[Themaintainers] 737 design maintenance

[Danny Spitzberg]

On Friday, 'Pilot X' and 400 pilots kicked off a fascinating follow-up to
this saga:

[ABC] Boeing sued by more than 400 pilots in class action over 737 MAX's
'unprecedented cover-up'
<https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-23/over-400-pilots-join-lawsuit-against-boeing-over-737-max/11238282>

"They [the pilots filing the lawsuit] argue that they 'suffer and continue
to suffer significant lost wages, among other economic and non-economic
damages' since the fleet's global grounding... By seeking damages for
monetary and mental distress, the pilots lodging the class action said they
hoped to 'deter Boeing and other airplane manufacturers from placing
corporate profits ahead of the lives of the pilots, crews, and general
public they service'."

And, what exactly are they targeting? Automation.

"The claim brought against Boeing hinges on the controversial addition of
an automated piece of software known as the Maneuvering Characteristics
Augmentation System (MCAS). Pilot X claimed that this gave the aircraft
'inherently dangerous aerodynamic handling defects'.

For the curious, here's how the software introduced to the legacy systems
creates complicated complexity:

"The reason for this handling quirk was by design, as Boeing made the
decision to retrofit newer, large fuel-efficient engines onto an existing
737 model's fuselage, in order to create the MAX. The larger engines caused
a change in aerodynamics which made the plane prone to pitching up during
flight, so much so, that it risked a crash as a result of an aerodynamic
stall. To stop this from happening, Boeing introduced MCAS software to the
MAX, which automatically tilted the plane down if the software detected
that the plane's nose was pointing at too steep of an angle, known as a
high Angle of Attack (AOA)."

On Mon, Mar 18, 2019 at 2:41 PM PHILIP SCRANTON <
scranton at scarletmail.rutgers.edu> wrote:

> This is a stunning, yet wholly sensible, thread. When I was researching
> the development of early US military jet engines, over a decade ago,
> engineering studies and project histories showed that any substantial
> technical change ramified through the whole device in unanticipated ways.
> Such vectors took years, if not decades, to bring under control, one
> element in which was project discipline in handling/accepting proffered
> design change requests, in part because repeated changes created
> maintenance and spare parts miseries. Cold War era jet engines did
> stabilize after multiple redesigns, though few lasted anywhere near 50
> years, except perhaps in the B52 propulsion systems. It makes sense that
> airframes experienced comparable upgrades, with ambiguous implications.
>    Best regards, Phil Scranton
>
> On Sunday, March 17, 2019, Nathan Schneider <Nathan.Schneider at colorado.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Really interesting discussion here on whether and why the 737 has been in
>> continuous development for 50 years, including regulatory and market
>> dynamics:
>>
>> A 50-year-old design came back to haunt Boeing with its troubled 737 Max
>> jet - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19414164
>>
>> This discussion also touches on other such cases, like the Soyuz and NYC
>> subway and firearms and unix.
>>
>>
>> ###
>> Nathan Schneider
>> Assistant Professor, Media Studies
>> University of Colorado Boulder
>>
>
>
> --
> Philip Scranton, Emeritus Board of Governors Professor, History of
> Industry & Technology,
> Rutgers University;
> Author, Enterprise, Organization and Technology in China: A Socialist
> Experiment, 1950-1971
> Palgrave Macmillan (2019).  BOOK LINK:
> https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783030003975?wt_mc=ThirdParty.SpringerLink.3.EPR653.About_eBook#aboutBook
>
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