Read First if flying on a Boeing 737 Max–or maybe not!

[Richard]

I share your lack of enthusiasm for the way this has been handled. While the bitey dog might be useful, I am not totally sure I feel comfortable with him as the pilot and the real thing relegated to a watch and fail role as they have now become. Certification should be governed by one set of rules for all, not one for (a) ‘nothing really required’ and one for the rest ‘do everything again and then get recertified’.

Note, (a) appears to be Boeing as the blue eyed one at the moment.

[Bob Williams]

A Singaporean ‘Business Insider‘ view of the Cirrus SF50:

http://tinyurl.com/y5wprmr7

” The control issue has been attributed to a production defect in the jet’s AOA sensor. As a result, the sensor can give faulty readings that may result in, “unintended automatic flight control activations; the flight crew having difficulty controlling the airplane; excessive nose-down attitude; and/or possible impact with terrain,” the FAA said. ”

99 aircraft, 3 incidents, no crashes.

” The Cirrus ESP system is unrelated to the 737 MAX Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System. The ESP assists the pilots but does not take control and can be overridden with control inputs. ”

A big selling point:

” At around $2 million, the Vision Jet is the most affordable new private jet on the market ”

 

 

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Les.]

Edp, only this morning, at our motor bike breakfast club, we were discussing this, and I started to think about the very point you ask. In the past we may well have had the most competent  and dedicated officials in many departments, especially air flight safety. However, whilst sometimes it has made total sense, privatizing or semi-privatizing has dealt a serious blow to some sectors. I still think we are reasonably OK on nuclear safety. Big business and money do screw things up somewhat.

Of course we were at the forefront of aircraft design for so long, then the likes of Harold W gave most of it away.

Winston did not help with our wartime computer expertise, just destroying so much once the job was finished.

Les.

[Richard]

Thank you Bob for the amplification and clarification. What a truly ‘bloody’ difference, one no deaths, just a reminder to the person in charge to take charge, the other left nothing for the undertaker. I wonder which one got it right, wow a really hard question for some to follow.

[Richard]

Les, most of the developments and improvements came from a mix of either private companies or key workers on their own or within those companies. When was the last time the world wanted leading technologies produced by the civil service?

As for the abandonment of/attempts to destroy the air industry by Harold W the least said about that the better. Perhaps he saw more votes in dying efforts like coal mining and riveted shipbuilding?

Winston’s desire to keep the computerisation part of code breaking hidden might more easily be understood when you realise that the enigma code machines were being used post war by communist states who were unaware that the codes had been broken and messages still could be decoded. A fact of which the other side were not thought to be aware. Some of the expertise was still employed or tried to be employed, the Lyons Corner shop chain with their LEO ordering system was a key deployment and highly successful in its niche. Several other projects were also considered ground breaking at the time in the early 1950s. Elliot Automation dabbled in early CAD/CAM work for machine automation, but those and other efforts came to nought or nowt or more accurately buried in a hill of retribution and shattered dreams. I knew someone who spent more than a year trying to debug programmes on paper while waiting for the computers to be delivered. He gave up and became a soon to be very disillusioned teacher, further blunted by the birth of a disabled child for whom he had to move to another location seeking help for her training and development.

[Les.]

Richard, I started work and tech college in 1957, and of course we had the English Electric here in N. Staffs. Whilst signing on for my course, I saw, there in the main college foyer all the big posters around telling us about the” English Electric – Leo – Marconi” computers, and i imagine they were signing on students for their Kidsgrove factory about 5 miles north. Yes, I knew Lyons were the leaders, but EARLY fifties? Maybe, Mr Google would no doubt know.

Les.

[JayCeeDee]

Les. wrote:

Yes, I knew Lyons were the leaders, but EARLY fifties? Maybe, Mr Google would no doubt know.

Info from HERE.

How a chain of tea shops kickstarted the computer age
In November 1951 a British company switched on the world’s first business computer, writes Christopher Williams.

[Richard]

Thanks JCD, the link showed how Harold W also had a finger in the failure pie of the UK computer industry. Though whether it failed because of its own internal problems or was pushed is a hotly debated question, but fail it did.

[Ed P]

It is pay and conditions that cause the problem in the FAA. Knowing the disparaging way that our Civil Service look down on the technical arms, I would suspect that the position is MUCH worse in our own CAA.

However, whether within or outside the Civil Service such bodies must be independent and on a par with High Court Judges and Law Lords.

[Richard]

There is always a balance to be achieved and probably no one does it very well. The FAA are, by now probably either stuffed with Trump’s yes bozo’s or others who just want to keep their heads down anyway. The French are limited by their civil service training and cultural development straight jackets. Our lot well I was briefly a civil servant in the 1960s. Many systems were clearly designed to suit a particular type of mind, no initiative and no room for doubt, add entry (a) to entry (b) calculate (c) multiply by (d) and hit with stamp (e). Ideal for low grade clerks which were employed in their thousands. It could go wrong when the constant (d) turned out to have wider variation than any of the supposed variables but that was another story. Still the inky finger brigade did not get on too well with the oily finger lot that actually did things and as for the messy wellington lot (e.g. farmers) they were beyond the pale. Just ask Blair’s wife what she thought about the UK countryside.

So there were walls but it had benefits as long as it lasted, the messy hand brigade got on and did what they did best, fixing real things, investigating real problems and discovering essential things.

I am not sure, are the crash investigation lot (a) still in existence and (b) are they still filled with skilled technical staff or have they been replaced by EU mandated dubious experts who never do field work, ‘too messy by half” for them? As I said elsewhere they were well above the usual run of ‘experts’ and very skilled at their chosen field of work.

[Ed P]

Richard wrote:

I am not sure, are the crash investigation lot (a) still in existence

They still exist, but I would guess that other than a handful of 50+ people, most are cheapo graduates getting experience before moving on to better pay and less hide-bound conditions.

I was very fortunate as an undergraduate to do vacation work in a Government lab and it put me off the Civil Service for life!

[Les.]

And the whole bleeding shambles is because we (read THEY) think arts degrees are tops, and science degrees are sh*te. I have realised that for maybe 60 years. At our school, the “fifth” *  year was dived into V Modern, V Science,  and V Remove.

* Most of the Modern and Science stream were in fact FOURTH year, as there was no  IV A, with the previous A stream going direct to upper IV A. Probably a very good idea, but it was a High School. No Comprehensives then,just “Secondary modern” and Grammar (High) schools.

I was of course a dropout (V Remove) finishing on 16th birthday rather than going on to “Lower VI General” and hence “A” levels.

Instead, I went directly to work (Lab ass in ceramic research). 10 years later I had a wider experience probably than 99% of the school pupils I left behind. I wonder how many have repaired motor cycles, colour TVs, lay a brick, understand gas, oil and electricity (practical and theoretical),  AND still ride a ‘bike around the TT course.

Maybe life aint so bad  in spite of the politicians.

Les.

[Richard]

Les, you have probably seen the effects of narrowing down career choices too early and the inbuilt attitudes to work that can build up. While overseas I saw the effects of two types of employee evolution. One ‘classically developed’ through work and learning what was needed, the others through theoretically based training. One faced with a fault could carry out a mental triage and rapidly located the problem area. The other pulled the manual, started as page 1 and went through all of the pages checking totally irrelevant aspects before arriving close to the problem area and wondering what to do. Guess which one made the better technical staff?

[Ed P]

Richard I think your first post was spot-on. Individual thinking, and questioning custom and practice were/are generally frowned on in the Civil Service. The system dates back to the Victorian days where the man at the high desk doles out the work to his clerks, and everything is done by the book – irrespective if the book was written in Victorian days or is wrong. That at least was my main reason for striking the Civil Service off the list of potential post-grad employers.

Judging by my wife’s experiences fighting the DWP etc as a CAB volunteer it has not changed very much, and the country now suffers with far more self inflicted bureaucracy than it did when I left the UK (much of it required by badly applied metrics, and their corresponding compliance  audit).

[Bob Williams]

Les, I attended a Secondary Technical school from 11 to 16. The fact that I achieved no qualifications is down to my immaturity and inclination to defy authority, and too much messing about. Plus I ran away from a bad home situation at 13 to work on a travelling funfair, which didn’t help, until tracked down and brought back by the police. I sat the 11 Plus and did not have enough marks for a Grammar place, so was offered the Technical place. That tallies with your own experience and describes perfectly the Establishment attitude towards science and tech subjects. At our school, we felt ‘surrounded’ by grammar schools and we regularly clashed with them. We had some really good teachers, several were also good Sports instructors, which explains why we regularly thrashed other schools at every County sports meeting. Regular football fixtures saw us winning almost every game. Our uniform was a target in the Mansfield/Sutton area.

That school and those teachers gave me a great grounding that came in useful later, but I went to sea from there, eventually joining the Army at 19 as I have said here before. My former school equipped me to become an aircraft technician and to achieve Army Education GCE a level equivalents.

The only thing wrong with a Technical education, is the people administering the educators, plus the system that prizes a pop star, an ‘modern’ artist or a footballer, more than a scientist or an engineer. I have many former schoolmates* who filled those posts and had good careers.

*Those who have not fallen from their perches, that is…

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Ed P]

In my neck of the woods there were often a number of 11 plus real successes who opted to go to Technical School. A fair proportion of these did so due to parental pressure (father was a plumber, electrician etc and wanted son to follow). On the female side, many parents wanted them to do Accountancy or Shorthand and Typing etc. – definitely non-pc in today’s terms. IIRC there were inter-school transfers at 13 and 15 for those who did not fit into this for one reason or another. It actually was very like the German system and worked extremely well and as a result no Tech children ever thought themselves failures (unfortunately the story was perhaps not so good for those who failed both systems, but the 13+ and 15+ transfers still existed (both ways) for those as well. The main positive to all this was that the very disruptive kids were all in one geographically separate school with teachers who knew how to handle them (often ex-Army PE types), so both tech and grammar kids benefited, and a lot of upward social movement took place as a result.

It was unfortunately far more expensive than the less optimal Comprehensive system so was dropped by 1965.

[Ed P]

Just to add to the terrible reputation of the 737 Max, beware if you are travelling on an older 737 (any version) as its wings may fall off! link

[Ed P]

Scratch the Max it looks like the whole damned Boeing Aircraft range has been infested by Bean Counters. Quantas have just discovered cracks in their relatively young fleet. Link

I’m really glad I’m no longer a jet-setter I would have driven our travel dept mad getting them to ensure that I was not on any sort of Boeing!

[Wheels-Of-Fire]

Oh dear

[Bob Williams]

From your first link Ed, an unfortunate comment by the retired engineer:

“A crack like this is similar to when you see a crack in a coffee cup handle,” the retired engineer tells us. “You can likely continue using the cup several more times, but there’s always a risk that handle will break off and hot coffee will wind up in your lap.”

No coffee cup has to withstand the effects of sub-zero temperatures at extreme altitude, then a return to land in much higher temperatures and varying humidity. A lapful of hot coffee, however painful, is somewhat less terminal than a detached wing at 40,000 feet. To quote a fellow passenger on his first flight, to Budapest this year: “F******g H**l the wing’s going up and down!” That was a 737-800. If you don’t know that happens, it is quite scary. Watching a wing fall off would IMO initially be a gradual process.

Anyone with shares in Boeing now has a choice. Anyone contemplating a flight in any mark of Boeing 737 also has a choice. My next foray into Europe will be via Eurostar and my motor. Jersey and Guernsey look good, if the flight is by another type. I fancy Belgium next year, then on to Bavaria. By road, with periodic B&B stops.

When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.

[Author]

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