[conspire] That costs extra

[Texx]

The costcutting Rick describes it the typical MBA business practice.
When you hear me going off on MBAs, this is the braindead thinking that Im
going off on.

Weve had an epidemic of regulating bodies permiting the regulated companies
to regulate themselves.
The FAA either didnt have the manpower or the expertise to regulate Boeing
so they left the fox run the henhouse.

Some sort of action should be taken against the FAA allowing this or we
will have a repeat.

On the other hand Boeing, should be required to retrofit all the Maxs AT
THEIR EXPENSE.
Until they do, the costs airlines have to pay for parking the aircraft
should be sent to Boeing and those parking fees are STEEP!
The airlines are going to expect the feds to reimburse them for parking
fees but the taxpayers shoundt have to pay them, Boeing should.

This needs to be a near bankrupting experience for Boeing, and it should
badly wound the stockholders.
Like maybe all dividends sent to victims families instead of stockholders
for several years?
Otherwise, the MBAs will continue getting people killed.
As long as stockholders get dividends when the company screws up, it makes
it OK to keep screwing up.
Block the dividends and the stockholders will start firing management, and
thats what REALLY needs to happen.

People screamed when Obama practically wiped out the GM stockholders, but
it was the stockholders own fault for not firing inept management years ago.
Having GM fail and overnight adding over 50k people to the unemployement
roles would have dramatically destabilized the US.

NPR, I think Planet Money did a great program on why nobody went to jail
for the 2008 meltdown.
I recommend it.

I never thought it would happen.  Trump finally did something I agree
with.  He grounded all Boeing Max aircraft.
Now if he hangs tough and doesnt "mug wump" like he did on N Korea, weak,
but appropriate screws might be put to Boeing.


On Sun, Mar 24, 2019 at 12:56 AM Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

> Here's the narrative Boeing Company has been feeding to the press about
> the 737 MAX:  'Oh, this is just a pilot-education matter, plus we'll be
> rolling out a software update to make the product more better.  Nothing
> to see here.'
>
> An entirely different picture has been emerging, but first a review of
> what the 737 MAX is about.
>
>
> The original 737 was an only modestly successful short-to-medium-range
> jet from the middle 1960s (single-aisle, narrow body, six-across
> seating) that was almost cancelled several times.  It was due to be
> retired in the 2000s, and the usual process of a from-scratch
> replacement code-named Boeing Y1 was underway.  This was understandable
> since the 737 was only barely different from the 1950s B-707 design,
> which is why its low-slung design limited the size of the engines if
> they weren't to knuckle-drag on the ground, a point I'll return to.  But
> then in the late 2000s a crisis happened, called the Airbus A320neo.
>
> Jet fuel had kept getting more expensive, reaching a peak (so far) in
> 2008.  At two airshows in 2009 and 2010, Airbus Industries showed its
> responses:  (1) a 'sharklet' wingtip device that reduced fuel burn 3.5%,
> and then (2) better engines with higher fuel efficiency (thus the name
> A320neo where 'neo' = new engine option), that shaved fuel another ~14%.
> This was a killer advantage in the market, so Boeing needed an immediate
> response.  They crafted one in a hurry by killing the Y1 program, and
> frankensteining new, high-efficiency LEAP-1B turbofan engines from CFM
> International, and, yes, winglets.  This rushed job, resulting in the
> 737 MAX series,  saved Boeing's sales to, in particular, Southwest and
> American Airlines.
>
> But some kludging was required, because the LEAP-1B was, well, bigger.
> So, it was mounted a bit forward and higher on the wing than its
> predecessor power plants, so that it didn't knuckle-drag.  And that in
> turn threw off the airframe's handling, because test flights showed it
> tended to go nose-up, risking stalls.
>
> So, the kludge need a kludge, which was the now-famous Maneuvering
> Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS).  Two little vane-like
> external sensors report 'angle of attack' (AoA), and, if software judges
> the AoA from _either_ sensor (can you say 'single point of failure'?) is
> too steep relative to airspeed, forces the plane's nose down -- with no
> notice to the pilots.
>
> Here's where the true narrative starts departing _greatly_ from what
> Boeing's been saying, because this is where the firm's sales and product
> strategy under current CEO Dennis Muilenburg becomes very relevant:
> Since taking charge in 2015, Muilenburg (a buddy of the
> Toddler-in-Chief, readers may recall) has implemented a strategy to
> further improve Boeing profitability in its workhorse commercial
> aviation lines.  He introduced top-to-bottom cost-cutting, _and_ he
> turned _options_ for the commercial jets into a highly lucrative profit
> centre.  A leasing firm (Jackson Square Aviation) estimated that typical
> Boeing narrow-body jets' composite costs now includes about 5%  just
> spent on 'options', which include -- ta-da! -- safety gear.  Jackson
> Square says 'options' can add between $800,000 to $2 million.
>
> Basically, these are huge moneymakers.  (How huge?  Sorry, that's
> a trade secret, Friend Citizen.)
>
>
> What safety gear is deemed 'optional' and how much it adds to the price
> tag is kept quite secret.  Reporters have been asking both Boeing and
> dozens of airlines owning 737 MAX planes, and been stonewalled.
> Moreover, it appears that this information is not even disclosed in
> filings with financial regulators.  But there's a clue from the pre-MAX
> 737s:  Brazilian carrier Gol Airlines failed to redact this information
> from a 2003 SEC filing:
> https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1291733/000095012304007706/y97722a2exv10w4.txt
> As it turned out, Gol paid $6,700 extra for oxygen masks for its crew,
> and $11,900 for an advanced weather radar system control pane.  Asked
> about this and any extra information in the current context, Gol has
> refused to comment.  But, anyway, it's pretty obvious that the general
> rule for all of the 'options' is:  mucho dinero.  Gold plated.  And,
> it's known that two items that could have prevented MCAS from killing
> confused and panicked pilots and their passengers are deemed 'options":
>
> o  An angle of attack indicator that displays the readings of the two
> sensors.
> o  A 'disagree light', lighting up if the sensors disagree with each other.
>
> FAA, in certifying the 737 MAX safe in 2017, did not require either of
> these options.  Today, as FAA staff scramble for cover over the matter,
> it is being claimed that senior FAA officials hadn't even been aware
> MCAS existed, only lower-level ones.  Further in consequence, FAA
> has not required any updated pilot training for the MAX design, not even
> on simulators.
> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/19/business/boeing-elaine-chao.html
> Also, since 2005, FAA has been in a sense deliberately asleep at the
> regulatory wheel as a matter of policy, delegating authority to airplane
> manufacturers to largely 'self-certify' safety, and the 737 MAX, having
> entered certification in 2012, was one of the first passenger jets
> approved under this new program.
>
>
> But wait, it gets worse:
>
> The 737 being Boeing's most profitable passenger jet line, it was
> extremely helpful to the sales program that critical safety features
> were _not_ required by regulators, and neither was pilot training,
> because the 737 MAX could be offered to budget airlines and poor
> countries as a straight-up equivalent to the earlier 737 lines cranked
> out all the way back to 1967.  Skip the expensive options if you want,
> and no expensive pilot retraining!  It's the same, trust us!  This
> was especially attractive to countries like, to name two, Indonesia and
> Ethiopia that want cheap, standard jets.
>
> Lion Air Flight 610 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 didn't have either
> of these premium-priced safety systems necessary to compensate for failures
> of the MCAS system that was required by the huge engines -- and the
> pilots has absolutely no idea that the MCAS 'safety' system that was
> about to kill them and their passengers _even existed_, because they'd
> been lied to and told it was just a plain old 737 with no differences
> requiring any training or any documentation.
>
> And so more than 300 people died.
>
>
> Boeing had in mind to make some small software changes eventually as it
> slowly moseyed along after the first crash last November:  They figured
> they'd eventually roll out a software update to prevent MCAS from acting
> unless both AoA sensors reported trouble, and were still pondering
> this when the second plane crashed.  Now, they've generously allowed
> as how they'll do that _plus_ they'll throw in the $2.50-cost, probably
> $5,000-priced 'disagree sensor' as free retrofits.  But not the angle of
> attack indicator, because, hey, that's an extra-price option, and
> Muilenberg's stock options are at stake.
>
> In conclusion:  Go, Airbus.
>
> --
> Cheers,                     « Le doute n'est pas une état bien agréable,
> mais
> Rick Moen                   l'assurance est un état ridicule. »  ("Doubt
> is not
> rick at linuxmafia.com         a pleasant condition, but certainty is
> absurd.')
> McQ! (4x80)                                                       --
> Voltaire
>
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-- 

R "Texx" Woodworth
Sysadmin, E-Postmaster, IT Molewhacker
"Face down, 9 edge 1st, roadkill on the information superdata highway..."
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