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KC-46A Program Back in the News


here_2_help

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12 hours ago, here_2_help said:

Nope. And you know a lot.

Somehow we've gotten away from my original assertion, which was that Boeing's LPTA "investment" strategy was brilliant and resulted in a number of key program wins--not only KC-46 but also MQ-25. I have no opinion on their engineering acumen, or lack thereof.

Yes,   Boeings LPTA lowball strategy to lock in the USAF for the follow on Tanker production orders may look brilliant. That may be a combination of the Boeing strategy, short sighted “limitations “ of the DoD and USAF and concerted political pressures. However, Boeing’s “less than stellar” (putting it mildly) cost, schedule, and quality performance might eventually come back on them. Of course, the same political pressures and relationships with DOD and USAF might stifle competition for a possible“Y” contract.  

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48 minutes ago, joel hoffman said:

Yes,   Boeings LPTA lowball strategy to lock in the USAF for the follow on Tanker production orders may look brilliant. That may be a combination of the Boeing strategy, short sighted “limitations “ of the DoD and USAF and concerted political pressures. However, Boeing’s “less than stellar” (putting it mildly) cost, schedule, and quality performance might eventually come back on them. Of course, the same political pressures and relationships with DOD and USAF might stifle competition for a possible“Y” contract.  

No. Disagree with you. Just look at how USAF converted the FPIF contract that was WAY beyond PTA into what seems to be a cost-type contract. Boeing has fallen behind schedule, experienced egregious cost growth, and had quality control issues. USAF doesn't care (or doesn't seem to). They're locked into Boeing now. You'd think they'd be sending cure notices, right? But no. They need that new tanker, whether it meets specs or not.

Just my opinion, of course. I have no inside knowledge whatsoever.

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For an account of the relationship between Boeing's commercial aircraft business and its military aircraft business in the context of the tanker competition, see Sweitzer, The Boeing 767 Tanker Boondoggle: How the Corporate-Sales-Pitch Procurement Regime Lost Its Parent and the U.S. Economy International Billions, Penn State International Law Review, Oct 2004.

https://elibrary.law.psu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1628&context=psilr

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1 hour ago, here_2_help said:

No. Disagree with you. Just look at how USAF converted the FPIF contract that was WAY beyond PTA into what seems to be a cost-type contract. Boeing has fallen behind schedule, experienced egregious cost growth, and had quality control issues. USAF doesn't care (or doesn't seem to). They're locked into Boeing now. You'd think they'd be sending cure notices, right? But no. They need that new tanker, whether it meets specs or not.

Just my opinion, of course. I have no inside knowledge whatsoever.

You seem to have said what I said, though I was intentionally  softer on the government side (than I wanted to be). Boeing and it’s backers have played the game like a well tuned fiddle.

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2 hours ago, Vern Edwards said:

For an account of the relationship between Boeing's commercial aircraft business and its military aircraft business in the context of the tanker competition, see Sweitzer, The Boeing 767 Tanker Boondoggle: How the Corporate-Sales-Pitch Procurement Regime Lost Its Parent and the U.S. Economy International Billions, Penn State International Law Review, Oct 2004.

https://elibrary.law.psu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1628&context=psilr

Good article! It does explain how Boeing used (or tried to use) military sales to offset demand problems on the commercial side.

Today, though, I believe it serves more as a valuable historical retrospective than a critique of current events. Unfortunately, the article is focused on the failed leasing deal and not on the current aircraft procurement contract award. Its market analysis is similarly aged, in my view.

In the past couple of years, Boeing has had problems on both sides of the house. Big problems. Which is why it slashed the corporate dividend and saw its stock price fall precipitously. Between 2012 and 2020, though the company's stock price soared.

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Good! It's quite a read, and provides background on commercial aircraft development, what happened to the values that made Boeing one of our greatest manufacturers, and the changes in its culture that brought it down. Prepare yourself to be sad and a little angry.

A close friend, very well known and respected, read the book at my suggestion and then wrote to me that it is a story of the decline of American capitalism.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks , Bob. Very intriguing article along with additional links to related stories. Article discusses avoiding loss of market share, profit over safety concerns by engineers,  airline resistance $$$ and seller penalties for cross-training, additional simulator time, etc. and apparently some shame on SWA, too.

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1 hour ago, joel hoffman said:

Thanks , Bob. Very intriguing article along with additional links to related stories. Article discusses avoiding loss of market share, profit over safety concerns by engineers,  airline resistance $$$ and seller penalties for cross-training, additional simulator time, etc. and apparently some shame on SWA, too.

Don't let the FAA off the hook.

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2 minutes ago, Vern Edwards said:

Don't let the FAA off the hook.

Agreed. The article also mentions the FAA, though not in much depth. 

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18 minutes ago, joel hoffman said:

Agreed. The article also mentions the FAA, though not in much depth. 

Read Flying Blind. You cannot understand Boeing, the FAA, and the 737MAX unless you do. Read the Wall Street Journal review here: https://www.wsj.com/articles/flying-blind-review-downward-trajectory-11638136648

Boeing's "brilliant" financial strategy made some rich people a lot richer, damaged its reputation, cost its airline customers a lot of money, and killed 346 human beings.

I wonder if any of that has figured into their past performance evaluations, or will in the future.

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19 hours ago, Vern Edwards said:

Read Flying Blind. You cannot understand Boeing, the FAA, and the 737MAX unless you do.

Boeing's "brilliant" financial strategy made some rich people a lot richer, damaged its reputation, cost its airline customers a lot of money, and killed 346 human beings.

I wonder if any of that figures into their past performance evaluations.

I bought the book for my pilot son-in-law (including 737 MAX-9) and ex-USAF pilot daughter (C-130). I do intend to read it as soon as I can visit them. I read the preview and outline so far.

As for the PP evaluations, there are so many ex-military employees embedded at the Company and so much political support that I have little confidence in the probability of negative recent, relevant past performance evaluations. 

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There are around 500 max planes flying now.  To my knowledge, none crashed since they were allowed to fly again.  However, the damage is done in consumers' minds.

Boeing decided on development of a software program that took the controls of the Max out of the pilots' hands and sent the pilots--and passengers--on a series of 10-second roller coaster rides until the pilots were unable to compensate for the faulty progam and crashed into the ground at over 500 mph.  Boeing was at fault.  The FAA approved the MAX and MCAS as it was originally set up.  The FAA is at fault and someone needs to evaluate how FAA conducts tests.  No crash test dummies need apply.

The European Union Aviation Safety Agency put the Max with the larger engines through its paces even without MCAS on and it was stable during the tests.

Boeing and FAA failed all of us because they gave Communist China the opportunity to be the first country to ground the Max after the two crashes.  They didn't enjoy that much, I'm sure.

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On 2/19/2022 at 10:37 AM, Vern Edwards said:

Don't let the FAA off the hook.

This link in the cited article discusses the deception by Boeing and some of its employees (“scapegoats” ?) of the FAA Aircraft Evaluation Group FAA-AEG during the certification process and foot dragging  during the investigations subsequent to the grounding of the MAX fleet.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/boeing-charged-737-max-fraud-conspiracy-and-agrees-pay-over-25-billion

It would be incredulous to believe that two Boeing technical pilots* independently schemed to deceive the FAA and Boeing’s customers about the differences between the 737 MAX and the 737-NG planes.

Of course, public reports and documents are not going to go into depth or detail about the extent or depth of the deception and problem, in deference to the long term business health of the company.

The extent of remedial actions as part of the deferred prosecution agreement, including reorganizing Boeing’s engineering function to have all Boeing engineers, as well as Boeing’s Flight Technical Team, report through Boeing’s chief engineer rather than to the business units, is telling…

Yes- I know there is much more complexity to the story, the Aviation and Airline competitive pressures and business climates, etc.

*Former lead technical pilot Mark A. Forkner was indicted last fall. The other pilot has apparently not been indicted, leading some to speculate that he cooperated in the investigation…

 

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I am disappointed and embarrassed to say that Mark Forkner is a USAF Academy graduate. However, I am not surprised as there are a whole lot of Academy Graduates working in the Aviation and Space industry after retirement or service commitments.

What is particularly upsetting to me is that Honor (Honesty), Integrity, Ethics, Leadership and Character Development are Hallmark values of USAFA. 

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1 hour ago, joel hoffman said:

Former lead technical pilot Mark A. Forkner was indicted last fall. The other pilot has apparently not been indicted, leading some to speculate that he cooperated in the investigation…

Here is Forkner's indictment: https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1442191/download

He sent an email to a colleague in which he said he lied to the FAA "unknowingly." Anyone who says such things in a company email deserves to be indicted, even if just for stupidity.

The problem is that he never told FAA what he knew about MCAS:

Quote

Despite knowing that MCAS could now operate at low speed and was no longer limited to high-speed, wind-up turns and speeds of Mach 0.7-0.8, FORKNER withheld this material fact from the FAA AEG.

 

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On 2/18/2022 at 5:33 PM, Matthew Fleharty said:

A documentary on the 737 MAX tragedy is now available on Netflix. It’s called “Downfall: The Case Against Boeing”

Watched this over the weekend. Thanks for the recommendation.

The one problem I have with the criticism of Boeing and the FAA is that they are being judged on the result of their decision to not ground the 737 MAX. At the time of the decision, it may have been reasonable to believe that the risk of catastrophe was very low. Perhaps the probability of another crash within the time it would take to fix the problem was the same as a non-737 MAX crash. Yes, a second crash happened, but was it reasonable to believe that a second crash would happen based on the data available at the time?

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7 hours ago, Don Mansfield said:

Watched this over the weekend. Thanks for the recommendation.

The one problem I have with the criticism of Boeing and the FAA is that they are being judged on the result of their decision to not ground the 737 MAX. At the time of the decision, it may have been reasonable to believe that the risk of catastrophe was very low. Perhaps the probability of another crash within the time it would take to fix the problem was the same as a non-737 MAX crash. Yes, a second crash happened, but was it reasonable to believe that a second crash would happen based on the data available at the time?

If you read the indictment it sure looks like “yes”. The MCAS program software could engage at slow speeds - which it did in the simulation and actually did in both crashes. if a pilot wasn’t trained for that possibility and how to disengage the MCAS program or recover, there was probably a high probability of an incident. It is a different animal than  a 737- NG. According to the indictment, it appears that there was  NO training for the MCAS. 

I don’t know when the cause of the first crash was known and who knew though…

I admit I haven’t watched the documentary… 

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29 minutes ago, joel hoffman said:

If you read the indictment it sure looks like “yes”. The MCAS could engage at slow speeds - which it did in the simulation and actually did in both crashes. if a pilot wasn’t trained for that possibility and how to disengage the MCAS or recover, there was probably a high probability of an incident. It is a different animal than  a 737- NG. According to the indictment, it appears that there was  no training for the MCAS. 

I don’t know when the cause of the first crash was known and who knew though…

I admit I haven’t watched the documentary… 

Yes, it would engage because of a sensor malfunction. What was the probability of a sensor malfunction? What was the probability of a crash in the case of a sensor malfunction?

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55 minutes ago, Don Mansfield said:

The one problem I have with the criticism of Boeing and the FAA is that they are being judged on the result of their decision to not ground the 737 MAX. At the time of the decision, it may have been reasonable to believe that the risk of catastrophe was very low.

Bulls...!

It's not the presence of the MCAS that caused the problem. It was the failure of Boeing to put the FAA and pilots on notice about the MCAS and to require simulator training. They went out of their way not to put the FAA and pilots on notice and require simulator training. It was a business decision!!!!!!!!!  The need for simulator training would have affected sales and pricing.

The pilots of the crashed aircraft did not know what was happening to them. 

If you haven't read Flying Blind maybe you should.

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3 hours ago, Don Mansfield said:

Yes, it would engage because of a sensor malfunction. What was the probability of a sensor malfunction? What was the probability of a crash in the case of a sensor malfunction?

Methinks you must be kidding!!! Boeings engineers altered the application of MCAS to include lower speeds e.g.  takeoffs. Forkner wasn’t even initially aware of that and he was the lead technical pilot!!!  It was because the first flights of the new MAX showed rough handling characteristics  at low altitudes and speeds. The MCAS relied upon a single angle of attack sensor, which the Boeing engineers had previously expressed concern about as they were known to fail. If they did, the MCAS could aggressively and repeatedly force the nose down (into a dive)…!!!

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/boeings-fatal-flaw/transcript/

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