Note that despite what media headlines will make of this, it wasn't a Boeing issue in this case. One of their suppliers incorrectly installed a bearing on a component that could lead to moisture getting in and freezing. That component is used on the 737NG and 737Max.
These things are relatively common in aviation. An incident happened, everything went OK, but during the investigation a problem was found. The NTSB then writes a set of recommendations and it's likely that the FAA will issue an Airworthiness Directive (AD) that tells all operators to fix this problem.
Depending on the severity and the FAA's estimate of the risk that AD will either be a "fix now" which is very disruptive or a "fix at the next [some type] inspection" which is more common.
Specifically with this component the NTSB seems to think it can be removed until a replacement is available:
> Additionally, the NTSB recommended that the FAA determine if actuators with incorrectly assembled bearings should be removed from airplanes, and if so, to direct U.S. operators to do so until replacements are available.
In that case the plane won't be able to do a cat III autoland anymore, but from the text is looks like it would operate normally apart from that restriction.
Category III autoland (other than to "keep your hand in") is relatively rare anyway because it solves only a specific narrow problem.
Suppose there is one plane and it needs to land right now, but all nearby airfields are fog bound so a human couldn't land a plane there: they'd get to minimums, still not be able to see the field and abort every time until they divert to somewhere with better weather - the Cat III autoland doesn't need to see the field, it will land anyway. You have to absolutely trust the machine, this is a rare Fail Active system - humans can't necessarily help even if things go wrong so once it reaches minimums it must land the plane even if it later ceases to have 100% confidence that it can do so correctly due to systems failure.
But now we're done, the plane is on the ground, on a runway, the passengers are no longer in the sky, if the plane was about to explode or run out of fuel that's awesome, but we can't do this again, autoland doesn't taxi the plane, and it can be pea soup out there, the pilots still can't see the ground even though they know their plane is firmly landed.
So if there's a stack of fifty planes for JFK and it's zero visibility this technology lands one plane per runway, maybe you can land three or four, then it's effectively closed, that's 46 planes left to divert, it's not useless, especially when visibility is marginal rather than truly zero, but it does not allow the airports to stay running normally.
Agree that autolands are rare, but they are used for low visibility procedures and it's not "1 plane per runway". Almost the opposite, typically you would only use a limited set of runways in such conditions and severely limit the complexity of ground routing.
Practically real zero-visibility almost doesn't happen. There will be some visibility just very very little.
You can taxi slowly (think 10 miles per hour) following bright centerline lights in quite low visibility. But it would be very dangerous to manually control a landing rollout at 150+ miles per hour in that visibility.
I think you got the last part wrong. Airplanes have GPS and they know where they are on the runway, where the taxiways are and so on for all the airports they operate in.
Just as they can take off in low visibility, they can also maneuver. And airports have ground radars that know where every plane on the ground is, even if the ground controllers are able to see the planes with their own eyes.
Otherwise, in a lot of places airplanes wouldn't land pretty often :)
> Note that despite what media headlines will make of this, it wasn't a Boeing issue in this case. One of their suppliers incorrectly installed a bearing on a component that could lead to moisture getting in and freezing. That component is used on the 737NG and 737Max.
Parent sounds a bit like the software engineers who blame random FOSS libraries for the bugs that appear in their own projects using said FOSS libraries.
In your project, you're ultimately responsible for what you ship, even if you're shipping airplanes.
Indeed. If I am putting together a product and I rely on an assembly from a third party, it’s my responsibility to ensure that I have adequate QC processes in place to ensure that assemblies are made to spec before accepting them. To simply take a supplier’s word for it is negligent.
The door plug could also be spun as a supplier issues. Ultimately this points to poor supplier management at Boeing. Boeing realizes this, and is taking steps to address it including purchasing Spirit.
Did you read the whistle blower commentary on internal notes on the plane that had the door plug blowout? It wasn't a supplier issue: the people inside the factory had an off-the-books message board that directly discussed what happened on that plane, and it was precisely because the Boeing employees that removed the door failed to record the door removal in the official logs that the failure to properly reattach the bolts was not detected. Door removal is one of the activities that would have required a reinspection. It was Boeing's fault through and through.
> it wasn't a Boeing issue in this case. One of their supplier
Isn't farming things out to unreliable suppliers the core problem with Boeing? All of their problems boil down to "we have the lowest bidder manufacture everything"
That is very much a Boeing problem. They're responsible for choosing qualified vendors and verifying the quality of their work because literally everything puts hundreds of innocent lives on the line.
Step 1: spin out all your suppliers into their own companies
Step 2: use pricing power to force your suppliers to cut corners in order to survive.
Step 3: claim plausible deniability for the scores of suppliers giving you substandard parts. Roll in your money while telling the rest of the world you couldn’t have done anything differently.
I am not a pilot, but is it possible we are inching towards a scrapping of the Max? The reliability of the plane seems to be in ever increasingly doubt
As usual, anyone without prior familiarity should take all “Boeing News” with a huge grain of salt, because outrage merchants / people trying to look smart get a kick out of spreading very BAU things as if they weren’t.
Readit News
These things are relatively common in aviation. An incident happened, everything went OK, but during the investigation a problem was found. The NTSB then writes a set of recommendations and it's likely that the FAA will issue an Airworthiness Directive (AD) that tells all operators to fix this problem.
Depending on the severity and the FAA's estimate of the risk that AD will either be a "fix now" which is very disruptive or a "fix at the next [some type] inspection" which is more common.
Specifically with this component the NTSB seems to think it can be removed until a replacement is available:
> Additionally, the NTSB recommended that the FAA determine if actuators with incorrectly assembled bearings should be removed from airplanes, and if so, to direct U.S. operators to do so until replacements are available.
In that case the plane won't be able to do a cat III autoland anymore, but from the text is looks like it would operate normally apart from that restriction.
Suppose there is one plane and it needs to land right now, but all nearby airfields are fog bound so a human couldn't land a plane there: they'd get to minimums, still not be able to see the field and abort every time until they divert to somewhere with better weather - the Cat III autoland doesn't need to see the field, it will land anyway. You have to absolutely trust the machine, this is a rare Fail Active system - humans can't necessarily help even if things go wrong so once it reaches minimums it must land the plane even if it later ceases to have 100% confidence that it can do so correctly due to systems failure.
But now we're done, the plane is on the ground, on a runway, the passengers are no longer in the sky, if the plane was about to explode or run out of fuel that's awesome, but we can't do this again, autoland doesn't taxi the plane, and it can be pea soup out there, the pilots still can't see the ground even though they know their plane is firmly landed.
So if there's a stack of fifty planes for JFK and it's zero visibility this technology lands one plane per runway, maybe you can land three or four, then it's effectively closed, that's 46 planes left to divert, it's not useless, especially when visibility is marginal rather than truly zero, but it does not allow the airports to stay running normally.
Practically real zero-visibility almost doesn't happen. There will be some visibility just very very little.
You can taxi slowly (think 10 miles per hour) following bright centerline lights in quite low visibility. But it would be very dangerous to manually control a landing rollout at 150+ miles per hour in that visibility.
They get a "Follow me" car to help the plane taxi out
Slower, but it is not like the plane will stay on the runway
Just as they can take off in low visibility, they can also maneuver. And airports have ground radars that know where every plane on the ground is, even if the ground controllers are able to see the planes with their own eyes.
Otherwise, in a lot of places airplanes wouldn't land pretty often :)
Seems like a Boeing issue to me.
In your project, you're ultimately responsible for what you ship, even if you're shipping airplanes.
The world would look very different if organisations were on the hook for the actions of their suppliers.
Isn't farming things out to unreliable suppliers the core problem with Boeing? All of their problems boil down to "we have the lowest bidder manufacture everything"
That is very much a Boeing problem. They're responsible for choosing qualified vendors and verifying the quality of their work because literally everything puts hundreds of innocent lives on the line.
Step 2: use pricing power to force your suppliers to cut corners in order to survive.
Step 3: claim plausible deniability for the scores of suppliers giving you substandard parts. Roll in your money while telling the rest of the world you couldn’t have done anything differently.