AS Flight1282: Another Boeing 737 MAX crisis

[slasher-fun]

That's not comparable.

Eggs are worth half a dollar each, millions are sold every day, and the difference between a good and a bad egg to the customer will be about taste and that's it. Cost reduction is about the environment in which the chicken are raised, which is awful to the chickens, but doesn't change anything for the customer (apart for the potential weight on their mind).

Aircrafts are worth dozens of millions, 3 or 4 are sold every day (on average), and the difference between a good and a bad aircraft to the customer will be about small profit or huge losses. The faulty MCAS design of the 737 Max costed Boeing about 1500 orders (either cancelled or not made). Emirates decided against the A350-1000 because its RR engines aren't reliable enough (and that's not a safety issue, just a level of operational availability issue). The Sukhoi Superjet 100 might be 40% cheaper to buy than a similar sized B737 or an A320, but its reliability is so bad that it exited the fleet of almost all its non-Russian customers only a few years after its entry into service, while other future customers just canceled their orders (that was way before the 2021 trade sanctions against Russia).

It's not all about the price tag of a product, but mainly about the extra revenue / costs incurred by that product, which for these kind of products can be a lot more that the products themselves: if you save 10 million in buying aircraft Z instead of Y, but it appears that Z's unreliability costs you every year an extra 2 million vs Y, well aircraft Z was the wrong pick...

Or if we're to talk about trains, sure, AnsaldoBreda's "Fyra" was much cheaper that what Alstom or Siemens could offer. But this didn't really matter anymore to NS and SNCB when the whole fleet had to be taken out of service after a series of serious incidents (including the loss of a door!) only 6 weeks after their entry into service, as the cost of this "disruption" far exceeded what had been saved in capital costs...

 

[Brian Battuello]

Plenty of pressure in all directions. When an airline buys aircraft, they negotiate every dime. Every dollar the manufacturer saves on design, construction and especially outsourcing is a dollar in the shareholders pocket. The days when Pan Am and Boeing considered themselves partners for the good of the industry is long gone.

That said, modern aircraft are still pretty amazing machines.

 

[JamesWhitcombRiley]

Surprising the FAA is not coming in for more criticism, compared to the previous 737 MAX disaster. Regulatory capture had Boeing largely running its own certification with light supervision from the FAA. All the things above about Boeing after the MD merger are true, but I'm chiming in on it being a highly regulated duopoly, choose A(irbus) or B(oeing), and I take it the order books are full.

Amazon is an "engineer first" company, as opposed to traditionally US companies being known as "sales first," and that compared to the rest of the world. Sales was the most highly compensated job in US companies, and that was in contrast to the rest of the world. We're an outgoing, optimistic people! But I'm pretty out-of-date on all that. It's probably now finance, and the executive suite - where compensation has soared. Their customers are the stock market, reading the quarterlies, etc. Culturally you see a mindset of cutting people as the default way to higher profitability, and it's hard to convince free market thinkers that business culture can have anti-economic biases.

 

[jis]

The Regulatory Capture related to FAA certification and inspection role was possibly an unintended consequence of something carried out to satisfy Congressional intent in order to be able to cut FAA funding. You asked for it, you got it.

 

[crescent2]

This video by a respected pilot has a lot of details about factors contributing to this accident.

 

[jis]

Another video with ex accident investigators discussing the information available so far

 

[flitcraft]

The Regulatory Capture related to FAA certification and inspection role was possibly an unintended consequence of something carried out to satisfy Congressional intent in order to be able to cut FAA funding. You asked for it, you got it.

Indeed. But regulatory capture by industry transcends the aviation industry. It's part and parcel of an ideological perspective, that industries and markets together will supply what we need best, and that government regulation is a drag on the efficient work of the market. The gutting of government regulation, partly via agency capture and partly through de-regulation, has had far-reaching consequences across the board.

 

[andytiedye]

The pilots had just endured a terrifying experience, where the cockpit door was ripped open, their headsets ripped off, and checklists flew out. After safely landing the plane, they forgot to pull the breakers on the CVR. This is a forgivable mistake.

As for the seat being empty: there were 7 empty seats on the plane, and Alaska uses assigned seating. People sometimes look for different seats at check-in, or what is more likely: a couple seated here got upgraded to premium economy or first.

Those were seats that someone could have been upgraded TO, since they had extra legroom.

 

[Trogdor]

Those were seats that someone could have been upgraded TO, since they had extra legroom.

I doubt those seats have extra legroom. The whole point of putting a plug there instead of a door is so the airline doesn’t have to work their seating layout around it.

 

[flitcraft]

No extra legroom, since the area in question is not designed to be used as an emergency exit--the actual emergency exit row with greater legroom is fairly far forward of the row in question with the plug. Seats are added to the planes' fuselages in Renton, in the configuration desired by the acquiring airline. No US airline, and few foreign ones, use an emergency exit there.

 

[west point]

Now another undisclosed item for pilots on the 737 MAXs. My question obviously is are there other items not disclosed? Boeing management, engineering persons, test pilots are all needed to be questioned on this under oath,

 

[Chris I]

Those were seats that someone could have been upgraded TO, since they had extra legroom.

No extra legroom with this door plug config. I think we can refer to row 26 as the "unexpected exit row".

https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Alaska_Airlines/Alaska_Airlines_Boeing_737-900_D.php

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Those were seats that someone could have been upgraded TO, since they had extra legroom.

Where’s the extra leg room? As others stated, this was not an exit row in this plane.

 

[slasher-fun]

Now another undisclosed item for pilots on the 737 MAXs. My question obviously is are there other items not disclosed?

The presence of deactivated exits on an aicraft is fully disclosed.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Where’s the extra leg room? As others stated, this was not an exit row in this plane.

Looks like the window seat has all the legroom anyone could ever want...if you can lean to the left a bit. Might be a little cold and windy though.

 

[John Santos]

The presence of deactivated exits on an aicraft is fully disclosed.

According to the video posted by @crescent2 in Comment #30 above, the undisclosed issue was that the cockpit door slams open in the event of a sudden cabin depress. This is what caused the pilots to lose their checklists and other important documents (which is probably why they forgot to pull the CVR breaker after landing.) The extremely rapid, unexpected depress probably delayed their response to the loss of cabin pressure, which at 14K feet, did not in this case probably matter much but at 20 or 30 thousand feet could have made a huge difference. One second depress is much harder to deal with (possible hearing loss, headsets pulled off, etc.) than a slower depress. Even 5-10 seconds would greatly reduce these problems.

Boeing may have saved a few pounds of aircraft dry weight by not reinforcing the door and frame sufficiently to hold up for a few seconds, but if that's why it was designed that way, it was a false economy. Knowing about it but not documenting it was unconscionable.

 

[west point]

Suspect that FAA is going to need find way to secure documents in the cockpit. If this happened at a higher altitude even the portable computers for navigation may be sucked out?

 

[slasher-fun]

According to the video posted by @crescent2 in Comment #30 above, the undisclosed issue was that the cockpit door slams open in the event of a sudden cabin depress.
Boeing may have saved a few pounds of aircraft dry weight by not reinforcing the door and frame sufficiently to hold up for a few seconds, but if that's why it was designed that way, it was a false economy. Knowing about it but not documenting it was unconscionable.

Well, did they know even about it? Is this even part of the testing during aircraft design? I'm far from convinced about this...

EDIT: Seems that it's actually done on purpose, the locking mechanism has a feature that will unlock the door in case of a sudden pressure change. This is to prevent damage to the bulkhead between the cabin and the cockpit, as it contains lots of wiring, and its damage would be a great threat to the safety of the flight controls.
That's a fully disclosed feature (at least on Airbus aircrafts, but I would assume the same for Boeing?...), there's a status LED for both pressure sensors on the "cockpit door" control panel in the cockpit (see for example this A320 documentation pages 37 to 41)

Suspect that FAA is going to need find way to secure documents in the cockpit. If this happened at a higher altitude even the portable computers for navigation may be sucked out?

Or just implement the checklists in the aircraft display as a backup measure, like what the ECAM kind of already does on Airbus aircrafts.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

I guess I should clarify what I said above about the true cost of maintenance, especially because I was particularly writing it on here, where the focus is trains.
When something like this happens on an airplane, I sometimes ask: what would have happened if this had been on a train?
And the answer is usually "stopped outside of Chehalis for 15 minutes while someone finds some duct tape".
Everything on an airplane has to be engineered to a higher degree of precision because flying is just intrinsically more difficult than ground travel. Things have to be engineered better both because the forces involved are greater, and an error has much worth repercussions.
I also believe that the total cost of maintenance is not reflected in the ticket prices for air travel.

 

[west point]

Or just implement the checklists in the aircraft display as a backup measure, like what the ECAM kind of already does on Airbus aircrafts.

That would still not note the last item on the paper emergency check list of pulling the voice recorder C/B. The ECAM is shut down first.

 

[slasher-fun]

I also believe that the total cost of maintenance is not reflected in the ticket prices for air travel.

Well most airlines make a profit, so I'll have to disagree on that.
What's reflected though is the complete absence of taxes on the kerosene, but that's another topic.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

Well most airlines make a profit, so I'll have to disagree on that.

I am not particularly well-informed on the economics of airlines, but I know that with any large business, the accounting and finances can get pretty opaque, and that it is easy enough for any business to show a profit when it is actually losing money long term---or to show a loss when it is actually making a profit.
In the case of airlines, it may be the case that they can raise capital costs at a time when interest rates are low, and temporarily turn a profit by foregoing maintenance.
When I look at the ticket prices of some low cost carriers, the basic mathematics of how many 50 dollar round trip tickets they need to sell to pay off a 50 million dollar airplane leads me to think that the economics of airlines are based more on some type of complicated financing than on the accounting of costs and revenues.

 

[flitcraft]

I am not particularly well-informed on the economics of airlines, but I know that with any large business, the accounting and finances can get pretty opaque, and that it is easy enough for any business to show a profit when it is actually losing money long term---or to show a loss when it is actually making a profit.
In the case of airlines, it may be the case that they can raise capital costs at a time when interest rates are low, and temporarily turn a profit by foregoing maintenance.
When I look at the ticket prices of some low cost carriers, the basic mathematics of how many 50 dollar round trip tickets they need to sell to pay off a 50 million dollar airplane leads me to think that the economics of airlines are based more on some type of complicated financing than on the accounting of costs and revenues.

I know of no airlines, even low cost carriers, that make profits by foregoing maintenance. One fatal crash will cost the airline more than years of maintenance--and if you get caught by regulators, you're hosed even without a crash. How low cost airlines make a profit isn't through ticket prices alone--it's through what the industry calls 'ancillary fees' for checking bags, having a carry-on a smidge too big or too heavy, snacks and drinks, checking in at the airport, etc. Some, like Ryan Air make nearly as much on those fees as on ticket prices. Also by running high load factors--canceling flights that aren't solidly booked, and by keeping their planes in the sky (and earning money) as much as possible, with quick turnaround between flights. Leasing deals in lieu of purchase of planes has cut costs in recent years, too, though this may be changing at the moment.

One way in which maintenance costs can be reduced, however, is by having fewer types of aircraft, so that your maintenance staff, whether in house or contract, only needs expertise on a smaller spectrum of aircraft and your parts inventory can be much smaller than if you had a multiplicity of aircraft from different manufacturers. Southwest is the prime example of this strategy.

 

[caravanman]

I heard recently that Ryanair and Easyjet were rated as among the safest airlines? If we are talking profit v safety, Mr Fish's argument seems a tad, err, fishy?

 

[slasher-fun]

True for easyJet, but Ryanair had lots of issues with crew rest and pilots being disciplined for go-arounds, diversions, or wanting to carry extra fuel... “Mayday Mayday” wins over Ryanair defamation allegations

Ryanair is on my personal "airline blacklist" for lots of reasons, including this one of course.