterannean see to a repeated behavior of apparently loving to land with the front gear's wheel rotated 90 degrees (why oh why!? At this point I think they'll have to reinforce the arm holding the wheel so that it can better deal with landing at 90 degrees).
Are Boeing planes really that much more dangerous than Airbus ones?
> Are Boeing planes really that much more dangerous than Airbus ones?
You don’t need to speculate about what could happen, you have statistics about what did happen. Yes, they are. Not by much in absolute terms (thank goodness) but in relative terms, significantly.
> from frozen sensors sending planes into both the Atlantic and the Mediterannean
It wasn't the sensors doing that, it was pilots misunderstanding what the frozen sensors are telling them, and what the plane is telling them. That's why the UX has been improved on that, and there's even an estimated airspeed via GPS now to give some indication to the pilots with the best available information.
Overall, I think this is a false equivalence and bad form of whataboutism. Boeing are caught, again, with shoddy manufacturing and design practices, and people harp on "But Airbus aren't better!". Even if they weren't, and they are better, why does it matter? Boeing have issues, those need to be fixed. If Airbus had issues, those have to be fixed too. And Airbus have been working on theirs (like the A350 paint problems or the UX that could be improved when sensors are out) which are, again, much less critical than Boeing's planes flying themselves into the ground or with parts flying off.
The other problem with Boeing and FAA in USA is that we seen how they cover their mistakes, how they try to patch over flaws etc.
FAA should today randomly pick new Beoings and do a full inspection and not wait for incidents to happen in USA and posted on internet before pretending to care.
> Are Boeing planes really that much more dangerous than Airbus ones?
The 737NG is the safest airliner ever produced. Boeing is having a rough patch, but anyone counting them out is foolish. They've had rough patches before.
Also government subsidies that make the airplanes ~20-30% cheaper.
Which to be fair Boeing almost has as well, but for Boeing it's mostly military contracts that subsidize the development of new airplanes that then get reused as civilian aircraft.
Except Boeing's flawed execution turned their normal 'safe' government contracts into a disaster. They claim to have lost $7B on that KC-46 refueler contract already. So they managed to fumble that into a negative subsidy. Boeing looks like a grossly mismanaged company now.
What recent Boeing planes were originally developed for the military and reused as civilian aircraft? It seems like recent designs (eg the 787) are developed entirely from the needs of airlines.
Well, there are a lot of these 737s going around the world all the time, and very seldom does anything like this happen… I just don’t want people thinking that Boeing airplanes aren’t safe.
I have a feeling this will soon enough lead to some protectionist measures and new sanctions based on some suddenly discovered anti-competitive behavior.
They certainly did a wonderful hatchet job to Bombardier. Effectively forced them out of the market to the point they had to sell the entire line to Airbus as the A220.
I'm still crying about this. Bombardier could have become a third large airframe producer.
On the other hand, the Quebec government made the boneheaded decision to give incentives specifically to the C-Series. If they had given those incentives to the whole company, Boeing couldn't have complained.
They're going to have a real tough time doing that when the alternative is grounded planes. Boeing has put both themselves and the government between a rock and a hard place.
> I have a feeling this will soon enough lead to some protectionist measures and new sanctions based on some suddenly discovered anti-competitive behavior.
I'd be interested to know how many are former Boeing customers. The implication is that people are switching from Boeing to Airbus but it's quite possible a lot of these airlines have always been Airbus customers.
Avalon doesn't have fleet information on Wikipedia (I'm not in the industry and have no idea what a reputable place to go to get this information would be)
India is going through an economic boom period of which not that many people talk about. The cheap energy inputs as a result of Western sanctions on Russia also help with that, of course.
What is happening is that for decades, Indian govts have not focussed much on infra development. Current govt, which is in power for past 9 years, has put infra development on a rocket sled, with special focus on highways, railway stations, freight and airports.
Also, air travel is just within the reach of middle-middle class and above. Cirporate bookings are also on the rise.
On the whole, a huge boom is in the works. But dampners include eventual high prices and inefficiencies of logistics and poor management.
Indian are cheap travellers, and cutting 5 USD on a ticket that has no snacks means people will throng to it.
Market is astronomically competitive and consumers are very high price sensitive.
India's economy in general is strong but the recent expansion in air travel has been epic.
I'd also point out that US airlines are notorious for holding on to old planes. Delta in particular has an ancient fleet but they are excellent in maintenance so it's OK, it's not like the 737 has done anything to improve the passenger experience in the past 30 years.
There’s undoubtedly great engineers at Boeing but the management sound like most software organisations I’ve worked making random decisions to obtain bonuses or favours with bosses. In software this can just get 900 postmasters jailed, in planes this manages to be considerably worse!
It's just sad how much of this idiocy is driven by the idea that "we don't want to have to get re-certified". It's 100% short-term thinking because if they'd just bite the bullet and get re-certified they'd likely be setup for another 30+ years on the new airframe. Of course, that would also mean airlines would have a reason to look at the alternatives, so I guess they're also admitting they don't think they can produce a new airframe that's attractive enough to win on merit.
It's not just safety, it's that the 737 is the symbol of an industry which is not keeping up with the times. The 737 is a 1967 aircraft that is still flying. You don't see a 1967 car being sold in car dealerships. You can't buy a 1967 computer.
You see the headline "Airliners can't take off in Arizona because it's too hot" but the truth is "737s can't take off in Arizona because it's too hot" (737 struggles to take off under good conditions, it takes more runway to take off than planes with 2x the PAX) People say "flying sucks", but it's more like "flying sucks in a 737" (the reason why your neck locks up just thinking about sitting in a window seat on a 737 is because the 737 has a circular cross section that doesn't fit the human body; a plane smaller than a 737 with a more appropriate cross section feels like riding in a 747)
The Embraer E2-Jet is a smaller aircraft that has a bigger engine with better fuel economy because it's not an obsolete design that can't fit a bigger engine. Then there's the A220, bought by Airbus, that Boeing has no answer to and has chosen to have no answer to. For some reason they got possessed to develop several widebody airliners in a row but when it comes to overhauling the narrowbody planes that are most of the units, most of the flights and most of the social and economic impact of aviation, management has been on strike for decades.
The industry has been trying hard to keep you from riding in a modern narrowbody or regional jet because if they did, you'd be demanding it. Once you try the A220 there is no way you'd ride the same route on a 737 if you had a choice. And the thing is the A220 has lower operating costs... But remember, capitalists pay capital costs but they can make you pay operating costs. So long as everybody is flying inferior aircraft they can refuse to invest and pass higher operating costs on to you.
It seems like the federal government could help everyone get out of this mess by subsidizing the certification and training costs associated with switching out the 737 for a new Boeing airframe. But the federal government doesn't generally think like that. In fact they still fly a ton of 737s themselves.
Boeing supply chain is 500 miles long. Multiple suppliers for every part, and practically none of them are made by Boeing. I started my career in aerospace manufacturing. The whole supply chain is designed to track and shift liability down into the smaller suppliers, who can be easily replaced. That panel blew off your plane? Well who made it?!?! Where are the certs?!?! That vendor must've done something wrong! It surely wasn't us not tightening the bolts all the way.
The design problems that led to the first grounding of the 737 Max weren't particularly cost saving.
The overall approach, where they wanted pilot certification to carry over is certainly a business decision, but I'd bet that pilots and airlines and so on liked it.
Similar thing with this door issue. It's likely enough to be sloppy process, and is going to cost them a mint, not save them money. Sure, you can say that compromising quality is motivated by profit, but that cedes an awful lot of the discussion of the consequences of the poor quality to the people that are pushing to save a bit up front.
Not "cost saving" per se, but definitely about money. MBAs are taught that airlines should use one kind of plane. FAA makes it expensive to certify a new kind of plane. So you get this "737 of Theseus" concept where they virtualized the 737 as a "guest", implemented on a different plane "host", leading to the crashes.
Readit News
I’m not sure if these are connected but I wouldn’t be surprised if they are. Airlines are losing millions of dollars due to grounding their fleet and the fact that it’s happened again cannot help.
The only thing keeping Boeing in the game right now is likely the fact that Airbus is sold out for over a decade.
[1] https://crankyflier.com/2023/09/26/the-problem-with-pratt-wh...
Oy. As an American it's rough to see the state of U.S. aviation.
Deleted Comment
The US government will never let Boeing go bankrupt, the impact on their supply chain (specifically nuclear) would be too big. And Boeing know it.
You haven't been keeping track I presume. Boeing is bleeding money on recent military contracts like the Air Force One Replacement or the KC-46, because they're on a fixed price structure and Boeing drastically underestimated the costs involved.
So much so that for the replacement of the NEACP ("Doomsday Planes") Boeing withdrew from bidding because they refuse to get into another fixed price military programme, knowing they can't predict costs for shit and will lose a lot of money. They're only interested in costs+ contracts, which nobody seems to be willing to give them.
This is completely false. For 2022 fiscal year revenue in commercial was $25B vs $23B for defense and losses in commercial were $2.3B vs $3.5B for defense.
https://www.boeing.com/resources/boeingdotcom/company/annual... (Page 58)
More or less all capital-B Boeing programs in the DoD side are - at best - unwell, but "terminally ill" is also making a showing. KC46, SLS, CST-100. There was also the AH-64D/E fictional upgrade kit and bad/counterfeit parts, something repeated on the CH-47 retrofits[1] . . honestly, peel back the skin on a successful Boeing program and odds are you'll see a non-Boeing organization or its remnants (or Phantom Works, or some other little island of competence that's somehow avoided the All Seeing Eye). And this is just the surface stuff.
BDS never recovered from the end of cost plus' Glory Days of the GWoT. Fixed price broke a lot of BDS, because no one really has any idea what anything costs, or even how long it takes to do a thing. Sometimes I wonder just how much is left in the core of the org.
My first memory of working with Boeing was from 2010, when a government encryption requirement led me down a long and tortured road that ended with me training an entire Boeing team on what PGP was (we still ended up handling virtually all of that in-house, at cost to Boeing, because it took eight months to get an answer to virtually any question, as both call and response filtered through two dozen levels of management emails). More recently the USAF tossed Boeing a softball project to glue wings and a GPS kit to Mk82 iron bombs, but Boeing couldn't figure it out - they had to subcon the job to Kratos (this was in the news, but was also confirmed anecdotally). Similar thing with "avionics updates" for <redacted> - the "update" was just a request that an accurate pinout diagram be sent with the documentation. Again, core Boeing just couldn't manage that without subconning it out; they literally did not know the pin #s on a standard ARINC connector that they were themselves using. Pretty close to an aerospace company needing a subcontractor to explain what the Bernoulli Principle is.
I do hope I am wrong about B. It's quite possible I've just had really bad luck when it comes to the division I deal with. But sometimes . . sometimes you wonder, "What . . what if the whole org is like that?"
[1] That's a huge theme across multiple BDS divisions and programs, from UAS to F-15 and Super Hornet. I suspect it's also why BGS appears to be made of money.
How about some engines made with those fancy alloys they've got? Or just a willingness to do an awesome design without all the baggage or need for short term profit.
>On 28 April 2016, Bombardier Aerospace, a division of Bombardier Inc., recorded a firm order from Delta Air Lines for 75 CSeries CS100s plus 50 options. On 27 April 2017, The Boeing Company filed a petition for dumping them at $19.6m each, below their $33.2m production cost.
>On 26 September, after lobbying by Boeing, the US Department of Commerce (DoC) alleged subsidies of 220% and intended to collect deposits accordingly, plus a preliminary 80% anti-dumping duty, resulting in a duty of 300%. The DoC announced its final ruling, a total duty of 292%, on 20 December, hailing it as an affirmation of the "America First" policy.
>In October 2017, as a direct result of the tariffs and mounting financial issues, Bombardier was forced by the American government into an agreement to relinquish 50.01% of its stake in the CSeries program to Airbus for a token CAD$1, and would produce CSeries aircraft in the United States.
>In 2020, amid mounting debts, Bombardier sold its remaining A220 stake to Airbus and exited the commercial plane business.
Boeing will be fine.
Depends on the model, A220, A330 and A350 can be ordered for within 5 years.
Update: Delta just ordered A350-1000s, and deliveries will start in 2026, so merely 2 years out.
The A320 order book is approaching ten years so, and wont decrease with sales exceeding deliveries.
Deleted Comment
That was in reference to the difference in philosophy between Boeing and Airbus about whether the pilot or the plane's computer should get the final say in emergency situations, with Boeing letting the pilot override the plane and Airbus having some protections that won't allow the pilot to do something dangerous (I'm sure I'm oversimplifying or misconstruing details, I'm not a pilot or aviation engineer and it's been a couple of decades since I heard this particular rant).
With the last few years of Boeing's misadventures I wonder what he'd call himself today, "an otherwise reputable computer scientist who sometimes gets on modern jetliners"?
Consider it like a modern car with engine management software. If you floor the accelerator all at once from a low rpm in a very old car, the engine will stumble, if you do it in a modern car the engine management software will inject the maximum amount of fuel that can be burned and not too much, getting you maximum acceleration.
The same applies for the way Airbus controls work. Let's say you want the maximum climb (for example due to wind shear on landing), in the Airbus you push the throttles all the way forward, and pull the stick all the way back. The computer will figure out not to pitch you up further than the plan can handle.
The same manoeuvre in a Boeing means you press the TO/GA switch twice for maximum power (because the engines are computer controlled here as well) but then you pull back on the yoke up to stick shaker activation (stall warning) and manually try to pitch just below the maximum. There is no safeguard stopping you from pulling too far and stalling the airplane. Every pilot can do that, small training aircraft that everyone learns this in don't have any protections either. But the accuracy won't be as good as what the Airbus computers can do and it requires paying more attention.
Now in an emergency, systems failures, the Airbus will downgrade to how the Boeing works. Full back stick will be an unlimited pitch-up and the pilots need to manually figure out what the maximum is.
You're referring to Alternate Law and the more extreme version, Direct Law. One note is that it's not always an emergency that can cause this. If important sensors like AOA or airspeed disagree (for example, due to a temporarily-frozen pitot tube), that will also reduce to alternate or direct depending on the situation.
Unfortunately this can bite pilots badly if they either don't notice or don't understand the new situation quickly enough. There have been one or two crashes attributed to this over the years. [See Air France 447]
The unit not matching the others are marked as suspect and removed from flight operations-the switch out is not done by software but hard cutover system using relays.
Good design.
So in an emergency a Boeing may allow the pilots to make an input that may overstress the airframe but save the lives of the passengers. Whereas the Airbus computer would override the pilot’s decision and not allow it.
IANAP so I have no idea if that’s true or not.
So a software bug could doom the plane?
IIRC, some other flight-control voting system have 3 computers, but one runs software developed independently from the others.
I still think it is basically true (MCAS notwithstanding).
For Boeing:
The design philosophy is: "to inform the pilot that the command being given would put the aircraft outside of its normal operating envelope, but the ability to do so is not precluded."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_control_modes
I thought there was some situation where an airbus plane though it was landing and cut back on the throttle causing a crash. Can't find it now.
The crew then pulled as far back as the stick would go, and the computer put the aircraft at it's maximum possible pitch-up. Unfortunately that wasn't enough to clear the trees they were flying into. More details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296Q
A 737 in the same situation would have similar engine challenges. But the crew would have stalled it instead of the Airbus computer avoiding the stall. That would have most likely been a more severe crash than what happened here.
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-long-way-down-the-cr...
I guess all big companies eventually succumb to this fate. It sucks.
For Airbus Industrie 129, it seems that the FCS was not the root cause of the issue, but I don't know a lot about this flight.
Deleted Comment
Are Boeing planes really that much more dangerous than Airbus ones?
You don’t need to speculate about what could happen, you have statistics about what did happen. Yes, they are. Not by much in absolute terms (thank goodness) but in relative terms, significantly.
It wasn't the sensors doing that, it was pilots misunderstanding what the frozen sensors are telling them, and what the plane is telling them. That's why the UX has been improved on that, and there's even an estimated airspeed via GPS now to give some indication to the pilots with the best available information.
Overall, I think this is a false equivalence and bad form of whataboutism. Boeing are caught, again, with shoddy manufacturing and design practices, and people harp on "But Airbus aren't better!". Even if they weren't, and they are better, why does it matter? Boeing have issues, those need to be fixed. If Airbus had issues, those have to be fixed too. And Airbus have been working on theirs (like the A350 paint problems or the UX that could be improved when sensors are out) which are, again, much less critical than Boeing's planes flying themselves into the ground or with parts flying off.
FAA should today randomly pick new Beoings and do a full inspection and not wait for incidents to happen in USA and posted on internet before pretending to care.
With the attention span of last few weeks it is indeed the case.
Besides the serious one you recounted. I find this [1] funny:
https://www.businessinsider.com/airbus-changing-a350-aircraf...
The 737NG is the safest airliner ever produced. Boeing is having a rough patch, but anyone counting them out is foolish. They've had rough patches before.
And aviation, especially in the U.S., is very much tied to politics, which cares not as much about what might happen, but what did.
— [0]: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10130490
Which to be fair Boeing almost has as well, but for Boeing it's mostly military contracts that subsidize the development of new airplanes that then get reused as civilian aircraft.
Deleted Comment
On the other hand, the Quebec government made the boneheaded decision to give incentives specifically to the C-Series. If they had given those incentives to the whole company, Boeing couldn't have complained.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSeries_dumping_petition_by_Bo...
Deleted Comment
American competitiveness and freedom act.
Dead Comment
* 500 to Indigo (India)
* 250 to Air India.
* 220 to Turkish Airlines
* 153 to EasyJet
* 100 to Avolon.
Air India are about 60% Airbus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_fleet
Turkish Airlines are about 50/50: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_fleet#Current...
EasyJet are all Airbus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EasyJet#Fleet
Avalon doesn't have fleet information on Wikipedia (I'm not in the industry and have no idea what a reputable place to go to get this information would be)
What is happening is that for decades, Indian govts have not focussed much on infra development. Current govt, which is in power for past 9 years, has put infra development on a rocket sled, with special focus on highways, railway stations, freight and airports.
Also, air travel is just within the reach of middle-middle class and above. Cirporate bookings are also on the rise.
On the whole, a huge boom is in the works. But dampners include eventual high prices and inefficiencies of logistics and poor management.
Indian are cheap travellers, and cutting 5 USD on a ticket that has no snacks means people will throng to it.
Market is astronomically competitive and consumers are very high price sensitive.
Apple made sure to migrate some of their factories to India is another evidence
As well as US companies lobbying the Indian government to weaken the labor laws
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03/apple-foxconn-convin...
I'd also point out that US airlines are notorious for holding on to old planes. Delta in particular has an ancient fleet but they are excellent in maintenance so it's OK, it's not like the 737 has done anything to improve the passenger experience in the past 30 years.
I have an overall impression that Boeing had excessively chooses profit over safety. E.g., the various 737 MAX problems, maybe other ways as well?
If they have, then I'd hope that losing orders gets them to mend their ways.
But maybe my view is overly simplistic.
Today I learned. For context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal
It's be nice to know how much of this is Boeing and how much is Boeing's customers. 95/5? 80/20? 50/50?
It's hard to believe that Boeing doesn't want to build a brand-new 737-sized aircraft.
Well, you have time to decide because that's not what TFA is about.
You see the headline "Airliners can't take off in Arizona because it's too hot" but the truth is "737s can't take off in Arizona because it's too hot" (737 struggles to take off under good conditions, it takes more runway to take off than planes with 2x the PAX) People say "flying sucks", but it's more like "flying sucks in a 737" (the reason why your neck locks up just thinking about sitting in a window seat on a 737 is because the 737 has a circular cross section that doesn't fit the human body; a plane smaller than a 737 with a more appropriate cross section feels like riding in a 747)
The Embraer E2-Jet is a smaller aircraft that has a bigger engine with better fuel economy because it's not an obsolete design that can't fit a bigger engine. Then there's the A220, bought by Airbus, that Boeing has no answer to and has chosen to have no answer to. For some reason they got possessed to develop several widebody airliners in a row but when it comes to overhauling the narrowbody planes that are most of the units, most of the flights and most of the social and economic impact of aviation, management has been on strike for decades.
The industry has been trying hard to keep you from riding in a modern narrowbody or regional jet because if they did, you'd be demanding it. Once you try the A220 there is no way you'd ride the same route on a 737 if you had a choice. And the thing is the A220 has lower operating costs... But remember, capitalists pay capital costs but they can make you pay operating costs. So long as everybody is flying inferior aircraft they can refuse to invest and pass higher operating costs on to you.
I find it more comfortable as it's a bit wider, the cabin wall is straighter, and the windows are higher up. Possibly it's also quieter.
Deleted Comment
The overall approach, where they wanted pilot certification to carry over is certainly a business decision, but I'd bet that pilots and airlines and so on liked it.
Similar thing with this door issue. It's likely enough to be sloppy process, and is going to cost them a mint, not save them money. Sure, you can say that compromising quality is motivated by profit, but that cedes an awful lot of the discussion of the consequences of the poor quality to the people that are pushing to save a bit up front.
Not "cost saving" per se, but definitely about money. MBAs are taught that airlines should use one kind of plane. FAA makes it expensive to certify a new kind of plane. So you get this "737 of Theseus" concept where they virtualized the 737 as a "guest", implemented on a different plane "host", leading to the crashes.