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Petter, for my part I think that it’s quite sad that you’ve stopped your career of flying so that you can earn a living from TH-cam. I recognize that you want to spend time with your family but nonetheless it’s regrettable that you’re no longer going to fly. Best wishes to you and yours.
What's the NG like for reliability? I started my career flying the 737-400 and 500 and when I moved to the A320/321, tech delays were a lot rarer than on the 737.
A friend of a friend was on the Ethiopian Airlines flight. He went to my university, and had a huge amount of ambition and potential to help his community. Thank you for covering this situation, Petter. RIP Micah, and all others killed by greed and hubris.
@@melodybarta2837 , my condolences to everyone who lost someone these two tragic flights flying on the Max8 ( Ethiopian and Lion Air). The FAA was somewhat complicit too granting quick approval for air worthiness of the Max8. But as usual with these companies that’s under constant pressure to bring in shareholders value/ profits while neglecting and pushing aside safety and their responsibility towards their airline buyers.
I think that the "more for less" philosophy didn't just doomed the 737 max and Boeing, but it is also daunting the European automotive industry. What Boeing is experiencing in its own market is very similar to what it is going on in VW, Stellantis and others. When you stop innovating to pay more dividends to your shareholders, you are basically killing the company.
So short sighted. If you make a good product, your shareholders will be happy, but instead they try to please the shareholders for quarter to quarter profits instead of long term.
The software industry is starting to do this too. Google has hardly done any real innovation for years, it mostly comes from buying other companies or rushing to respond to trends. Now we've got to the reduce the workforce to appease shareholders and investors stage. The biggest difference is there's virtually no competition in big tech. They're essentially a cartel lobbying together for anticompetitive regulations.
There's two ways to kill a company. Stagnation and penny pinching; and on the other hand overinvestment in new technology much of which may not end up paying back out. It's an art with no provably correct way to do it. Usually, management which drives a more conservative route can hold onto their positions for longer and reap more personal benefits - bad incentive structure. A "modern" compromise is to not innovate yourself instead nurture a field of smaller competitors not interfering with them too much, and when they have taken up the risk, didn't crash and burn, and produced an innovation that works, you gobble them up. But when it comes to things that require such immense resources like large planes whee you won't just see a competitor pop up from the ground, well that's not going to work is it.
This is the philosophy of the McDonnell family, imported to Boeing with the MD "merger." As a friend of mine once said, it's astounding that one family could destroy three great American airplane companies.
I was at the Boeing museum in Seattle last year. I met a tour guide who was a former Boeing employee for 40 some years who had recently retired. He spoke openly how Boeing had built up brand recognition and affection and respect worldwide over a century, and destroyed it all in a matter of months. The look on his face, man... You could tell he was heartbroken
Talk to an old Mercedes Engineer, you will hear the same story. Maybe talk to any old engineer.... The computer screen and "modelling" destroyed engineering. Better watch porn than use FE to design a piece.
You are quite correct that the management problem is NOT just at the top... I worked on the 787 build in Charleston as Shipside Engineering Support Team Manager and MRB Engineering Team, and the "upstairs" people I worked with are still there. They were perfectly OK with breaking the Material Chain of Custody for KEEL SPLICES by "relabeling" Those parts JUST TO MEET SCHEDULE!! I refused to sign of on that, and was quickly (and gladly) pushed out... I have emails on that... More details if you want them
@@MichaelBuetKESE I believe without knowing everything that the supply chain if relabeling sometimes is one of the key issues. “Meet the schedule” can probably only be acceptable if the quality is acceptable. Then the question is why has Airbus fared so “good” ? Considering that most suppliers face shortages of stuff, quality assurance and perhaps adequate supply chains.
I'd hazard a guess that this was ZA001, the Potemkin roll-out airplane. Biggest lie ever. Should be taught in every B-school as a case study on how to demoralize your workforce.
This is a very well done explanation of the problems at Boeing. As a former Boeing engineer, I am shocked by the combination of bad engineering and really bad senior management decisions that led to this mess. Boeing was once a great company with the world's best engineers.
The problem with a cost reduction strategy is that is like heating your house by burning the furniture. Problem comes when you have run out of furniture.....
Yeah but sadly this is the way basically every company on the stock market is run these days in every sector! Its a systemic problem with the entire stock market economy by this point, where every company will prioritise greater profit margins for themselves and shareholders than anything else. In the past innovation was seen as what would increase profits and appease both shareholders and customers, but these days to these companies, innovation is just seen as an expense thats unlikely to bear fruit compared to just squeezing the existing lemon infinitely tighter, whehter its by overcharging customers, underpaying workers, cheapening out on the lemons themselves, or a combination of everything! Its also why many of the highest regarded businesses in their respective fields nowadays arent on the stock market at all, but are rather privately owned, family owned, or state owned. They don't have shareholders that demand ever increasing returns on investment to appease to, they can just run a financially sound business that makes its customers happy without having to increase profits infinitely to appease some outsider who doesnt even contribute anything to the company other than his own money to just sell on later when making a profit.
Boeing seems to make its money from being a corporate raider. They buy promising and wealthy companies then strip them of assets and then discard the carcass. Happened to the company I worked for. Evil people.
@@jamesengland7461 Agreed. Firing the employees who just polish the silverware that no one uses is a valid cost saving measure. Firing the staff that keep ordering new silverware to polish is also a valid measure. Burning the house down because the silverware is taking up too much space is not.
My mom came to Boeing when they bought the part of Rockwell she worked for. She worked for Rockwell/Boeing for about 19 years, in the Government Operations office. She was initially excited when the merger with MDD was announced. Her office already dealt with government business, and it got much busier due to MDD's focus on defense and federal contracts. But then she go to know more of the MDD folks, who quickly became prominent in the company. She did not like what she saw. They had little interest in Boeing's incredible heritage in commercial aviation. They pivoted the company heavily towards defense and government business (and lobbying), and their priorities were more about maximizing profits than reliable engineering. When they moved the HQ to Chicago, away from their amazing engineers in the Seattle area, she knew things were going in the wrong direction. When she retired from the company just before her office moved to Crystal City, the culture there was unrecognizable. She passed away before the 737 MAX crashes and the Boeing HQ move to Northern Virginia. I miss her terribly, but I'm glad she didn't have to witness what happened to a company she once admired and was proud to work for.
I worked for Rockwell myself - in a completely unrelated division - but your story rings very true. It's astonishing how just a few senior people with no integrity can utterly destroy a business.
Hunter Killer assassins going up against Boy Scouts indeed…. Harry Stonecipher didn’t even pretend to care about Boeing’s history. He just flat out said ‘Oh yeah Boeing’s a financial institute now. Screw engineering.”
What a tragedy to have to watch a great company like this. If companies didn't have to wait 5 years to get an Airbus I think Boeing would basically be a military contractor. They assemble a substandard airplane these days. The tactics they employed to break the machinist union are disgusting and the 787 and all its problems are a direct result of this decision. I am no conspiracy theorist but I'm pretty sure they un-alived a whistleblower too.
From what I remember Boeing prior to the MDD merger had a very good safety record whereas MDD's was a bit shakier. The joke going around at the time was the more financially savvy MDD execs bought Boeing with Boeing's money. It also changed the culture and Boeing was thereafter led by more MDD minded managers. James Mc Nerney ironically wanted more for less from everyone but himself. While he was penny pinching on engineering, trying to bust the unions he was being paid ever larger sumsand took about $94m out of Boeing in compensation during his term as CEO.
Thank you for providing more information on this topic. A friend of mine, a junior in my university, was on the fateful Lion Air flight. She died in the line of duty, doing a business trip as a government employee. RIP to her and all killed by greed and hubris.
It still boils my blood that the responsible CEOs got a 'golden parachute' instead of a hefty jail sentence. And no, I'm not comfortable with labeling it "company culture" and sweeping it under the rug. Boeing management need to hurt. A lot! I don't believe for a second that they care about anything. Not failure, not harm to the company, not the workers, not the airlines that are their customers. Not the laws, not the FAA, not national pride, not basic human decency and certainly NOT us passengers who they call "cargo". "Insurable goods". "If a few eggs break, no biggie. We just say 'oopsie', pay for it with company money and continue business as usual". They are so full of themselves that all they care about are stock price and their bonuses, if anything. No, I am not done. Haven't even started yet. They need to pay. Not with company money and not with government bailouts. THEY. NEED. TO. PAY! Until they really feel what they did. This is not okay. What they did DELIBERATELY and in FULL KNOWLEDGE will NEVER be okay!
Boeing is a business that came into existence by designing new planes. It is also a business that became successful by designing new planes. It is also a business that grew into a market leader by designing new planes. It then appointed a CEO who thought that designing new planes was a moonshot. How can you appoint a CEO who views your core skill as almost impossible ? How can you not see that this will kill the Company ?
You really think this decision comes down to just one guy? Boring sent out request to their large customer’s. The airlines didn’t want new training to be required, and the decision was made for them. It’s not Boeings singular greed. They were literally just fulfilling their customers wishes.
Engineers need to be in charge of engineering not MBAs. The old Boeing was run by engineers and they made great planes. Today it’s run by MBAs trying to maximize profit at the exclusion of all other considerations. The results are self evident.
@@mitchellstoddard1061 as an MBA, I wholeheartedly agree. The golden age of boing was led by a lawyer: William M. Allen. In his tenure(1945-1968), the company was cemented as an engineering company and developed the 707, 727, 737 and most of the 747. What made him successful was his humbleness and an ability to listen. Something Boeing’s last 20 years of leadership have lacked.
@@mikemck4796 If Boeing just said "NO, that's not possible", the airline would have had 2 choices: buy from them regardless and do the training, or buy from Airbus and also do training.
No “maybe” about it. I’m pro- big government, pro- regulations, and pro- the administrative state. But it absolutely pisses me off when for-profit corporations use their “indispensable” status with the government as an excuse to screw over their customers, fuck over their employees, and wreck their companies. Such companies should be nationalized… and both their executives and their _major stockholders_ JAILED.
Your content with your relatively small team is so much better than the way Netflix covered these technical details in their documentary. thanks for continuing to put out these amazing and well thought out videos.
Yes, it was a very detailed deep dive that covered a lot of technical information in a way that helped the audience understand without patronising them. I definitely appreciate that.
I'm a software engineer with 20 years of experience. Exactly what you said about not pursuing new tech is exactly what's killed other companies I've worked for in the past. They stopped innovating, so smart people stopped wanting to work there.
As a retired Aircraft Maintenance Engineer who has spent the last 25 years in Technical Training, and delivering training on the 737 MAX, on the initial release of the AMM and the Student Material, the description of MCAS consisted of one short sentence in ATA 22. That was it! It was as much of a mystery to the Aircraft Mechanics as it was to the pilots.
One short sentence and buried behind what was perceived as more important information. The utterly callous disregard for the wellbeing of all users of the product was shocking.
@@Jablicek Yeah, I think this was their biggest mistake. Not so much trying to get as much as they can from old designs, or not innovating, those can be issues, but this... this is a big deal. They left the pilots untrained and unaware of this system, as well as maintenance engineers apparently. And yeah, the system itself wasn't exactly what they thought, it caused problems. Even if didn't though, leaving pilots unaware of it, is just criminal really. And all this so airlines don't add up extra type training from what I gather, to make the plane look more "cost effective" to compete with Airbus. That's just stupid. Lives lost for a stupid, greedy reason.
"As a retired Aircraft Maintenance Engineer who has spent the last 25 years in Technical Training, and delivering training on the 737 MAX,..." The 737 Max was designed 25 years ago?
maintenance folks don't need to know what MCAS is as it's not a system you can go repair/replace. It's only something flight controls engineering and pilots need to understand. The underlying issue is a lot of the world's airlines don't have great training or experience in the flight deck and rely way too heavily on automated controls. When something goes wrong, they don't react properly. The ASA door plug is a great example. Any pilot knows a cabin pressure warning = go below 10k ft, and the door never would've come off. A maintenance high blow test would've found the leak and the door plug would've been properly replaced. Those DEI pilots didn't even know the FD door automatically swings open during sudden decompression by design.
As a former US Navy sailor, I thank you for not treating this like "old news". It's very dismissive to treat Boeing's profit over quality culture as a minor or past issue, especially when you have someone like the former Navy aviation Captain Ed Person, who was the Senior Production Manager at the Renton, WA factory where the first two doomed 737 MAX airplanes were built, is still very active with a podcast (Alarm Bells) and founded The Foundation for Aviation Safety with other pilots as well.
its the US (and EU ) business model, cut any and all costs to increase the stock price, even if its just for a few days at most. now SOP in the US and Europe, and has been for a long time now. this will kill both economies in the short run. and the companies in both. and this is as much an invention of Jack Welch at GE, and you can see how well it worked for GE. barely a shell of what it used to be
I’ve been following this story myself and I’m appalled at what I’ve been reading over the year. Hiding faulty parts from the FAA and dragging stuff out of the scrap heap? It’s embarrassing that a billion dollar corporation is acting like a shady second hand car dealer. It’s almost like they’re intentionally trying to humiliate themselves at this point 🤦♀️
@@yamato6114 Aljazeera revealed the truth is even worse. Boeing planes were allowed by the FAA to fly at 36,000 ft, the higher a plane flies, the lower the fuel consumption, on the assumption critical parts are all NC machine made, but the parts contractors used human labour resulting in gross errors. The degradation rate was higher than projection, and it is only a matter of time before an explosive decompression occurs.
I began my engineer career for a small company doing rework for Boeing in Seattle. After a few years spent in the US, I decided to move back in my home country in France and Germany to work for its competitor. It was like restarting from scratch. The culture is absolutely different there. They both build planes, but with a different mindset. You can see it from the shop floor : all workers wearing company uniform, PPE, FOD bag, clean working environment. Even to put a label you need training and qualification. Quality and manufacturing are separated and quality has it's last word with engineering teams. They are not perfect, but everything I see like speak up culture, training... Actions Recently taken by Boeing following the plug blow up have existed there for many years. When I arrived I was seeing this as useless, a lot of paper, even for small rework you need a complete analysis, assessment, simulation and approval from the engineering and quality teams. Now I understand why. It doesn't help to reach the delivery target but at least we know what we are doing. It's sad to see my former Boeing colleagues in this situation...
"When you stop innovating and start relying on only defending old wins, you basically start dying" This made me think of the current crises at Intel so much!
That's what killed RCA. They went from pretty much being the key company in developing radio and television to end up selling rebadged Panasonic VCR's.
@DomDeDom Boeing does not have a monopoly, not at all. That's not the problem issue. It's an insane management philosophy that dictates only stock price & ROI matter, nothing else.
The fact that your content here is perceived to be so much better than Netflix speaks to the value of your technical know-how. Thank you for choosing to educate us
Petter & team is amazing. Though, in fairness, considering that Netflix also produced such travesties as Ancient Apocalypse, beating them in the documentary game isn't necessarily a high bar 😂
As a long time follower, I'm impressed by the shift in your position. Back when the max crisis was unfolding you were defending Boeing... but now your position is more neutral and fact seeking... very refreshing!
Every major company has this on paper because of whistleblower laws. In reality, the knowledge that whistleblowing is a career limiting move (off the books) still has a strong chilling effect, because "decision makers" and "job creators" face no consequences for their actions in this country. The power of pulling the ladder up behind you.
Jim McNerney's 'more for less' mantra could very well have meant 'more for me (and executives) and less for you (workers)! Passengers (safety and comfort) are an afterthought! How else can we explain stiffing the workers (including taking away their pensions), cutting corners in manufacturing, downsizing QC & QA, while at the same time boosting executive compensation?
How in the F the MAX wasn’t grounded after the first crash is still another astonishing question for me People should be in jail for this, but we’re going to forgot everything fast
It should be obvious if you look at the immediate reactions after the Lion Air Thai crash. Not only Boeing themselves tried to spin the story that it was an obvious pilot error due to poor training - a Southeast Asian LCC seemed like an easy target. Obviously that line of argumentation went out of the window with the Ethiopian crash. People just didn't want to admit that Boeing simply couldn't keep up with Airbus anymore and the problems that had been lingering since the 80s were not only showing but also killing people.
An artifact of the FAA's dual mandate. You see, there is a major conflict of interest because the FAA is supposed to both regulate aviation and aircraft manufacture in the US AND also supposed to promote the airline industry and support healthy profits. Get ready for more of the same because Trump's policies will only aggravate the problem. If you hated the 737 MAX, you're going to utterly despise Boeing's new plane - the 737 Super MAX.
@@konni6694 Sounds terribly similar to the Chernobyl disaster. The manufacturer is perfect and it must be operator error, because the device wasn't meant to be used that way. Except that no one told the operators that they shouldn't use the device that way, and the problem was purposefully omitted from the manuals to make the product look perfect, combined with the fact that there were no other fail safes to prevent disaster in case the operator decided to use the product that way anyway and zero training on how to recover once the machine was put in motion.
I'll only add a compliment to whoever edited this; the "tunnel vision" effects here and there around things with Boeing logos are absolutely spot on. Kudos to Team Mentour's research, skill, and creativity. Thank you!
Seems to me that all industries are increasingly focused on short term gains only with no thought given to the long views and decades of advancement that got them to their position in the first place
it's a plague, because the companies that do it, often can earn a lot of money in the short term, buying the companies working towards the long term. By the time the company is failing because lack of long term planning, the CEO (s) that bled the company dry are long gone with their big bonuses and the companies planning for long term have been dismantled. The whole 2008 financial crisis was very similar. The banks not partaking in the shady sub prime market, got bought out by those that did.
A publicly traded company will always put their stockholders and interests above safety and lives. If any of us treated the public with this much disregard and carelessness you would be in prison.
That ebbs and flows. If capitalisms does its work and removes the old sick trees from the forest they will be replaced by younger companies who have the work culture the old ones once had. Many times, the most capable employees are fed up with their old bosses and start their own company and compete their former employers out of the market. Unless with lots of lobbying the old trees are kept alive and the new ones are strangled with patent exclusions and other regulations. Also the whole aircraft industry has a high entrance cost, naturally, so the old trees can afford to stay around longer.
The 737 is a frankenplane. It started out as a sleek, sharp-looking little regional jet, and they just kept on stretching it, slapping more and more crap on it, bending things to fit bigger and bigger engines, culminating in two of them crashing themselves. It's a 60-year-old design at its heart. It was a great plane... in 1967.
How old the design of the 747 and why don‘t people say the same things about 747-8? It‘s not the age of the 737, itÄs about the very new invention MCAS and how poorly it was desned. If a new plane consited of only wuch poorlx designed new components, it would be eveb worse.
@@JM_2019 Mainly because the 747 is still used for its original design purpose: Hauling a lot of people a long distance; hauling a helluva lot of people a short distance (Japan); and hauling cargo. If you look at a 747-100 and a 747-8 they look the same. Not so with the 737. It's a frankenplane.
@@james-p It is a frankenplane, but because of the MCAS, not because of the engines. As Mentor said in the video, the design is in perfect balance - the fact that they wanted to make it feel as the NG and designed a system for that that can turn into a death trap based on a single input makes it a frankenplane.
You would think that would motivate them to take safety seriously but history proves conclusively that that isn’t how corporations work. It’s like saying that restaurants won’t serve substandard food because making customers sick will be bad for business. Business entities will only stick to prescribed safety standards if there is a meaningful inspection and enforcement regime AND genuine accountability afterwards if things go wrong. It was perfectly logical for Boeing’s management to cut corners on safety because there was no particular risk to them from doing so, whatever happened they were going to retire with a chunky bonus and a fat pension.
This is the underlying cause of enshittification in every industry. The product just has to look okay on paper so you can trade stock. Making the product actually usable is basically malpractice because it costs money that could be going back out to the stockholders.
Not that long ago there was an internal webcast at Boeing, with various upper managers talking about their department or program's accomplishments. A person from BCA was proudly going over how automated testing had cut their FQT from weeks down to a few days. I struggled to believe what I had just heard since it showed they learned nothing.
Believe me when I say that the right test harness can truly decimate testing times even while doing things properly and by the book. Although I work with avionics only, I don't know how well that generalizes to general systems
@@alessandroceloria oh I can completely agree a good test harness/rig/jig/setup/etc can make all the difference. But what she was describing was replacing interactive human testing to a test plan with CI style suites. Basically bragging she was doing things the BSF way...
@@alessandroceloria As former software developer, I know enough about the topic to say that automated tests can boost productivity. But if the company is throwing manual testing overboard because "We already have automated tests", it is an invitation for errors to slip through. Because automated tests are by nature limited and cannot replace human intuition.
@@rabiatorthegreat6163 Spot on, but I think this is not incompatible what with the Boeing manager sai there. The inclusion of the letter "Q" in the procedure mentioned by OP makes me think that is a qualification procedure. These are driven by requirements (eg: ADC must report speed as invalid if above 450 KTS) and tend to be dead simple, dead stupid, dead boring, and extremely easy to automate if you have a capable enough system. The reason is that these don't verify the correctness of the software per se, big rather it's adherence to expectations, and is important, among other things, to make sure that differently implemented modules can correctly communicate with each other, since avionics are extremely distributed systems. Software tets per se (eg: verify that the program doesn't crash if you press two buttons in sequence) have a decent overlap with requirements, but are generally separately handled as it is impossible (or extremely impractical) to prove the correctness of software through sheer requirements. For that there are more classical approaches to testing, such as unit testing etc... And of course (good) developers run their own tests while developing the software. But that, as mentioned earlier, does not necessarily go in the qualification procedure, which is more focused on correctness of the overarching algorithm, rather than the implementation. At least, that's how that works on my side. I am under easa rules and don't work with airliners, so the grass could definitely be different over there. Certainly, I hope that this increased automation (which can actually improve safety, for reasons I won't get into as this is already a poem) has been properly scrutinized by the authorities, given Boeing's recent past... And I hope they are working on getting back to their former glory...
@@rabiatorthegreat6163 They should be run alongside, not instead of. Because an automated system is only as good as the people who designed it, possibly only as good as as the one person who wrote the line of code that has a mistake in it.
@@mrluckyuncle that was the heritage Boeing attitude. This new attitude comes from the McDonnell-Douglas people -- it's exactly how they destroyed both of those companies!
when the airlines are requesting sim training, but not the manufacturer or the regulator, (should be the other way around) you know something may be seriously wrong, well, it was I think this might be a good example of regulatory capture.
I really don't think it was an agency nature situation. I think that the regulators were skunked by only being told what sounded good, instead of the truth.
@@Ldavies2 i know, but when manufacturer is saving costs by monkeying with the aircraft handling, in order to make it "feel" like other aircraft, in order to prevent need for sim training, then that is a red flag, not in hindsight, it was a red flag before the accidents.
I am an embedded systems software engineer and I would rather quit my job than to implement an MCAS system in the way it was implemented here. We always have to expect every possible subsystem to fail at some point and we may never rely on just a single input (such as the aoa sensor) for any actuator trigger (trim down). This implementation is absolutely reckless. When I heard they had implemented it like this, I lost all faith in Boeing as a company, because this is an absolutely obvious hazard. Every system will fail at some point and we always have to make sure, that the failure mode is safe.
Agreed! I've been an avionics tech, and became a EE designing for aircraft and earthmoving equipment. When I did items that could be safety critical, we did a DFMEA (design failure modes and effects) analysis, where we looked at the worst case outcome for any sort of failure. Did Boeing not do this sort of analysis? I can imagine that if such an analysis was done, the engineers involved might have fully understood the complexity of the system either. I can also imagine pressure to get stuff done quickly and not fully considering all implications of a failure. Another factor that I can't wrap my head around... there were two AOA sensors on the aircraft! Why didn't MCAS look at the outputs of both?? I suppose that was when they thought it was a simple system and easy to disconnect, so no need? So many ways that this could have been avoided.
@@SkyhawkSteve My understanding is that only one AOA sensor was provided by default, unless the customer specifically requested two. I don.t believe either of the two planes that crashes had two installed.
Boeing was once famous for its "No single point failures" design mantra. Now we have a 737 Max system vulnerable to a single failure of a angle of attack sensor, which are notorious for their failure rate, primarily due to bird strikes.
@@SkyhawkSteve Due to the accelerated schedule, Boeing had to deal with a large number of design changes very late in the development cycle. My understanding is that in order to save time they were only updating the safety analysis every 60 days or so in order to deal with the numerous changes more efficiently. Their safety analysis also concluded that pilots would recognize an MCAS failure within a few seconds based on its similarity to a runaway trim servo, even though it's cyclic actuation is completely different from the continuous action of a runaway trim servo. This conclusion was backed up with simulator data where highly trained Boeing pilots briefed on the system had no difficulty dealing with MCAS failures.
Absolutely fascinating. It’s the same kind of attitude that lead NASA to the Challenger and Columbia disasters. It’s horrible that so many people had to pay for executive arrogance.
Very good explained. However I miss 1 thing. The new MCAS actually required a new certification proces for the 737-MAX. This however would delay the delivery too much, to possible customers risking they'd change to Airbus instead. So Boeing decided to keep quiet about the MCAS system, and I have heard something like Boeing had a former Boeing employee in a very high position at the FAA, and Boeing used this contact to keep the MAX from a new certification for the MCAS. That is what I have understood about it. But correct me when I am wrong here.
I am 62 and when I started my corporate career back in the early 90s (in earnest) I was one of the those "business flyers" who flew around the US and later the world on many a business trip. In my entire career, I totaled well more than 1200 roundtrip flights and back then everything was Boeing or McDonnell Douglas ... except for some USAir, Northwest and America West planes - it was always Boeing. It made me feel really great to hear all of the familiar noises, vibrations, doors, gallies, etc. I retired about 10 years ago and recently we traveled to Europe and flew on several A321NEOs ... that really changed my view of Airbus, that and the fact that Boeing was indeed changing and it was noticeable ... if Boeing cannot get its act together and very quickly, this younger corporate generation will basically have the same comfort level with Airbus that I once had with Boeing. The only way Boeing can make it's comeback is either a wonderful new technology aircraft, or Airbus making huge mistakes like Boeing with the Max jets. Too bad, good will is very hard to earn, but very easy to lose.
Boeing after the LION air disaster knew the MCAS was to blame, they calculated the probability of another air disaster in the immediate future was low, allowing them time to correct the MCAS. They were perfectly happy to risk aircraft full of passengers crashing in order to avoid admitting the MCAS was a mistake. The MCAS was only needed for commercial reasons : to avoid 737 certified pilots having to recertified with simulator training. The repositioning of the engines needed to fit them in, changed the CG, and the effects of take off thrust. The reason there was no US or European crash was due to social media. The pilots found out what to do from pilots social media groups. The Alaskan door plug incident happened before the aircraft reached full altitude. If the plane had reached full altitude, the depressurization shock would have killed most of the passengers.
I think they need to put in a new management team with the same attitude as the dream team coming to our government on Jan. 20. I also think that a lot of companies' directors need to weed out the bean-counters and MBAs, and bring in teams who know their products and their customers' needs.
Similarly NASA were the only ones in the game, then along came SpaceX with their 'reusable launch platforms' and Ooops! NASA getting a hard lesson in complacency and costing!
Retired military and Boeing employee here. All you have said was very apparent to all in the company (737 line). Especially the "more for less"; address an aerodynamic and structural design problem with a software fix for the 737 Max 9.
With any technical system, provision must be made for WHEN it fails, rather than IF it fails. As a recently retired PenTester I spent my career causing such failures to compromise systems (with the owners permission obviously), and watching the failure states of some systems was both intriguing and frightening. My work was primarily in the telecoms and banking sector, not aviation, but even here such “critical” systems were seldom designed with the “3Rs” in mind - response, resilience & restoration” - the 4th R, regression testing, was also “cost managed” out of many development cycles. I never managed to cause a major outage on a live system during my career; most of the organisations did that themselves, only calling us in after something “newsworthy” had occurred.
Former cabin crew: 6 months on the 737-300/500 series and 12 years on the A319/A320/A320NEO/A321NEO. I trust Airbus - whether it’s an older A319 aircraft we fondly call "the shed on wings" or a brand-new A321NEO straight from Hamburg, I always feel confident in their safety. I also trust the 737-300/500 series, having flown on them extensively, and I feel secure on the 700/800 series too. And who can forget the cigar - the staple aircraft of Britannia Airways for British Tourism. The issue for me is this: while all Airbus aircraft, classic and modern, feel safe, only the classic Boeing aircraft feel safe to me. My concern for Boeing's safety practices began when reports surfaced about lithium battery fires on brand-new aircraft. Those incidents were particularly alarming because they signaled a breach of a critical safety principle - the safe transportation of lithium batteries. If such basic oversights happened on the Dreamliner, what might the 737MAX be hiding? When it was revealed that MCAS relied on data from a single AOA probe, Boeing shattered another fundamental safety principle: redundancy. That’s unforgivable. Worse yet, they systematically withheld crucial information from my former colleagues - professionals who know their bird inside and out, spend hours of training hours preparing for any eventuality. By withholding that information, they revealed to the world that their culture had become sales over safety. Given the history of aircraft incidents and how much I felt then and still feel part of the aviation community, The feeling I have for Boeing is betrayal. Former NTSB staff used to say on Air Crash Investigation, “you have to have enough dead bodies for change to happen”. That phrase, like the television show, is outdated. We live in 2024, our safety culture has always been to understand incidents of the past and learn how to avoid them in the future, whether through pilot training or aircraft modification. My former airline culture was to speak up, speak out, if you are concerned at any point or for any reason, whether you are the captain or a supernumerary cabin crew member. I have also made use of this system to avoid a safety incident that had not been noticed. I was very pleased with that system because it is aviation operating at its finest, empowering all staff to be on alert for anything that could affect the safety of the aircraft. That culture extended to every member of staff who worked on or maintained our fleet. When think of software installed that was hidden from the people who operate them, further software issues, loose rudder screws, loose bults or poor door plug installation, I think of a business that is willing to play Russian roulette with peoples lives.
You'll forgive me, but its always fantastic to find a great thinker in a profession thats traditionally might bemoan intelligence over aptitude. You have both and its really great to hear a logical and fair assessment from someone in your trade. The MCAS deceit and development and Boeings culture caused this. And yeah as a software engineer (not even a mechanical engineer) redundancy is a no-brainer on a core line-of-business system. On an aircraft its almost diabolical not to have it on that control. It is unforgivable. But they just want to assassinate their whistleblowers instead.
Love this channel. It's not just the information contained in the videos, it's the storytelling. It's where a lot of channels fall down, but you are able to convey so much, but keep the "story" of what happened to the forefront. I think that's what ultimately makes your videos so compelling.
One thing I experienced in Engineering is, if something is bound to go wrong, it will go wrong (often spectacularly). Don't cut corners ever. Don't rest until some seemingly minor issue you realized is left unfixed. It will come back to haunt you.
Yes. It should seem perfectly obvious to anyone with a modicum of intelligence and common sense, but Murphy's Law was never tongue in cheek - even if it is darkly funny. If something can find a way to go wrong, no matter how remote of a chance, it _will_ happen. And when it does, it will most likely happen at the most inopportune moment, where conditions are worst. Boeing... they -deliberately ignored- _forgot_ that, and it cost hundreds of people their lives.
Great explanation of the max fiasco and eventual disasters. As a retired 737 captain I'm probably one of the few who have flown 100,200 300,400,and 800 (I had retired before the max arrived) I had to do a full conversion course between 1/200 and 300 but my conversion to 400 consisted of a reminder to rotate slowly on takeoff to avoid tail strike! Another full course was required to fly the NG. Actually the 100 was probably the best handling 737 but it was extremely noisy! Keep up the excellent work!
I worked at Boeing as an IT contractor in the Renton plant in 97/98, on their first quality control system. I was amazed at the chaos and ancient manufacturing techniques. I had visited Airbus' A320 assembly plant in 1995, which was state of the art. Boeing's Renton plant looked like a WW2 plant.
My sister works for Boeing in the division that sells aircraft to the US military. She said they were aware of the system and required 2 attitude sensors for redundancy. My understanding is the commercial variant had a single attitude sensor.
There are some very good people at Boeing and some bad people at Boeing. Both are protected by at least two Unions, SPEEA and IAM. The union vilifies the "bean counters". Bean counters are the ones who add up every cost associated with a delivery. When the cost exceeds the price, the company is no longer viable. It's happened to 1500 of the Willshire 5000 American companies. So now, there are only 3500 American companies in the Willshire 5000. Bottom line is - if you can't make and sell your products for a profit, then "US corporate greed is unbelievable and disgusting" is irrelevant. 🧐🧐
Very big misconception. The company was run by a CEO with a engineering background during the MAX disasters (Muilenberg). The incredibles era (first 747) was under a CEO who was a lawyer by trade. Engineers don't necessarily make good leaders.
Thank you, Petter. Your videos are the best and I think this one is one of your very best if not the best ever. They are detailed, explained in ways anyone could understand them, and very respectful of all parties. All the best for 2025 and beyond. Lots of love to all from Toronto.❤❤❤
The point about moonshot projects is that if you keep doing them, they'll get easier and easier. This is what Airbus has done. The A380 was a megaproject indeed for them - a moonshot. Good plane, bad sales performance. Oh well. Never mind, all the expertise went into the A350 (and I suppose A330neo and A320neo). Result? The A350 program went veeeeery smoothly, despite being an entirely novel construction technique for Airbus. And oh look, good market performance. And the A330neo is doing the job too. And the A320neo is just nuts.
I once commented in an article about the same remark above....A380 commercially was not successful but the lessons learned/the experience and knowledge gained from developing that moonshot really thrusted Airbus forward
i work at emirates are im pretty sure upper management would suck airbus off if they restarted a380 production. heck quite a few logistics guys would cry tears of joy if airbus actually agree to rengine and rewing the a380 for better efficiency. its a really really good plane, unfortunate that most airlines couldn't make the best use of it.
@@johnbenoy7532 I've been on Emirates A380s a few times recently. Completely full and still a very nice ride. They're going to have to source aircraft that size at some point or other, when their A380s start wearing out. In fact, if Emirates wants to grow their market, they'd actually need a larger A380. Which would be an unbelievable thing to see in the sky. Airbus hate the idea of making an aircraft model for a single customer. But, there seems little choice; Emirates will get desperate, and Airbus won't be able to turn down their money forever. The only choice I see Airbus having is if, say, Turkish Airlines decided to bet big on the big 'Bus too. Which, they might.
An old saying that may apply well to Boeing current situation is “If you try to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s ideas you wont be in business tomorrow.”
My dad is a retired computer hardware engineer and when the technical details re: MCAS were starting to circulate, the people who he worked with noticed that the bus used in either the MCAS or the AOA sensor (I forget which) was notoriously faulty. He was used to designing around its flaws. There were issues all the way down to the circuit board-level.
The whole operational design of MCAS seems to have been filled with too many assumptions about critical factors that could impact its operation and the flight of the airplane. Retired engineer here who dealt with code failures and electronic equipment failures often to restore high volume IC production. No one died as a direct result. But we know integrated circuits with undetected flaws do make it into the real world. I would hope redundancy and overrides would be key in the airplane design and subsequent validation testing. Appears it isn't. Note major goal in IC testing was always reduce the amount of testing, but based on fail rate escape data. Did see serious failure (do to a design flaw) that a customer (military equipment mfg) found, and that resulted in considerable work to resolve. This was decades ago and a fix that eliminated the flaw was implemented at that time.
It’s a perfectly workable system that was fitted. It wasn’t new, it had been developed for the plane Boeing sold the Military. That’s how it “flew under the radar” during certification.
@@chrissmith7669 There was also the decades of trust built up by Boeing with the FAA. The FAA didn't expect Boeing to try to trick them. The system was developed post the Mc Douglas merger. Boeing freight planes using MCAS systems were developed prior.
@@chrissmith7669 Boeing used 1 sensor, when at least 2 should have been used. This gave the system the appearance of not being critical. (The FAA would have expected any system capable of being safety critical to have 2 or more. Given the decades of prior experience with Boeing, the FAA would have expected Boeing to behave responsibly. )
The moment boeings lawyer argued that no one suffered until the aircraft hit ground.. the corporation was finished as a moral entity.. now more like a bloodsucker
Wow. I didn’t hear that. Like saying “it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the end.” Reminds me of GM (or Ford) calculating whether it was cheaper to fix the dangerous gas tank issue, or just pay out to victims of the fires.
Actually their suffering ended when they hit the ground. For the people on those two Maxes which crashed, their suffering was in the moments when they knew they were likely going to die.
@molybdomancer195 Yup.. but according to Boeing.. none of the passengers suffered any emotional distress whilst the aircraft plummeted to its destruction.. kind of an idiotic thing for them to say.. but hey.. money I guess..
Maybe they were thinking that the people who suffered were the families and friends of the victims that died. Do we know if they were even considering the people on board when they made that statement? The people on the plane are just a revenue stream. The only people who suffer, in their eyes, are the people on the ground who suffer the loss of a friend or family. As long as the revenue stream is alive, they don’t matter when considering suffering from the corporate lawyer’s perspective.
@@andrewb9590 Ford on the Pinto. From Wikipedia “In the memo Ford estimated the cost of fuel system modifications to reduce fire risks in rollover events to be $11 per car across 12.5 million cars and light trucks (all manufacturers), for a total of $137 million. The design changes were estimated to save 180 burn deaths and 180 serious injuries per year, a benefit to society of $49.5 million.”
It shows. What happens at Airbus when the planners and design engineers make mistakes - as being human they will - it costs Airbus shareholders serious money (think the A380). Boeing's management simply refuses to countenance anything that might cost the shareholders (and them) money. "More with less" was a truly ridiculous slogan for a commercial airline company and the mindset it implied was always only going to end in disaster. And eventually the shareholders losing even more money.
mate. Airbus said it itself: what happens to Boeing isn't good for us either. the lack of competition could be very bad in the future. with no competition, comes complacency, and in this field, it can always lead to disaster. i pray that day never comes, no matter the company.
@@chrissmith7669 That was true last century - but not this century. Airbus these days is very profitable and pays quite a lot to the French (and German and Italian) taxman.
I've previously worked as a ramp agent, everyone hated 737s because the cargo bin is like a coffin. The larger doors on the A320 family permit better ventilation and airflow in the summer time, which makes a huge difference in the hot, humid climate of the Southeastern US, where I worked.
There is environmental hardware (filtration, water separation, etc) behind the aft bulkhead of the forward baggage pit. As a mechanic, I can tell you that working in there is like being banished to at least the sixth circle of hell. Maybe the seventh. Eighth, if you're doing insulation.
My “favorite” Boeing axiom was “design anywhere, build anywhere”. Meaning that they had engineers and manufacturing resources all over the country. If a program had a resource shortage, just ship the work to another facility. I worked in the satellite segment. Designing, building and testing a satellite is very different than an airplane. But, a Boeing executive doesn’t challenge another executive no matter how stupid the idea is.
...and 'built by anyone'. I read one report that inspectors found that one of their suppliers had people using sharpies to mark out critical components when the authorities had been promised that the job in question would be done by precision machining. When (female) Boeing inspectors found this out and reported it, they were the ones that ended up in trouble.
The 737 max tragedy is the best example of pure corporate greed which unfortunately leads to tragic consequences. This has tarnished boeing’s legacy considerably and it will be years before their reputation returns to what it once was. Can’t even feel sorry for them, they deserve the backlash, they essentially turned into mcdonnell douglas after merging with mcdonnell douglas. What a shame
It is also a very good example of an economic ideology that not only supports that attitude of greed, but also demands it for a thing called shareholder value. In Boeing’s heydays when they were the true and only leader in commercial aircraft design, shareholder value was literally unknown and unknown not only to Boeing, but to all and any industries. Value was given to the product, its quality and the work needed to fulfill those values. These days we see the first signs of turning back and eliminate the misunderstood effects of globalisation and its underlying ideology of shareholder value.
It's not corporate greed. Such a weird term that's been thrown around lately. The responsibility of a business is to be profitable and their shareholders were determining the path of the company instead of the engineers like it should be. If you make a good product, share a holder will be happy and the customer will be happy. If you try to cut corners because of laziness or trying to have a better quarter quarter profit, you will eventually make a crappy product.
@@mediocreman2 don't be naïve, that's not how profit driven publicly owned businesses operate these days. nothing is more important than quarterly profits. not even human life apparently. welcome to late stage capitalism.
I've heard some of this explained also like a car that was redesigned for a bigger engine, but messed up the suspension geometry such that the vehicle constantly pulled to the left, causing driver fatigue. Rather than redesign and fix the problem, a gizmo (MCAS) is installed to pull the vehicle to the right.
I did not fully agree with the kitten tiger comparison. What Boeing did was keep adding more little kittens, which was fine until they started fighting with each other. LOL
You had recommended Air Wars a while ago and I bought the book based on your recommendation. Anyone who really enjoys your channel will love this book. I couldn't put it down.
Well handled. I have followed this story since before release of the aircraft and understand the series of events that led to the deaths of good pilots, crews, and innocent civilians. You didn’t address the FAA’s culpability in this systemic Boeing failure, but perhaps that is another video. It’s just imagining the horror on the flight deck of these people who had not the information nor the training to confront their, to them, inexplicable situation is heartbreaking. Thank you for continuing to clarify this terrible series of events.
I still believe that the accidents and attitude at Boeing were in large part facilitated by the over-cosy relationship they had (perhaps still have) with the FAA in America, particularly in relation to certification.
Americans in general seem to be allergic to regulation, they speak of it as if it is an affront to their 'freedoms'. When people are killed, they still ignore regulation and reassure themselves with the idea of compensation, so nothing changes. They appear to think that so long it's not them personally who die, and relatives get compo, it's all good. They seem to have the same attitude to road safety, food safety, gun safety, everything. If other countries didn't regulate, many US products would be far less safe- they rely on other markets to do all the heavy lifting. Maybe the solution for aircraft is the same, other countries will just have to discount US regulators and force the likes of boeing to undergo testing by their authorities before being allowed to use other airspace.
I feel like recently there just maybe may have been another over-cozy relationship between a manufacturer and a regulator that also starts with an F and ends with A that also resulted in the release of a product with a sketchy safety margin at best, which has resulted in signficantly more incidents of unaliving. Are we allowed to say that yet, or does this phenomenon still only apply to airplanes?
Bravo Mentour! This is BY FAR the best analysis of the 737 MAX problem! I must admit that I also fear that Boeing has a lot more pain to undergo before they get themselves righted again. Let's just hope that no one dies before that happens.
The best single statement of this entire fiasco is attributed to AA Mike Micheils in a meeting btwn AA (APA) and Boeing's management. Micheils stated to Boeing re MCAS, "it could have been us (AA) in Biscayne Bay", in reference to Lion Air crash, Java Sea.
The problem lies in the CEO compensation packages that focus almost exclusively on raising the stock price. This leads to sacrificing long-term growth in favor of short-term gains.
True. The fact is that annual executive bonuses (usually in the form of shares) a major part of their remuneration, BUT are only paid IF the share price goes up each quarter. You could not design a more corrupt system.
The full quote is “This airplane is designed by clowns, who in turn are supervised by monkeys.” - which makes me laugh, although it’s a grim laugh, I admit.
My stepfather was a maintenance man at Boeing/Spirit in Wichita, KS for over 30 years. He's probably worked on everything to keep that place going at one time or another. Even after he retired they kept calling him back to work on equipment that only he really knew how to work on that they were still using. There is a lot of downgrading and bad decisions that went into the failure of Boeing. A lot of it was pushing out old people that knew what they were doing to make room for the new people.with no good cross trading. Also, the work morale and pride in work fell very far. My cousin still works there as a union stewart. Their big money seems to be military contracts, they love those.
The most tragic thing about the second max crash, is that the captain actually got control of the MCAS trim, despite the fact that the MCAS trims the aircraft far more than the pilot normally would do, the captain got the trim up in place every time. Whether this was unconscious is not known. But it is when the captain gives the controls to the first officer that things go completely wrong. The MCAS trims more than the first officer and the trim runs wild exstremly fast. Doubly tragic, I'm sure the captain would have landed that plane if he hadn't given the first Officer the controls. This should NOT be seen as a criticism of the captain, it was just the extra hole in the cheese. MCAS was a bomb just waiting to go off.
I'm just amazed that with the trim system going bonkers and trimming against the desired flight attitude, neither crew thought to just shut down the stab trim and trim manually. I'm even more amazed that with their airplanes careening toward the ground, neither crew gave a thought to retarding the engine throttles. Both went into the ground at takeoff power.
@@kevinmadore1794 In Ethipopian Airline crash, they disable the auto trim. But then the aircraft is too heavy and too unweidly to control, they try to turn it on trying to trim it abit and then it just nose down all the way by MCAS from there. Please imagine having to constantly pull ~80kg, after awhile it is tiresome.
@@marveloushagler3682 The problem is....and what the media doesn't talk about is...that it took the Ethiopian crew WAY too long to get around to turning off the electric stab trim. By the time they finally did it, the airplane was badly mistrimmed and going downhill at Warp 9. It is no wonder they could not move the trim wheels. The aerodynamic loads on the horizontal stab must have been huge. It certainly did not help that the crew failed to do anything to control the speed. They quite literally flew into the ground at takeoff power!!! BOTH crews crashed at full throttle. That is terrible airmanship. Even a student pilot knows that when you're in a nose-low condition at high power, the power must immediately be reduced. Here's the thing. The checklist for a runaway stab trim is a Memory Action Item. You have to memorize it because if the trim system goes haywire, there is no time to go fishing through the EP checklist or QRA handbook, looking for the solution. The aircraft I regularly fly has a 4-step process that must be committed to memory. As I have noted before, Boeing definitely screwed up badly with the initial design of MCAS. But well-trained pilots should have been able to save the day. Unfortunately, there weren't any on those two airplanes. It took a bad design, bad maintenance, and poor airmanship to bring those airplanes down. Unfortunately, the media and the public just don't understand the concept of the "Swiss Cheese Model." A bunch of holes need to line up, before we have a major accident.
@@kevinmadore1794 Boeing fault is still the major part here, from bad design, bad display (removing the AoA disagreement and put it behind paywall that most airline skip), cheating the FAA process, hiding important single point failure from the crew, running system behind the pilot without any notification/indicator/training. Even after the Lionair crash they still try to deflect it until the next crash. Even the Lion Air crash the story is horrible, it is continueously having issue and just before the crash the good crew manage to land it, but it is just a disaster waiting to happen, the next crew is not as good and Kaboom.
@@marveloushagler3682 No argument regarding Boeing's role. How they allowed the faulty MCAS software to ever make it into a production airplane is just difficult to comprehend, given how the aviation industry has historically focused on continuous improvement and learning from past mistakes. My point is simply to counter the clueless media's claims that there was nothing the crew could do and that those passengers were doomed from the moment the airplanes took off. The most important safety feature on any airplane is a well-trained crew. Any suggestion by so-called experts, and even one prominent manufacturer, that we should move to single-pilot crews is just lunacy. In that respect, one could argue that that manufacturer (Airbus), is doing a little of their own catering to the corporate greed in the airlines, who would love to save on crew costs. ;o)
As a trainer I find the anti-training movement alarming at best! As though money spent on training is a waste of money. Training on human computer interaction is especially important.
That was the selling point of the MAX over the Airbus - the Airbus may seem cheaper to buy but you'll have the expensive re-training which will make the overall cost greater than staying with Boeing as you won't need to retrain your pilots - you'll only need to letcthen know about the minor change details.
I refuse to board a 737MAX. Air Canada operates this aircraft to go back to my country. I bought a ticket that was $200 more expensive on a Airbus to avoid the MAX
I think at the moment MAX seems safer than other planes, at least Boeing planes. Do you think it's one company issue? We have a culture of cutting corners, building as cheap as possible. Is there any company that actually takes pride in quality anymore rather than cheap, outsourcing, and "fat trimming" culture? I think we as consumers need to initiate the change. I know it's impossible to it 100%, but let's strive to question companies about quality. Write honest reviews, complaints, experiences. Let's stop overconsumption and buying cheap things.
I can honestly tell you as a B737 Max pilot, its safe. It s a horrible plane to fly from a pilot comfort perspective. But, it is the most reliable plane I have ever flown. As much as I hate it, i have to kind of love it.
The Boeing disaster with the MAX crashes and door plug blowout and the Starliner failures and so forth strongly remind me of NASA's shuttle disasters. Once the managers stop listening to the engineers, disasters follow, and it can take a long time to fix those problems.
My take away from this video is that Boeing could easily have made this plane perfectly safe but due to mismanagement they didn't. That is... that's much worse somehow.
Exactly. Thats the most painful. 346 lifes lost could have been prevented by an extra sensor. More sad is that it will happen again, no lessons learned
@@ryanblazi9303 yes and ambiguous indication mechanisms for the ground crews to ascertain if the doors were properly locked. The DC-10 was just as flawed a design as the 737 Max but in different areas. Douglas merged with McDonnell during DC-10 development and the problems began. McDonnell-Douglas merged with Boeing and infected them. McDonnell was the source of the contagion. The other parallel with the DC-10 and the Max was that corners were cut to get it to market before a more technologically advanced competitor could be launched (the Lockheed Tri Star in the case of the DC-10 and the Airbus A320 Neo in the case of the 737 Max)
@DJLoPaTa2005. Not even an “extra” sensor, really; All they had to do was hook the software up to the already-existing copilot’s sensor and command it to turn itself off if there was a mismatch. Just like every other bit of automation. An extra wire and a few lines of code, that’s all. I don’t know if their safety culture was so degraded that they didn’t realize they needed to do this, or if they planned to and false-economy bean counters objected to the extra wire; And I’m not sure which would be worse.
I would like a detailed explanation of the complete horizontal stabilizer and trim system. How does it work? When and how can you manually trim using the trim buttons? When and how can you manually trim using the trim wheel? How is the trim adjusted when on autopilot? What do you really switch off with the "cutout" switched on the center console? I see 2 switches. Why two? Nice video! Maybe many of my questions will be answered in the upcoming video.
Tigers are only a sort of a big kitty. The problem for us human beings is only that we´re for the Tiger what is a mouse for the kitty. Beyond this Tigers are nice animals.
I flew on the very first 737MAX8 that Air Canada purchased at the end of November 2017. I was on the 14th flight of that plane. My return flight was also on the MAX8. Lion Air crash was in October 2018. I flew on the MAX8 again twice in January 2019, before the Ethiopian crash in March 2019. It's disturbing to know that my flights were in planes with faulty MCAS and untrained, unware pilots.
Boeing may have brought out McDonald Douglas financially, but McDonald is the one who took over Boeing, I remember as a kid always hearing about a MD jet crashing in the news, I was convinced that I was either going to die in a house fire or in a jet crash because that was always on the news in the early 80s
@MentourNow it was the wrong decision from the beginning. They should ve built clean sheet design. 737 is just outdated these days. Everything else is aftermath
Thanks for another very interesting and well made video, please keep up the good work! And also thanks for the Holzkern link, these watches are amazing! They even have a store here in Berlin :-D
I think that the idea that pilots would just assume it was a runaway trim situation and hit the cutouts was a flawed one because of the way that it activated and then mysteriously let up, then activated again. A stuck trim pickle wouldn't behave that way, and the fact it MCAS wasn't in the POH or even in the non normal checklist for stab trim issues that they could be related to erroneous AoA vane values was crazy. I don't think two AoA vanes is enough. Like much of the air data systems or modern aircraft, having one redundant copy is enough to detect a disagreement and the comparator can say it's INOP, but having three is far more valuable as the avionics can diagnose which sensor is faulty and proceed albeit with an item for tech to look at on the ground before release.
@@waynethornton2174 Because the ever larger "on again-off again" cycle FELT nothing like the behaviour of a stuck stab trim that they'd trained in the sim for. In the months leading up to the crash several other crews around the world had discovered the MCAS rollercoaster but got the remedy right (something Boeing BTW knew but hushed up in case someone asked for sim training in it). It was only a matter of time before MCAS found a crew who got it wrong under pressure. Doesn't reduce Boeing's culpability one whit.
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Petter, for my part I think that it’s quite sad that you’ve stopped your career of flying so that you can earn a living from TH-cam.
I recognize that you want to spend time with your family but nonetheless it’s regrettable that you’re no longer going to fly.
Best wishes to you and yours.
Well, first he can explain how the industry works to me. When he has time..?
@@mtkoslowski ?? As far as most of the viewer know he is still flying and instructing.
What's the NG like for reliability?
I started my career flying the 737-400 and 500 and when I moved to the A320/321, tech delays were a lot rarer than on the 737.
Thanks, but I’m spending all my money on ‘Christmas’ gifts so I can’t afford ‘Holiday’ gifts this year.
Christians… who’s with me? 😂
A friend of a friend was on the Ethiopian Airlines flight. He went to my university, and had a huge amount of ambition and potential to help his community. Thank you for covering this situation, Petter. RIP Micah, and all others killed by greed and hubris.
Sorry about your friend
i am sorry for your (and many other peoples) loss
@@melodybarta2837 , my condolences to everyone who lost someone these two tragic flights flying on the Max8 ( Ethiopian and Lion Air). The FAA was somewhat complicit too granting quick approval for air worthiness of the Max8. But as usual with these companies that’s under constant pressure to bring in shareholders value/ profits while neglecting and pushing aside safety and their responsibility towards their airline buyers.
And yet Boeing still denies and lies and continues with their evil business model.
That's gutting. I'm so sorry for you and everyone who was bereaved by his loss 💔
It's good to hear from a pilot who has survived, both flying a 737 Max and criticizing Boeing. Well, done.
Best comment I have read in weeks...you seriously deserve some kind of excellence-in-commenting award
Just avoid the label of, “Whistleblower.” It’s a death sentence.
He was very defensive of them in the early day, I'm happy to see his change in tone, probably because he is no longer flying as much
Peter needs a security detail. I fear for his safety
Did he fly the max?
I think that the "more for less" philosophy didn't just doomed the 737 max and Boeing, but it is also daunting the European automotive industry. What Boeing is experiencing in its own market is very similar to what it is going on in VW, Stellantis and others. When you stop innovating to pay more dividends to your shareholders, you are basically killing the company.
Yeah but 737 already killed hundreds of ppl
So short sighted. If you make a good product, your shareholders will be happy, but instead they try to please the shareholders for quarter to quarter profits instead of long term.
The software industry is starting to do this too. Google has hardly done any real innovation for years, it mostly comes from buying other companies or rushing to respond to trends.
Now we've got to the reduce the workforce to appease shareholders and investors stage.
The biggest difference is there's virtually no competition in big tech. They're essentially a cartel lobbying together for anticompetitive regulations.
There's two ways to kill a company. Stagnation and penny pinching; and on the other hand overinvestment in new technology much of which may not end up paying back out. It's an art with no provably correct way to do it. Usually, management which drives a more conservative route can hold onto their positions for longer and reap more personal benefits - bad incentive structure. A "modern" compromise is to not innovate yourself instead nurture a field of smaller competitors not interfering with them too much, and when they have taken up the risk, didn't crash and burn, and produced an innovation that works, you gobble them up. But when it comes to things that require such immense resources like large planes whee you won't just see a competitor pop up from the ground, well that's not going to work is it.
This is the philosophy of the McDonnell family, imported to Boeing with the MD "merger." As a friend of mine once said, it's astounding that one family could destroy three great American airplane companies.
I was at the Boeing museum in Seattle last year. I met a tour guide who was a former Boeing employee for 40 some years who had recently retired. He spoke openly how Boeing had built up brand recognition and affection and respect worldwide over a century, and destroyed it all in a matter of months. The look on his face, man... You could tell he was heartbroken
He got the call to Jesus moment and ignored it due to skypilots cruising for the cash possibly?
Keep seeking and you will find.
Talk to an old Mercedes Engineer, you will hear the same story. Maybe talk to any old engineer.... The computer screen and "modelling" destroyed engineering. Better watch porn than use FE to design a piece.
@ziegle9876 Mercedes does not fly, cannot crash land
You got me at:
*me(n)t tour* guide 😂
I retired from Boeing 2 years ago, and I can tell you most employees are sick of McDonald Douglas management.
You are quite correct that the management problem is NOT just at the top... I worked on the 787 build in Charleston as Shipside Engineering Support Team Manager and MRB Engineering Team, and the "upstairs" people I worked with are still there. They were perfectly OK with breaking the Material Chain of Custody for KEEL SPLICES by "relabeling" Those parts JUST TO MEET SCHEDULE!!
I refused to sign of on that, and was quickly (and gladly) pushed out... I have emails on that...
More details if you want them
The FAA would no doubt be interested, I'd have thought.
If you genuinely have them, I suspect the FAA would be very interested in them.
@@MichaelBuetKESE I believe without knowing everything that the supply chain if relabeling sometimes is one of the key issues. “Meet the schedule” can probably only be acceptable if the quality is acceptable. Then the question is why has Airbus fared so “good” ? Considering that most suppliers face shortages of stuff, quality assurance and perhaps adequate supply chains.
This is sickening
I'd hazard a guess that this was ZA001, the Potemkin roll-out airplane. Biggest lie ever. Should be taught in every B-school as a case study on how to demoralize your workforce.
This is a very well done explanation of the problems at Boeing. As a former Boeing engineer, I am shocked by the combination of bad engineering and really bad senior management decisions that led to this mess. Boeing was once a great company with the world's best engineers.
Management is too greedy with 200 aircraft orders.
The problem with a cost reduction strategy is that is like heating your house by burning the furniture. Problem comes when you have run out of furniture.....
Yeah but sadly this is the way basically every company on the stock market is run these days in every sector! Its a systemic problem with the entire stock market economy by this point, where every company will prioritise greater profit margins for themselves and shareholders than anything else. In the past innovation was seen as what would increase profits and appease both shareholders and customers, but these days to these companies, innovation is just seen as an expense thats unlikely to bear fruit compared to just squeezing the existing lemon infinitely tighter, whehter its by overcharging customers, underpaying workers, cheapening out on the lemons themselves, or a combination of everything!
Its also why many of the highest regarded businesses in their respective fields nowadays arent on the stock market at all, but are rather privately owned, family owned, or state owned. They don't have shareholders that demand ever increasing returns on investment to appease to, they can just run a financially sound business that makes its customers happy without having to increase profits infinitely to appease some outsider who doesnt even contribute anything to the company other than his own money to just sell on later when making a profit.
Not all cost reduction strategies....
Boeing seems to make its money from being a corporate raider. They buy promising and wealthy companies then strip them of assets and then discard the carcass. Happened to the company I worked for. Evil people.
@@jamesengland7461
Agreed. Firing the employees who just polish the silverware that no one uses is a valid cost saving measure. Firing the staff that keep ordering new silverware to polish is also a valid measure.
Burning the house down because the silverware is taking up too much space is not.
Indeed, exactly.
My mom came to Boeing when they bought the part of Rockwell she worked for. She worked for Rockwell/Boeing for about 19 years, in the Government Operations office. She was initially excited when the merger with MDD was announced. Her office already dealt with government business, and it got much busier due to MDD's focus on defense and federal contracts.
But then she go to know more of the MDD folks, who quickly became prominent in the company. She did not like what she saw. They had little interest in Boeing's incredible heritage in commercial aviation. They pivoted the company heavily towards defense and government business (and lobbying), and their priorities were more about maximizing profits than reliable engineering. When they moved the HQ to Chicago, away from their amazing engineers in the Seattle area, she knew things were going in the wrong direction.
When she retired from the company just before her office moved to Crystal City, the culture there was unrecognizable. She passed away before the 737 MAX crashes and the Boeing HQ move to Northern Virginia. I miss her terribly, but I'm glad she didn't have to witness what happened to a company she once admired and was proud to work for.
I worked for Rockwell myself - in a completely unrelated division - but your story rings very true. It's astonishing how just a few senior people with no integrity can utterly destroy a business.
Hunter Killer assassins going up against Boy Scouts indeed…. Harry Stonecipher didn’t even pretend to care about Boeing’s history. He just flat out said ‘Oh yeah Boeing’s a financial institute now. Screw engineering.”
What a tragedy to have to watch a great company like this. If companies didn't have to wait 5 years to get an Airbus I think Boeing would basically be a military contractor. They assemble a substandard airplane these days. The tactics they employed to break the machinist union are disgusting and the 787 and all its problems are a direct result of this decision. I am no conspiracy theorist but I'm pretty sure they un-alived a whistleblower too.
@@816928 At least 2 whistle-blowers.
From what I remember Boeing prior to the MDD merger had a very good safety record whereas MDD's was a bit shakier. The joke going around at the time was the more financially savvy MDD execs bought Boeing with Boeing's money. It also changed the culture and Boeing was thereafter led by more MDD minded managers. James Mc Nerney ironically wanted more for less from everyone but himself. While he was penny pinching on engineering, trying to bust the unions he was being paid ever larger sumsand took about $94m out of Boeing in compensation during his term as CEO.
Thank you for providing more information on this topic.
A friend of mine, a junior in my university, was on the fateful Lion Air flight. She died in the line of duty, doing a business trip as a government employee. RIP to her and all killed by greed and hubris.
It still boils my blood that the responsible CEOs got a 'golden parachute' instead of a hefty jail sentence. And no, I'm not comfortable with labeling it "company culture" and sweeping it under the rug. Boeing management need to hurt. A lot! I don't believe for a second that they care about anything. Not failure, not harm to the company, not the workers, not the airlines that are their customers. Not the laws, not the FAA, not national pride, not basic human decency and certainly NOT us passengers who they call "cargo". "Insurable goods". "If a few eggs break, no biggie. We just say 'oopsie', pay for it with company money and continue business as usual". They are so full of themselves that all they care about are stock price and their bonuses, if anything. No, I am not done. Haven't even started yet. They need to pay. Not with company money and not with government bailouts. THEY. NEED. TO. PAY! Until they really feel what they did. This is not okay. What they did DELIBERATELY and in FULL KNOWLEDGE will NEVER be okay!
Absolutely. It is a scandal that no one has been charged and jailed for that reckless computer programming.
Indeed, exactly.
Maybe the world needs more people like Luigi Mangione 😊.
100% agree.
They will not pay. This is more a US culture. The worshipping of money above all.
Boeing is a business that came into existence by designing new planes. It is also a business that became successful by designing new planes. It is also a business that grew into a market leader by designing new planes.
It then appointed a CEO who thought that designing new planes was a moonshot.
How can you appoint a CEO who views your core skill as almost impossible ?
How can you not see that this will kill the Company ?
You really think this decision comes down to just one guy?
Boring sent out request to their large customer’s. The airlines didn’t want new training to be required, and the decision was made for them.
It’s not Boeings singular greed. They were literally just fulfilling their customers wishes.
@@mikemck4796 If they didn’t want more training, but wanted more efficient planes, then Boeing couldn’t have delivered…and they didn’t.
Engineers need to be in charge of engineering not MBAs. The old Boeing was run by engineers and they made great planes. Today it’s run by MBAs trying to maximize profit at the exclusion of all other considerations. The results are self evident.
@@mitchellstoddard1061 as an MBA, I wholeheartedly agree.
The golden age of boing was led by a lawyer: William M. Allen. In his tenure(1945-1968), the company was cemented as an engineering company and developed the 707, 727, 737 and most of the 747. What made him successful was his humbleness and an ability to listen. Something Boeing’s last 20 years of leadership have lacked.
@@mikemck4796 If Boeing just said "NO, that's not possible", the airline would have had 2 choices: buy from them regardless and do the training, or buy from Airbus and also do training.
One of few channels where comments are just as valuable as the content itself. Thank you guys
Seems like Boeing's driving philosophy here was "don't tell mom"
Maybe they’re just hoping uncle Sam will bail them out again.
No “maybe” about it.
I’m pro- big government, pro- regulations, and pro- the administrative state. But it absolutely pisses me off when for-profit corporations use their “indispensable” status with the government as an excuse to screw over their customers, fuck over their employees, and wreck their companies. Such companies should be nationalized… and both their executives and their _major stockholders_ JAILED.
Your content with your relatively small team is so much better than the way Netflix covered these technical details in their documentary. thanks for continuing to put out these amazing and well thought out videos.
Yes, it was a very detailed deep dive that covered a lot of technical information in a way that helped the audience understand without patronising them. I definitely appreciate that.
I'm a software engineer with 20 years of experience. Exactly what you said about not pursuing new tech is exactly what's killed other companies I've worked for in the past. They stopped innovating, so smart people stopped wanting to work there.
You forgot to mention you are a f r e e m a s o n also? Flaunting the o n e eye and s a t u r n name on your avatar and username?
As a retired Aircraft Maintenance Engineer who has spent the last 25 years in Technical Training, and delivering training on the 737 MAX, on the initial release of the AMM and the Student Material, the description of MCAS consisted of one short sentence in ATA 22. That was it! It was as much of a mystery to the Aircraft Mechanics as it was to the pilots.
One short sentence and buried behind what was perceived as more important information. The utterly callous disregard for the wellbeing of all users of the product was shocking.
MCAS needed AOA miscompare
@@Jablicek Yeah, I think this was their biggest mistake. Not so much trying to get as much as they can from old designs, or not innovating, those can be issues, but this... this is a big deal. They left the pilots untrained and unaware of this system, as well as maintenance engineers apparently. And yeah, the system itself wasn't exactly what they thought, it caused problems. Even if didn't though, leaving pilots unaware of it, is just criminal really. And all this so airlines don't add up extra type training from what I gather, to make the plane look more "cost effective" to compete with Airbus. That's just stupid. Lives lost for a stupid, greedy reason.
"As a retired Aircraft Maintenance Engineer who has spent the last 25 years in Technical Training, and delivering training on the 737 MAX,..." The 737 Max was designed 25 years ago?
maintenance folks don't need to know what MCAS is as it's not a system you can go repair/replace. It's only something flight controls engineering and pilots need to understand. The underlying issue is a lot of the world's airlines don't have great training or experience in the flight deck and rely way too heavily on automated controls. When something goes wrong, they don't react properly. The ASA door plug is a great example. Any pilot knows a cabin pressure warning = go below 10k ft, and the door never would've come off. A maintenance high blow test would've found the leak and the door plug would've been properly replaced. Those DEI pilots didn't even know the FD door automatically swings open during sudden decompression by design.
As a former US Navy sailor, I thank you for not treating this like "old news". It's very dismissive to treat Boeing's profit over quality culture as a minor or past issue, especially when you have someone like the former Navy aviation Captain Ed Person, who was the Senior Production Manager at the Renton, WA factory where the first two doomed 737 MAX airplanes were built, is still very active with a podcast (Alarm Bells) and founded The Foundation for Aviation Safety with other pilots as well.
its the US (and EU ) business model, cut any and all costs to increase the stock price, even if its just for a few days at most. now SOP in the US and Europe, and has been for a long time now. this will kill both economies in the short run. and the companies in both. and this is as much an invention of Jack Welch at GE, and you can see how well it worked for GE. barely a shell of what it used to be
@@DavidWiliams-r1g
The model being, make the CEO rich, regardless of who dies, or what destroyed.
I’ve been following this story myself and I’m appalled at what I’ve been reading over the year. Hiding faulty parts from the FAA and dragging stuff out of the scrap heap? It’s embarrassing that a billion dollar corporation is acting like a shady second hand car dealer. It’s almost like they’re intentionally trying to humiliate themselves at this point 🤦♀️
@@yamato6114
Aljazeera revealed the truth is even worse. Boeing planes were allowed by the FAA to fly at 36,000 ft, the higher a plane flies, the lower the fuel consumption, on the assumption critical parts are all NC machine made, but the parts contractors used human labour resulting in gross errors. The degradation rate was higher than projection, and it is only a matter of time before an explosive decompression occurs.
@@michaeledwards2251so in other words, a repeat of the DH comet was on the way?
I began my engineer career for a small company doing rework for Boeing in Seattle. After a few years spent in the US, I decided to move back in my home country in France and Germany to work for its competitor. It was like restarting from scratch. The culture is absolutely different there. They both build planes, but with a different mindset. You can see it from the shop floor : all workers wearing company uniform, PPE, FOD bag, clean working environment. Even to put a label you need training and qualification. Quality and manufacturing are separated and quality has it's last word with engineering teams. They are not perfect, but everything I see like speak up culture, training... Actions Recently taken by Boeing following the plug blow up have existed there for many years. When I arrived I was seeing this as useless, a lot of paper, even for small rework you need a complete analysis, assessment, simulation and approval from the engineering and quality teams. Now I understand why. It doesn't help to reach the delivery target but at least we know what we are doing. It's sad to see my former Boeing colleagues in this situation...
"When you stop innovating and start relying on only defending old wins, you basically start dying"
This made me think of the current crises at Intel so much!
Exactly what happened to McDonnell-Douglas, and the MD people forced that philosophy on Boeing after the "merger."
That's what killed RCA. They went from pretty much being the key company in developing radio and television to end up selling rebadged Panasonic VCR's.
This quote can be applied to vast swaths of industry.
This is normal for monopolies or near monopolies.
For them, innovation is not cost-effective
@DomDeDom Boeing does not have a monopoly, not at all. That's not the problem issue. It's an insane management philosophy that dictates only stock price & ROI matter, nothing else.
The fact that your content here is perceived to be so much better than Netflix speaks to the value of your technical know-how. Thank you for choosing to educate us
❤
Tech know how???...He's a F___ing Driver...a paid chauffer in the sky...
Petter & team is amazing. Though, in fairness, considering that Netflix also produced such travesties as Ancient Apocalypse, beating them in the documentary game isn't necessarily a high bar 😂
As a long time follower, I'm impressed by the shift in your position. Back when the max crisis was unfolding you were defending Boeing... but now your position is more neutral and fact seeking... very refreshing!
He’s not working for Ryanair anymore, so he’s free to speak his mind.
As a technician with a competing company, we are given assertiveness training. If it isn't right sound off with no retribution
That was the attitude of the old Boeing. It was appreciated.
Every major company has this on paper because of whistleblower laws. In reality, the knowledge that whistleblowing is a career limiting move (off the books) still has a strong chilling effect, because "decision makers" and "job creators" face no consequences for their actions in this country. The power of pulling the ladder up behind you.
Jim McNerney's 'more for less' mantra could very well have meant 'more for me (and executives) and less for you (workers)! Passengers (safety and comfort) are an afterthought! How else can we explain stiffing the workers (including taking away their pensions), cutting corners in manufacturing, downsizing QC & QA, while at the same time boosting executive compensation?
Indeed, exactly.
Mcnerny should be in prison
Finally, someone who also knew the actual culprit, many people blamed Mullenberg, but it wasn't him who made greedy decision regarding MCAS
@@yourbuddy6556
I publicly badmouthed Mcnerney on Seattle talk radio when he was still CEO,
And years before the planes crashed.
These people are just greedy bastards. Their focus is not on design and innovation, but profits and share prices.
How in the F the MAX wasn’t grounded after the first crash is still another astonishing question for me
People should be in jail for this, but we’re going to forgot everything fast
It should be obvious if you look at the immediate reactions after the Lion Air Thai crash. Not only Boeing themselves tried to spin the story that it was an obvious pilot error due to poor training - a Southeast Asian LCC seemed like an easy target. Obviously that line of argumentation went out of the window with the Ethiopian crash. People just didn't want to admit that Boeing simply couldn't keep up with Airbus anymore and the problems that had been lingering since the 80s were not only showing but also killing people.
@@konni6694 That was one of the most infuriating parts of the crashes. Blaming the pilots.
An artifact of the FAA's dual mandate. You see, there is a major conflict of interest because the FAA is supposed to both regulate aviation and aircraft manufacture in the US AND also supposed to promote the airline industry and support healthy profits.
Get ready for more of the same because Trump's policies will only aggravate the problem.
If you hated the 737 MAX, you're going to utterly despise Boeing's new plane - the 737 Super MAX.
@@konni6694 Sounds terribly similar to the Chernobyl disaster.
The manufacturer is perfect and it must be operator error, because the device wasn't meant to be used that way.
Except that no one told the operators that they shouldn't use the device that way, and the problem was purposefully omitted from the manuals to make the product look perfect, combined with the fact that there were no other fail safes to prevent disaster in case the operator decided to use the product that way anyway and zero training on how to recover once the machine was put in motion.
Maybe the reason why lies in two whistleblowers from Boeing that mysteriously died just before they were able to speak up in court.
I'll only add a compliment to whoever edited this; the "tunnel vision" effects here and there around things with Boeing logos are absolutely spot on. Kudos to Team Mentour's research, skill, and creativity. Thank you!
Seems to me that all industries are increasingly focused on short term gains only with no thought given to the long views and decades of advancement that got them to their position in the first place
it's a plague, because the companies that do it, often can earn a lot of money in the short term, buying the companies working towards the long term.
By the time the company is failing because lack of long term planning, the CEO (s) that bled the company dry are long gone with their big bonuses and the companies planning for long term have been dismantled.
The whole 2008 financial crisis was very similar. The banks not partaking in the shady sub prime market, got bought out by those that did.
A publicly traded company will always put their stockholders and interests above safety and lives. If any of us treated the public with this much disregard and carelessness you would be in prison.
That ebbs and flows. If capitalisms does its work and removes the old sick trees from the forest they will be replaced by younger companies who have the work culture the old ones once had. Many times, the most capable employees are fed up with their old bosses and start their own company and compete their former employers out of the market. Unless with lots of lobbying the old trees are kept alive and the new ones are strangled with patent exclusions and other regulations. Also the whole aircraft industry has a high entrance cost, naturally, so the old trees can afford to stay around longer.
countries too
Shareholders needs and values are as good as sabotage to a company.
The 737 is a frankenplane. It started out as a sleek, sharp-looking little regional jet, and they just kept on stretching it, slapping more and more crap on it, bending things to fit bigger and bigger engines, culminating in two of them crashing themselves. It's a 60-year-old design at its heart. It was a great plane... in 1967.
How old the design of the 747 and why don‘t people say the same things about 747-8? It‘s not the age of the 737, itÄs about the very new invention MCAS and how poorly it was desned. If a new plane consited of only wuch poorlx designed new components, it would be eveb worse.
@@JM_2019 Mainly because the 747 is still used for its original design purpose: Hauling a lot of people a long distance; hauling a helluva lot of people a short distance (Japan); and hauling cargo. If you look at a 747-100 and a 747-8 they look the same. Not so with the 737. It's a frankenplane.
@@james-p It is a frankenplane, but because of the MCAS, not because of the engines. As Mentor said in the video, the design is in perfect balance - the fact that they wanted to make it feel as the NG and designed a system for that that can turn into a death trap based on a single input makes it a frankenplane.
The early 737s had a serious problem which caused crashes.
@@GH-oi2jf There was a rudder problem that killed hundreds.
Boeing doesnt sell planes, they sell stock. The planes are just the pretext to sell stock.
The stock goes down when the airplanes go down...
And corporate raiding. Its their go to for quick cash.
You would think that would motivate them to take safety seriously but history proves conclusively that that isn’t how corporations work. It’s like saying that restaurants won’t serve substandard food because making customers sick will be bad for business. Business entities will only stick to prescribed safety standards if there is a meaningful inspection and enforcement regime AND genuine accountability afterwards if things go wrong. It was perfectly logical for Boeing’s management to cut corners on safety because there was no particular risk to them from doing so, whatever happened they were going to retire with a chunky bonus and a fat pension.
This is the underlying cause of enshittification in every industry. The product just has to look okay on paper so you can trade stock. Making the product actually usable is basically malpractice because it costs money that could be going back out to the stockholders.
As is the entirety of America.
Not that long ago there was an internal webcast at Boeing, with various upper managers talking about their department or program's accomplishments. A person from BCA was proudly going over how automated testing had cut their FQT from weeks down to a few days. I struggled to believe what I had just heard since it showed they learned nothing.
Believe me when I say that the right test harness can truly decimate testing times even while doing things properly and by the book. Although I work with avionics only, I don't know how well that generalizes to general systems
@@alessandroceloria oh I can completely agree a good test harness/rig/jig/setup/etc can make all the difference.
But what she was describing was replacing interactive human testing to a test plan with CI style suites. Basically bragging she was doing things the BSF way...
@@alessandroceloria As former software developer, I know enough about the topic to say that automated tests can boost productivity. But if the company is throwing manual testing overboard because "We already have automated tests", it is an invitation for errors to slip through. Because automated tests are by nature limited and cannot replace human intuition.
@@rabiatorthegreat6163 Spot on, but I think this is not incompatible what with the Boeing manager sai there. The inclusion of the letter "Q" in the procedure mentioned by OP makes me think that is a qualification procedure. These are driven by requirements (eg: ADC must report speed as invalid if above 450 KTS) and tend to be dead simple, dead stupid, dead boring, and extremely easy to automate if you have a capable enough system. The reason is that these don't verify the correctness of the software per se, big rather it's adherence to expectations, and is important, among other things, to make sure that differently implemented modules can correctly communicate with each other, since avionics are extremely distributed systems. Software tets per se (eg: verify that the program doesn't crash if you press two buttons in sequence) have a decent overlap with requirements, but are generally separately handled as it is impossible (or extremely impractical) to prove the correctness of software through sheer requirements. For that there are more classical approaches to testing, such as unit testing etc... And of course (good) developers run their own tests while developing the software. But that, as mentioned earlier, does not necessarily go in the qualification procedure, which is more focused on correctness of the overarching algorithm, rather than the implementation.
At least, that's how that works on my side. I am under easa rules and don't work with airliners, so the grass could definitely be different over there. Certainly, I hope that this increased automation (which can actually improve safety, for reasons I won't get into as this is already a poem) has been properly scrutinized by the authorities, given Boeing's recent past... And I hope they are working on getting back to their former glory...
@@rabiatorthegreat6163 They should be run alongside, not instead of. Because an automated system is only as good as the people who designed it, possibly only as good as as the one person who wrote the line of code that has a mistake in it.
Thanks!
Calling designing a new plane "a moonshot" just shows how myopic the Boeing management is.
Exactly. The attitude should have been… Designing new planes is what we DO.
737MAX isn't new plane so ....😅@@mrluckyuncle
@@mrluckyuncle that was the heritage Boeing attitude. This new attitude comes from the McDonnell-Douglas people -- it's exactly how they destroyed both of those companies!
@@mrluckyuncle I mean their motto went from "together" to "more with less".
You would think designing planes would be a core business function for Boeing.
when the airlines are requesting sim training, but not the manufacturer or the regulator, (should be the other way around)
you know something may be seriously wrong,
well, it was
I think this might be a good example of regulatory capture.
In other words, the regulator is working in the interest of Boeing company, rather than the airlines or the public at large.
I really don't think it was an agency nature situation. I think that the regulators were skunked by only being told what sounded good, instead of the truth.
@@Ldavies2 i know, but when manufacturer is saving costs by monkeying with the aircraft handling, in order to make it "feel" like other aircraft, in order to prevent need for sim training, then that is a red flag, not in hindsight, it was a red flag before the accidents.
@@tensevo yes, it should have been
I'm sure at the time Boeing was able to do a lot if its own FAA certification as well, not a great idea.
Thanks
I am an embedded systems software engineer and I would rather quit my job than to implement an MCAS system in the way it was implemented here.
We always have to expect every possible subsystem to fail at some point and we may never rely on just a single input (such as the aoa sensor) for any actuator trigger (trim down).
This implementation is absolutely reckless. When I heard they had implemented it like this, I lost all faith in Boeing as a company, because this is an absolutely obvious hazard. Every system will fail at some point and we always have to make sure, that the failure mode is safe.
Indeed, exactly. And therefore ithere wasn´t "only" the Top-Management of Boeing responsible for this.
Agreed! I've been an avionics tech, and became a EE designing for aircraft and earthmoving equipment. When I did items that could be safety critical, we did a DFMEA (design failure modes and effects) analysis, where we looked at the worst case outcome for any sort of failure. Did Boeing not do this sort of analysis? I can imagine that if such an analysis was done, the engineers involved might have fully understood the complexity of the system either. I can also imagine pressure to get stuff done quickly and not fully considering all implications of a failure. Another factor that I can't wrap my head around... there were two AOA sensors on the aircraft! Why didn't MCAS look at the outputs of both?? I suppose that was when they thought it was a simple system and easy to disconnect, so no need? So many ways that this could have been avoided.
@@SkyhawkSteve My understanding is that only one AOA sensor was provided by default, unless the customer specifically requested two. I don.t believe either of the two planes that crashes had two installed.
Boeing was once famous for its "No single point failures" design mantra. Now we have a 737 Max system vulnerable to a single failure of a angle of attack sensor, which are notorious for their failure rate, primarily due to bird strikes.
@@SkyhawkSteve Due to the accelerated schedule, Boeing had to deal with a large number of design changes very late in the development cycle. My understanding is that in order to save time they were only updating the safety analysis every 60 days or so in order to deal with the numerous changes more efficiently. Their safety analysis also concluded that pilots would recognize an MCAS failure within a few seconds based on its similarity to a runaway trim servo, even though it's cyclic actuation is completely different from the continuous action of a runaway trim servo. This conclusion was backed up with simulator data where highly trained Boeing pilots briefed on the system had no difficulty dealing with MCAS failures.
Absolutely fascinating. It’s the same kind of attitude that lead NASA to the Challenger and Columbia disasters. It’s horrible that so many people had to pay for executive arrogance.
Very good explained. However I miss 1 thing. The new MCAS actually required a new certification proces for the 737-MAX. This however would delay the delivery too much, to possible customers risking they'd change to Airbus instead. So Boeing decided to keep quiet about the MCAS system, and I have heard something like Boeing had a former Boeing employee in a very high position at the FAA, and Boeing used this contact to keep the MAX from a new certification for the MCAS. That is what I have understood about it. But correct me when I am wrong here.
I am 62 and when I started my corporate career back in the early 90s (in earnest) I was one of the those "business flyers" who flew around the US and later the world on many a business trip. In my entire career, I totaled well more than 1200 roundtrip flights and back then everything was Boeing or McDonnell Douglas ... except for some USAir, Northwest and America West planes - it was always Boeing. It made me feel really great to hear all of the familiar noises, vibrations, doors, gallies, etc. I retired about 10 years ago and recently we traveled to Europe and flew on several A321NEOs ... that really changed my view of Airbus, that and the fact that Boeing was indeed changing and it was noticeable ... if Boeing cannot get its act together and very quickly, this younger corporate generation will basically have the same comfort level with Airbus that I once had with Boeing. The only way Boeing can make it's comeback is either a wonderful new technology aircraft, or Airbus making huge mistakes like Boeing with the Max jets. Too bad, good will is very hard to earn, but very easy to lose.
Boeing after the LION air disaster knew the MCAS was to blame, they calculated the probability of another air disaster in the immediate future was low, allowing them time to correct the MCAS. They were perfectly happy to risk aircraft full of passengers crashing in order to avoid admitting the MCAS was a mistake.
The MCAS was only needed for commercial reasons : to avoid 737 certified pilots having to recertified with simulator training. The repositioning of the engines needed to fit them in, changed the CG, and the effects of take off thrust.
The reason there was no US or European crash was due to social media. The pilots found out what to do from pilots social media groups.
The Alaskan door plug incident happened before the aircraft reached full altitude. If the plane had reached full altitude, the depressurization shock would have killed most of the passengers.
You are anti-semetic!1!
I think they need to put in a new management team with the same attitude as the dream team coming to our government on Jan. 20. I also think that a lot of companies' directors need to weed out the bean-counters and MBAs, and bring in teams who know their products and their customers' needs.
@@grizzlygrizzle
The reverse has happened. The situation is getting steadily worse as the CEO enrichment philosophy gets embedded.
Similarly NASA were the only ones in the game, then along came SpaceX with their 'reusable launch platforms' and Ooops! NASA getting a hard lesson in complacency and costing!
This channel has really become one of the best on TH-cam. I’m not a frequent flyer, just a simple mechanic, but you have me hooked on your content.
Retired military and Boeing employee here. All you have said was very apparent to all in the company (737 line). Especially the "more for less"; address an aerodynamic and structural design problem with a software fix for the 737 Max 9.
With any technical system, provision must be made for WHEN it fails, rather than IF it fails.
As a recently retired PenTester I spent my career causing such failures to compromise systems (with the owners permission obviously), and watching the failure states of some systems was both intriguing and frightening. My work was primarily in the telecoms and banking sector, not aviation, but even here such “critical” systems were seldom designed with the “3Rs” in mind - response, resilience & restoration” - the 4th R, regression testing, was also “cost managed” out of many development cycles. I never managed to cause a major outage on a live system during my career; most of the organisations did that themselves, only calling us in after something “newsworthy” had occurred.
Former cabin crew: 6 months on the 737-300/500 series and 12 years on the A319/A320/A320NEO/A321NEO.
I trust Airbus - whether it’s an older A319 aircraft we fondly call "the shed on wings" or a brand-new A321NEO straight from Hamburg, I always feel confident in their safety.
I also trust the 737-300/500 series, having flown on them extensively, and I feel secure on the 700/800 series too. And who can forget the cigar - the staple aircraft of Britannia Airways for British Tourism. The issue for me is this: while all Airbus aircraft, classic and modern, feel safe, only the classic Boeing aircraft feel safe to me.
My concern for Boeing's safety practices began when reports surfaced about lithium battery fires on brand-new aircraft. Those incidents were particularly alarming because they signaled a breach of a critical safety principle - the safe transportation of lithium batteries. If such basic oversights happened on the Dreamliner, what might the 737MAX be hiding?
When it was revealed that MCAS relied on data from a single AOA probe, Boeing shattered another fundamental safety principle: redundancy. That’s unforgivable. Worse yet, they systematically withheld crucial information from my former colleagues - professionals who know their bird inside and out, spend hours of training hours preparing for any eventuality. By withholding that information, they revealed to the world that their culture had become sales over safety. Given the history of aircraft incidents and how much I felt then and still feel part of the aviation community, The feeling I have for Boeing is betrayal. Former NTSB staff used to say on Air Crash Investigation, “you have to have enough dead bodies for change to happen”. That phrase, like the television show, is outdated. We live in 2024, our safety culture has always been to understand incidents of the past and learn how to avoid them in the future, whether through pilot training or aircraft modification.
My former airline culture was to speak up, speak out, if you are concerned at any point or for any reason, whether you are the captain or a supernumerary cabin crew member. I have also made use of this system to avoid a safety incident that had not been noticed. I was very pleased with that system because it is aviation operating at its finest, empowering all staff to be on alert for anything that could affect the safety of the aircraft. That culture extended to every member of staff who worked on or maintained our fleet.
When think of software installed that was hidden from the people who operate them, further software issues, loose rudder screws, loose bults or poor door plug installation, I think of a business that is willing to play Russian roulette with peoples lives.
You'll forgive me, but its always fantastic to find a great thinker in a profession thats traditionally might bemoan intelligence over aptitude. You have both and its really great to hear a logical and fair assessment from someone in your trade. The MCAS deceit and development and Boeings culture caused this. And yeah as a software engineer (not even a mechanical engineer) redundancy is a no-brainer on a core line-of-business system. On an aircraft its almost diabolical not to have it on that control. It is unforgivable. But they just want to assassinate their whistleblowers instead.
Your Airbus recently also caught fire !!!
Love this channel. It's not just the information contained in the videos, it's the storytelling. It's where a lot of channels fall down, but you are able to convey so much, but keep the "story" of what happened to the forefront. I think that's what ultimately makes your videos so compelling.
One thing I experienced in Engineering is, if something is bound to go wrong, it will go wrong (often spectacularly). Don't cut corners ever. Don't rest until some seemingly minor issue you realized is left unfixed. It will come back to haunt you.
Yes, it sure does.
Yes. It should seem perfectly obvious to anyone with a modicum of intelligence and common sense, but Murphy's Law was never tongue in cheek - even if it is darkly funny.
If something can find a way to go wrong, no matter how remote of a chance, it _will_ happen. And when it does, it will most likely happen at the most inopportune moment, where conditions are worst.
Boeing... they -deliberately ignored- _forgot_ that, and it cost hundreds of people their lives.
Agree completely - when innovation stops, the vision is lost and the end is rushing toward you
One, if not the best channel to convert all of this! Thank you, Sir!
Great explanation of the max fiasco and eventual disasters. As a retired 737 captain I'm probably one of the few who have flown 100,200 300,400,and 800 (I had retired before the max arrived) I had to do a full conversion course between 1/200 and 300 but my conversion to 400 consisted of a reminder to rotate slowly on takeoff to avoid tail strike! Another full course was required to fly the NG. Actually the 100 was probably the best handling 737 but it was extremely noisy! Keep up the excellent work!
@24:30 it's when your chief pilot goes with the beancounters, and threatens anyone who advocates training, that you are truly lost.
I worked at Boeing as an IT contractor in the Renton plant in 97/98, on their first quality control system. I was amazed at the chaos and ancient manufacturing techniques. I had visited Airbus' A320 assembly plant in 1995, which was state of the art. Boeing's Renton plant looked like a WW2 plant.
A lot of great aircraft were built during WW2, some of them by Boeing.
@GH-oi2jf yes, but what's your point? You think WW2 manufacturing techniques are still adequate today? That the level of complexity is still the same?
My sister works for Boeing in the division that sells aircraft to the US military. She said they were aware of the system and required 2 attitude sensors for redundancy. My understanding is the commercial variant had a single attitude sensor.
It was an option for buyers to add the second sensor when it should have been mandatory.
I believe the second AOA vane on the Max was optional at an extra cost.
@@fjp3305"This plane is $15M, and for the low low price of $0.5M more, we can even make it not crash on takeoff! What a deal!"
@fjp3305 it is made for money 💰
@@gpaull2 definitely
Not just Boeing but in general US corporate greed is unbelievable and disgusting 🤮
Boeing is subsidised by the US government including money for research and development from NASA. (Taxpayers )
There are some very good people at Boeing and some bad people at Boeing. Both are protected by at least two Unions, SPEEA and IAM. The union vilifies the "bean counters". Bean counters are the ones who add up every cost associated with a delivery. When the cost exceeds the price, the company is no longer viable. It's happened to 1500 of the Willshire 5000 American companies. So now, there are only 3500 American companies in the Willshire 5000. Bottom line is - if you can't make and sell your products for a profit, then "US corporate greed is unbelievable and disgusting" is irrelevant. 🧐🧐
Absolutely correct, look at United healthcare!
It’s a real pity to see an iconic engineering company run into the ground by a management company whose focus was not about good engineering.
Very informative. That's the second video of yours I watched and they both were excellent.
This is what happens when career managers are allowed to take over. This firm was better when it was run by engineers.
Mullenberg was engineer. Diploma doesn't give vaccine from becoming asshole😂😂😂
Very big misconception. The company was run by a CEO with a engineering background during the MAX disasters (Muilenberg). The incredibles era (first 747) was under a CEO who was a lawyer by trade. Engineers don't necessarily make good leaders.
@timkono5645 ethical people do
An employee can be trained to manage. But a manager can't be taught to think like an employee.
@@timkono5645at least they make good planes . 😂
Given Lion Air's reputation in Indonesia, you know it's bad when for once they're actually the voice of reason instead of the regulators.
Thank you, Petter. Your videos are the best and I think this one is one of your very best if not the best ever. They are detailed, explained in ways anyone could understand them, and very respectful of all parties. All the best for 2025 and beyond. Lots of love to all from Toronto.❤❤❤
The point about moonshot projects is that if you keep doing them, they'll get easier and easier.
This is what Airbus has done. The A380 was a megaproject indeed for them - a moonshot. Good plane, bad sales performance. Oh well. Never mind, all the expertise went into the A350 (and I suppose A330neo and A320neo). Result? The A350 program went veeeeery smoothly, despite being an entirely novel construction technique for Airbus. And oh look, good market performance.
And the A330neo is doing the job too. And the A320neo is just nuts.
You could say the A380 was a successful failure.
I once commented in an article about the same remark above....A380 commercially was not successful but the lessons learned/the experience and knowledge gained from developing that moonshot really thrusted Airbus forward
i work at emirates are im pretty sure upper management would suck airbus off if they restarted a380 production. heck quite a few logistics guys would cry tears of joy if airbus actually agree to rengine and rewing the a380 for better efficiency. its a really really good plane, unfortunate that most airlines couldn't make the best use of it.
@@johnbenoy7532 Yeah, a twin engine A380 would be a killer.
@@johnbenoy7532 I've been on Emirates A380s a few times recently. Completely full and still a very nice ride. They're going to have to source aircraft that size at some point or other, when their A380s start wearing out.
In fact, if Emirates wants to grow their market, they'd actually need a larger A380. Which would be an unbelievable thing to see in the sky.
Airbus hate the idea of making an aircraft model for a single customer. But, there seems little choice; Emirates will get desperate, and Airbus won't be able to turn down their money forever. The only choice I see Airbus having is if, say, Turkish Airlines decided to bet big on the big 'Bus too. Which, they might.
An old saying that may apply well to Boeing current situation is “If you try to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s ideas you wont be in business tomorrow.”
Love your instructional videos. Keep them coming.
My dad is a retired computer hardware engineer and when the technical details re: MCAS were starting to circulate, the people who he worked with noticed that the bus used in either the MCAS or the AOA sensor (I forget which) was notoriously faulty. He was used to designing around its flaws.
There were issues all the way down to the circuit board-level.
The whole operational design of MCAS seems to have been filled with too many assumptions about critical factors that could impact its operation and the flight of the airplane. Retired engineer here who dealt with code failures and electronic equipment failures often to restore high volume IC production. No one died as a direct result. But we know integrated circuits with undetected flaws do make it into the real world. I would hope redundancy and overrides would be key in the airplane design and subsequent validation testing. Appears it isn't. Note major goal in IC testing was always reduce the amount of testing, but based on fail rate escape data.
Did see serious failure (do to a design flaw) that a customer (military equipment mfg) found, and that resulted in considerable work to resolve. This was decades ago and a fix that eliminated the flaw was implemented at that time.
It’s a perfectly workable system that was fitted. It wasn’t new, it had been developed for the plane Boeing sold the Military. That’s how it “flew under the radar” during certification.
@@chrissmith7669
There was also the decades of trust built up by Boeing with the FAA. The FAA didn't expect Boeing to try to trick them.
The system was developed post the Mc Douglas merger. Boeing freight planes using MCAS systems were developed prior.
@ what trick?
@@chrissmith7669
Boeing used 1 sensor, when at least 2 should have been used. This gave the system the appearance of not being critical.
(The FAA would have expected any system capable of being safety critical to have 2 or more. Given the decades of prior experience with Boeing, the FAA would have expected Boeing to behave responsibly. )
The moment boeings lawyer argued that no one suffered until the aircraft hit ground.. the corporation was finished as a moral entity.. now more like a bloodsucker
Wow. I didn’t hear that. Like saying “it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the end.” Reminds me of GM (or Ford) calculating whether it was cheaper to fix the dangerous gas tank issue, or just pay out to victims of the fires.
Actually their suffering ended when they hit the ground. For the people on those two Maxes which crashed, their suffering was in the moments when they knew they were likely going to die.
@molybdomancer195
Yup.. but according to Boeing.. none of the passengers suffered any emotional distress whilst the aircraft plummeted to its destruction.. kind of an idiotic thing for them to say.. but hey.. money I guess..
Maybe they were thinking that the people who suffered were the families and friends of the victims that died. Do we know if they were even considering the people on board when they made that statement?
The people on the plane are just a revenue stream.
The only people who suffer, in their eyes, are the people on the ground who suffer the loss of a friend or family.
As long as the revenue stream is alive, they don’t matter when considering suffering from the corporate lawyer’s perspective.
@@andrewb9590 Ford on the Pinto. From Wikipedia “In the memo Ford estimated the cost of fuel system modifications to reduce fire risks in rollover events to be $11 per car across 12.5 million cars and light trucks (all manufacturers), for a total of $137 million. The design changes were estimated to save 180 burn deaths and 180 serious injuries per year, a benefit to society of $49.5 million.”
Thank you. You've answered many questions that I've had.
Airbus planes are designed by engineers
Boeing planes are designed by shareholders
It shows. What happens at Airbus when the planners and design engineers make mistakes - as being human they will - it costs Airbus shareholders serious money (think the A380). Boeing's management simply refuses to countenance anything that might cost the shareholders (and them) money. "More with less" was a truly ridiculous slogan for a commercial airline company and the mindset it implied was always only going to end in disaster. And eventually the shareholders losing even more money.
Boeing planes are now designed by Accountants, Sales reps, and Interior Designers.
mate. Airbus said it itself: what happens to Boeing isn't good for us either. the lack of competition could be very bad in the future. with no competition, comes complacency, and in this field, it can always lead to disaster. i pray that day never comes, no matter the company.
@@kenoliver8913when Airbus flounders the French tax payers pick up the tab.
@@chrissmith7669 That was true last century - but not this century. Airbus these days is very profitable and pays quite a lot to the French (and German and Italian) taxman.
I've previously worked as a ramp agent, everyone hated 737s because the cargo bin is like a coffin. The larger doors on the A320 family permit better ventilation and airflow in the summer time, which makes a huge difference in the hot, humid climate of the Southeastern US, where I worked.
There is environmental hardware (filtration, water separation, etc) behind the aft bulkhead of the forward baggage pit.
As a mechanic, I can tell you that working in there is like being banished to at least the sixth circle of hell. Maybe the seventh. Eighth, if you're doing insulation.
Great video and pretty decent sales pitch for the watches.
You have the perfect channel for these kind of products.
My “favorite” Boeing axiom was “design anywhere, build anywhere”. Meaning that they had engineers and manufacturing resources all over the country. If a program had a resource shortage, just ship the work to another facility.
I worked in the satellite segment. Designing, building and testing a satellite is very different than an airplane.
But, a Boeing executive doesn’t challenge another executive no matter how stupid the idea is.
...and 'built by anyone'. I read one report that inspectors found that one of their suppliers had people using sharpies to mark out critical components when the authorities had been promised that the job in question would be done by precision machining. When (female) Boeing inspectors found this out and reported it, they were the ones that ended up in trouble.
The 737 max tragedy is the best example of pure corporate greed which unfortunately leads to tragic consequences. This has tarnished boeing’s legacy considerably and it will be years before their reputation returns to what it once was. Can’t even feel sorry for them, they deserve the backlash, they essentially turned into mcdonnell douglas after merging with mcdonnell douglas. What a shame
It is also a very good example of an economic ideology that not only supports that attitude of greed, but also demands it for a thing called shareholder value. In Boeing’s heydays when they were the true and only leader in commercial aircraft design, shareholder value was literally unknown and unknown not only to Boeing, but to all and any industries. Value was given to the product, its quality and the work needed to fulfill those values.
These days we see the first signs of turning back and eliminate the misunderstood effects of globalisation and its underlying ideology of shareholder value.
It's not corporate greed. Such a weird term that's been thrown around lately. The responsibility of a business is to be profitable and their shareholders were determining the path of the company instead of the engineers like it should be. If you make a good product, share a holder will be happy and the customer will be happy. If you try to cut corners because of laziness or trying to have a better quarter quarter profit, you will eventually make a crappy product.
@ fine by me, how about shareholder greed then? 😉
@@mediocreman2 don't be naïve, that's not how profit driven publicly owned businesses operate these days. nothing is more important than quarterly profits. not even human life apparently. welcome to late stage capitalism.
I've heard some of this explained also like a car that was redesigned for a bigger engine, but messed up the suspension geometry such that the vehicle constantly pulled to the left, causing driver fatigue. Rather than redesign and fix the problem, a gizmo (MCAS) is installed to pull the vehicle to the right.
Merci cher monsieur, grâce à vos explications nous avons une vision plus complète des faits. Merci infiniment.
Denada! No problema, Amigo.
As always Peteer, you and your team help educate all of us non-pilot aviation enthusiasts and we so appreciate all you do for the field of aviation.
I did not fully agree with the kitten tiger comparison.
What Boeing did was keep adding more little kittens, which was fine until they started fighting with each other. LOL
You had recommended Air Wars a while ago and I bought the book based on your recommendation. Anyone who really enjoys your channel will love this book. I couldn't put it down.
5:38 I feel you engine, I too have a noticeably flat bottom
Well guys Mentour Now is not depressed or he has self ending thoughts. Remember
yes
I hope Petter is good at swimming and doesn't think concrete is fashionable footwear.
One good thing about sponsors, unlike adverts, you can just scroll through them.
Ads: will still run on demonetized videos
Sponsorships: will still (usually) pay the creator if you skip them
Well handled. I have followed this story since before release of the aircraft and understand the series of events that led to the deaths of good pilots, crews, and innocent civilians. You didn’t address the FAA’s culpability in this systemic Boeing failure, but perhaps that is another video. It’s just imagining the horror on the flight deck of these people who had not the information nor the training to confront their, to them, inexplicable situation is heartbreaking. Thank you for continuing to clarify this terrible series of events.
I still believe that the accidents and attitude at Boeing were in large part facilitated by the over-cosy relationship they had (perhaps still have) with the FAA in America, particularly in relation to certification.
Americans in general seem to be allergic to regulation, they speak of it as if it is an affront to their 'freedoms'. When people are killed, they still ignore regulation and reassure themselves with the idea of compensation, so nothing changes. They appear to think that so long it's not them personally who die, and relatives get compo, it's all good. They seem to have the same attitude to road safety, food safety, gun safety, everything. If other countries didn't regulate, many US products would be far less safe- they rely on other markets to do all the heavy lifting. Maybe the solution for aircraft is the same, other countries will just have to discount US regulators and force the likes of boeing to undergo testing by their authorities before being allowed to use other airspace.
I feel like recently there just maybe may have been another over-cozy relationship between a manufacturer and a regulator that also starts with an F and ends with A that also resulted in the release of a product with a sketchy safety margin at best, which has resulted in signficantly more incidents of unaliving.
Are we allowed to say that yet, or does this phenomenon still only apply to airplanes?
Awesome video. Many details here and there and the animations were excellent. Good job to all of you
Bravo Mentour! This is BY FAR the best analysis of the 737 MAX problem! I must admit that I also fear that Boeing has a lot more pain to undergo before they get themselves righted again. Let's just hope that no one dies before that happens.
The best single statement of this entire fiasco is attributed to AA Mike Micheils in a meeting btwn AA (APA) and Boeing's
management. Micheils stated to Boeing re MCAS, "it could have been us (AA) in Biscayne Bay", in reference to Lion Air crash, Java Sea.
The fact that that somehow is supposed to make a difference is in itself horifying.....
Can you please make a video about the cargo Boeing crash in Lithuania?
The problem lies in the CEO compensation packages that focus almost exclusively on raising the stock price. This leads to sacrificing long-term growth in favor of short-term gains.
True. The fact is that annual executive bonuses (usually in the form of shares) a major part of their remuneration, BUT are only paid IF the share price goes up each quarter. You could not design a more corrupt system.
When lives are at stake morals should come into play. There is NO excuse for Boeing's management's actions.
The full quote is “This airplane is designed by clowns, who in turn are supervised by monkeys.” - which makes me laugh, although it’s a grim laugh, I admit.
My stepfather was a maintenance man at Boeing/Spirit in Wichita, KS for over 30 years.
He's probably worked on everything to keep that place going at one time or another. Even after he retired they kept calling him back to work on equipment that only he really knew how to work on that they were still using.
There is a lot of downgrading and bad decisions that went into the failure of Boeing. A lot of it was pushing out old people that knew what they were doing to make room for the new people.with no good cross trading. Also, the work morale and pride in work fell very far. My cousin still works there as a union stewart. Their big money seems to be military contracts, they love those.
The most tragic thing about the second max crash, is that the captain actually got control of the MCAS trim, despite the fact that the MCAS trims the aircraft far more than the pilot normally would do, the captain got the trim up in place every time. Whether this was unconscious is not known.
But it is when the captain gives the controls to the first officer that things go completely wrong.
The MCAS trims more than the first officer and the trim runs wild exstremly fast.
Doubly tragic, I'm sure the captain would have landed that plane if he hadn't given the first Officer the controls.
This should NOT be seen as a criticism of the captain, it was just the extra hole in the cheese.
MCAS was a bomb just waiting to go off.
I'm just amazed that with the trim system going bonkers and trimming against the desired flight attitude, neither crew thought to just shut down the stab trim and trim manually. I'm even more amazed that with their airplanes careening toward the ground, neither crew gave a thought to retarding the engine throttles. Both went into the ground at takeoff power.
@@kevinmadore1794 In Ethipopian Airline crash, they disable the auto trim. But then the aircraft is too heavy and too unweidly to control, they try to turn it on trying to trim it abit and then it just nose down all the way by MCAS from there. Please imagine having to constantly pull ~80kg, after awhile it is tiresome.
@@marveloushagler3682 The problem is....and what the media doesn't talk about is...that it took the Ethiopian crew WAY too long to get around to turning off the electric stab trim. By the time they finally did it, the airplane was badly mistrimmed and going downhill at Warp 9. It is no wonder they could not move the trim wheels. The aerodynamic loads on the horizontal stab must have been huge. It certainly did not help that the crew failed to do anything to control the speed. They quite literally flew into the ground at takeoff power!!! BOTH crews crashed at full throttle. That is terrible airmanship. Even a student pilot knows that when you're in a nose-low condition at high power, the power must immediately be reduced. Here's the thing. The checklist for a runaway stab trim is a Memory Action Item. You have to memorize it because if the trim system goes haywire, there is no time to go fishing through the EP checklist or QRA handbook, looking for the solution. The aircraft I regularly fly has a 4-step process that must be committed to memory. As I have noted before, Boeing definitely screwed up badly with the initial design of MCAS. But well-trained pilots should have been able to save the day. Unfortunately, there weren't any on those two airplanes. It took a bad design, bad maintenance, and poor airmanship to bring those airplanes down. Unfortunately, the media and the public just don't understand the concept of the "Swiss Cheese Model." A bunch of holes need to line up, before we have a major accident.
@@kevinmadore1794 Boeing fault is still the major part here, from bad design, bad display (removing the AoA disagreement and put it behind paywall that most airline skip), cheating the FAA process, hiding important single point failure from the crew, running system behind the pilot without any notification/indicator/training. Even after the Lionair crash they still try to deflect it until the next crash.
Even the Lion Air crash the story is horrible, it is continueously having issue and just before the crash the good crew manage to land it, but it is just a disaster waiting to happen, the next crew is not as good and Kaboom.
@@marveloushagler3682 No argument regarding Boeing's role. How they allowed the faulty MCAS software to ever make it into a production airplane is just difficult to comprehend, given how the aviation industry has historically focused on continuous improvement and learning from past mistakes. My point is simply to counter the clueless media's claims that there was nothing the crew could do and that those passengers were doomed from the moment the airplanes took off. The most important safety feature on any airplane is a well-trained crew. Any suggestion by so-called experts, and even one prominent manufacturer, that we should move to single-pilot crews is just lunacy. In that respect, one could argue that that manufacturer (Airbus), is doing a little of their own catering to the corporate greed in the airlines, who would love to save on crew costs. ;o)
As a trainer I find the anti-training movement alarming at best! As though money spent on training is a waste of money. Training on human computer interaction is especially important.
That was the selling point of the MAX over the Airbus - the Airbus may seem cheaper to buy but you'll have the expensive re-training which will make the overall cost greater than staying with Boeing as you won't need to retrain your pilots - you'll only need to letcthen know about the minor change details.
It is so very sad to see one of the world's great aviation innovators and manufacturers fall so badly. Great video thankyou!
Thanks Peter ! Great job as usual !!!
Thank you. I'm always doing my best to get the story right. There's more to come.
I refuse to board a 737MAX. Air Canada operates this aircraft to go back to my country. I bought a ticket that was $200 more expensive on a Airbus to avoid the MAX
I would spend more money to feel safe in flying too.
I think at the moment MAX seems safer than other planes, at least Boeing planes. Do you think it's one company issue? We have a culture of cutting corners, building as cheap as possible. Is there any company that actually takes pride in quality anymore rather than cheap, outsourcing, and "fat trimming" culture? I think we as consumers need to initiate the change. I know it's impossible to it 100%, but let's strive to question companies about quality. Write honest reviews, complaints, experiences. Let's stop overconsumption and buying cheap things.
I can honestly tell you as a B737 Max pilot, its safe. It s a horrible plane to fly from a pilot comfort perspective. But, it is the most reliable plane I have ever flown. As much as I hate it, i have to kind of love it.
If it's Boeing, I ain't going.
Even the Boeing 737-800 had 4 landing gear failures in one day, and one lead catastrophic consequences.
You have great and extremely informative videos. Thanks and keep it up.
The Boeing disaster with the MAX crashes and door plug blowout and the Starliner failures and so forth strongly remind me of NASA's shuttle disasters. Once the managers stop listening to the engineers, disasters follow, and it can take a long time to fix those problems.
My take away from this video is that Boeing could easily have made this plane perfectly safe but due to mismanagement they didn't. That is... that's much worse somehow.
Exactly. Thats the most painful. 346 lifes lost could have been prevented by an extra sensor. More sad is that it will happen again, no lessons learned
Perfectly safe!! That's chaining it down and going back to the canteen!
Didn't the DC-10 suffer the same attitude with the outward swinging cargo doors and weak locking mechanism?
@@ryanblazi9303 yes and ambiguous indication mechanisms for the ground crews to ascertain if the doors were properly locked. The DC-10 was just as flawed a design as the 737 Max but in different areas. Douglas merged with McDonnell during DC-10 development and the problems began. McDonnell-Douglas merged with Boeing and infected them. McDonnell was the source of the contagion. The other parallel with the DC-10 and the Max was that corners were cut to get it to market before a more technologically advanced competitor could be launched (the Lockheed Tri Star in the case of the DC-10 and the Airbus A320 Neo in the case of the 737 Max)
@DJLoPaTa2005. Not even an “extra” sensor, really; All they had to do was hook the software up to the already-existing copilot’s sensor and command it to turn itself off if there was a mismatch. Just like every other bit of automation. An extra wire and a few lines of code, that’s all.
I don’t know if their safety culture was so degraded that they didn’t realize they needed to do this, or if they planned to and false-economy bean counters objected to the extra wire; And I’m not sure which would be worse.
I would like a detailed explanation of the complete horizontal stabilizer and trim system.
How does it work?
When and how can you manually trim using the trim buttons?
When and how can you manually trim using the trim wheel?
How is the trim adjusted when on autopilot?
What do you really switch off with the "cutout" switched on the center console?
I see 2 switches. Why two?
Nice video! Maybe many of my questions will be answered in the upcoming video.
So glad the tiger became a kitty again when they put it back in the cage. Awesome explanation on this one.
Remember, kittens really think they are tigers.
@@JohnSmithShields Don't they just. Their claws and teeth are bloody sharp too.
Tigers are only a sort of a big kitty. The problem for us human beings is only that we´re for the Tiger what is a mouse for the kitty. Beyond this Tigers are nice animals.
Boeing doing a fair amount of its own regulatory checks for the FAA certainly didn’t help.
Oh man, your channel is great!
Excellent video, Petter, thank you! 😊😊
Glad you enjoyed it!
I flew on the very first 737MAX8 that Air Canada purchased at the end of November 2017. I was on the 14th flight of that plane. My return flight was also on the MAX8. Lion Air crash was in October 2018. I flew on the MAX8 again twice in January 2019, before the Ethiopian crash in March 2019. It's disturbing to know that my flights were in planes with faulty MCAS and untrained, unware pilots.
Very nice. Merry Christmas
Boeing may have brought out McDonald Douglas financially, but McDonald is the one who took over Boeing, I remember as a kid always hearing about a MD jet crashing in the news, I was convinced that I was either going to die in a house fire or in a jet crash because that was always on the news in the early 80s
What was the saying. MD bought Boeing with Boeings own money.
They didn't even let the pilots know that the system was installed in the plane.
That’s among them.. this is preparation video for what’s coming this weekend
@MentourNow it was the wrong decision from the beginning. They should ve built clean sheet design. 737 is just outdated these days. Everything else is aftermath
@@MentourNow Then I'm looking forward to this weekend.
@@AnetaMihaylova-d6f- Debatable.
Anything is debatable. That doesn't mean OP is wrong. @@gpaull2
Thanks for another very interesting and well made video, please keep up the good work! And also thanks for the Holzkern link, these watches are amazing! They even have a store here in Berlin :-D
I think that the idea that pilots would just assume it was a runaway trim situation and hit the cutouts was a flawed one because of the way that it activated and then mysteriously let up, then activated again. A stuck trim pickle wouldn't behave that way, and the fact it MCAS wasn't in the POH or even in the non normal checklist for stab trim issues that they could be related to erroneous AoA vane values was crazy.
I don't think two AoA vanes is enough. Like much of the air data systems or modern aircraft, having one redundant copy is enough to detect a disagreement and the comparator can say it's INOP, but having three is far more valuable as the avionics can diagnose which sensor is faulty and proceed albeit with an item for tech to look at on the ground before release.
I'm still baffled why those guys left the stab on. Awareness of MCAS or not.
@@waynethornton2174 Because the ever larger "on again-off again" cycle FELT nothing like the behaviour of a stuck stab trim that they'd trained in the sim for. In the months leading up to the crash several other crews around the world had discovered the MCAS rollercoaster but got the remedy right (something Boeing BTW knew but hushed up in case someone asked for sim training in it). It was only a matter of time before MCAS found a crew who got it wrong under pressure. Doesn't reduce Boeing's culpability one whit.