All I can say is that I’m glad it’s not javascript but is instead a typed language.
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The other day I found that when I zoomed into an image on one of my cameras I couldn’t move the zoomed area normally with the camera controls. After some sleuthing I found it was only when a non-manufacturer lens was attached. Obviously a small, random bug, one you’d never expect, and one nobody had tested for. Fortunately it wasn’t a matter of life and death in this case.
Bad gateway 505
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It’s obvious that this aircraft has problems, and has for a while. Now that the word is out, passengers will be really, really happy to be flying these planes.
The FAA will take these planes out of service in the next three days. If it doesn’t, the airlines will, when they are overloaded with cancellations.
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The only aircraft Donnie could maybe handle flying would have rubber band propulsion, and be made of balsa wood.
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COBOL. But you need to submit a tray of punch cards and wait overnight before you’re allowed to take off.
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Nah, it’s written in C and they use a single ‘=’ when they meant to use a ‘==’.
(I remember as a grad student we came up with a list of the “10 most common C bugs” and taped it to our office door. Found it the other day while shifting stuff around in the garage, I swear you could put it up on a door at work tomorrow and it would still be as current…)
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But then, when you go to pick up the printout, you knew immediately that something was wrong, because it was either one page (when you expected 20) or it was a huge stack that used up your student printing quota for the week… 
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We don’t need these complicated planes! How you gonna get oilygarchs flown around the world with underage asian girls with their panties stuffed full of yellowcake uranium and a gaggle of mail-order-brides along with pallets of rubles down to Palm Beach with all this newfangled auto-pilot shit that my 3rd rate pilot can’t understand? Luckily, I wasn’t planning on paying him!
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Two near misses, and two aircraft down. Hundreds killed. The National Transportation Safety Board is saying “nothing to see here. Move along.” You all think Boeing has some clout or what?
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However, that anti-stall system — called MCAS for its acronym — only activates if the autopilot is turned off
Doesn’t sound like it to me.
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Corporate profits are more important than human lives.
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Trump appointee to the head of the FAA is Ellwell, a former lobbyist for airplane manufacturers.
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The article is misleading. The pilots reporting this behavior may be seeing something that needs investigating, but the concern over the Lion Air crash and this recent one in Ethiopia is over the MCAS software addition on the Max.
The MCAS system will only engage with autopilot turned OFF. The other necessary conditions are flaps up, and high AoA reported by the AoA sensor, which is the suspected problem when the sensor is giving bad data.
So it can’t be a factor related to these recent crashes because it’s happening when they engage the autopilot. There are several possible causes for that, including a poorly trimmed aircraft on takeoff that is correctly trimmed (for the input course leg) when the AP engages. This report smells like a red herring, just FOD to add to the noise.
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I hear you can burn them in the exhaust for added thrust, maybe half-way through the flight - you want a good pile for a hot burn. (since we’re talking coal-powered planes per Trump today).
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MCAS=
Mass
Casualty
Assurance
System
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Or it’s that the MAX 8 has the new RTE (Return to Earth) enhancement also installed.
On the non-snark part, the fact that the same behavior is being reported in a couple of different situations at the same point in flight is rather alarming. Shouldn’t be happening with such a long-standing system and airframe.
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Has anybody consulted President Trump? Nobody knows airplanes better than him. And he knows tech better than anyone.
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I do find it a little weird that TPM has developed such an interest in civil aviation stories. In the past week I’ve seen a “plane diverted due to smoke” story, multiple crash threads, etc. Maybe Josh is doing a lot of flying and got spooked? 
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Boeing would have been better off if the FAA grounded these aircraft. By not shutting them down, the press will be hyper-focused on any problems that take place on these planes - and the world will doubt any declarations by the FAA that the problems have been identified and corrected because the FAA will be perceived as pro-Boeing and not pro-Aviation Safety.
To be honest, as an engineer, the idea that you can shift the wings aft and still try to grandfather it in as a 737 was a poor decision - especially when you then need a software ‘band aid’ to get the aircraft to function properly. And that’s not the only major change over the years - the original aircraft was made of aluminum while the latest edition contains a significant amount of composites.
Boeing is in serious trouble - even if the investigation into the Ethiopian accident shows no aircraft flaws, their reputation is taking a major hit - and Airbus remains a major competitor.
Boeing’s CEO is Dennis Muilenberg. He made his name leading Boeing efforts on the Army’s Future Combat System - a program that was profitable for Boeing but was eventually cancelled by the Army. I don’t know if he understands the importance of getting in front of this issue - and if he’s willing to risk short-term profits in order to preserve the long-term health of the company.
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