PMDG update 6 Jan 24

[Stearmandriver]

19 hours ago, nrunning24 said:

As a former Boeing Engineer who worked on the production line of the 787 multiple things can be true at the same time.
 

• Quality Control at Boeing is in need of a revamp, People get promoted biased of the speed of pushing things through (especially in Manufacturing leadership).  I know QA people who didn't even understand why they were writing stuff up for engineering to review, just that the mechanics told them they needed to.  FYI the mechanics I worked with were rock stars and usually could tell me exactly what was wrong with the design or install within 5 seconds on the airplane.
• Suppliers like Spirt have their own QA controls and don't get "re-inspected" by Boeing personnel usually.
• More FAA oversight isn't always a good solution, most of these bureaucrats have never designed or built an airplane and mostly just make and follow rules to not get in trouble..
• Current FAA regulations for new airplanes are extremely onerous for OEMs and Airlines and part of the reason we are seeing new versions of these 60 year old airplanes that get pushed to their limit is its not economically feasible to build something from scratch once you consider the FAA certification requirements if you truly want to be innovative.

There really is no good solution, obviously quality escapes like not tightening fasteners needs to be rectified, but there is a bigger issue that we keep on working with these old designs because its almost impossible to get the FAA to certify something innovative and new.  Last time Boeing did that on the 787 the FAA certification requirements were extremely onerous and now is causing lots of issues with airline maintenance, not due to safety but because the FAA added lots of excess requirements due to the "new design" and not having service history.

The problems with the 787 weren't a result of too much regulation; the plane had pieces not fit together properly, it caught on fire, etc.  These are not minor regulatory niggles.  Same with the Max; a lack of oversight on Boeing's self-certification process allowed them to include a (initially very poorly designed) new channel of the speed trim system without training anyone on it.

As someone who will spend a lot of hours of my life between now and retirement operating Boeing products... I'm a fan of adding some oversight / regulation.  

[JBDB-MD80]

As the OP of this thread can I request it to be locked.? Thread is going nowhere.

[nrunning24]

On 1/13/2024 at 3:59 PM, Stearmandriver said:

The problems with the 787 weren't a result of too much regulation; the plane had pieces not fit together properly, it caught on fire, etc.  These are not minor regulatory niggles.  Same with the Max; a lack of oversight on Boeing's self-certification process allowed them to include a (initially very poorly designed) new channel of the speed trim system without training anyone on it.

As someone who will spend a lot of hours of my life between now and retirement operating Boeing products... I'm a fan of adding some oversight / regulation.  

As a pilot I'm sure you see things differently since your concern is in the flight deck, I assure you the burden on airlines maintenance teams is drastically elevated due to these regulations on the 787.  There were MANY instances where we could approve changes to ease the burden of work required biased off any reasonable safety standard, but as it was part of the original FAA cert requirements we were forcing hundreds if not thousands of hours of additional work per aircraft to meet certification during standard checks. As we got more info from the fleet some of these requirements were removed for certain line numbers forward, but those changes could not roll back to earlier line numbers due to the difference in certification.  I assure you it is a major problem that Boeing and Airlines have spent crazy amounts of $ on.

Even on the MAX, MCAS was only added due to the aircraft to not meet a cert requirement in a flight condition that was almost impossible to see in regular operation.  Boeing for sure messed up the implementation but that system was only bootstrapped in to meet reg that covered a very improbable situation. 

Oversight is good, regulation for public safety is good, at this point its just not being implemented in a way or even proposed that actually improves safety and rewards industry innovation.

[JBDB-MD80]

43 minutes ago, nrunning24 said:

As a pilot I'm sure you see things differently since your concern is in the flight deck, I assure you the burden on airlines maintenance teams is drastically elevated due to these regulations on the 787.  There were MANY instances where we could approve changes to ease the burden of work required biased off any reasonable safety standard, but as it was part of the original FAA cert requirements we were forcing hundreds if not thousands of hours of additional work per aircraft to meet certification during standard checks. As we got more info from the fleet some of these requirements were removed for certain line numbers forward, but those changes could not roll back to earlier line numbers due to the difference in certification.  I assure you it is a major problem that Boeing and Airlines have spent crazy amounts of $ on.

Even on the MAX, MCAS was only added due to the aircraft to not meet a cert requirement in a flight condition that was almost impossible to see in regular operation.  Boeing for sure messed up the implementation but that system was only bootstrapped in to meet reg that covered a very improbable situation. 

Oversight is good, regulation for public safety is good, at this point its just not being implemented in a way or even proposed that actually improves safety and rewards industry innovation.

As usual and not related to PMDG and the update. Take your Boeing conflict to the hangar chat.  Please lock